Photo by Adam Fagen

The knives came out at New York and South Dakota this morning, as “The Washington Times 3.0” began with the expected layoffs of a large group of editorial staffers. David Jackson, who took over The Washington Times last November, made good on his promise of staff cuts when he gathered people from several parts of the paper to tell them they were being let go.

Among the sections impacted by the 20 layoffs are the arts and books section, the national weekly edition, the sports pages and the copy desk. The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple also reports that the photo department was downsized to a point where it can now be described as “threadbare.”

Some now-former Times staffers did not wait long to tell the world they were getting the axe, such as Patrick Stevens, who covered University of Maryland sports:

Can go ahead and cross “live tweeting while being fired” off the bucket list.

— Patrick Stevens (@D1scourse) January 4, 2013

Steve Repsher, who was cut from the paper during a previous downsizing in 2009 but later returned to the Web desk for “Washington Times 2.0”, lost his job again. And, as he suggested in his own tweeting of his termination, slashing the online team seems to go against Jackson’s web-heavy mission statement for the Times’ next incarnation.

The firings are not the only rumblings to come out of the Times today. Fishbowl D.C. picked up the resignation letter by Anneke Green, who quit her post as deputy op-ed editor last month by calling the Times “the most unprofessional and dishonest organization I have ever encountered.”