Local News? What Local News?

This from an American Journalism Review story on the downsizing of local film critics:

In June, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reassigned movie critic Phoebe Flowers to a general entertainment and pop culture beat, with a focus on local arts, according to Editor Earl Maucker. The paper's film reviews now come from other Tribune Co. papers.

"Local news is the absolute priority," Maucker says. "We have a limited number of resources. On any given day, a lot of things go uncovered because we don't have the resources to be where we'd like to be. We decided those resources would be better deployed on local stories."

For the real story, here's what Phoebe wrote in the comments below:

I haven't contributed anything to the Sentinel since early June. I have been on leave. I return tomorrow, July 31. I am not afraid to say that I very much doubt the Sentinel, in its current incarnation, will have much use for any of my writing -- particularly because it didn't seem to matter that mere weeks before they terminated my existing position, I won the first-place prize in criticism in the SPJ's Green Eyeshade Awards. Any work I do for them will likely be behind the scenes, editing, with which I have a decent amount of experience from my years with the Miami Herald. In case anyone was curious.