The upheaval at Newsweek Media Group continues.
Two digital-only news sites owned by NMG — Latin Times and Medical Daily — are getting restructured. Latin Times has laid off its staff.
Maria G. Valdez, the managing editor of Latin Times and Medical Daily, has been laid off, as has a handful of staffers.
The latest news stories posted to the site are dated Feb. 24.
At Medical Daily, e-mails to staffers on Tuesday received no return or bounced back as undeliverable. The company did post a single new story on its home page on Wednesday — the first new post since March 3 — and a company spokesman insisted the site is still live.
Medical Daily did not have an editor in chief, but listed Johnathan Davis, the company co-owner, in the top editorial slot. Emails to the next two slots, social media editor Nalin Kaul and front page editor Samantha Olson, bounced back as undeliverable.
At the same time, NMG has undertaken a restructuring that seems to be aimed at shoring up its listing flagship publications — Newsweek and International Business Times.
More than 20 people have been fired or resigned from Newsweek in recent weeks.
On Tuesday, Nancy Cooper, interim editor of Newsweek, was given the job permanently, the company said. Cooper had moved over from her job as editor of International Business Times after the NMG fired Newsweek editor Bob Roe, executive editor Ken Li and investigative reporter Celeste Katz for investigating a story on NMG’s possible financial ties to Olivet University, a small San Francisco Bible college founded by followers of controversial South Korean cleric Rev. David Jang.
Five other journalists had threatened to resign if the owners did not allow Newsweek to publish the article that Roe, Li and Katz had worked on.
The article was published Feb. 20.
Cooper will report to chief content officer Dayan Candappa.
NMG chief executive Dev Pragad on Tuesday called Newsweek “the jewel in our crown” and said it will now be given its own sales and operating team.
Julian Kossoff, managing editor of the British edition of International Business Times, will now become the global editor.
The company said it planned to establish an editorial and business advisory board with input from top industry professionals.
In other matters, NMG said it has been alerted to “a piece of potential code that disrupted ad tracking and ad viewability” at several IBT digital editions.
NMG said the codes were removed and the company “is also conducting an internal investigation to identify the individuals responsible and will take the necessary action.”
NMG, which was accused in a recent news report of using gimmicks to boost traffic on its IBT sites, said it enrolled with Trustworthy Accountability Group, an industry group formed to verify traffic and weed out ad fraud.
