Are Time4 Media turned Bonnier Corp employees just naïve?

By SDH When two companies with different cultures come together, what you will get is a culture clash. When the company that is buying the company you’re currently working for says that nothing will change, that’s just to stroke you while they close the deal because there is no way a company is going to drop over $200 million to acquire another company and not put their mark on it. One would be naïve to believe otherwise. This seems to be the current situation at Bonnier Corp which bought Time Inc’s Time4 Media group. Editors are quitting left and right because they don’t agree with the direction the new owners want the magazines to go in. The latest to leave the Bonnier nest is longtime editorial director of the Parenting Group Janet Chan due to what some think is her clashing with publisher Greg Schulman who is the middle man put in charge of enforcing the Bonnier doctrine. Chan has since been doing editorial consulting. Come on people. Did you really think that everything would have remained the same when you rolled under your new masters? How naïve of you!! Either roll with it, or roll out. Luckily for people like Janet Chan, she can probably afford to roll out, which she did.

More bodies exit Al-Jazeera English

By SDH Al-Jazeera English continues to bleed. This time the exits come higher up the ladder. Steve Clark, a former senior executive at ITN and Sky News and a driving force behind the launch of al-Jazeera English, resigned at the end of last week while David Marash, a former CBS Nightline presenter who was the senior anchor in Washington, has also quit. This is all due to what some staffers call a lack of clear direction and sucky contracts. If all this is due to lack of direction, then we should be seeing more boddies defect being that Steve Clark was a major player in the launch of Al-Jazeera English. In an email to staff, Clark paid tribute to his colleagues, saying his resignation had been a difficult decision. "We have redefined international news coverage with our dynamic emphasis on the developing world. Our analysis of events in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East has been an editorial triumph."

Fader Magazine loses editor to George Clooney and Brad Pitt

-YOSH Star struck Fader Magazine Editrix Alex Wagner has traded in music to go work for George Clooney and Brad Pitt among others who are part of Not On Our Watch, an anti-genocide non-profit led by the actors. It won't be too long till she returns to run another music magazine though. In times of trouble and looming deadlines and annoying requests from precious editors or writers, my refrain tends to be, 'We are a magazine, on sale for $5.95 at Barnes & Noble' as if somehow that reality will demystify the process and return our egos to planet Earth," Wagner writes in her 50th issue editor's note. "As far as our distributor tells me, that statement is still factually correct, but as everyone who has ever worked here knows quite well, the Fader is much more than that: it’s an unending science project and a completely dysfunctional family that people quit and get excommunicated from and marry into but never really leave." Alex Wagner Leaves The Fader [Folio