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The leaders of Mic's digital news publisher have managed to lay off almost all of the business and secure a new owner in one day. The company, which has started brilliantly as the premier source of information for the millennial generation, is officially sold to Bryan Goldberg's Bustle Digital group.
According to sources, a cash-strapped microphone was looking for a new buyer without success, while an imminent cancellation of Facebook in its Watch program, Mic Dispatch, had rocked the publisher's financial situation from bad to desperate.
The Wall Street Journal estimated that the deal was worth $ 5 million, which was a significant discount from what it valued just a few years ago. A spokeswoman for BDG confirmed the sale, but declined to comment on the price.
The agreement with Mic Dispatch with Facebook could potentially have generated millions of euros, and the publisher has invested heavily in programming, including recruiting new talent to launch from its launch in July.
Among the rumors that Mic was in talks to be sold to Goldberg and / or his company, the leaders gathered employees earlier this morning and fired the majority of them. Although the details remain unclear, the layoffs affected at least 85 people, ranging from branded content to copywriting and sales. It is also unclear what will become of what BDG will have acquired – including the remaining Mic staff members, mainly those who work in product development, and the company's custom CMS.
"Breaking an entire chain of information at any time, mainly because of an inexperienced management team and chronic mismanagement, can not become the new standard in the media," he said. in a statement the New York NewsGuild, who represented Mic's staff "We will continue to fight for each of our members in the face of these cuts and explore all the options available to us, that they whether legal or not. "
Mic's co-founders Jake Horowitz and Chris Altchek (the latter also being CEO), as well as Sarah Iooss' revenue stream, are expected to go to BDG, the New York Post reported earlier today. Mic publisher, Cory Haik, said in a note to the dismissed staff that she was resigning, pointing out that Mic had problems of "confusion."
None of them responded to several requests for comments. The BDG spokesperson declined to comment further on the terms of this agreement.
Mic.com has seen a sharp drop in traffic. As of October 2015, the site had approximately 18 million unique visitors per month, according to comScore figures, in the first year the company offered data. This figure fell rapidly to 5.5 million in October, the last month for which data are available.
Adweek technology journalist Kelsey Sutton, a former Mic journalist, contributed to this report.
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