Ruffled Boa Feathers at Mediabistro

Mediabistro.com marked its 10th anniversary with its Golden Boa Awards last night, but not everyone was celebrating. Some employees of the news-and-career-help website are nervous about what the future holds for them in the wake of the company's acquisition, in July, by Jupiter Media.

Mediabistro's $23 million sale price consisted of $20 million upfront and another $3 million if the company hits certain financial targets over the next two years. To improve its performance, say insiders, Jupiter is looking at reconfiguring the site's constellation of blogs. Resources will likely be redirected from the geographically-oriented blogs (the New York, Los Angeles and Washington D.C. Fishbowls) to the industry-specific ones (Galleycat, UnBeige and the company's crown jewel, TVNewser.) The recent soft-launch of two industry-focused blogs, PRNewser and AgencySpy, is consistent with this approach.

But where does that leave the bloggers? In limbo. In fact, several have been working on expired contracts, and others say founder Laurel Touby has been vague with them about whether their contracts are still in force post-sale. (When I asked her about all this, Touby told me, "I'm unaware of any changes to our strategy. In fact, [Jupiter CEO] Alan Meckler is really excited about the blogs.")

Meanwhile, the bloggers being asked to take on more. In a conference call yesterday, they were told that going forward they should concentrate less on aggregating links and more on original reporting. "Go out and break news, do lots of posts, get exclusives," was how one participant put the mandate. Jupiter is also looking to create some new synergies: Bloggers are being instructed to build posts around Mediabistro job listings whenever possible.

Perhaps they would take to the new regime more readily if they had enjoyed the spoils of the sale. While staffers received bonus checks, Mediabistro's notoriously ill-paid bloggers -- at least a few of whom are working for less than $15 per post -- didn't. "Nobody got shit, not even a gift certificate to Amazon," says one. "Everyone complained about it."