Sad times for The Washington Times

Via Memeorandum, I notice my buddy Jimmie Bise has blogged about the recent sad news at the Washington Times. I left a comment there:

You know, Jimmie, I tendered my resignation in January 2008, two days after they hired the Washington Post's John Solomon to replace Wes Pruden as editor. Right after Solomon's hiring was announced, one of my newsroom colleagues said to me, "If I had wanted to work for a Postie, I would have applied at the %$#&ing Post!"

Exactly -- but that colleague didn't quit. I did. And my decision proved to be the smart move. I got out before things went to hell, which has given me a two-year head start on establishing an independent career online, while most of my former colleagues who haven't already been kicked to the curb soon will be.

Understand this: I never had anything personally or politically against John Solomon, and Dave Bossie (a staunch conservative) described Solomon as a good guy. But I've always felt that any good organization should promote from within, which had been the general policy of the Washington Times.

During my decade-plus at the Times (1997-2008), the top jobs were almost always held by people who had proven their ability and their loyalty through years of hard work for the company. The most notable exception to that policy was when they hired Tony Blankley as editorial page editor and, given Blankley's national reputation, there was not much grumbling about that.

The decision of the newspaper's management to pass over Fran Coombs in favor of Solomon as Wes Pruden's replacement was a mistake. Solomon's subsequent hiring of his Washington Post buddy Jeff Birnbaum as a managing editor was a worse mistake, and hiring USA Today's Barbara Slavin as assistant managing editor was worse still.

With three top newsroom positions filled by recent outside hires, the effective message to the newsroom staff was: "Screw you, you're not good enough to deserve a promotion."

The Disgruntled and Dysfunctional
Like I said, I'm glad I got out before that happened. In any large organization, just about everybody will eventually get passed over for promotion at some time, and it's easy to become disgruntled.

The promotion I got in 2003, from assistant national editor to editor of the "Culture, Etc." page, was not the job I wanted -- I actually begged them not to put me there -- but loyalty is loyalty. And I did such a good job at it as to make myself irreplaceable. (After I left, the new editors eliminated the culture page, which President Bush had praised as his favorite feature in his favorite paper.)

When I was hired at The Washington Times in November 1997, I'd promised my wife I'd only stay three to five years, then parlay that national-level experience into a job at some paper in her native Ohio. Ah, but then there was the Lewinsky scandal, the impeachment, the 2000 election deadlock, 9/11 . . .

How could I walk away from the thrill of being smack-dab in the middle of stuff like that? So I stayed, even if I was stuck in a desk-job that wasn't exactly my cup of tea. In doing so, however, I was violating career the advice I've always given to others: "If you don't move up, move out."

An Ounce of Loyalty
Life is too short to waste time being bitter because you didn't get the promotion you wanted. Either make the best of the job you're in, or else find another company that will recognize and reward your abilities. If you're really good at what you do, you'll success, and the company that failed to make full use of your abilities will regret your departure.

Beyond the general decline of the newspaper business, much of what has gone wrong at The Washington Times was a function of faulty organizational dynamics. The spirit of teamwork was undermined because of a relative handful of spiteful, selfish, disgruntled malcontents who did not heed Elbert Hubbard's wise advice:

If you work for a man, in heaven's name work for him!
If he pays you wages that supply you your bread and butter, work for him -- speak well of him, think well of him, stand by him and stand by the institution he represents.
I think if I worked for a man I would work for him. I would not work for him a part of the time, and the rest of the time work against him. I would give an undivided service or none.
If put to the pinch, an ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness.
If you must vilify, condemn and eternally disparage, why, resign your position and, when you are outside, damn to your heart's content. But, I pray you, so long as you are a part of an institution, do not condemn it. Not that you will injure the institution -- not that -- but when you disparage the concern of which you are a part, you disparage yourself.

There were too many people at the Washington Times -- only a handful, really, but enough to destroy the spirit of effective teamwork -- who thought they knew how to run a newspaper better than Wes Pruden and Fran Coombs knew how to run a newspaper. They have had their way and, as a result, the newspaper has been run into the ground.

It's a crying shame, and it remains to be seen whether The Washington Times can ever again become what it once was: The most important newspaper in the world, providing an invaluable balance to the liberal Post, reporting stories in the nation's capital that would have otherwise been ignored.

Tuckpo Update
Last night, I saw a friend who gave me the latest word on Tucker Carlson's long-delayed DailyCaller.com. They've reportedly gotten a new investment of $3 million and now expect to roll out in January -- at least six months later than Carlson promised in May.

Well, good luck with that, but I'm reminded of a conversation I had this past spring. After seeing what I'd written in the wake of the Culture 11 Hindenberg-at-Lakehurst implosion, I was contacted by guy who is affiliated with a major conservative foundation. He wanted to "pick my brain," as they say, about how an online news operation could be developed, and we talked for more than an hour.

Among other things, I explained that personnel is policy. What went wrong at Culture 11 had a lot to do with the fact that David Kuo was hired to run it. Kuo is a second-rater who couldn't make a profit on the snow-cone franchise in Hell, and there was nothing on his resume to suggest he knew anything about running a news operation. Hire the wrong guy at the top and you'll get bad results every time.

What I told my foundation-funded friend was this: If you're going to start a conservative news operation, the first thing you need to do is to hire Fran Coombs to run it. Nobody in Washington knows how to do it better, and anybody who tells you otherwise is wrong.

That was last spring. Given the subsequent success of BigGovernment.com, I'd say the second guy you need to hire if you're going to start a conservative news operation is Andrew Breitbart.

Whatever other decisions were subsequently made, any conservative news organization that could combine the Old School journalism savvy of Coombs with the New Media brilliance of Breitbart would be unbeatable. And you wouldn't need seven months and $3 million to make it happen.

As I say, I wish all the luck to DailyCaller.com. But it had better not suck.

The real (?) story behind the recent turmoil at The Washington Times

Because I worked for 10 years at The Washington Times, several people have asked me what I know about recent reports of chaos and catastrophe at the newspaper. As I've explained here from time to time, my decision to leave the Times in January 2008 was the result of various personal and professional considerations, including the desire to be able to do more of the kind of on-the-scene reporting that I did in the 2008 presidential campaign and the NY23 special election.

When "insider" tales about the operations of The Washington Times come out in the media, there's always an element of bias, as the news organizations publishing the reports are, at the very least, business competitors of the newspaper, if not indeed political adversaries. And because I was often mendaciously backstabbed by gossipy anonymous "inside sources," I know better than to accept at face value the stuff that gets leaked out of the Times newsroom.

However, a friendly fellow journalist recently asked me what I knew about the latest brouhaha at the newspaper, and I felt obliged to share what little I knew. Perhaps some good might be done by sharing with blog readers what I wrote to that friend:

Nearly all I know -- or think I know -- about the recent upheaval at The Washington Times is what has been reported in the media, and you know how badly misinformed such reports can be. I have talked to various sources, but they have conflicting tales, so there is not much in the way of "special insight" I can share with you. Keep those caveats in mind, then, as you read my summary of the situation as I understand it.
During Wes Pruden's long tenure as editor in chief, his most important role -- little understood by his detractors -- was to serve as a "firewall" between the newsroom and the Unification Church. It seems to me obvious that the Rev. Moon came to trust Mr. Pruden's judgment as a professional newsman, so that when the newspaper came under attack from various enemies (including certain disgruntled, disloyal and dishonest employees), it was Mr. Pruden's authority that preserved the independence of the news operation.
Over the past decade, as the Rev. Moon grew older, he gradually delegated responsibilities that he once undertook personally. As a result, it seems the internecine squabbles within the Unification Church became more troublesome than ever to the operations of the Times. After 2004, when it began to be rumored that Mr. Pruden would retire as editor in chief of the paper, there commenced a lot of jockeying for position and backstabbing within the newsroom, especially by Mr. Pruden's internal critics, who sought above all else to deny the editorship to Pruden's second-in-command, Francis Coombs.
The Rev. Moon has reportedly chosen his son, Preston, to succeed him as supervisory proprietor of the newspaper. I've never had any direct dealing with Preston Moon and have no cause to dislike him or to judge his abilities, although he has a Harvard MBA and is therefore to be presumed a shrewd businessman. However, it appears that Preston Moon allowed himself to be swayed by Mr. Pruden's critics, so that Coombs was passed over, given a generous severance deal, and John Solomon was hired from the Washington Post.
This past week, some have told me that, contrary to what has been widely reported, the real story behind the recent ouster of Solomon (and three executives at The Washington Times) was financial. Preston Moon had become concerned that Solomon was spending far too much on an ambitious "re-branding" of the Times. Preston was also reportedly concerned that, under Solomon, the paper was losing its once-formidable market position as the nation's premier conservative news-gathering organization.
Of course, my sources for that version of the story are second-hand at best, and I share this with you only by way of suggesting that the real story about this recent turmoil may be either more complex or more simple than most people suspect. And I trust you won't mind if share this message (without identifying its recipient) with my blog readers.

Jonathan Slevin, recently named acting president and publisher of the Times, has published a note addressing some of the recent media reports. As to what happens next, I haven't the slightest clue, and would hesitate to offer any suggestions.

Ouch, Boss!

OK, I probably deserved this shot from Michelle Malkin:

And no, it isn't "playing the victim" to expose their bigotry.
It’s calling them out.

Without naming me, she evidently refers to my post yesterday:

Grant that the editors of Newsweek hate Sarah Palin. We have every reason to believe that the choice of photo of Palin in shorts represented an attempt to diminish and belittle Palin, to portray her as a cheesecake bimbo, the political equivalent of Lindsay Lohan. . . .
That this is "sexist," OK. Gotcha. But does Sarah Palin want to assume a feminist victimhood posture, to say that she is being oppressed by the patriarchy?

Given that I don't like it when people tell me how to frame my response to attacks on me, I suppose that I shouldn't be telling others how to frame their responses to attacks on them. The Golden Rule, in other words.

So if I'm correct that The Boss was aiming that elbow at me, I acknowledge the fault was mine. Mea culpa.

The old rule in the Washington Time newsroom was, "When in doubt, blame McCain." When I resigned last year, I wondered how they'd get along without having me around as the reliable scapegoat.

Answer? Not too good. Not too good at all.

Ruh-roh: Jew-baiting behind TWT uproar?

Hmmmmm. And hmmmmmm. OK, this is kind of hard to sort out, so we'll bullet-point it:

• Jonathan Slevin co-authors a novel that depicts U.S. foreign policy as "hamstrung and optionless because of Arab and Russian tyrants, oil, Middle East politics, American evangelicals, Israel, and AIPAC."
• Slevin reportedly handpicks Michael Scheuer to review the book for The Washington Times.
• Three senior executives of TWT are ousted, while Slevin is promoted to acting publisher.
• Executive editor John Solomon is reported to be "considering his options."

Quite a pickle here. Of course, I admit that the title of this post is misleading, since criticizing U.S. Middle East policy is not the same as "Jew-baiting." (But tell that to David Frum vis-a-vis "Unpatriotic Conservatives.") I was just looking for a shorthand label.

Having friends on both sides of the paleocon/neocon schism, I'm kind of an odd hawk-dove hybrid -- a Zionist paleo? -- and wish there were some sort of fusionist middle ground or, at least, that the two sides would stop anathematizing each other. Decades of this Manichean either/or game gets tiresome.

Anyway, when I posted about this "atavistic anarchy" earlier, I imagined that the reported turmoil at my former workplace was just a business matter. If, as these liberal bloggers suggest, it turns out to be a function of global geopolitics . . . well, wouldn't that be a kick in the head? Or maybe it's about ethics because of Slevin's hand-picking the reviewer, which violated company policy.

I'm betting there are many people in the Washington Times newsroom who are now fondly recalling the Wes Pruden era as the Good Old Days. As a news philosophy, "Get It First, Get It Right" had the virtue of simplicity.

Bad craziness at The Washington Times

Back in the day, the motto was always, "When in doubt, blame McCain," but I had nothing to do with the latest onset of atavistic anarchy:

The Washington Times has announced major changes at the paper this morning, with three top executives gone in the process.
Those removed Monday morning include Thomas P. McDevitt (president and publisher), Keith Cooperrider (chief financial officer), and Dong Moon Joo (chairman).
Jonathan Slevin, previously vice president, has been named acting president and publisher . . .
News of the executive shake-up follows rumors swirling around the Times Sunday night that there could be a major change on the editorial side, perhaps including executive editor John Solomon. However, Solomon was not mentioned in the release about changes to the business side. (Solomon has not responded to multiple calls and emails for comment).
There's also been speculation that changes at the Times could be associated with last month's handover of power in the Unification Church, the paper's owner. The Rev. Sun Myung Moon, who turns 90 in January, handed over power to his three sons . . .

And there's more:

Following Monday's news that top executives of the Washington Times have been removed, senior editors will be briefed at 10 a.m. this morning by members of the paper's Board.
Managing editor David Jones notified staff in a memo obtained by POLITICO.
Jones is second-in-command to executive editor John Solomon, who has been rumored to be leaving the paper, according to staffers . . .

Those of us who got out when the getting was good were the object of much badmouthing at the time. I still occasionally run across claims that I was fired, instead of resigning shortly after Solomon was hired from the Post. As a colleague said to me at the time, "If I wanted to work for a Postie, I would have applied at the f---ing Post."

One of the basic misconceptions that outsiders (and some insiders) had about The Times was that every problem at the paper was a function of the paper's conservative-alternative perspective: "It's those wacky right-wingers! Blame them!" But the newsroom operation was excellent. The real problems were always on the business side -- advertising, circulation and promotion.

So when the new management began by decapitating the newsroom -- Wes Pruden retired and Fran Coombs ousted -- it was certain that there would eventually be further bloodletting. Now it's come, and we wait to see what happens next.

UPDATE: Management spews mumbo-jumbo in press release:

The Washington Times LLC today announced that it is continuing on its path toward a sustainable multimedia news enterprise involving leadership expertise from within The Washington Times and directed by its Board of Directors and its parent company, News World Communications LLC.
Today's industry conditions and the general economic downturn necessitate this team-based assessment, planning, and subsequent implementation of a plan to enable The Times to become a sustainable multimedia company in today’s challenging news industry environment. . . .
[New publisher Jonathan Slevin]: "Our assessment team looks forward to emerging with a market-based plan that supports the sustainability of The Washington Times and advances the Times' role as an important source of news and opinion for readers who value a diversity of information and analysis."

Whatever that means -- probably not much, really. You could boil it down to, "Revenue sucks, so we're ditching some guys with big salaries."

The larger problem is that new giveaway tabloids -- the Examiner and Politico -- are cutting into the two paid-circulation daily broadsheets in D.C., while a plethora of Web-based outfits make it more and more difficult for newspapers to break exclusive news. Hell's bells, you can get scooped by Twitter and Facebook nowadays!