Americans woke up to the news that Digital First Media may be taken apart, starting with its Thunderdome national newsroom.

Editor-in-chief Jim Brady says he will be leaving the company and the suggestion is that the architect of DFM, chief executive John Paton may be a casualty. Initially however, sources say he will take on the role of chairman while the chain is dismantled.

In his blog yesterday, Paton says, “Folks, Media changes very fast these days and nothing changes faster than digital. Make a change, then get set in your ways and become reluctant to make other changes and you get left behind.” Following changes to the Project Thunderdome project, DFM will “go in a new direction”. While the company will still invest heavily in digital, “increasingly our focus will be in local where we are the news and information leader in our markets”.

Meanwhile, in a Twitter post, Brady urges “anyone out there looking for talented digital folks across the skills spectrum” to get in touch.

And commentator Ken Doctor says Alden Global Capital, the hedge fund that owns most of DFM, is “readying its newspaper properties for sale” albeit not yet on the market. Local editors were being brought together for a phone link-up yesterday.

Doctor suggests “regional auctions” are likely in clusters around the Los Angeles area, the Bay Area, New England, Philadelphia, and Texas, unless Alden can find a single buyer.

It is understood Alden wants to sell everything off because it believes DFM will be never be worth more than it is now.

DFM had been seeking to cut $60-100 million from an annual budget currently estimated at US$1.15 billion. The Washington Post’s Paul Farhi described the cuts as “a setback” for DFM which had struggled with plans to transform previously print-centric newsrooms.

The Thunderdome project was never accepted by the regional groups who refused to use the project’s content. Some measure of Paton’s frustration was expressed in an address last year titled, ‘How bad CEOs and worse editors are using the past to kill our future’.

Digital First Media was created in 2011 from the assets of Journal Register Company – which went into bankruptcy reorganisation the following year – and MediaNews Group, which were merged in December. The announcement is understood to have brought deep morale issues at the former JRC operation.

Local implications in the Asia-Pacific include News Corp Australia, which is using the Xtend platform based on DFM’s AdTaxi to manage a digital marketing extension package for small to medium-sized advertisers. Other users include the Denver Post, the Dallas Morning News and the Toronto Star.

Twitter posts are combined in this Storify of reactions to the news by Aram Zucker-Scharff.

The timing of yesterday’s announcement is interesting: A source told us that while the announcement was planned, the decision to make it yesterday appeared to be “last minute” because Jim Brady had been tweeting that he had been fired and his staff was looking for work three hours before DFM posted any notice that this is what they were doing.