With editor Anthony Wilson-Smith announcing a hasty exit, and the publisher already jettisoned, the Globe and Mail is reporting that the venerable magazine's anxious staff is wondering what it all means. The Toronto Star's Antonia Zerbisias also weighs in.

An excerpt:

"We're going into the future with too much unknown. The central questions are who's the boss going to be and what kind of magazine are we going to have?" said an editor who wished to remain nameless.

Hanging around the place as a part-time consultant is former Saturday Night and National Post editor Ken Whyte.

Editor-at-large Ann Dowsett-Johnson is considered a longshot. Toronto Life editor John Macfarlane said they had their chance with him.

There was talk of having a single editor-publisher, which some staff feared would shift the balance of power too much to the business-marketing side.

"If there's a villain in this piece," said another staffer, "it's not the journalism. On the whole, Maclean's is a pretty good place to work. It's Rogers -- for the constant pressure to turn a profit, and for not being happy that the editorial flagship is breaking even."

Here's the CP story that CTV.ca carried about Wilson-Smith's resignation announcement.

In Zerbisias's column, she says her sources tell her Whyte wants the publisher's chair too as a condition of accepting the gig.

However, her media gossip goes further than the Globe's piece.

Apparently, the N-P's staff isn't bonding with new publisher Les Pyette, formerly of the Toronto Sun.

Some people were quite pissed he picked up Scott Taylor as a columnist (read giving a plagiarist a second chance for background). As Zerbisias noted, that paper has seen three people leave in the last few years for plagiarism or fabrication-related offences.

In addition, some Sun types have been sniffing around the N-P for a gig.

As the yin to that yang, many of the N-P's current talent roster would love to see Whyte -- who hired many of them when the N-P started in 1998 -- get the Maclean's gig so he could hire them!

She also says Wilson-Smith could end up at the Post!

It's a small world
after all
It's a small world
after all
It's a small word after allll ...
It's a small small small small world!