The Washington Times

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For the newspaper founded in 1893 by William Randolph Hearst, see Washington Times-Herald.

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

The Washington Times[1] is a daily broadsheet newspaper published in Washington, D.C., United States.

As of March 31, 2005, the Times had an average daily circulation of 103,017; about one-seventh that of its chief competitor, the Washington Post.

Contents

[edit] History

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 right-leaning editorial stance. By 2002, the Unification Church had spent about $1.7 billion in subsidies for the Times. [1]

The Times was founded the year after the Washington Star, the previous "second paper" of D.C., went out of business. Without the Times there would have been no "second paper" in Washington, so the daily has been able to position itself as an underdog competing for attention and respect with a more prestigious and established rival. In many ways that has been a one-sided affair, with the Post seeing itself as competing with the New York Times, and preferring to ignore the cross-town broadsheet. 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; even 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."[2]

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.

Dante Chinni, writing in the Columbia Journalism Review said:

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.”[3]

[edit] Political leanings

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". [4] [5] [6] [7] It does also print op-ed and opinion articles that include liberal and Democratic party voices; liberal columnist Clarence Page is a regular contributor.[8] Also featured are libertarian opinion pieces, almost always from scholars at the DC located Cato Institute.[9][10]

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."[11]

[edit] Relationship to the Unification Church

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 and controversy. 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" [12]. 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.[13]

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"[14]). In 2002, Columbia Journalism Review suggested Moon had spent nearly $2 billion on the Times[15]. Ads fill an average of 35% of the Times' pages, compared to an industry average of 50-60%.[16]

[edit] Criticism

[edit] Editorial independence

Several critics have claimed 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. Times critics such as Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting assert significant influence by the Church on the paper and give the Church significant credit (or blame) for the Times' actions. [17][18] 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."[19]. 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 firmly deny any Church influence on their news coverage and editorial policy, or that they have any interest in proselytizing directly for the Unification Church. (Compare the Christian Science Monitor.) 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.

Critics of Rev. Moon also say that operation of the Times is part of an attempt to gain political influence in Washington, D.C., along with the purchase of the UPI newswire service in 2001 -- which allows one of their reporters to sit in a press seat on Air Force One.

[edit] Alleged news bias

Salon.com ([20], [21]) and The Daily Howler (examples: [22], [23], [24], [25]) 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." [26]

[edit] Alleged racial insensitivity

The paper has attracted occasional controversy over its coverage of racially sensitive matters. Editor Robert Stacy McCain has drawn fire from gay 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. Award-winning 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.

[edit] Notable current and former writers

News

Opinion

Religion

Sports

Computers

  • Mark Kellner

Metro

  • Adrienne T. Washington
  • Tom Knott
  • Fred Reed (police beat, later took on a broader purview)

Former

Comics

  • Wes Johnson (Martini 'n Clyde - 1990-1992)

[edit] Executive officers and editors, present and past

[edit] Editors-in-chief

[edit] Other

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ 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.

[edit] External links

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