More Times departures

Layoffs and voluntary departures continue at the Los Angeles Times, which has yet to reach the magic 150 figure for the newsrooms (250 paperwide.) Also, it seems that many staffers firmly believe that Sam Zell and Chicago have already set in motion another, deeper round of staff cuts for later in the year. That one, says the speculation, will hit Washington hard and force several foreign and national bureaus to close. The following names did not come down today; I'm just catching up to my confirmations and email.

• Josh Getlin, who was named bureau chief in New York in 2001, has been covering publishing and the literary world, mostly for Calendar. He has also been a Los Angeles City Hall reporter and deputy editor of the Times Book Review, among other beats. In 2006, the Times called Getlin "the latest facet of our enhanced literary coverage." This week, they laid him off. "The paper we knew and cared about is fast disappearing, and the real losers are the people of Los Angeles," he emails. "In any case, I hope to write books and explore alot of new career options in the future. I've had the greatest job in the world, but now it's time to move on."
• Maggie Farley also worked in New York, covering the United Nations and Canada for the foreign desk. Her husband, Marcus Brauchli, was recently named executive editor of the Washington Post. "I resigned last week in the hopes that it would save a body, and with all the changes in our family and at the paper, it felt like a good time to leave and try something new," she emails. "I am proud to have been part of one of the largest and strongest foreign staffs in the country, and am disheartened by what has been done to our great newspaper."
• Kevin Bronson, deputy editor of the discontinued weekly section The Guide, was at the Times for 18 years — as an an assistant sports editor and a designer before The Guide. He wrote 250 Buzz Band columns covering the music scene and started the paper's first music blog. News of his layoff has brought him some nice kudos at LAist and other blogs. "The ones left behind face a tough road," he emails. "I was sports editor at the Star-News in 1989 when Singleton swooped in -- it was bad then, especially since the world was younger, and it was not a time of rampant slash-and-burn. But this is worse."
• Nick Cuccia designed the Real Estate section, which is merging with Home as a joint section, apparently on Saturdays. He joined the Times in 1986 as a copy editor in Business editor, later was copy desk chief and assistant Business news editor, and regularly edited the annual “Times 100” sections. He also worked as a designer in Food, Calendar, Outdoors and Highway 1.
• Colleagues, proteges and fans of Tom Trapnnell, art director for Sunday Opinion and the paper's former editorial design director, are posting warm tributes at drawger.com. Sample: "A couple of weeks ago, I was in Los Angeles for the first time. There were a lot of people and places I wanted to see, but at the top of the list was an attempt to meet someone I had only known as a soothing voice on the phone for years. That person is Tom Trapnell....Tom is probably the calmest and most reassuring art director I’ve ever worked with. The deadlines are usually one to two day turnarounds, but he never loses his cool. This is the kind of person that makes you want to work harder and stay up later than usual."

• Kathleen Nye Flynn, formerly of the Downtown News, wrote a piece for the Columbia Journalism Review suggesting journalists lay down their pens for a day and see how people like that: "I’m sick of newsroom cuts, of reporters sent home, of newspaper teams—families, really—broken and torn. I’m sick of buyouts, of slashes, of cutting the fat. Why do journalists put up with this?"
• Bob Rosenblatt retired in 2002 after 32 years at the Times, mostly in Washington and, toward the end, writing the Benefits Bob column on health insurance for the Health section. He offers to advise laid off Times staffers at bobblatt@aol.com.