What was supposed to be a routine all-company meeting at The New York Times turned into a contentious grilling Thursday, as employees pressed management for answers about the paper’s recent decision to disband the sports section. The move left the newsroom disheartened and worried, with many angry about the company’s plan to subcontract certain sports coverage through The Athletic, the subscription-based sports website the Times acquired last year. “There is sincere concern in the newsroom that if this is left to stand, they could do this to any section, and nothing they said at the meeting made us feel otherwise,” one Times staffer tells me.

During the meeting, Terri Ann Glynn, the senior newsroom operations manager for the sports desk, made an emotional address about the way staffers in the department learned their section had been cut. Sports staff were invited to a morning meeting on Monday, and the news alert that the sports desk was shuttering came out before executive editor Joe Kahn had said the words aloud to the room, according to a source with knowledge of the meeting. Glynn noted that staffers were receiving texts from family and friends about the news, while they themselves were still getting briefed on the situation. Kahn acknowledged that the “choreography” was not perfect and called it a difficult situation.

“It was a crappy response. Just fucking apologize,” one Times staffer says. “There hasn’t been empathy, and there also just hasn’t been honesty,” says another, noting that the sports desk has been “begging for information” for months. “All of us are completely dumbfounded. It just feels like they made the wrong decision at every point.”

Sports reporter Jenny Vrentas asked Kahn on Thursday when leaders decided to cut the sports desk. Kahn did not directly answer the question, according to multiple Times staffers, and said staff were told once management knew. When asked if the company intends to cut any other sections and essentially replace them with third parties going forward, Kahn said the paper is investing in the newsroom, citing the “Cooking” and “Well” verticals.

Times staffers also raised concerns over differing standards between The Athletic and the Times. When brought up during Thursday’s meeting, deputy Wirecutter and Athletic publisher Cliff Levy, a former Times masthead member who used to oversee standards for the Times newsroom, said that he knows more about standards at the Times than almost anyone else and claimed the “core” standards and journalistic values of The Athletic are the same as those of the Times, according to two staffers. Times employees have been particularly vexed by Shams Charania, who works for both The Athletic and the gambling company FanDuel, and last month impacted betting odds with a tweet, multiple staffers have told me. (A spokesman for the Times previously told The Wall Street Journal that Charania “does not pick games or encourage people to gamble. He simply reports on news (after reporting it first for The Athletic) around injuries, trades, and transactions.”) The Journal has reported that the two newsrooms keep a different set of standards and editorial processes.

Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien officially closed the meeting and ended the livestream about 25 minutes into the Q&A portion, but said that some leadership members—including Kahn, Levy, managing editor Carolyn Ryan, and Athletic publisher David Perpich—would stay and answer questions for those in the office. “We recognize that this decision has been disappointing to some colleagues. But we want to emphasize that there are no plans for layoffs, and everyone affected on the current sports desk has been offered roles on other desks in the Times newsroom,” Times spokesperson Danielle Rhoades Ha said in a statement to Vanity Fair, adding that the company has added more than 1,000 journalism jobs in recent years, even as other companies were forced to cut staff.

Thursday’s meeting was packed with people wearing Guild shirts and stickers that said, “Subcontracting Sports Isn’t Fair Play.” The Guild has said it intends to challenge the Times’ plan to outsource union jobs to The Athletic’s nonunion workers.

This piece has been updated.