Tuesday, March 30, 2010

The Washington Times

When I was a boy, there were some real conservative newspapers. We had one locally called the Santa Ana Register. A lot of areas in the country had conservative newspapers that could be subscribed to. There aren't too many really conservative newspapers in business any more.  Ours is now called the Orange County Register and it's pretty mainstream.

The most often cited source of conservative journalism, nationally, is the Washington Times. This small D.C. newspaper was going under, decades ago, when it was bought by Sun Myung Moon, later day Jesus clone and leader of the World Unification Church. I was never sure why he bought the paper and transformed it into the premier organ for Wing Nut news in America but he did. It's lost hundreds of millions of dollars over the years but it is a solid source of far right wing news and editorial content.

Sun Myung Moon is old and about to die. His family do not want to continue the expense of supporting his messianic religion. They have no interest in owning America's most conservative daily paper. I'm sure the family would like to sell the paper and at least recoup some of their investment but I can't imagine any group who would be willing to buy such a grossly money losing venture. The family has in the last few years instituted draconian budgetary cuts and wholesale staff layoffs. They will rid themselves of the enterprise itself eventually. It's only a matter of time.

Rupert Murdoch bought the Wall Street Journal several years ago and it, while always fairly conservative, has taken a hard jog to the right. It doesn't have the staff to churn out the mass of content that the Washington Times does but I guess it will have to do because the Washington Times is on the way out.

1 comment:

Steve Harkonnen said...

I can easily say the same thing about the Staunton News Leader. It's so liberal that the locals in my area aren't buying it and they were recently revealed to censoring conservative letters to the editor, which isn't good at all.