Mic is laying off staff and pivoting to video, a move all too familiar in digital media
Mic, a news startup focused on millennials, is laying off 25 staffers as it prepares to shift to video.
It's a move that has become all too common among media startups.
Cofounder Chris Altchek told the company in a memo that the move was spurred by a need to become "the leader in visual journalism..."
This echoes a recent op-ed from Mic publisher Cory Haik, which suggested the need to move away from print and toward video.
"The much-lamented and much-snarked-about phrase 'pivot to video' is, if I'm being honest, somewhat warranted — video advertising is becoming central to every digital media company’s revenue model," she wrote in a post on Recode.
The company's pivot to video appears to be the subject of some confusion. One Mic reporter who requested anonymity said that the company had initially told people that there would be no switch to video.
One former Mic employee claimed that the company had told people it was not going to have layoffs, which Business Insider also reported.
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Numerous digital media companies have announced similar moves in the past few years, as the online advertising market has proved challenging. Display ads and branded content have only gone so far, while video ads and licensing deals have proven more lucrative — and some see a brighter future for such content.
Mic joins a growing list of media organizations that have also "pivoted to video," including Vocativ, Vice News, MTV, ATTN, Fox Sports, and others. (Mashable went through its own version of a similar move in April 2016).
A group of Mic staffers tweeted that they had been let go.
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Jason Abbruzzese is a Business Reporter at Mashable. He covers the media and telecom industries with a particular focus on how the Internet is changing these markets and impacting consumers. Prior to working at Mashable, Jason served as Markets Reporter and Web Producer at the Financial Times. Jason holds a B.S. in Journalism from Boston University and an M.A. in International Affairs from Australian National University.
