Mic.com has fired 25 employees in preparation for a pivot from written news to video, according to a report.
“The latest new media company to adopt the very in-vogue euphemism for staff layoffs is Mic, a far-left millennial news website. Its Thursday morning massacre saw 25 employees out the door — roughly half from the newsroom,” reported Mediaite on Thursday. “Mic staffers have feared the impending death-by-video ‘since the company announced it would hold a day-long meeting on August 24 to discuss the future of the company.’ Though some fired staffers told BI the company promised there would be no firings in a meeting last week.”
The firings, which included reporters, editors, and members of the analytics team, were confirmed by Mic Co-Founder and CEO Chris Altchek.
“We made these tough decisions because we believe deeply in our mission to make Mic the leader in visual journalism, and we need to focus the company to deliver on our mission,” Altchek declared in a statement. “Visual journalism already makes up 75% of the time that our audiences spend with Mic… As new platforms emerge and existing platforms continue to grow, we believe this will become a dominant form of news consumption.”
“Our strategy to realign our resources behind this new market of ‘tap stories,’ in which we are already winning, will set us apart,” he continued. “In addition, we remain confident about our ability to succeed with extensions into the premium video space and already see strong traction with those efforts.”
In October, Mic sabotaged a gay military fundraiser at a pro-Trump art show hosted by The Gateway Pundit’s White House Correspondent, Lucian Wintrich.
As reported previously, “Jack Smith IV, a writer at Mic, reached out to the American Military Partners Association, a gay military charity that Wintrich was planning to donate 30% of his art sales to,” and “persuaded the charity to reject any donations from the event.”
Last year, Mic also criticized Out Magazine for profiling former Breitbart Senior Editor Milo Yiannopoulos, claiming that journalists should only work to further a left-wing narrative, and not “simply to push ‘facts’ out into the world and see what happens.”
Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington and Gab @Nash, or like his page at Facebook.