LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) - Now former CNN Capitol Hill correspondent Lisa Dejardins posted a video of her final sign off from CNN as she prepared to leave the building after being laid off. Dejardins compares the mass goodbye emails from laid off CNN employees to the personal ones, finding a wide discrepancy in the general tone and niceness between the two, and expresses her disappointment CNN's decision to get rid of a congressional reporter given Congress's struggles.
Time Warner announced on Tuesday that approximately 600 buyouts, or 6% of its U.S. staff, were being offered across their Turner network, of which CNN is a division.
According to reports, CNN president Jeff Zucker told employees in a news meeting that the network was, "going to do less and have to do it with less."
"We now have a sense of what Turner is expecting from CNN," Zucker reportedly told the staff. "I am working with the senior management team at CNN to figure out what this means for us. This will result in changes and what we do and what we stop doing."
Zucker was addressing an internal memo from Turner CEO John Martin, who recently said that "organizational changes" were expected.
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"Given the current focus on reducing costs and prioritizing investments to maximize company performance, Turner will also undertake additional reductions in staffing," the memo read.
The move is tied to Martin's "Turner 2020" initiative, which is aimed at turning the company around by the year 2020, which is also Turner's 50th anniversary.
Additional layoffs are expected at Turner's other news network, HLN.
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By Kevin Noonan
