Associated Press national photo editor
Victor Vaughan lost his job in a round of layoffs this week.
Vaughan, who was based at AP headquarters in New York, is no longer working there, a source at the AP tells
PDN. Vaughan’s departure was also reported by
Gawker and the Maynard Institute’s
Journal-isms blog, which noted that Vaughan was one of the AP’s highest ranking journalists of color. A voice mail left for Vaughan at his office Wednesday morning was not returned.
The News Media Guild, which represents AP employees in the U.S.,
said on its Web site that 57 employees received termination notices Tuesday, including five photographers.
AP spokesperson
Paul Colford declined to comment on the layoffs, other than to cite a previous statement that the AP planned to cut its global payroll costs by 10 percent in 2009.
Photographers cut this week include Texas-based
Harry Cabluck and
Donna McWilliam; Anchorage, Alaska-based
Al Grillo; Hanoi, Vietnam-based
Chitose Suzuki and two part-time photographers in Boston, an AP source tells PDN.
Gawker and
NPPA News Photographer also reported photographer
Mary Ann Chastain in Columbia, South Carolina, was being let go, and identified the two Boston-based photographers as
Winslow Townson and
Lisa Poole.
Vaughan joined the AP in April 2007, coming from the
The Arizona Daily Star, where he was assistant managing editor for presentation. He previously worked as an editor at
The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Va., the
Detroit Free Press and
The Columbus Dispatch.
Cabluck, one of the photographers let go in Texas, has been with the AP for 40 years and was in John F. Kennedy’s presidential motorcade when Kennedy was shot in 1963, according to the
Texas Tribune web site.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled Winslow Townson's last name as Townsend.
