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The Washington Times

Founding

The Washington Times was founded by Unification Church leader Sun Myung Moon in 1982.. Bo Hi Pak, Moon's chief aide, was the founding president and the founding chairman of the board. In 1996 Moon discussed his reasons for founding the Times in an address to a Unification Church leadership conference, saying "That is why Father has been combining and organizing scholars from all over the world, and also newspaper organizations, in order to make propaganda." In 2002 Moon, who has said that he is the Messiah and the Second Coming of Christ and is fulfilling Jesus' unfinished mission,, by George D. Chryssides, University of Wolverhampton, U.K. A paper presented at the CESNUR 2003 Conference, Vilnius, Lithuania. said: "The Washington Times is responsible to let the American people know about God." and "The Washington Times will become the instrument in spreading the truth about God to the world."
At the time of the Times founding Washington had only one major newspaper, the Washington Post. Massimo Introvigne, in his 2000 book The Unification Church, said that the Post had been "the most anti-Unificationist paper in the United States." Former speechwriter for President George W. Bush and neo-conservative journalist David Frum, in his 2000 book How We Got Here: The '70s, wrote that Moon had granted the Times editorial independence.
Funding
The Washington Times has lost money every year that it has been in business. By 2002, the Unification Church had spent about $1.7 billion subsidizing its operation of the Times. In 2003, The New Yorker reported that a billion dollars had been spent since the paper's inception, as 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". In 2002, Columbia Journalism Review suggested Moon had spent nearly $2 billion on the Times. In 2008, Thomas F. Roeser of the Chicago Daily Observer mentioned competition from the Times as a factor moving the Washington Post to the right, and said that Moon had "announced he will spend as many future billions as is needed to keep the paper competitive."
History
The Times was founded the year after the Washington Star, the previous "second paper" of D.C., went out of business, after operating for over 100 years. A large percentage of the staff came from the recently defunct Washington Star. 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. Although USA Today used color in the same way, it took several years for the Washington Post, New York Times and others to do the same. 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 Posts. This design and its editorial content attracted "real influence" in Washington.
In 2002, Post veteran Ben Bradlee said, "I see them get some local stories that I think the Post doesn’t have and should have had." Dante Chinni wrote in the Columbia Journalism Review:

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.”

In 2004 the Washington Post reported dissention between some of the Times staff and ownership over the paper's stance on international issues, including support for the United Nations.

, home delivery of the paper in its local area is made in bright orange plastic bags, with the words, "Brighter. Bolder. The Washington Times" and a slogan that changes. Two of the slogans are "The voice and choice of discerning readers" and "You're not getting it all without us".

Circulation

From October 2008 to March 2009, The Washington Times had an average daily circulation of 83,511, about one-eighth that of its chief competitor in Washington, The Washington Post; and an average Sunday circulation of 43,889, about one-twenty-second that of the Post. In 1992 the New York Times reported that two-thirds of the Washington Times subscribers also subscribed to the Post.
Political leanings
Times dispenser
The political views of The Washington Times are often described as conservative. The Washington Post reported: "...the Times was established by Moon to combat communism and be a conservative alternative to what he perceived as the liberal bias of The Washington Post."
In 1997, the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (which is critical of United States and Israeli policies), praised the Times and its sister publication The Middle East Times for their objective and informative coverage of Islam and the Middle East, while criticizing the Times generally pro-Israel editorial policy. In 1998 the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram, one of the most respected newspapers in the Arab world, wrote that the Times editorial policy was "rabidly anti-Arab, anti-Muslim and pro-Israel."

In 1999 the Times was criticized by the Daily Howler for misquoting vice-president Al Gore. In 2000 the Howler criticized the Times again, this time for making unsubstantiated allegations about Gore's campaign fundraising. In 2004 the Howler criticized a Times front page story which made fun of Democratic Party presidential candidate John Kerry's vacationing in France.

Conservative-turned-liberal writer David Brock, who worked for the Times sister publication Insight on the News, said in his 2002 book Blinded by the Right that the news writers at the Times were encouraged and rewarded for giving news stories a conservative slant. In his 2004 book The Republican Noise Machine, Brock wrote "the Washington Times was governed by a calculatedly unfair political bias and that its journalistic ethics were close to nil."

In his 2003 book, Lies (And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them): A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, comedian, author, and later senator Al Franken devoted a chapter to criticizing the Times after executive editor Wesley Pruden re-wrote a reporter's story—without the reporter's knowledge—about Franken's performance at a White House party. According to Franken, the rewrite was made to appear as if Franken had received a negative reception, which he says was not the case.Lies (And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them): A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. Dutton, August 29, 2003
The Washington Times has been accused of promoting racist views. Max Blumenthal in The Nation claimed that Times editor Fran Coombs had made a number of racist and sexist comments and was being sued by his colleagues for his remarks.. The Southern Poverty Law Center in its Spring 2005 report criticized the wife of Fran Coombs, for writing articles in what the report claimed as white nationalist websites such as the Occidental Quarterly.. Media Matters criticized the Times for promoting the views of Steve Sailer of VDARE..

In 2002, the Times published a story accusing the National Educational Association (NEA), the largest teachers' union in the United States, of promoting teaching students that the policies of the United States government were partly to blame for the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. This was denied by the NEA and by other commentators.
In 2007, Mother Jones said that the Times had become "essential reading for political news junkies" soon after its founding and quoted James Gavin, special assistant to Bo Hi Pak:

We're trying to combat communism and we're trying to uphold traditional Judeo-Christian values. The Washington Times is standing up for those values and fighting anything that would tear them down. Causa is doing the same thing, by explaining what the enemy is trying to do.

In a 2008 essay published in Harper's Magazine, historian Thomas Frank linked the Times to the modern American conservative movement, saying:

There is even a daily newspaper—the Washington Times—published strictly for the movement’s benefit, a propaganda sheet whose distortions are so obvious and so alien that it puts one in mind of those official party organs one encounters when traveling in authoritarian countries.

In 2009, the Manila Times criticized the Times for an editorial which it said interfered with the political process in the Philippines, while the New York Times criticized it for an editorial linking proposed health care reforms in the United States to policies of Nazi Germany.

Conservative commentator Paul Weyrich has called the 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.

The Times was read every day by President Ronald Reagan during his term in office. In 1997 he said:

The American people know the truth. You, my friends at The Washington Times, have told it to them. It wasn't always the popular thing to do. But you were a loud and powerful voice. Like me, you arrived in Washington at the beginning of the most momentous decade of the century. Together, we rolled up our sleeves and got to work. And—oh, yes—we won the Cold War.

Recent changes

In January 2008, editor-in-chief Wesley Pruden retired and John F. Solomon began work as executive editor of the Times. Solomon is known for his work as an investigative journalist for the Associated Press and the Washington Post, and was most recently head of investigative reporting and mixed media development at the Post. Solomon is quoted as saying:

The only point I have made with the reporters and editors who write for the news pages is there must be a bright line between opinion and editorializing that rightfully belongs on the op-ed and commentary pages and the fair, balanced, accurate, and precise reporting that must appear in the news sections of the paper.

Within a month the Times changed some of its style guide to conform more to mainstream media usage. The Times announced that it would no longer use words like "illegal aliens" and "homosexual," and in most cases opt for "more neutral terminology" like "illegal immigrants" and "gay," respectively. The paper also decided to stop using "Hillary" when referring to Senator Hillary Clinton, and the word "marriage" in the expression "gay marriage" will no longer appear in quotes in the newspaper. These changes in policy drew criticism from some conservatives. Prospect magazine attributed the Times' apparent move to the center to differences of opinion over the United Nations and North Korea and said: "The Republican right may be losing its most devoted media ally."

On May 31, 2008, the Times announced that its Civil War section, which some commentators had said was too sympathetic to the South, would be expanded to include coverage of all America's wars and would be renamed "America at War." At the same time the Times laid off about 30 employees and also stopped printing a Saturday edition as cost saving measures; it still produces an electronic version of the Saturday paper. In August 2008, the Times announced it would outsource its printing operations to the publisher of The Baltimore Sun in order to avoid the expense of overhauling existing presses. In March 2009, the Times announced that it would soon launch a syndicated radio talk show.

Christmas tradition

Christmas issue

For several years, every December 25, above the masthead, the paper runs an inverse color (white on green) headline, which reads "'For unto you is born... a Saviour' - Luke 2:11".