Gawker: valleywag, sugar publishing

Sugar leaves nine employees out in the rain

Owen Thomas — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 22:40:00 EDT

Brian Sugar, cofounder of San Francisco-based blog network Sugar Inc., sent two ominous Twitters this afternoon: "Sad day." "First rain, will last for 5 months." Was he just talking about the weather? Less than an hour later, he'd gathered his staff into a conference room and told them he was laying off nine employees, mostly in editorial — 11 percent of the company's 80-person staff. What's worse: More layoffs could come over the next two quarters, if ad sales don't improve.

Sugar's CEO may have aimed to put employees on notice, in hopes of motivating them to perform. But leaving a shoe to drop is the worst mistake one can make in cutting employees, the meltdown's self-appointed layoff pundits agree. Sugar Inc.'s real problem may be self-inflicted: It took ad sales in-house from partner and investor NBC this summer, leaving it with a sales force still in development, right as the online-advertising market got a lot tougher.

Sugar Publishing ventures into "as seen on TV" product-pushing market

Jackson West — Wed, 21 May 2008 13:20:00 EDT

San Francisco-based blog network Sugar Publishing has bought StarBrand Media, a company that works with television producers to highlight and sell clothing and furnishings that appear in popular shows such as Gossip Girl, making every moment in every show an opportunity to place a product. One network it doesn't work with yet is NBC, which just happens to have invested in Sugar Publishing.

And Madison Avenue created woman

Mary Jane Irwin — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 12:32:17 EST

There are women on the Internet. Did you know? Madison Avenue is just figuring this out, desperately looking for websites to stuff with female-targeted ad dollars. Lifetime, the cable network, just launched its own social network, mylifetime.com, with a lot of help from Glam Media's stable of female-centric blogs. Similarly, Warner Bros. announced entertainment and advice destination Mom Logic. Martha Stewart has launched Martha's Circle, an online ad network which represents other websites, and NBC Universal's iVIllage has struck a similar deal with Sugar Publishing. "It's kind of boring to say, but we really think content's king in this category," said Starcom's Jeff Marshall to AdAge. Boring, and false. The rule these days is sell the ads first, and find a place to put them later.