Surprise!

I've been fired as Stage Matters columnist for the North Coast Journal.  The Stage Matters column will be totally gone.

I received the news by email from arts editor Jennifer Fumiko Cahill.  It reads in part: "Stage Matters has long been identified with your voice, and we have enjoyed and appreciated your contribution — your writing and viewpoint, as well as your reliability."

"The theater column is one of the sections of the Journal we are revamping by expanding its scope and introducing some new voices in a collaborative rotation. In order for those writers to develop and gain traction, the Journal will not be including your reviews in that rotation, and we are changing the name."

This evidently has been in the works for some time, but I'm guessing I got this Monday because something about it will appear in this week's Journal.  But I'm not going to be scooped on this story!  You read it here first.

After nine years, something like 225 columns for a total of 200,000 words or more,  one might think I'd earned a more dignified exit in its pages.  One apparently would be wrong.

I'll probably have more to say about this at some point.  If so,  I'm sure I'll say it here.

Update: Sure enough, the Journal this week has the first of the new "theater" columns, and my name has vanished from the Contributing Writers in the masthead.  But nothing else.  It's as if I never existed.  It's--wait!  I can see through my hand!  My arm is disappearing!  I'm---