Channel 11 reporter John Schwada blogs that the recent layoff of 99 staffers cost his newsroom "a lot of good young people, with energy and dreams (fortunately, not all of them dreamed of becoming anchors overnight or hobnobbing with movie stars while covering the entertainment beat.)..." His post, on the station's website, also says:
Many of those getting the pink slip are very talented, and, of course, we eat our young in this laying-off-business (thanks to union rules). Seniority is protection. Put another way, if your butt sags, if your eyes don’t just have crow’s feet, but crow’s legs, heads, wings, etc. and if you need to be airlifted to an ICU for emergency Botox treatment, then you probably survived these cuts. It helps, too, if you can be seen several times a day playing solitaire in your edit bay, have boozy breath and are operating on auto-pilot (and don’t give a damn who knows it).
How do you really feel, John? He says most of the workers given the axe will continue working until September.