Mic is laying off staff as it prepares for a pivot to video

Mic.com has begun to lay off staff in what is expected to be a larger pivot to video later this month.

Two sources familiar with the situation confirmed to Business Insider that the millennial news site has begun laying off between 20 and 30 editorial staffers this morning amid a larger reorganization of the company later this month.

Some staffers have speculated about layoffs since the company announced it would hold a day-long meeting on August 24 to discuss the future of the company.

Several Mic staffers tweeted that they had been laid off Thursday morning.

Two staffers told Business Insider that the company promised during a company meeting last week that there would not be layoffs.

Enter, pods

Over the past several weeks, Mic has begun to restructure its newsroom, laying off its vice president of content and shifting editorial staff into "cross-functional pods" and "correspondent-driven journalism."

The goal, according to a company memo sent last week, would begin "integrating our written and video journalism, to continue our leadership in pioneering new forms of visual journalism."

Mic hasn't exactly kept its intentions secret.

Site publisher Cory Haik published an op-ed in Recode on August 7 evangelizing the "early stages of a visual revolution in journalism," arguing that "new mixed-media formats in social video (primarily short- and mid-form) offer a rich opportunity to deliver complicated news in compelling ways."

And earlier this year, the company officially hired former Vevo and Nielsen executive Jonathan Carson to serve as the company's president, and just last week, Mic announced it was hiring Viacom's Sarah Iooss as its executive vice president of revenue. Both have extensive experience in video.

The changes come amid a larger shift by a number of publishers away from text toward video.

Over the past several months, companies like MTV, Vice editorial, and Vocativ have laid off written editorial staff, to focus resources on short-form video content.