SCOWL Part 2: More Layoffs at the Register!

The Orange County Register is apparently running a story tomorrow saying that 25 people are being laid off from the paper in just the latest downsizing by Freedom Communications and its corporate investor overlord, Blackstone.

One person who's leaving is Susan Jacobs, an editor who took a buy-out with five months pay. No word yet on who else is heading out the door. But according to one source, rumors had been flying through the newsroom just before Christmas that "massive" layoffs-as in up to 100--were on the horizon. "Ken Brusic [the Register's editor] canceled the Christmas Party," the source said. "Then they cut the company's matching funds on the 401 K plan." But when nobody got fired before the holiday, everyone assumed the rumors were just that--rumors.

Apparently whoever wrote this ferociously anti-Blackstone poem, inspired by Allen Ginsberg's HOWL, was more right about the Register than they could have known.