Mic reportedly laid off the bulk of its staff this morning as it negotiates a sale to Bustle Digital Group, a publisher reaching millennial women.
The millennial news outlet is in talks to sell its assets to Bustle for a reported $10 million, according to multiple published reports. That price, first reported by The Information, would represent a significant discount on Mics valuation when it raised $60 million from investors — a group of backers that includes Lightspeed Venture Partners and Time Warner Investments.
Recode reported that Mic CEO Chris Altchek announced the layoffs at a staff meeting this morning. The company has not responded to Deadlines requests for comment. Bustle also could not be reached.
Mic has been struggling financially since Facebook canceled its deal for Mic Dispatch, a weekly news show on Facebook Watch that the millennial news publisher hailed this summer as “a big moment for the company in terms of growth and journalistic excellence.”
Publisher Cory Haik packed up her personal belongings this week, AdWeek reported. She announced her resignation today in an email to Mics staff, where she lauded its work reporting on the struggles and triumphs of people who would otherwise have been invisible.
“What you hear less about the truth is that it is expensive,” Haik wrote in an email obtained by Recode. “Our business models are unsettled, and the macro forces at play are going through their own states of unrest.”
Digital publishers have been struggling to find sustainable business models at a time when Google and Facebook together account for nearly 60% of digital advertising revenue and another behemoth, Amazon, is capturing a growing share of the digital ad market.
Content companies have been hit hard by a 2016 change in Facebooks algorithms that reduced the visibility of news articles and videos in the News Feed. And media darlings, like BuzzFeed, are openly discussing the need for consolidation for digital publishers to survive.
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