Frank magazine gutted its newsroom this week in a mass termination that saw it lose four of its five reporters.

Dan Walsh, a seven-year employee, quit Monday night, but the other three were fired, sources say.

The news hit the Twitterverse about the same time as the biweekly tabloid launched its paywall website.

Andrew Douglas, the magazine’s managing editor, said the two things are unrelated.

Sources say that Mairin Prentiss was dismissed Monday night and that Walsh resigned. Neal Ozano and Jacob Boon left the office soon afterward and were fired for insubordination when they showed up for work this morning.

More cagey than frank, Douglas offered no explanation as to why he emptied his newsroom.

“I’ve been a reporter for close to 10 years and I’ve heard ‘can’t comment on personnel matters’ about 19 million times and it makes me sick to say it to a fellow reporter, but that’s the situation I’m in,” he said.

“I’d love nothing more than to sit down for a couple of hours and tell you the story … but right now you just can’t get into that kind of stuff, you know.”

The magazine’s owner, however, was more forthcoming.

Parker Rudderham said the dismissals had been overseen by his managing editor and were planned for some time. He couldn’t say when Douglas first spoke to him about it.

“You can’t just go around and fire your newsroom and expect to be up-and-running,” he said. “When it’s a massive … termination it has to be planned.”

Rudderham said he didn’t know the specifics of the terminations, saying it was Douglas’s decision.

“When he tells me he has issues with people, I don’t necessarily need to know what the issues are,” the owner said.

“After a period of months, if he decides he can’t work with people, that’s it.  A new broom sweeps clean and it’s unfortunate that people have to be let go, but that’s just a fact of life.”

Douglas, Cape Breton correspondent Murray Johnston, and two writers Rudderham brought in from Montreal will make sure the magazine hits the stands next Tuesday, the owner said.

When reached Tuesday, Ozano said he was looking at his options. He didn’t want to comment on what happened in the newsroom, but said he was sorry to leave the magazine.

“(Frank) provides such fantastic latitude,” he said in an email. “Nothing in Canada right now covers the type of stuff they cover.”

(lfraser@herald.ca)