Lawrence.com made the difficult decision this week — for financial reasons — to let go two staffers who have been with the site for years.

Phil Cauthon, longtime lawrence.com editor, and Gavon Laessig, lawrence.com writer and podcaster, were both let go in a round of layoffs at The World Company.

And while their departure is very sad to me, it does not mean our commitment to our lawrence.comrades is ending. Jon Niccum, entertainment editor, will take over day to day operations of lawrence.com. He's been leading its operations as Phil's supervisor for many months now.

In fact, you've probably read lots of his work here already. Jon will be assisted by members of the features staff. We've also continued our relationship with all of our freelancers and contributors as well.

Additionally, we're working on some new features for lawrence.com we expect to launch this summer. We're building on some technology we've tested on our health site that allows you all to be a much more integral part of the site itself.

We're going to do our best to continue to make lawrence.com the place you want it to be. But I have no doubt sometimes we won't succeed. It's impossible to do all of Phil and Gavon's work as well as they did right away. But our goal is to continue to provide you with the lawrence.com experience that you all expect.

Don't ever hesitate to get in touch with me if you have any questions or concerns, or with Jon Niccum. This is your website. We just work here.