CAN THE WASHINGTON TIMES SURVIVE?:
The Washington Times gets picked up every day on C-SPAN, and by other major news organizations when it scores a big hit.
But for a paper that only has a daily circulation of just 90,000
with inflated numbers, can that marvelous respectability continue?
The paper for years has been a beacon for both conservative and
liberal readers for its own take on the news of the day and the
direction of our culture.
Conservatives love it, liberals may hate it, but as President Bill
Clinton told me personally when I was still a reporter for The Times,
“I read you every day to see what you’re saying about
me.” That was respect from a man who hated The Washington Times,
but he said he felt he had to read The Washington Times every day to
find out what the other side was thinking and doing.
But can that conservative-liberal, love-hate scenario that once made
the low-circulation Washington Times work as a pacesetting newspaper
continue?
Can The Washington Times survive and continue to be a beacon of the
conservative view of America, its politics and culture, that all can
look to with respect for a complete daily report from its own
perspective?
I doubt it, because of a festering internal civil war within the
company, featuring ideological and abusive micro-management by senior
TWT editors, backed by the founder’s top corporate manager at The
Washington Times Corp., that has driven out the newspaper’s best
people over the past five years, and continues to drive people out.
The latest brain-drain victim in late December 2006, just before
Christmas, was Washington Times Corp. Vice President Jonathan Slevin,
executive assistant to company CEO Douglas M. Joo. Slevin told
inquiring news organizations that he left voluntarily — but I’m told
confidentially by several of Slevin’s close co-workers that he felt
forced to leave after months of extremely intolerant abuse and
rejection of him by Joo.
Slevin, according to people who know him best, just gave up and
refused to continue accepting a paycheck from a company for whom he had
worked for a quarter century because its current CEO, Joo, was a
tyrannical maniac who listened to nobody except a coterie of
arse-kissers who weren’t helping better the perpetually
money-losing situation of the company.
I have known Jonathan Slevin for more than a quarter century, but he
understandably did not want to talk to me about this situation for a
publicly posted piece.
Let me just say as a person who has dealt with Slevin over many
years in different situations, some of them quite complex, involving
difficult personalities and circumstances, that Jonathan Slevin is one
of the finest, nicest, most erudite, capable, calm, kind, sensitive,
and fair individuals I have ever dealt with, ever. He always gave his
all to his employer and the job at hand.
For Jonathan Slevin to leave his post at The Washington Times
executive offices abruptly, without a thank-you normally accorded to
any longtime employee right down to the switchboard — albeit nicely
saying he was leaving to finish a book — tells all who know Jonathan
that something was terribly wrong in the way he departed or was forced
out. Everybody who knows Jonathan Slevin knows what I am saying is
correct. This man is a saintly man, and I know in my heart that he has
been wronged. So herein lies the greater story.
As the first reporter hired at The Washington Times outside the
founding group, and a 21-year veteran who received four Pulitzer Prize
nominations from the newspaper for investigative reporting, I
found from talking to people at all levels of the company after I left
in September 2005 that the newspaper now has just a small cadre of
reliable, experienced reporting talent. There has been a huge exodus of
capable reporters and editors on all desks and at all levels over the
past several years. Why?
The Washington Times can no longer claim to be the premiere
conservative pacesetting newspaper in the Nation’s Capital, which
it was in the 1980s and 1990s, because it is no longer breaking big
exclusives and blockbuster stories that overcome its puny circulation,
despite its claimed access to powers in the Bush administration and on
Capitol Hill.
The Wall Street Journal, which has both excellent editorial and news
pages and a seasoned feisty staff in Washington that dwarfs the news
and opinion product of The Washington Times every day. So does National
Review magazine online, the weekly Human Events tabloid, rigidly
ideologically conservative but factually dependable for breaking out
important domestic and foreign news stories for readers across the
country, and liberal media outlets – The Washington Post, New
York Times, and Los Angeles Times.
Broadcast competition such as Fox News on the conservative side, CNN
on the liberal side, and BBC, NPR, and PBS on the middle-left of the
ideological spectrum also are constantly beating the socks off The
Washington Times, both on the news side and in their editorial opinion
offerings. Why?
::Tullycast:: 