Peter Kafka, a former Forbes.com editor, reports that 19 have been laid off from both the print and online sides. Other sources give a breakdown: 17 from print, chiefly those with the longest tenure and hence the highest salaries; and 2 from the Web, both recent hires.

Forbes and Forbes.com have been run separately since the late '90s, when the Forbes family hoped to make some quick cash by spinning out the dotcom in an IPO. The public offering never happened, but Forbes Media's split has persisted, exacerbated by turf wars and infighting. (Forbes.com did not want Dan Lyons, the magazine writer who turned into a superstar blogger as Fake Steve Jobs, to write for the website; he left for Newsweek last year.)

Plans to merge the two feuding operations first leaked in October. In November, the company, which is now part owned by the Forbes family and part owned by Elevation Partners, the private equity firm which counts U2 rock star Bono as a member, conceded in a memo to employees that a merger was afoot, and that decisions on cuts would be made in January.

It is a comedown for the magazine, especially. We have heard, but not yet confirmed, that the list-happy title has lost most of its junior reporters who served as factcheckers. And the print team, we're told, may move from its 60 Fifth Avenue headquarters to Forbes.com's dumpier newsroom at 90 Fifth Avenue, perhaps so Forbes Media can unload the more valuable real estate. (Not that it's a good time to sell Manhattan office space, which is likely why the move is still undecided.)

From: Steve Forbes
Sent: Mon 11/17/2008 2:20 PM
To: undisclosed-recipients
Subject: News

We want to let you know of a series of structural changes that will enable us not only to better weather the current economic torm, but to move ahead quickly and profitably when the global economies begin recovering. These moves will make our company highly competitive in an extremely tough environment.

One of the benefits of Forbes is precisely the ability to move nimbly and swiftly to respond to our clients and marketers in the way they want to do business. For these reasons we have decided to change the organization of our sales and marketing groups in the company. In making these decisions, we got enormous and valuable input from our own people, as well as the marketplace to best position Forbes Media.

Over the next few weeks, the sales and marketing groups of Forbes magazine and Forbes.com will be combined into three specific units under the Forbes Media umbrella. The purpose is to enable us to more sharply and effectively focus our resources and priorities in response to our audiences and marketing partners.

The first newly organized sales and marketing group is the Brand Intelligence Group. It will focus on the senior-most levels of our marketing partners. We will create consultative engagements with these executives to better connect our highly valuable audiences with our advertisers' core communication goals. This vital enterprise will be led by Kevin Gentzel, as President and Group Publisher of Forbes Media. Bruce Rogers, Chief Brand Officer, will lead the marketing and research arms of this effort. The Integrated Solutions Group, another newly aligned sales and marketing unit, will work to create integrated and custom solutions to access our unique audiences. These original programs will be cross-platform, content-based, with broad marketability. The Integrated Solutions Group will be led by Mike Woods, as President.

As always, the core of our client outreach will be our geographically dispersed sales teams. Now, though, we will organize these teams in regional business centers, that combine the talents of the Forbes and Forbes.com sales staff in the newly created Forbes Media Sales and Service Group. This initiative will position the Forbes brand as a true multi-media vehicle. The marketplace increasingly recognizes the necessity to utilize —precisely and efficiently — several platforms to achieve their objectives. The group will be led by Avery Stirratt and Robert Pietsch, who will serve as Co-Presidents and Chief Advertising Officers. Debbie Himmelfarb will serve as Vice President, Marketing to support this group's marketing programs.

The leaders of the newly established groups will report to The Office of the Chairman, which will consist of Steve Forbes, Chairman and CEO of Forbes Media; Timothy Forbes, President and COO of Forbes Media; and Jim Spanfeller, President and CEO of Forbes.com.

I want to thank the leadership of sales and marketing for their critical input in this valuable effort. We believe these bold moves will place us in a far stronger position to expand our historical lead in both print and on-line. In other areas of the company, the following changes will be implemented as well.

Conferences and events in the U.S. and Europe will now be part of sales and marketing programs.

Recently, the name of the overall brand of web properties and affiliated properties has changed to Forbes Digital. Included under the Forbes Digital umbrella are: Forbes.com; Investopedia.com; RealClearPolitics.com; RealClearMarkets.com; RealClearSports.com; the Forbes.com Business and Finance Blog Network; and ForbesTraveler.com. ForbesAutos.com will be discontinued.

We are also strengthening and expanding the editorial integration at both Forbes and Forbes.com. There has been a program to exchange talent between the web and the magazine in place for some time. These efforts have been successful, and we are in the midst of conversations to discuss ways to truly integrate the great talent in both organizations by sometime in early 2009.

In recognition of their considerable contributions to the magazine in the past year, I am elevating Stewart Pinkerton and Tom Post from Deputy Managing Editors to Managing Editors.

Before joining Forbes in 1990, Stewart spent 24 years at the Wall Street Journal, in a mix of reporting and editing positiions, including Deputy Managing Editor under Norm Pearlstine. He's a graduate of Princeton and has a J.D. from New York Law School.

Tom joined Forbes 11 years ago from ABC News. He has B.A. from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. from UC, Berekeley.

This masthead change won't result in any reassigments of writers. Stewart will continue to spend a lot of his time overseeing the contributions of print writers to Forbes.com and vice versa. That job is getting bigger; it is vital that magazine contributions to the Web go where they will deliver the most prestige and traffic. Tom will keep his stable of writers and have a large role in the development of cover stories. He has done much in the past two months to keep us on top of the news.