Online news site shuts up shop

IT publisher VNU is shutting down its newswire, vnunet.com. Ten staff are set to lose their jobs.

The company said it is getting rid of "unnecessary people" as it brings its web and print operations closer together. Seven London-based journalists will be made redundant, along with three administrative and technical staff. vnunet.com will be relaunched as a portal for the websites of VNU's ICT (information communications and telecoms) publications later this year. This is a return to VNU's original online strategy of having an umbrella site (then called Magnet) through which users could access edited content from its paper titles. Jonathon Ross, CEO of vnunet.com Europe, said that advertisers increasingly demand that publishers establish a strong pan-European presence. He said: "We are going to play to our strength which is the presence of web and paper operations across seven territories. Our web strategy is not clumsy but has been going through a lot of change." At the same time, the Industry Standard, the internet economy publication, will be sacking 18 journalists based at its San Francisco offices. A further 51 non-editorial staff will also go. silicon.com is currently recruiting editorial staff and would like to hear from interested journalists. Please email ijones@silicon.com.