Pandora's founder is sad — also, you're fired

Not even the biz reporters we reblog have much to say about Pandora laying off 20 of its 140 employees. Last month, founder Tim Westergren had sent out warning signals that online music royalties could be a problem. Cutting 14.2 percent of staff this week, though, seems more pro forma than panic. Westergren's "A Sad Day" bears no news, but serves as an intriguing template of that new writing genre, the layoff blog post. Spot the patterns:

• In tech, the Founder is the most important figurehead. Not the CEO.
• The Founder gets to publish the boilerplate announcement drafted by PR, HR and Marketing.
• Pandora's CEO? Not a founder! His or her name needn't appear here. Joe Kennedy is too busy putting his five years' experience at E-Loan and four more running Pandora into firing people.
• 3-step story template: Preface ("This is a very sad day"), Message ("Our listenership is growing rapidly, and Internet radio royalty rate resolution seems finally near"), and Recap ("It's just hard to be excited about all that today.")
• A smart Valley blogger signs his name "Tim (Founder)," not "Tim Westergren"

I'm 100 percent sure Tim is sad. But try to picture him crying into his keyboard as he types, "The explosion of mobile devices like the iPhone are opening up a world of opportunity for Internet radio to expand off the desktop."

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