<em>CQ Roll Call</em> Bloodbath of Layoffs Hits

CQ Roll Call informed some 30 employees this morning that they no longer have jobs. As layoffs, they will receive severance packages. For days the news was imminent that more heads were going to roll on the sales side of the publication with last week's five layoffs that included Marketing Director William Kiniry, who landed a new gig at WaPo. As of late yesterday, the writing was on the wall as HR booked three conference rooms for this morning, when the news struck. While most of the layoffs reside on the business end of the publication, at least three are from the Editorial Department, which we were told was not supposed to be affected. The editorial layoffs include one from Legislative Tracking, one from specialty publications, and one from production. The department hit hardest was sales, with 16 people from account management and circulation side sales personnel being eliminated. IT lost an estimated five employees. Last week five additional marketing employees lost their jobs. All of these numbers are estimates, but more than 30 email accounts have been ordered to be shut down. We're told the layoffs were mostly conducted one at a time (think George Clooney style from Up in the Air). CQRC brass says the layoffs are part of the publication's larger effort to invest in growth areas in the market, especially on the advocacy and engagement side. A company publicist released the following statement today... Publicist: "As we have mentioned previously, we are realigning our business team to focus on the areas of greatest growth - electronic, mobile, and social. The new organization gives us greater focus on our product, sales and marketing efforts. “We are continuing with our plans combine our newsrooms as we move to one print daily. We are launching a new advocacy and engagement platform, which is poised to be the strongest product on the market, serving customers inside and out of DC. We are moving forward in the digital space—investing in CQ.com and continuing our legislative information and bill track services. “We will continue to find ways to best meet the needs of our readers—which both CQ and Roll Call have been doing for over 50 years.”

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CQ Roll Call Bloodbath of Layoffs Hits

Betsy Rothstein

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Betsy Rothstein