Yahoo has announced plans to kill seven of its digital magazines, including Yahoo Food, Yahoo Health, Yahoo Parenting, Yahoo Makers, Yahoo Travel, Yahoo Autos and Yahoo Real Estate.
The company is closing these signature projects of embattled CEO Marissa Mayer in an effort to shore up the fortune of the company.
Yahoo’s Global Editor-in-Chief Martha Nelson said: "On our recent earnings call, Yahoo outlined out a plan to simplify our business and focus our effort on our four most successful content areas – News, Sports, Finance and Lifestyle.
"To that end, today we will begin phasing out the following Digital Magazines: Yahoo Food, Yahoo Health, Yahoo Parenting, Yahoo Makers, Yahoo Travel, Yahoo Autos and Yahoo Real Estate."
According to reports, dozens of writers and editors will lose their jobs following the closure of these magazines. However, the company will continue to publish News, Sports, Finance and Lifestyle verticals with a renewed focus.
Nelson added:" We make these changes, we acknowledge the talent and dedication of an extraordinary group of journalists who brought new and newsworthy content to Yahoo.
"While these Digital Magazines will no longer be published, you will continue to find the topics they covered, as well as style, celebrity, entertainment, politics, tech and much more across our network.
"We know you come to Yahoo because of our distinct voice and unique blend of original content, aggregation and personalization. With a renewed focus on News, Sports, Finance and Lifestyle, we will be working to make Yahoo an even more essential part of your life."
According to reports, some of the employees working with the digital magazines have been told to go.
A Yahoo spokesperson was quoted by CNNMoney as saying: "In early February Yahoo shared a plan for the future, with this new plan came some very difficult decisions and changes to our business.
"As a result of these changes some jobs have been eliminated and those employees will be notified today."
CEO Marissa Mayer has been focusing on content, hiring some prominent faces in the media including Katie Couric, who was hired to be Yahoo’s global anchor.
She also hired noted New York Times technology reviewer David Pogue in 2013 to look after the Yahoo Tech site.
As per the new plan, Yahoo Tech with Yahoo News could now be merged with some employees losing jobs.
According to a report from the San Francisco Chronicle, about 128 jobs will be cut at Yahoo’s headquarters in Sunnyvale, California, while 46 will be cut in San Francisco and 60 in Los Angeles.
The job cuts are part of its lay off plan announced last month to shed 15% of its workforce.
Separately, Yahoo has also announced areorganisation of a Google-like research group and integrated it into the product group, while two of the top executives will apparently leave.
Yahoo Research vice president Yoelle Maarek said: "Recently we announced our efforts to make Yahoo a more focused company. This focus will let us accelerate the pace of innovation to make our products even better.
"We saw these changes as an opportunity to better align our research efforts, while preserving Yahoo’s culture of exploration and inquiry. As a result, we are reorganizing Yahoo Labs and moving forward with a new approach to research at Yahoo.
"Our new approach is to integrate research teams directly into our product teams in order to produce innovation that will drive excellence in those product areas. We will also have an independent research team that will work autonomously or in partnership with product partners."
The integrated research team will be called as Yahoo Research which will be led by Yoelle Maarek together with Ben Shahshahani.
"Without a centralized Labs organization, Yahoo’s Chief Scientist, Head of Labs, and my mentor, Ron Brachman, and my fellow VP of Research and friend, Ricardo Baeza-Yates, will be leaving the company."
