What Mark Schlueb and other fired or resigned journalists wrote to their bosses on the way out.

"After extensive study of history, I believe 'Latino'—as used in the Los Angeles Times—is the most recent attempt at genocide perpetrated against the native people of the Americas. I also posit this new genocide is far more dangerous than the old fashioned murder and relocation efforts."
—Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, in her 3,400-word letter of resignation to her editors at the Los Angeles Times, early 2001

"Blogging at Newsweek was sort of like setting up your tent in a bombed out building. First the editor who hired me left. Then the editor above him left. Then the executive above that guy left. Then the editor who didn't really like me but tolerated me left. As a result I was left alone, which was fine. I kept writing; the checks kept coming. It was only a matter of time before the occupying army moved in."

"The people at the Daily Beast seem to be having a desperate sort of faux-fun as they try to madly generate paying hits before Barry Diller's money runs out subsidizing Ms. Brown's big bucks staff."
—Mickey Kaus, shortly after his Newsweek blog was canceled by incoming editor Tina Brown, who was merging Newsweek into the Daily Beast, February 2011.

"If some ditzy American editor went to London, took over the Spectator and turned it into, say, In Your Face: A Magazine of Mucus, there would be a big uproar, but here in America, we expect turnover. Here, a great American magazine falls into the clutches of a Staten Island newspaper mogul who goes out and hires a British editor who seems to know this country mainly from television and movies, and nobody says much about it."
—Garrison Keillor, after Tina Brown replaced Robert Gottlieb as editor of The New Yorker, April 1995.

"Hi there. My name is James Renner and up until this morning, I was a staff writer for Cleveland Scene. I was fired this morning because I wrote an email to the CEO of the media conglomerate that now owns Scene, Matt Haggerty, in which I warned him that spiking stories because they are afraid of being sued is a good way to destroy a newspaper."

"I am attaching the story on Coughlin which Scene spiked."
—James Renner, March 2009

"I must say, though the [New Yorker]office itself is a little creepy. I didn't work there. I live in Colorado. But I'd visit 3-4X a year.

"Everybody whispers. It's not exactly like being in a library; it's more like being in a hospital room where somebody is dying.

"Like someone's dying, and everybody feels a little guilty about it.

"There's a weird tension to the place. If you raise your voice to normal level, heads pop up from cubicles.