3 Comments
18 hrs agoLiked by Simon Owens

Excellent article, Simon. You expertly capture the man’s strengths and weaknesses as a media personality.

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Great article about someone I’ve read and admired for a very long time. One critical note though. There is a monumental difference between being fired and being laid off. You use them interchangeably.

People are fired for cause. You stole something. You got into a fight with your boss. You were immediately walked out of the facility with a security escort.

People are laid off for financial reasons. The company you worked for didn’t have the money to pay you.

If you’re fired, your payment typically ends immediately or close to it. If you’re laid off, you often get some type of severance. If Chris were actually fired (he wasn’t), it’s unlikely CNN would have paid out his contract.

Chris Cillizza was laid off, full stop. It had zero to do with his performance at CNN and everything to do with CNN’s financials.

Somehow writers today have muddled these two terms. I think it’s because writing “fired” guarantees eyeballs whereas writing “laid off” does not. Now, everyone gets fired. No one gets laid off. That makes no sense, as these are two fundamentally different things.

It’s a disservice to Chris and to his work to use these two terms interchangeably. It’s also the EXACT reason people taunt him on Twitter, because writers muddling the distinction has allowed it.

More importantly though, these two terms exist for one reason and one reason only. They do not mean the same thing.

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Excellent points and course correction Sean. I work in the world of enterprise software, and I have experienced lay offs 3 times and other self-triggered transitions in my career. Everyone in every industry should be prepared to experience a lay off - unfortunately.

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