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Newsjock Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-01-10 10:00 PM
Original message
Unification Church will put Washington Times up for sale
Edited on Sat May-01-10 10:01 PM by Newsjock
Source: Washington Post

Washington Times executives are negotiating to sell the newspaper, after the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's family cut off most of the annual subsidy of about $35 million that has kept the Unification Church-backed paper afloat, company officials said.

Nicholas Chiaia, a member of the paper's two-man board of directors and president of the church-supported United Press International wire service, confirmed that the paper is actively on the market: "We recently entered into discussions with a number of parties interested in either purchasing or partnering with the Washington Times," he said in a statement to The Washington Post.

Current and former Times officials said one suitor has been the paper's former executive editor, John Solomon, who resigned in November 2009. Soon thereafter, they said, Solomon organized a group of investors to purchase the Times or launch a new multimedia outlet called The Washington Guardian. Times company officials said they are also in discussions with other potential investors.

... The finances are so tight that the newspaper hasn't paid some of its bills or tended to basic maintenance issues -- such as hiring an exterminator to deal with mice and snakes sneaking into the building on New York Avenue in Northeast.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/30/AR2010043002043.html
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rrneck Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-01-10 10:03 PM
Response to Original message
1. How much will they pay me to take it? nt
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Nancy Waterman Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-01-10 10:09 PM
Response to Reply #1
3. I wish some progressives would buy it
And we could get a decent DC paper. The Washington Post gets worse by the month.

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gmoney Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-01-10 10:12 PM
Response to Reply #3
5. Come on Soros... or Al Gore... or Sean Penn... or Charles Foster Kane.
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SoapBox Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-01-10 11:36 PM
Response to Reply #3
9. Ditto! But just watch...here comes Murdoch!
We can only keep our fingers crossed that it does NOT get into the hands of some creep like Murdoch.
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SkeeterVT Donating Member (4 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri May-07-10 06:11 AM
Response to Reply #3
32. You have to be CRAZY to buy a paper that's lost money for 28 years!
Edited on Fri May-07-10 06:13 AM by SkeeterVT
Not a chance. Nobody in his or her right mind would buy a newspaper that's never made a profit in its entire 28-year history (Assuming it doesn't fold before then, the Washington Times will turn 28 on May 17). Rev. Moon has sunk $3 BILLION into the Times and never got one red cent of that money back in 28 years.

Forget about Rupert Murdoch buying the Times. He can't. He owns WTTG, the Fox TV station in D.C. and would have to sell the station to comply with FCC cross-ownership rules in order to buy the paper. Unlike in New York, where Murdoch has an almost 35-year-old "grandfathered" cross-ownership of Fox's flagship station WNYW-TV and the New York Post (which enabled him to buy the New York-based Wall Street Journal), Murdoch can't get an exemption from the FCC in the D.C. market -- especially now that the FCC has a 3-2 majority of Obama appointees.

Besides, the New York Post itself hasn't made a profit since 1974, losing an estimated $50 million a year. Murdoch can't afford to sink $85 million a year to subsidize two money-losing papers -- especially when the one in D.C. has a circulation of a measley 42,000 and falling. Unlike Rev. Moon, Murdoch has shareholders he has to answer to -- and is already fighting to keep one of them (Liberty Media chairman John Malone) from launching a hostile takeover of Murdoch's News Corp.
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coffeenap Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-01-10 10:08 PM
Response to Original message
2. Mother-f'in snakes in the mother f'in newsroom!!!
:)
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Warpy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-01-10 10:09 PM
Response to Original message
4. Maybe Scaife will be interested
He's got a few poisonous outlets already and one in DC would probably look pretty attractive to him.
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Historic NY Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-01-10 10:19 PM
Response to Original message
6. Finnally giving up on the bird cage liner...losers.
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Proletariatprincess Donating Member (527 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-01-10 10:24 PM
Response to Original message
7. Are the whacko religious nutcases loosing their grip?
Amen to that!
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Hawkeye-X Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-01-10 10:27 PM
Response to Original message
8. Guess the "king" business isn't doing well.
Hopefully Moonies will just go away.. for good.
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dotymed Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-10 08:58 AM
Response to Reply #8
17. Doesn't it make people think?
When the very influential Washington Post has been owned and run by Moonies for decades, how could anyone take their articles seriously? All rethug all the time. Doesn't that show Americans what type of "people" support the rethug cause? I am surprised they didn't burn it to the ground for the insurance. Oh, they probably own the insurance company.
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Akbar Donating Member (264 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-01-10 11:42 PM
Response to Original message
10. No Serious Person Would Buy It
This is tantamount to a blacksmith shop going on the block. At this point in time, it doesn't make any business sense to buy a newspaper (or its plant, which is essentially the only thing of worth that would be up for sale.)

Okay, someone like Murdoch or Scaife might take an interest in replacing the propaganda organ of record in the nation's capitol. Murdoch is a businessman, and I would be surprised to see him make such a disastrous move. Scaife might be crazy enough to go for it, but it would be pretty stupid. He may be crazy, but who knows if he's stupid.

A few years ago, this was the biggest fear among Posties. They were concerned that if the Times ever got bought out by a legitimate owner, it would mean they'd be faced with actual competition--something they haven't faced since before the end of journalism. For them, though, it's no big deal. They aren't in the newspaper business any more. They're a test-preparation company, that's holding onto their legacy business for a while, perhaps just because of the cachet of the name.
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IthinkThereforeIAM Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-10 03:50 AM
Response to Reply #10
13. Do you mean like McLatchy...
... Newspapers? The former Knight- Ridder organization? They have been what I consider the last real journalistic organization in the US of A. No one is perfect but they have been doing real journalistic news and whithered the propaganda storms.
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No Elephants Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-10 09:17 AM
Response to Reply #13
19. Reminds me: The last Bill Moyers Journal ever aired this weekend. PBS
has hired John Meachum to "replace" Moyers.

Democrats need to wake up and get busy. Seriously.
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Democat Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-10 02:55 AM
Response to Original message
11. $35 million a year to prop up that loser paper?
You'd have to be crazy to buy it. Who has $35 million a year to lose in this economy?
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defendandprotect Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-10 08:38 PM
Response to Reply #11
27. The right wing wealthy have kept right wing stuff going ---
Edited on Sun May-02-10 08:42 PM by defendandprotect
from Bill Buckley's mag to all the right wing organizations --

After Bill Buckley died some right wing memos came floating out making clear

that the CIA had been financing right wing members of Congress -- two that were

named were Sen. Strom Thurmond and Rep. Gerry Ford.

CIA took right wing many from any right wing sources -- including KKK.

Pat Buchanan also was financed by them.

GOP gave start up funding for the Christian Coalition -- Richard Scaife financed

Dobson's organization -- and other right wing wealthy financed Bauer's organization.

Using religion as a tool of conquest is an old pattern for the right wing.

And, take a look at this . . .



The US spent $100's of millions shooting down Soviet helicopters yet didn't spend a penny helping Afghanis rebuild their infrastructure and institutions.

They also spent millions producing jihad preaching, fundamentalist textbooks and shipping them off to Afghanistan. These were the same text books the Western media discussed in shocked tones and told their audiences were used by fundamentalist teachers to brainwash their charges and to inculcate in young Afghanis a jihad mindset, hatred of foreigners and non-Muslims etc.


Have you heard about the Afghan Jihad schoolbook scandal?

Or perhaps I should say, "Have you heard about the Afghan Jihad schoolbook scandal that's waiting to happen?"

Because it has been almost unreported in the Western media that the US government shipped, and continues to ship, millions of Islamist textbooks into Afghanistan.

Only one English-speaking newspaper we could find has investigated this issue: the Washington Post. The story appeared March 23rd.

Washington Post investigators report that during the past twenty years the US has spent millions of dollars producing fanatical schoolbooks, which were then distributed in Afghanistan.

"The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system's core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books..." -- Washington Post, 23 March 2002 (1)

According to the Post the U.S. is now "...wrestling with the unintended consequences of its successful strategy of stirring Islamic fervor to fight communism."

So the books made up the core curriculum in Afghan schools. And what were the unintended consequences? The Post reports that according to unnamed officials the schoolbooks "steeped a generation in violence."

How could this result have been unintended? Did they expect that giving fundamentalist schoolbooks to schoolchildren would make them moderate Muslims?

Nobody with normal intelligence could expect to distribute millions of violent Islamist schoolbooks without influencing school children towards violent Islamism. Therefore one would assume that the unnamed US officials who, we are told, are distressed at these "unintended consequences" must previously have been unaware of the Islamist content of the schoolbooks.

But surely someone was aware. The US government can't write, edit, print and ship millions of violent, Muslim fundamentalist primers into Afghanistan without high officials in the US government approving those primers.

http://www.tenc.net/articles/jared/jihad.h...





If you're interested, US created Taliban/Al Qaeda . . .


The CIA's Intervention in Afghanistan
Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski,
President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser

Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998

Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs <"From the Shadows">, that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?

Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?

B: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?

Q: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?

Q: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

http://www.takeoverworld.info/brzezinski_i... ...








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Rex Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-10 03:30 AM
Response to Original message
12. Oh good, I hope Moon is doing horrible and their wacko church crumbles
to the ground in poverty. No one deserves to be poor more then the Moonie Loonies.
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pepperbear Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-10 04:28 AM
Response to Original message
14. paging sean penn, michael moore, janeane garofalo, danny glover, alec baldwin...
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No Elephants Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-10 09:30 AM
Response to Reply #14
20. I think more and more people are just giving up on government in general.
It's gone beyond just Democrat vs. Republican anymore.
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Historic NY Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-10 06:19 AM
Response to Original message
15. the new business plan is to give away the papers.
http://www.mediajobmarket.com/jobs/content_display/career-resource/finance/e3idf30b42a15c2d86a034ead391a8c9435

NEW YORK More than half of The Washington Times' circulation will be free under the new business strategy revealed this week, according to Publisher/President Jonathan Slevin. He added that the new plan, which includes substantial job cuts, is necessary to end the paper's reliance on subsidies from the Unification Church ownership.<snip>


Daily circulation had taken a hit in the recent Audit Bureau of Circulations FAS-FAX Report for the six months ending Sept. 30, dropping from 80,962 to 67,148 compared to the same period a year earlier. Slevin said circulation would be reduced further, but did not indicate by how much: "There is still some due diligence we need to do to determine what circulation will result in what advertising revenue."

But he noted that "more than a simple majority will be no cost, it will be more than half, significantly more than half."

News coverage will be altered, Slevin said, stating "the newsroom will be smaller and we will focus on our strengths, which are national security, national politics, geo-strategic areas and cultural coverage, in addition to the opinion pages and investigation." (Republican Talking Points)





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Chemical Bill Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-10 07:07 AM
Response to Original message
16. The corporate media is doing his lying for him...
so he doesn't need to keep his lying paper anymore. This is not reason to celebrate.

Bill
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defendandprotect Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-10 09:12 AM
Response to Original message
18. Who would read this rag . . . but then, again, I think newspapers vs internet are losing ....
ALL communication has to be a two way street -- which the internet largely is.

Newspapers have a "letters to the editior" section and that's it!

But Moon has more money than "god" and I think he's making clear newspapers are losers now.

Evidently, NY Times is also anxious to fold.
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No Elephants Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-10 09:32 AM
Response to Reply #18
21. Meanwhile, the NYT has all but killed off the Boston Globe. The Globe does little more
than reprint articles from the NYT; and the NYT ain't what it used to be.
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defendandprotect Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-10 08:16 PM
Response to Reply #21
24. Used to love the Boston Globe . . . agree with you...NYT should never have been
alllowed to buy it!

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Captain Hilts Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-10 08:48 PM
Response to Reply #21
28. The NYT is doing some excellent economic/financial writing and reporting these days. nt
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DWilliamsamh Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-10 09:32 AM
Response to Original message
22. GOOD! F them. I hate to see most papers go under....not so the times. (n/t)
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Crowman1979 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-10 10:01 AM
Response to Original message
23. The print media is dead, THANK GAWD!
Edited on Sun May-02-10 10:01 AM by Crowman1979
Seriously, just save some trees and look for the news online, TV or radio. You're just wasting paper that could be used for better things, like packaging material that isn't made from styrofoam or petroleum products.
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EFerrari Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-10 08:19 PM
Response to Original message
25. They should just put it out of our misery. nt
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totodeinhere Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-10 08:32 PM
Response to Original message
26. I bet Rupert Murdock buys it. It's right wing editorial policy would fit in with him just fine. n/t
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annabanana Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-10 08:50 PM
Response to Original message
29. "mice and snakes"?
or just the regular staff?
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ThomThom Donating Member (752 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-10 09:08 PM
Response to Original message
30. Now why can't a group of wealthy progressives buy it?
and bring back real news, real facts
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Brother Buzz Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-02-10 09:39 PM
Response to Original message
31. Washington Times is a white elephant in a buyers market with no buyers
Perhaps Murdock will purchase it for a song after Rev Sun Myung Moon et al. finds nobody else wants to touch it with the proverbial ten foot pole.
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