It's getting ugly out there in layoff land. Former Time Inc. top editor Susan Haynes — she was at Coastal Living for many years — penned a particularly vitriolic email to the London-based Executive Vice President Sylvia Auton this week. Auton is head of Time Inc.'s lifestyle group and therefore in charge of the layoffs (from a distance) at the hard hit Southern Progress division. Per the email:

I don't know what Time Inc.'s master plan is — or if you even have one, but from any standpoint, business or otherwise, Time Inc. is demonstrating shockingly shortsighted and reprehensible behavior...I had an opportunity to leave. . . of my own volition and choice. Now, like so many in the community of Birmingham, Alabama, I watch in horror and disgust as Time Inc. conducts its endless bloodbath at my former company.

Snap! She goes on to point out that "Of course, I see [the memos], despite the fact that I am no longer a Time Inc. employee. They are being forwarded around the world with a smirk and a gasp." We suspect this is just the begining of this sort of public (read: leaked) exchange. Not surprisingly Time Inc. head Ann Moore says it's painful for everyone, etc. Meanwhile Keith Kelly is also reporting that the Conde folks are feeling the crunch (sort of).

Apparently employees there are going to have their town car service diminished, also assistants will no longer get free lunches and magazine subscriptions are being cut back (the logic on that last one not being particularly clear. We have nothing particular against Conde Nast, though we stand by our notion that the sooner they step into the cold hard media world reality, the quicker someone will figure out how to make all this content profitable.