Good evening, I'm Dylan Byers.

Happy Friday. Welcome back to In The Room. Tonight, we go inside the ABC News massacre, where veteran staffers are still reeling from Kim Godwin’s effort to consolidate power and oust perceived enemies, all under the cover of a broader Disney cost-cutting effort.

These veterans, some with more than three decades of experience at the network, prided themselves on a hard-working, hyper-competitive and sharp-elbowed culture—a culture that fueled ABC’s rise to number one, albeit with some hurt feelings and a little H.R. drama along the way. Godwin was hired with a mandate to impose collaboration and collegiality, to clean up what one source had described as “a wolf den.”

The wolfpack didn’t take kindly to the effort, in part because they saw it as a threat to their way of life. But, more importantly, many believed that Godwin’s leadership style, which seemed long on work-life balance and short on editorial vision, was a threat to their hard-fought success. Rightly or wrongly, ABC News’s dominance was, in their view, the direct result of their unwavering, occasionally cutthroat commitment to better ratings, superior bookings, and the dark arts of the trade. Godwin felt like an affront to all that, and soon every gesture she made started eliciting eye rolls: the all-about-Kim Instagram account; the staff-wide Happy Birthday sing-a-longs; the penchant for handing out swag from her alma mater, FAMU, to employees who lived for the letters ABC.

Godwin had her loyalists and acolytes, including some veteran executives and journalists who, in interviews, described relief at her attempts to improve workplace culture. Nevertheless, Godwin felt besieged by the faction of ABC News veterans who, she suspected, were actively trying to undermine her. In response to my initial report about the frustrations with her leadership, last December, Disney Global Security conducted an internal leak investigation in which employees were required to disclose whether or not they had spoken to me. “I didn’t call for it” or “approve it,” Godwin told Vanity Fair’s Charlotte Klein recently.

Apparently it was set in motion by the H.R. department. But, regardless, Godwin privately warned that her detractors should be wary about burning the place down. Earlier this year, in response to another one of my reports on the internal drama, sources told me that Godwin told staff, “you’re either with me or against me.”

The most notable evictee was Wendy Fisher, the head of global newsgathering and a 34-year veteran of the network, whom several sources described as the heartbeat of the editorial division. On the occasion of her most recent promotion, two years ago, Godwin’s predecessor James Goldston described Fisher as a “brilliant” newsroom leader who, in addition to playing “an essential role in our editorial coverage,” was “a champion for collaboration,” “a trusted mentor” and “a particularly strong voice for women in the workplace.” Another departure was Chris Vlasto, who in his 30-plus years as a producer and political and investigative reporter had been responsible for some of the news division’s biggest scoops, including the Monica Lewinsky scandal and her subsequent Barbara Walters interview. Vlasto, a demi-legend in the business, had also mentored generations of ABC News journalists and talent. “Wendy and Chris built this place,” one source told me Thursday.

It turns out that Fisher was not laid off, but fired for cause, sources with knowledge of the matter told me. One source said that ABC’s H.R. department had launched an investigation pertaining to her treatment of employees. Fisher was informed of her termination on Thursday but was not given any explanation for the cause, and was escorted out of the building. More than ten sources who worked with Fisher at various points during her 34-year career said they knew of no formal complaints about her leadership style or treatment of employees; several of these sources instead referred to her as one of the most revered and beloved figures in the entire organization. ABC News declined to comment.

Other notable layoffs included Galen Gordon, a senior vice president of talent strategy and development who was blamed by some for the mishandling of the T.J. Holmes and Amy Robach affair, and his colleague Mary Noonan, the vice president of talent strategy and development. David Herndon, the Los Angeles bureau chief, who had been with ABC News for more than two decades, was also let go, as were at least two high-level P.R. people: Heather Riley, a veteran communications executive, and Alison Rudnick, a CNN alum who had joined the network to serve as Godwin’s communications V.P. All affected employees were asked to leave the building immediately, and lost access to their ABC News email accounts upon Godwin’s announcement.

In their place, Godwin has installed some loyalists: Katie den Daas, a Fisher deputy, will become vice president of newsgathering, while Derek Medina, the network’s executive vice president, and Stacia Deshishku, an executive editor and S.V.P., will expand their oversight to include talent management and investigations, respectively. Many veterans fear that these folks lack the institutional knowledge of their predecessors, and that the network will suffer in the absence of the old braintrust.

These are complicated decisions that require shrewd business maneuvers that are almost impossible to get right on the first try. But at the end of the day, many of Godwin’s charges in ABC may be misdirecting their anger at their newish boss. It’s easier to get pissed at whomever is occupying the corner office than come to terms with a rapidly evolving business where the future rewards (measured in terms of money, prestige, and influence) pale in comparison to the past. That’s a hard pill to swallow.

On the other hand, there are surely more dignified ways to show widely revered, thirty-year veterans to the door. “Team Culture doesn’t expel seasoned veterans by marching them out of the building the same day,” one ABC News veteran observed. “It’s a culture of Kim. It’s a culture of no dissent. It’s a culture of indifference to the history and competitiveness that made ABC great. It’s a faux culture where no one cares about anything anymore—except talking about the culture.”