The editors of two impreMedia publications have been laid off as the company restructures operations and revises editorial strategy of its weekly publications.
María Antonieta Mejía, Managing Editor of San Francisco’s El Mensajero, had been with the company more than 8 years.
María Padilla, Managing Editor of Orlando’s La Prensa, who had been on board for over 3 years, was also let go, as well as co-workers Migdalia Fernandez y Natalia Nevarez.
Iza Montalvo was named editor of the Orlando pub, replacing María. Her return to the paper was announced in the most recent issue of La Prensa. Until recently, Montalvo was press secretary for Florida congressman Alan Grayson, but had previously been a reporter for La Prensa.
“We’re not reducing personnel to eliminate the weeklies,” assures Juan Varela, VP News and Editorial, Content Director for impreMedia. “We’re actually focusing on strengthening local content. We’re establishing a weeklies team that will focus on the common content for the publications, while local editors will produce 8 pages of local content, something that we didn’t have before,” explains Varela. “So we’re going to have more local content than we had before.”
Varela says there was a lot of work duplication, as the weeklies were independently producing the same content. The restructuring is part of a new strategy that aims to save costs and redefine the publications.
El Mensajero, La Prensa and Rumbo will now each have a local editor and will hire freelance writers as needed.
Ricardo Ibarra, multimedia editor for El Mensajero, has taken over production of local content for the S.F. pub.
Gustavo Rangel is now the local content editor for Rumbo.
Jesús del Toro, who had been Editor and General Manager of Rumbo Texas, is now Editorial Director and will oversee content for all impreMedia weeklies.
**DISCLAIMER**
I work as West Coast Web Editor of impreMedia Digital, a division of impreMedia. My employer authorized the interview with the company’s content director to address the layoffs and strategy changes for publication on Media Moves.