When Black Friday comes to AVN

AVN laid off 16 employees today, including senior editor Mike Albo, long a fixture on the adult reportage scene, having previously edited Hustler’s Erotic Video Guide.

Also let go were AVN’s receptionist and employees throughout the company, from Art to the warehouse.

News travels fast. An AVN employee asked how I knew, and I remembered how I’d read about my own firing five years ago on Mike South’s blog.

That’s 16 employees set adrift through Porn Valley. I recall no severance package when I was let go (that might have changed or maybe it was because I’m an asshole; word is that there was no severance package and that I am an asshole), and I only survived due to my substantial trust fund, so if there are adult companies seeking to absorb former AVN employees, now is the time.

UPDATE

Hire them, or the alternative is clear: 16 new porn bloggers who used to work for AVN.

While neither mentioning it had sent 16 employees packing nor announcing what the company would actually do to remain competitive, AVN nevertheless posted an unprecedented “restructuring” story on its website that, according to one former employee, lacked only the use of phrases like “paradigm,” “thinking out of the box,” and “moving forward” to be interchangeable with “any other instance of corporate bullshitspeak in America.”

That said, AVN was bloated and it needed to cut somewhere. No one who watches this sort of thing is ever satisfied with the choices made or how they were executed, but it is important to point out that AVN finally has a better website and, though its magazine is shrinking, it still has more of a presence as it “streamlines” than does its main competitor expanding.

But looking at the higher-profile departures from AVN of the past few years, each was kept long after the individual had severely damaged the company’s reputation via the three bugaboos of the adult entertainment industry: cocainery, chicanery, and incompetence, whereas the poor slobs let go today on the whole did not know what was coming and did not get a parachute like their higher-profile former superiors did.

Previously: AVN sold to Dunkin Donuts
See also: AVN