Monday, Variety announced that it was laying off 30 employees, with editor Peter Bart claiming, "The modest staff cuts will in no way compromise the editorial integrity of Variety or Daily Variety."
By late afternoon, however, it was clear that the two most visible and trusted Variety reporter/bloggers - particularly to those of us in the indie film community - were amongst those let go: veteran reporter Anne Thompson and Variety.com Film Festival editor Mike Jones, an indieWIRE and Filmmaker Magazine veteran.
Thompson, who wrote her Risky Business blog for The Hollywood Reporter before she decamped for Variety and launched Thompson on Hollywood, is particularly bewildering. Few are able to balance coverage of studios and indies as well as Thompson does. And, true to her being a real reporter, she has better sources and a more inquisitive mind than nearly anyone who writes about the industry on a regular basis.
In a posting on her blog announcing the news, Thompson held out hopes for the continuance of her blog:
And then there's that book...
Stay tuned. The blog isn't going anywhere."
As of early Tuesday morning, Jones had yet to post on his The Circuit blog about the layoffs.
Update: Tuesday night - As Ray Pride notes in the comments, Jones posted his farewell this morning and it's a beaut:
"The blossoming depression is now an inevitable part of all small talk.
Hard to even call the talk small. Yet in the wake of a 70,000-plus job
loss yesterday, the magnitude of what the country faces threatens to
make the individual story smaller. It's important to remember the
stories above this drone of newspaper statistics and bad news
avalanche. The news will get worse. We'll rely on filmmakers and
artists to make some sense of it all, or to at least shift our gaze.
Which is frankly just as good.
And that task is the film festival's job -- to put up stories in that
great black box, on that giant screen, with that enveloping sound
system, and under the influence of a room full of moody strangers. All
without a pause button. Film festivals are cinema's art gallery and in
an economic crisis it is a cheap temple to worship at. For me, it's
the best worship around."
Hey AJ - do you have an RSS feed?
Posted by: Brett Gaylor | January 27, 2009 at 07:28 AM
Mike's posted a bittersweet au revoir.
Posted by: Ray Pride | January 27, 2009 at 11:40 AM