Decline in Job Ads Helps Spur NLJ and Legal Times Merger
Updated: The National Law Journal and Legal Times are merging.
The combined publications will publish under the banner of the National Law Journal, according to a press release (PDF) posted by How Appealing. Both are owned by Incisive Media.
William Pollak, Incisive Media’s chief executive officer for North America, writes at Bill’s blog that the bad economy had affected revenues at Legal Times and was one reason for the merger.
“The fall-off in the economy and particularly the dramatic decline in recruitment advertising has had a devastating impact on Legal Times,” Pollak says. “Maintaining LT as a stand-alone, self-supporting newspaper would have required significant cost reduction and would have almost certainly had an impact on the quality of our journalism. That possibility was intolerable to us and so we went looking for a solution that would allow us to maintain our journalistic ambitions in DC but supported by a different business model.”
Incisive Media spokesman Lee Feldman emphasizes another reason for the merger–the opportunity to bring increased coverage of Washington, D.C., legal developments to a broader audience. “The important thing to focus on here is the upside rather than the downside,” he told the ABA Journal.
Current NLJ readers will get expanded coverage of the Supreme Court, Capitol Hill, federal regulatory agencies and the Justice Department, according to the release. Legal Times readers, on the other hand, will get more news on the business of law, litigation, the nation’s courts and in-house counsel.
The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times will be published on a revamped NLJ website.
David Brown, editor and publisher of Legal Times, will serve as editor in chief of the new National Law Journal. NLJ publisher Stephen Lincoln will continue in his current role.
Incisive Media had laid off 42 staffers in late January across all of the company’s North American units, in a development covered by Above the Law.
Feldman told the ABA Journal that no decisions have been made on whether additional job cuts will be needed. “We haven’t made any determination yet with regard to staffing for the combined publications,” he said. “We don’t know if there are going to be any jobs lost. We are still in the process of working through it.”
Asked if any other legal publications owned by Incisive Media will be affected, Feldman replied, “No–no reason they would be.”
The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times says staffers were told in sessions today that the merger will eventually mean the loss of some jobs.
Last updated at 12:30 p.m. to include Feldman’s comments and at 1:10 p.m. to include BLT information. Item also updated previously to note Pollak’s blog post.
