Variety Axes Vet Anne Thompson, Fest Editor Mike Jones in Layoff

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:

"Variety and I are in talks about continuing to host the blog, but I am also fielding other interest. For the past few months I have been actively involved in a web start-up which is in stealth mode; details will be available soon. And I will continue teaching film criticism at USC and hosting Sneak Previews at UCLA Extension.

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."

Comments

[Brett Gaylor]

Hey AJ - do you have an RSS feed?

[Ray Pride]

Mike's posted a bittersweet au revoir.