'Bloodbath' at USA Today

Here's an excerpt from a really sad story about USA Today.

Korina Lopez was preparing to get a tooth pulled when the call came from USA Today’s human relations office on Wednesday morning. She couldn’t talk, but returned the call as soon as she got home and learned her job as an entertainment writer for the media giant was over.

“They gave me all of five minutes and dismantled 11 years of work,” she said. “I had 15 minutes before they locked me out of my computer. I was trying like crazy to copy all of my contacts before I got locked out. “

Lopez was one of 60 to 70 employees laid off this week at USA Today in a move the company attributed to a need to cut costs in the face of declining print advertising revenue.

Gannett Co. recently announced it was spinning off its flagship national paper and 81 other newspapers into a company separate from its broadcast properties. The company said about half of those laid off worked in the newsroom, amounting to 8 percent of the total editorial staff.

Lopez and several others whose positions were slashed said they weren’t totally surprised that the company was downsizing, but were shocked at how it took place.

Scott Bowles, 49, a film reporter and critic for USA Today’s Los Angeles bureau and 20-year-veteran of Gannett Co., got the layoff call at 8:20 that morning.

“They told me, we are letting you go. You are out and your email is down,” he recalled. “It was cold, it was quick and it was final. Perhaps that is fitting for what is happening in the news era.”

Others in the newsroom were escorted out by security after losing their jobs, Bowles said. “It was so disrespectful. These people were treated like shoplifters.”

Bowles said veteran newsroom employees who had worked there for decades almost immediately lost access to their business email accounts.

“It was a total bloodbath,” Lopez said.

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