Shuffling for the Sake of Shuffling at Time Inc.

I hope they do the organizational chart in pencil at Time Inc.

Rarely can the megapublisher bring itself to simply fire people. It typically has to be accompanied by some redrawing of the reporting lines, some bundling-together or unbundling of titles that may have little to do with each other. To oversee the ever-shifting groupings, the company's forever creating, then eliminating, executive vice president and group president posts.

Yesterday's shakeup at Fortune and its siblings was a prime example of this tic. The Time Inc. Business and Finance Network, established only last year, is no more. Now we have The Fortune/Money Group. Open the floodgates; here come those ad dollars!

As part of the change, Fortune and Money will once again have individual publishers to oversee ad sales, though not the publishers they had before their sales were consolidated 18 months ago. Those guys, Michael Federle and Michael Dukmejian, are out.

My favorite iteration of this phenomenon came two years ago, when Time Inc. for some reason decided to unite ad sales for Teen People and People en Espanol under one person. When I described this as a "stopgap measure," the company protested: No, it makes absolute sense! Teens and Hispanics are both "growth markets," don't you see? Six months later, of course, the two had individual publishers again. (And five months after that Teen People was no more. Some growth market.)

By the way, I should probably note here that Fortune competes directly with Portfolio, and our parent companies, Time Inc. and Conde Nast, compete on several fronts. Consider it disclosed!