Fired Fast Company Web chief admits he was moonlighting

Owen Thomas — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 15:20:00 EDT

Here's a career tip from Ed Sussman, the fired head of Mansueto Digital: Have a startup in your back pocket. Since March, he reveals, he's been working on a side project while running the websites of Fast Company and Inc. magazines for Mansueto Ventures. His job was one of 20 eliminated in the cutbacks, which primarily hit the company's online and events divisions. He tells Mediabistro that he and his partners have "put some 4,000 hours into the project" — an effort to commercialize Drupal, an open-source blog software program. Gosh, do you think his boss would have waited until October to lay off Sussman if he had known how much free time his employee had on his hands?

Fast Company publisher to lay off 20

Owen Thomas — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 16:20:00 EDT

Times are tough all over. That's the excuse bosses are now using for cleaning house, making hard decisions they were too timid to execute in bubblier times. We've just heard that Mansueto Ventures, the publisher of Fast Company and Inc. magazines, is laying off 20 people. Inside the company, it's being spun as an "economic move" — but if it's a financially motivated maneuver, why is Fast Company magazine being left untouched in the layoffs?

Most of the cuts are hitting Mansueto Digital, the company's Web arm, previously the fiefdom of executive Ed Sussman. Sussman is leaving the company, and control of Fastcompany.com is now being handed to the magazine's editor, Bob Safian; traffic had fallen by about half on Sussman's watch, while rivals like Wired saw visits to their websites grow quickly. Robert Scoble, the self-obsessed managing director of Fastcompany.tv, will still be employed as of Monday, though he now reports to Safian. Darn!

Gawker: valleywag, mansueto digital

Fired Fast Company Web chief admits he was moonlighting

Fast Company publisher to lay off 20