There Will Be Blood

Call me gullible or impressionable, but I'm actually feeling kind of hopeful this week. It's not just the new year or the inauguration (which I loved most for its goofs and gaffes) or even that—please, please—publishing business firings are coming to an end, at least for a while.

So wrote Publishers Weekly editor-in-chef Sara Nelson in her column last week, entitled "Change I Believe In." Now call her "fired," as she and other PW staffers were let go today when corporate owner Reed Business Information laid off 7 percent of its workforce. (See story in Portfolio.com). Executive editor Daisy Maryles, who'd been with PW--her sole employer--for 40 years, was laid off as well.

RBI also owns Variety. Bloodbath At Variety: Hammond, Thompson Let Go is one of the lead stories on the opening day of website TheWrap, founded by former NYT & Washington Post entertainment reporter Sharon Waxman.

I won't comment on the irony of niche websites reporting on the demise of the very publications they're supplanting. (Disclosure: I was a PW contributing editor for 14 years and stopped reading it in favor of the more timely and interesting GalleyCat and Publishers Marketplace.)