Employees received an email from publisher Arena on Friday, informing them of a “significant” round of layoffs. It is still unclear how many of the hundred employees have been dismissed. According to The Washington Post, this concerns almost the entire workforce. Three weeks ago, the publisher failed to pay a bill of 2.8 million dollars (2.5 million euros) to licensee Authentic Brands Group (ABG).
ABG has therefore revoked the license, Arena writes in the email to staff. A notice period of 90 days applies to dismissed employees who are union members, other employees are immediately laid off. The future of the magazine, which has been a leader in American sports journalism for decades, is therefore in doubt.
The round of layoffs did not come completely out of the blue. Businessman Manoj Bhargava bought a majority stake in Arena last year. After a damning report on the magazine’s future, Bhargava called the staff together for a meeting. There he allegedly said to the editors: “No one is important. I’m not important. It’s unbelievable how many useless things you do.”
AI
The editorial staff of Sports Illustrated has been significantly downsized before. When ABG bought the license in 2019, about 40 percent of the jobs disappeared. At that time, the magazine had been published every other week for some time instead of weekly. In 2020, this was further reduced to one issue per month.
Last fall it turned out that several authors on the Sports Illustrated website did not exist. The profile pictures of the ‘authors’ were generated by artificial intelligence. The articles attributed to the fake authors may also have been written by AI. After the revelation, the non-existent editors and their work disappeared from the website. According to publisher Arena, the pieces were supplied by a third party.
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2024-01-19 20:35:27
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