ALM journalists concerned about future role

Cuts of high-ranking journalists at ALM Media have raised concerns among the publications’ reporters about how journalism fits into the ALM company, reports Casey Sullivan of Bloomberg Law.

Sullivan writes, “The current ALM employee said that the company was seeking “payroll savings in the millions of dollars” after some of ALM’s products failed to meet revenue projections in the fourth quarter of 2016 and faced dim prospects for 2017. Specific financial figures could not be determined.

“The cuts have raised concerns among the publications’ reporters about how journalism fits into the ALM company, said a separate ALM employee. Some of the publications’ most prominent legal journalists have left ALM in recent months, including Julie Triedman, who departed for a public relations position at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in New York; Zoe Tillman, who took a job on the legal team at BuzzFeed News in Washington, D.C.; and Susan Beck, a senior writer whose future plans could not be determined.

“ALM is a privately held company, owned by the private equity shop Wasserstein & Co, which bought back ALM in 2014 (for $417 million, as reported by The New York Times) after selling it in 2007. The company, founded by Steven Brill in 1979, covers the business of lawyers, law firms and in-house counsel through a number of publications including The American Lawyer, The New York Law Journal, The Legal Intelligencer, The Recorder, among others. The publications compete with Bloomberg LP, Bloomberg BNA and Big Law Business.”

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