'When The Washington Times reaches profitability, America will be resurrected.'

I was thinking of a snarky headline as I read this article...something along the lines of this reflecting the true value of this fishwrap to America. When I found the text I ultimately used in the copy, I realized I could never surpass it.

Washington Times struggles amid divisions of family, ideology, finances
By Ian Shapira
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 6, 2010; C01

In summer 2009, the Times' future turned rocky. In July, church donations from Japan, long a key source of subsidies, stopped flowing to the paper, according to a memo by Victor Walters, treasurer of the Times' parent company. Walters did not return phone messages left at his office.

Times executives scrambled to figure out why the spigot had been turned off. Cooperrider e-mailed a senior church official: "We are really on the edge here. This is payroll week and we didn't get all of last week's funds yet and this week's funds are not at all clear. Should we start closing the doors?"

In e-mails obtained by The Post, Cooperrider provided a laundry list of problems, including the fact that the Times' Internet provider and health insurance bills hadn't been paid.

Instructed to contact Justin Moon, the second-oldest son, Cooperrider wrote asking, "Should TWT close their doors? Has the Founder instructed that should happen?" He signed his e-mail, "For the sake of America and the world . . . Keith Cooperrider."

Meanwhile, other Times executives searched for alternative revenue streams. McDevitt and John Solomon, then the executive editor, pushed for a morning-drive radio show that would air around the country. They struck a deal with Talk Radio Network, a major syndicator of talk shows. The Times would pay the distributor $100,000 a month for three years in exchange for a portion of advertising revenues, according to Times sources and internal documents.

Solomon declined to comment.

McDevitt was optimistic. In mid-August 2009, he e-mailed Times and church officials boasting about the radio deal and how the paper had received an apology from a New York Times editor for a story that characterized the Washington Times as "decidedly opposed" to President Obama -- wording that Washington Times editors said unfairly labeled their news reporters who sought to cover the news objectively.

McDevitt still dreamed high, writing about a drive to win a Pulitzer Prize, and he invoked the Times' longstanding code -- "Summit of Mt. Everest"-- for the ultimate goal of finally achieving profitability and freedom from church subsidies. McDevitt said he had promised the Rev. Moon that someday, after McDevitt's wife of 20 years died, he planned to "dedicate 40 more years on earth, and with [my wife's] help from Heaven, first make The Washington Times the most powerful media company in America." He added: " 'When The Washington Times reaches profitability, America will be resurrected.' I heard that from Father directly years ago."

"Gentlemen, Today is an historical day for which I deeply thank Heaven," began McDevitt's letter, obtained by The Post. "For the sake of this nation, and for the sake of God's providence, I pray that we choose to focus on the mission and the purposes for which The Washington Times was founded. This franchise has become a national treasure."

Preston read the e-mail and grew angry, according to a former Times official. "Preston felt like the letter showed Tom wasn't up to the task of running the Washington Times in the way he mixed together church and state," the source said.

Several weeks later, McDevitt was fired, along with Joo and Cooperrider. And the Times stopped paying Talk Radio Network, having lost hundreds of thousands on the radio show, according to former and current Times officials.

By early 2010, some Times staffers were concerned that Preston, who was perceived as less committed to conservative causes than his father, would steer the paper away from its ideological roots. Even after his recent departure, some worried that Solomon, a former Washington Post reporter, had made the paper's coverage too moderate. Charles Sutherland, the paper's former director of development and promotions, said he and some editors devised a plan to feature two articles a week highlighting excessive spending in the Obama health-care plan. They created and distributed around the Times building pins reading "Cut or Be Cut," advocating trims to the health-care plan.

"A lot of customers were calling saying, 'Why should we buy the Times when we can read the same crap in The Post?' " Sutherland recalled. "Preston wasn't married to the idea of having a conservative paper."

But Preston told some Times executives that he wanted a profitable paper and was committed to its conservative stance, even if his own politics were less doctrinaire than his father's. "The threat of China is a big deal to him, and American strength is really necessary, but he thought Bush's invasion of Iraq was a huge mistake," said a former Times official.