Layoffs Coming to the Washington Times

TigerVols, it is inappropriate for you to try to turn a "There's going to be layoffs at the Washington Times!" thread into an opportunity to rip on the low-hanging fruit that is the newspaper founder's political leanings. You may have the luxury of spouting your politics and having them affect every single part of your life both personal and professional. Not everyone has that luxury, and not everyone wastes so much time freaking out about is as passionate about politics as others.

A few years ago, I was in some stupid fight with one of the board's more noted political loudmouths, who was of the left-leaning persuasion.

I received a breathless PM regarding this individual, saying how funny it was that this person was so hardcore liberal yet had to work for the very conservative-leaning Washington Times (this was before the paper crashed a couple of years ago and mass whacked its staff).

I responded that people need to do whatever they feel they must to feed their families. Especially with how the business has gone over the last decade or so, there is no call for anyone to turn down an opportunity for employment just because the politics of the person with the pursestrings might be disagreeable.

It's well and good to believe in some kind of political persuasion (though I can't imagine having that much passion for people who ultimately cannot be trusted), and it's important to have some kind of principles.

But real people are about to lose their jobs. And, especially considering the fact this board has friends, posters and colleagues in the sports department who could not possibly care less about Rev. Moon's politics, it's a real mean-spirited move to sit on a high horse on the West Coast and thumb your nose at people who are hanging on in a business they love. There are good people at that paper, and they're not there because they adore the paper's political reputation.

They're there because they need to feed their families. And because the restarting of the sports section provided an opportunity.

Save your need to be a political loudmouth for another thread.

 

I don't know if I'd call it breathless.

 

Hhahahaa obviously it was not from you.

Don't remember who sent it, but I'm sure someone will try to figure it out.

The overall point remains.

Best of luck to all at the Washington Times.

 

Maybe it was from a zombie.

 

Agree best of luck to all at The Washinton Times.

If the standard for employment was the politics of senior management then many would be leaving ESPN since the big boss was a huge Romney supporter.

I think I figured out the sj member you are talking about. Last I heard he got a job shinning shoes at a stand by the Capitol.

 

You need to improve your reading comprehension skills if you think I criticized anyone for taking a job "because they need to feed their families" because I clearly did not. Hell, I've made no secret over the years that I used to work for tabloids because I, too, had a mortgage to pay...and I wasn't surprised, and didn't complain, when the tabloid cleaned house in a manner that raised eyebrows.

My point, and it's rather simple, is that no one should complain about bad management practices by anyone in upper management of a cult-funded organization, whether that cult leans to the right (like the Times) or the left.

It's terrible if anyone is fired this, or really any, time of year, especially when the firings are due solely to economic factors.

 

It's hardly the first paper to put Big Brother measures in to check emails and whatnot... I know of one paper that used similar measures to find out which person there was posting on this site. A guy was fired for it even though he wasn't the person who posted the item that had the editors pissed off.

There was another big paper that audited the emails of every employee there because an employee had forwarded an internal memo to the alternative weekly...

It's never OK...

 

You'd think the messiah's heirs would take better care of their employees.

 

The paper dropped everything except national news/politics and commentary. It "relaunched" as a full service newspaper in March 2011 when it brought back the sports, metro and lifestyles sections.

 

Either way, the print product was not shuttered. That would have been a substantially greater investment. Closing the sports, metro and lifestyle sections was an act of desperation. Reopening them was an act of desperation.

I don't think this has anywhere near as much to do with the ownership as the Tiimes' status as the No. 2 newspaper in the city, not including the free Washington Examiner and Washington Post Express. There only are a handful of cities in this country that still feature two daily newspapers that cost money.

 

Wow, I figured they would wait until the Redskins were eliminated...