When I got former Tampa Tribune columnist Joe Brown on the telephone Wednesday to talk about his unexpected departure from the Tampa Tribune -- the company laid him off Monday after 14 years working there -- he was surprisingly open and frank about what had happened.

"(Editorial page editor Rosemary Goudreau) apparently decided I was the least valuable player on her team," said Brown, 58, who was visiting friends and family at his alma mater, the University of Iowa. "I don't know what I'm going to do -- I'll probably take it easy for a month to figure it all out."

Brown became the highest-profile casualty this year of the Tribune's staff cuts, let go after the newspaper had moved his column to the front of its Sunday Commentary section. This latest round of reductions was supposed to include up to 10 editors, but enough people left voluntarily when staff cuts started among the reporters and editors that just three other people were laid off Monday -- all mid-level editors or managers.

Given that the Tribune will debut a smaller design Monday, it may not be surprising that the newspaper decided to pare down its editorial board. But columnists are often a personal connection with readers, and Brown was the newspaper's most visible columnist of color in Tampa, a city with a population nearly 50 percent black and Hispanic.

Feeling a bit stung by the office politics of his situation -- he was hired by Goudreau's predecessor -- Brown was also skeptical of the Web-first strategy articulated this week by Tribune executive editor Janet Coats.

"The Internet will not save newspapers," he said flatly, when I brought up the changes. "You need 22 Internet readers to produce the same revenue as one newspaper reader. You're not going to make any money like that."

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