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A budget-cutting standoff at Portland, Maine’s Casco Bay Weekly ends with four of the paper’s five editorial staffers fired.

The owner of a Portland, Maine, alternative weekly fires four of his five full-time editorial staffers after a cost-cutting dispute. Dodge Morgan, who has owned Casco Bay Weekly for more than a decade and absorbed hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual losses in recent years, calls the firings "a nasty occurrence." The showdown followed Morgan's request that each department meet specific cost targets, which, says former Editor Chris Busby, would have forced him to cut a position from the overworked staff. All five agreed they would leave the 30,000-circulation paper if that happened. "We didn't want to work for a paper that was crappy," Busby says. Morgan's response: "Since you're not backing away from your line in the sand, I'm forced, sadly, to cross it." Listings Editor Tom Mahoney decided to stay. Morgan, who still praises their abilities, fired Busby, Deputy Editor and political columnist Al Diamon and two writers, paying each a "modest" separation package. By the next morning, Morgan's ex-wife, Lael, the paper's publisher and temporary editor, had hired a deputy and a reporter.