The Washington Times

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'''''

Type Daily newspaper
Format Broadsheet
Owner News World Communications
Editor Wesley Pruden
Founded 1982
Headquarters Washington, D.C.
Circulation 102,351[1]
Website: www.washtimes.com

The Washington Times[2] is a daily broadsheet newspaper published in Washington, D.C., United States. As of March 31, 2007, the Times had an average daily circulation of 102,351,[3] about one-seventh that of its chief competitor, The Washington Post. According to former editor Josette Shiner, it is the world's third-most-quoted newspaper.[4]

Contents

The Times was founded in 1982 by Sun Myung Moon, leader of the Unification Church and the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, to be a conservative alternative to the larger Washington Post. The Times is widely perceived as maintaining a strongly right-leaning editorial stance. By 2002, the Unification Church had spent about $1.7 billion in subsidies for the Times. The paper has lost money every year that it has been in business.[5]

The Times was founded the year after the Washington Star, the previous "second paper" of D.C., went out of business. Each day on page 2 the Washington Times prints a list of all its front page headlines side by side with those of the Post, to let readers compare what stories each paper is emphasizing and how. Some see the Times' coverage of local politics in particular as stronger than the Post's; Post veteran Ben Bradlee has said "I see them get some local stories that I think the Post doesn’t have and should have had."[6]

When the Times began, it was unusual among American broadsheets in publishing a full color front page, along with full color front pages in all its sections and color elements throughout. USA Today used this approach to an even greater degree. It took several years for the Washington Post, New York Times and others to follow suit. The Times originally published its editorials and opinion columns in a physically separate Commentary section, rather than at the end of its front news section as is common practice in U.S. newspapers. It ran television commercials highlighting this fact. Later, this practice was abandoned (except on Sundays, when many other newspapers, including the Post, also do it). The Washington Times also used ink that it advertised as being less likely to come off on the reader's hands than the Post's.

There is a reference to the paper, in which a front page from The Washington Times is used in the film The American President. The movie shows a copy of the newspaper in which the front page photo of the two main characters is in black and white. This is an error as the front page photo used on the Times is always in color.

Dante Chinni wrote in the Columbia Journalism Review:

In addition to giving voice to stories that, as Pruden says, “others miss,” the Times plays an important role in Washington’s journalistic farm system. The paper has been a springboard for young reporters to jobs at The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, even the Post. Lorraine Woellert, who worked at the Times from 1992 to 1998, says her experience there allowed her to jump directly to her current job at Business Week. “I got a lot of opportunities very quickly. They appreciated and rewarded talent and, frankly, there was a lot of turnover.”[7]

Ads fill an average of 35% of the Times' pages, compared to an industry average of 50-60%.[7]

As of 2007, home delivery of the paper in its local area is made in bright orange plastic bags, with the words, "Brighter. Bolder. The Washington Times" and a slogan which changes. Two of the slogans are "The voice and choice of discerning readers" and "You're not getting it all without us," which may be a response to the current slogan used by its much larger competitor, The Washington Post, which uses the slogan, "If you don't get it, you don't get it."

The Times is politically conservative. It was President Ronald Reagan's preferred newspaper. Some have cited it along with the Fox News Channel and talk radio as epitomizing the conservative media.[7][8][9][10] It also prints op-ed and opinion articles that include liberal and Democratic party voices; liberal columnist Clarence Page is a regular contributor.[11] Also featured are libertarian opinion pieces, almost always from scholars at the DC-located Cato Institute.[12][13]

Conservative commentator Paul Weyrich has called the Washington Times an antidote to its liberal competitor: "The Washington Post became very arrogant and they just decided that they would determine what was news and what wasn't news and they wouldn't cover a lot of things that went on. And the Washington Times has forced the Post to cover a lot of things that they wouldn't cover if the Times wasn't in existence."[14]

The Times is the flagship publication of News World Communications, Inc. (NWC). NWC was founded by Sun Myung Moon, and some of its officials are members of the Unification Church which he leads, a fact that has drawn some criticism. NWC published Insight Magazine and The World & I. Insight ceased hardcopy publication in 2004, moving to the web; and The World & I became The World & I Online, an educational magazine with four corresponding websites. NWC continues to publish the The Washington Times National Weekly Edition (a tabloid compilation, designed for subscribers outside the metropolitan area, of the previous week's published Washington Times stories). NWC also owns United Press International.

NWC is described by the Columbia Journalism Review as "the media arm of Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church".[15] The Unification Church calls Moon the "founder" of the Times. In 1997, on the 15th anniversary of the founding of the paper, Rev. Moon gave an address to staff members that began:

Fifteen years ago, when the world was adrift on the stormy waves of the Cold War, I established The Washington Times to fulfill God's desperate desire to save this world. Since that time, I have devoted myself to raising up The Washington Times, hoping that this blessed land of America would fulfill its world-wide mission to build a Heavenly nation. Meanwhile, I waged a lonely struggle, facing enormous obstacles and scorn as I dedicated my whole heart and energy to enable The Washington Times to grow as a righteous and responsible journalistic institution.[16]

In 2003, The New Yorker reported that a billion dollars had been spent since the paper's inception, as Rev Moon himself had noted in a 1991 speech ("Literally nine hundred million to one billion dollars has been spent to activate and run the Washington Times"[17]). In 2002, Columbia Journalism Review suggested Moon had spent nearly $2 billion on the Times[7] and in 2006 Consortium News said that the figure was more than $3 billion.[18]

Several critics have said that the Times is unfairly biased towards the Unification Church, noting that the paper's op-ed pages are often sympathetic to Unification movement concerns. Media watchdogs Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting asserts that the Church has significant influence on the paper and gives the Church significant credit (or blame) for the Times' content and actions.[19][16] In 2002, during the 20th anniversary party for the Times, Rev. Moon declared: "The Washington Times will become the instrument in spreading the truth about God to the world."[7] The paper's first editor-in-chief, James Whelan, said that he resigned rather than accepting what he saw as church interference with his operation of the paper. "I have blood on my hands," he declared. The paper's current editor says Whelan was fired because he was difficult to work with and other staffers were threatening to quit because of this.

Washington Times editors deny any Church influence on their news coverage and editorial policy, or that they have any interest in proselytizing directly for the Unification Church. According to Wesley Pruden, the current editor-in-chief, the paper's editorial independence is guaranteed by a contract between him and the owners, and no editor-in-chief has been a member of the Unification Church. He estimated that no more than 10 of the editorial staff of 230 are members of the Unification Church.[citation needed]

According to the Columbia Journalism Review, "Because of its history of a seemingly ideological approach to the news, the paper has always faced questions about its credibility."[20] Salon.com[21][22] and The Daily Howler[23][24][25][26] have published analyses of what they believe are serious factual errors and examples of bias in the paper's news coverage. Conservative-turned-liberal writer David Brock, who worked for the Times' sister publication Insight, said in his book Blinded by the Right that the news writers at the Times were encouraged and rewarded for giving news stories a conservative slant. In Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy Brock wrote "the Washington Times was governed by a calculatedly unfair political bias and that its journalistic ethics were close to nil."[27]

The paper has attracted occasional controversy over its coverage of racially sensitive matters. Editor Robert Stacy McCain has drawn fire from activist Michelangelo Signorile and the Southern Poverty Law Center for his criticism of Abraham Lincoln and apparent sympathies toward the Confederacy in the Civil War. Times columnist Samuel Francis was fired by editor-in-chief Wesley Pruden after speaking at a conference hosted by American Renaissance, a self-described "pro-white" group, essentially ending his mainstream journalistic career.

In 2006 Max Blumenthal reported in The Nation that Sun Myung Moon's son Hyun Jin Moon (sometimes called Preston Moon) and editor at large Arnaud de Borchgrave were trying to remove Pruden and take the Times in a more liberal direction.[28] In February 2007, former Times reporter George Archibald wrote that long time Unification Church leader Tom McDevitt would soon be taking office as president of the Washington Times Corporation and expressed hope that he would bring about needed changes in the Times organization.[29] In March 2007 McDevitt became the corporation's president.[30] In November 2007, the Washington Post reported that Pruden planned to step down soon and that the Times was looking for a new editor in chief.[31]

News

Opinion

Sports

Computers

Metro

Former

  1. ^ http://www.accessabc.com/products/top200.htm
  2. ^ The paper should not be confused with a previously existing paper of the same name established in 1893, which later became the Washington Times-Herald, and, still later, in 1954, was purchased by the Washington Post. Nor should it be considered the successor to the Washington Star, an afternoon paper which closed in August 1981. The Washington Post purchased the equipment and plant of the Star. The Times purchased part of the computer system used by the Star, which it replaced soon afterward.
  3. ^ http://www.accessabc.com/products/top200.htm
  4. ^ Josette Shiner said, "There has been very rarely in American history a newspaper that in ten years has the impact that The Washington Times has. We are told by the Associated Press that we are the third most quoted newspaper in the world after The New York Times and the Washington Post." [1]
  5. ^ http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A60061-2002May22
  6. ^ http://www.cjr.org/issues/2002/5/wash-stability.asp
  7. ^ a b c d e http://www.cjr.org/issues/2002/5/wash-chinni.asp
  8. ^ http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/connelly/100030_joel16.shtml
  9. ^ http://www.cfif.org/htdocs/freedomline/current/in_our_opinion/gore_fox_times.htm
  10. ^ http://www.consortiumnews.com/2005/012805.html
  11. ^ http://washtimes.com/commentary/
  12. ^ http://insider.washingtontimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20060930-095009-9419r
  13. ^ http://insider.washingtontimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20060916-112430-7148r
  14. ^ http://www.mediachannel.org/originals/moontranscript.shtml
  15. ^ http://www.cjr.org/tools/owners/newsworld.asp
  16. ^ a b http://www.tparents.org/Moon-Talks/sunmyungmoon97/sm970617.htm
  17. ^ http://www.unification.net/1991/911223.html
  18. ^ http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/122706.html
  19. ^ http://www.fair.org/media-outlets/washington-times.html
  20. ^ http://archives.cjr.org/year/95/2/times.asp
  21. ^ http://www.salon.com/politics/col/spinsanity/2002/09/05/nea/index_np.html
  22. ^ http://www.salon.com/politics/col/spinsanity/2002/09/18/nea/print.html
  23. ^ http://www.dailyhowler.com/h120899_2.shtml
  24. ^ http://www.dailyhowler.com/h092500_1.shtml
  25. ^ http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh082702.shtml
  26. ^ http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh022504.shtml
  27. ^ http://www.thinkingpeace.com/Lib/lib099.html
  28. ^ http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20061009&s=washington_times
  29. ^ http://georgearchibald.typepad.com/george_archibald/2007/02/unhinged.html
  30. ^ Points Of Light Executives to Lead Washington Times, Child Advocacy Group
  31. ^ The Washington Times, Hunting For a Bionic Editor in Chief

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