The beginning of the real bitter end of the Hollywood Reporter happened yesterday when, as Nikki Finke has reported, several essential, first-rate people were cut from the payroll — film reporters Gregg Goldstein, Carolyn Giardina, Leslie Simmons, managing editor Harley Lond, TV critic Barry Garron, TV reporter Kimberly Nordyke, Manhattan-based special issues editor Randee Dawn, international department editor Hy Hollinger, plus Dan Evans, Lesley Goldberg, Michelle Belaski and James Gonzalez.

Plus the roilling heads at Paramount, Universal/Focus and Newsday.

Plus I’m told that film critic Glenn Whipp has been cut from the ranks of the L.A. Daily News. Put vaguely, his duties and/or compensation have been reduced beyond a duties/compensation diminishment that had happened previously. (I could make it vaguer.) Whipp didn’t reply to an e-mail, his colleague Bob Strauss didn’t reply to email and a call, Whipp’s arts editor didn’t pick up, etc. People never seem to want to call back when someone’s been cut. Nobody wants to touch it.