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WNBC/NY Newsers Party in Midtown: "Severance Fest '09"

Yeah.  It wasn't your typical going away party.  As detailed in the New York Observer's The Media Mob column, WNBC/NY newsers gathered at an Irish bar in midtown recently to send off a group of some of Channel 4's best and brightest;  not headed to bigger and better things, just headed "in a different direction," as the ludicrous management cliche goes.

"In the days leading up to the party, some staffers jokingly referred to it as a 'Wake 4 NY and a 'gathering of the recently departed.' Others took to calling it 'Severence-Fest 2009.'"  As the once-mighty WNBC has transformed in recent months from a team of titans to an ever-more-anxious group of survivors in the "Content Center," the bold-faced names that once populated the place have been picked off, one by one.  

"By the time Friday night rolled around, everyone needed a stiff drink, went the thinking. And in the end, despite the recent gloominess at WNBC-4, Friday night's party turned into a jovial affair, according to several attendees. The cash bar, located in the basement of Legends 33, was packed by 7:30 p.m., and the party didn't break up until 3:30 a.m. By Monday morning, photos of the revelry were already making their way onto Facebook," the Observer reports.

Jay DeDapper

Recently laid off political reporter Jay DeDapper served as an impromptu emcee, and kept it positive, but told the paper the station New York had come to know over the last few decades as solid, serious, and staffed with veteran New Yorkers, has ceased to exist.  "It was more of a reunion and a goodbye. We put the dot at the end of the sentence. News Channel 4 is over."  (DeDapper, though, is not.  He's taken his show on the web.)

"Everything that we did, all the Emmys we won, all the great stories and series we did, that's done," he added. "There may be great stuff in the future with the new group of people. We're just not going to be a part of it. We had what we had. Now it's time to move on."
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