Gawker uses the “give ‘em enough rope” tactic to excellent advantage against Rosie O’Donnell today in a really, really mean item.

This is the punchline:

To read the setup, click here.

It was enough to make me feel almost sorry for Rosie for about two seconds.

Annoyingly, the New York Times tends to fall back on the adjective “shell-shocked” when reporting layoffs. Still, I can’t really blame them in this instance, when they’re writing about their confreres at Time, Inc.

Employees at People said they felt “shell-shocked” as Larry Hackett, People’s managing editor, delivered the news by speakerphone from the magazine’s New York offices. The news “was not sugar-coated,” one employee said, as employees were told that the company had to cut costs.

Both Time and People are scaling back their practice of using several correspondents to report and write a single article.

In her statement to employees, Ms. Moore wrote: “You will continue to hear much speculation about our company in the press, so I encourage you to stay focused. I know this is a difficult time for all of us — it’s never easy to see talented colleagues leave.”

True. No matter how much I agree with Jeff Jarvis’s “exploding media” notion, it’s not easy to watch the greater media world disintegrate.