Food and culture critic Bethany Jean Clement has become the latest high-profile writer to leave The Stranger, announcing late Friday that she is going to work for The Seattle Times, endless butt of jokes and denunciations in the publication she is leaving.

Clement is the fourth “name” writer to leave the newspaper/bog in recent months. A fifth departure, on the news side, is believed imminent.

The Stranger has experienced staff unrest of late, much of it due to perceived senior management interference in coverage of the $15-an-hour minimum wage. The news-heavy Slog website gives The Stranger clout and drives attention. But print advertisers pay the bills.

The first to depart was Cienna Madrid, a crack city government reporter and a forceful, unyielding feminist voice at The Stranger. Madrid was vastly popular with fellow staffers.

Longtime blogger David Goldstein was sent packing — and back to his HorsesAss.com website — last spring. Although famously self-absorbed, with almost as many “I”, “me” and “my” references as Dan Savage, “Goldy” is a trenchant, lucid critic of the state’s deficient tax structure. He has since found ghostwriting assignments.

The highest profile among the departed belonged to Dominic Holden, who is moving to New York — but not before being roasted next Saturday at a benefit for Real Change. Mayor Ed Murray and Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes will be among the roasters. (Some at the roast will likely be there to make sure Holden is leaving town.)

Holden is a bulldog of an investigative reporter whose targets have included the deep-bore tunnel, the Seattle Police Officers Guild, ex-Interum SPD Chief Harry Bailey and long-ago departed City Attorney Tom Carr. He endured years of the cat-herding job of Stranger news editor.

Departures leave The Stranger particularly depleted on the news side: Ansel Herz, who once reported on a fast story — Haiti in the aftermath of its earthquake — is likely to be burning the candle at both ends in covering city government and social issues.

Talented writers move on. Holden has felt a heavy dose of “I can make it in that town” vibes toward New York for a long time.

At the same time, however, The Stranger is notorious for paying low wages to highly talented writers . . . even as editorial director Savage rings up the honoraria on the college lecture circuit.

Perhaps its writers should form a union. They could ask council member Kashama Sawant to lead a demonstration outside Stranger offices on Capitol Hill. After all, they elected her.