Aaron Sorkin fires writing staff that probably wasn’t writing The Newsroom in the first place

Like Will McAvoy dispersing the clouds of American exceptionalism blurring the vision of fictional television viewers in 2010, Aaron Sorkin has reportedly dismissed the majority of The Newsroom’s writing staff. The Daily quotes a source close to the HBO series, stating that Sorkin and Corrine Kinsbury are all that remains of a writers’ room whose contributions, given the patterns of Sorkin’s past TV work, were most likely heavily reworked by the Moneyball scribe himself. Leave it to the gossip-hungry, Worst Generation Ever-courting online press to point out that Kinsbury—whose last name might also be spelled “Kingsbury,” though that’s unclear because everyone reporting the story is trapped in a back-patting, digital echo chamber, Will McAvoy thinks in one of several spec scripts being furiously composed at this very moment by prospective Newsroom writers—has a romantic history with Sorkin.

HBO has downplayed the news, telling Entertainment Weekly that such turnover is a regular part of producing a television show—unless that’s just PR speak glossing over the The Truth that only a maverick like Will McAvoy would dare speak. No word yet on whether or not Sorkin will similarly dismiss the show’s cast, putting himself in front of the camera to speechify about the implications of two-year-old news stories while Kinsbury flits about in the background, acting generally hysterical and making Emily Mortimer and Alison Pill glad they no longer have to play such one-dimensional characters.