It looks like I made it through this workweek without learning of any friends in journalism getting sacked. That would be the weakest of wins after three days of mass layoffs across old and new media.

It started Wednesday, when Gannett–publisher of my client USA Today–began firing a few hundred people in newsrooms across the country. Later that day, Verizon Media Group–the parent organization of my client Yahoo Finance–said it would lay off 7 percent of its workers. And then BuzzFeed upped the ante by telling staffers that it would sack a full 15% of them.

Thursday and Friday, I watched the occupational bonfire burn across Twitter. While it hasn’t involved friends, it has taken out bylines I know and trust–and some entire sections.

The Huffington Post dumped its opinion staff, a grim echo of last March’s closure of the U.S. News & World Report opinion department that cost my friend Robert Schlesinger his job. BuzzFeed deleted its national and national-security desks–I can only read that as a declaration of unseriousness at covering the news in 2019–and, in some sadistic mix of incompetence and heartlessness, is stringing the layoffs into next week.

I ache for everybody involved, because I’ve seen this movie before. I’ve read the weasel-worded memo from managers trying to paper over things, I’ve eaten the sheet cake at the newsroom goodbyes, and I’ve watched decades of experience walk out the door–knowing that the exercise will repeat. It certainly will if Digital First Media, a civic cancer of a newspaper chain owned by the Alden Global Capital hedge fund, succeeds in its unsolicited bid to buy Gannett.

I just hope things stop sucking at some point and that some of the following things happen: The online-ad industry stops racing to the bottom; subscription or other ad-independent revenue frees us from hoping adtech gives us a pony; newsroom executives stop wasting time and resources by chasing after every shiny object Facebook touts each quarter before sunsetting two quarters later; hedge-fund plutocrats find another industry to strip-mine of value; or the media at large switches to a non-profit footing and we all accept lives of shabby gentility.

Meanwhile, after this week, I have to count myself as lucky in this business. When I lost my newspaper job, that came with a soft landing and a long runway, and I’m still learning things and writing about them–the only work I want to do. I could be making more money in another career (and I was in this one three years ago), but things could be worse. To any journalists reading this who just had things go much worse: I see you, and if you want to vent, please get in touch.