Washington Times Announces Additional Changes to Become a 21st Century Multimedia Company

Changes include improved on-line presence, focused print edition and more exclusive news and commentary

WASHINGTON, DC - The Washington Times LLC today announced changes to refocus its position as a provider of vital information and insight to readers in the nation's capital, across the country and around the world. As with other news organizations in the United States, the company continues to reshape operations to keep pace with the dynamically changing economics of the news business.

"These changes will continue The Washington Times' transformation into a 21st century media company and reinforces its mission to provide an independent, alternative voice in the nation's capital," said President and Publisher Jonathan Slevin. "We have developed plans to secure our position and advance our vital role in an evolving media marketplace and through challenging economic times. A new Washington Times will continue to reach readers and more effectively earn new audiences via digital, broadcast, print and wireless media, well into the future.

"Changes at the Times are rooted in a rigorous business analysis applying sound and tested financial principles, and shaping plans informed by current marketplace realities," continued Slevin. "In this regard, the company is aggressively working to achieve efficiencies of scale that must include significant staff reduction of its 370 personnel."

Scheduled for incremental implementation between now and the first half of 2010, the changes announced include:

• News focused on strengths. The Washington Times news operation will operate in a highly focused manner, investing in Washington Times' well-established core strengths that include exclusive reporting and in-depth-news national political coverage, enterprise and investigative reporting, geo-strategic and national security news, and cultural coverage based on traditional values.

• Controlled-market local circulation. In the first quarter of 2010, the local print edition will be distributed at no cost in select areas, and home/office delivery will be offered at a premium price. No-cost distribution will focus on targeted audiences at influential branches of the federal government as well as at other key institutions. Single copy sales will continue through newspaper boxes and retailers at select locations. Current subscribers will also be offered their choice of subscriptions to Washington Times' digital editions and The Washington Times National Weekly.

• Digital news resources: The Company will expand the recently launched theconservatives.com, subscription-based e-briefings and other new digital information resources as part of its online strategy.

• Radio programming. The newspaper's 3-hour-a-day morning radio program, "America's Morning News," will continue to grow through its syndicated by Talk Radio Network. It currently airs in more than 70 markets nationwide.

• Partnerships. The Washington Times will work closely with its affiliate company, United Press International (UPI), to mutually benefit both organizations through collaboration in areas such as photography and online sales, as well as leveraging UPI's multi-lingual and international presence.

"The new Washington Times will continue to report Washington-focused news that other journalistic enterprises often overlook," said Slevin. "Fearless reporting, respect for American values, and crisply written editorials and columns will remain the centerpieces of our new strategy, and our content will continue to engage readers and viewers through a wide range of 21st century media."

[Referring] To your post:

http://gawker.com/5389594/oscar+winner-paul-haggis-publicly-resigns-from-church-of-scientology-over-gay-rights

Ah. Yes. Paul Haggis. They suggested we link to their food website, which has a recipe for haggis, "A sheep's heart, liver, and lungs mixed with minced onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, salt, and stock...boiled in the sheep's stomach."

We will ask Paul Haggis if he's into that.

Neal Boulton is the upstanding one here, see? He was forced, forced by his conscience, to tell Keith Kelly that he had no choice but to quit his job as editor of Men's Fitness, in moral protest, when the magazine got Tiger Woods to be on its cover in exchange for covering up news of his dirty, sexxxy affairs.

"We were going to [do a quid pro quo with] America's favorite sports star, just to get his name on the cover of a magazine," said Boulton. "That was too much for me. That's when I high-tailed it out of there."

David Pecker, CEO of AMI [which owns both the National Enquirer and Men's Fitness], denies this and calls Boulton a "disgruntled former employee." The truth is, there are no winners here, ladies and gentlemen. None.

[Disclosure: Neal Boulton once commissioned a freelance article from me and then never paid me for it so I am biased against him.]

Allison was an early pioneer in the fine art of internet attentionmongering, so it makes sense she's tried to establish a beachhead on disclosure. The NonSociety founder today apologetically issued a "so corporate" post to make sure everyone understood who has been paying her to say nice things about them:

• Blueprint Cleanse, which has been flushing things out of Allison's colon for "over a year."
  
• SeaWorld, whose payments Allison did not disclose until after we raised the issue.
  
• Sony, who gave Allison an unprecedentedly classy deal involving actual TV commercials.

We expect this will be the tip of the iceberg; FTC rules say that bloggers must disclose their "material relationships" with people they write about, including anyone who provides freebies or cash. If you see any other confessionals, email them in; we'll round up the blogger confessionals tomorrow.

(Top pic: One of Allison's Blueprint Cleanse endorsements. Via NonSociety.)

In case you missed the NYT story this weekend (read it!), allow us to highlight these facts for you: Jim Sinkinson, the publisher of Infocom Group and owner of Bulldog Reporter, which many of you PR people subscribe to in an effort to more effectively influence journalists, is currently leading a campaign to put The Berkeley Daily Planet, a liberal weekly, out of business, because he doesn't like the fact that they publish "letters and other commentary pieces critical of Israel."

"We think that [Daily Planet editor Becky] O'Malley is addicted to anti-Israel expression just as an alcoholic is to drinking," Jim Sinkinson, who has led the campaign to discourage advertisers, wrote in an e-mail message... "If she wants to serve and please the East Bay Jewish community, she would be safer avoiding the subject entirely."

Please, take a moment to reflect on the unapologetically gangster philosophy behind that quote. Reflect, also, on the fact that Sinkinson objects to the paper publishing submitted items that are not even part of the paper's own editorial output. In other words, this "media relations" mogul objects to free speech, and is an asshole of the first order. [Pic: Flickr]

UPDATE: Jim Sinkinson sent this email to me Monday evening:

Dear Hamilton,

I want to follow up on your accusations yesterday, which are long on hyperbole, name calling and accusations, but short on factual basis. I hope you'll publish this so your readers will have a better ability to judge the truth of your analysis.

First, as a publisher, I fervently support free speech and stand by the rights of all publishers to print whatever they wish. What I oppose vigorously, however, is hate speech—-anti-Semitism in this case. I also oppose the delegitimization and demonization of Israel and the application of a double standard against the Jewish state.

Please understand also that neither I nor any of the people opposing this editorially biased coverage have ever asked or demanded that the Planet not publish this type of material. What we have done is to make the Jewish community and local advertisers aware of the constant drumbeat of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel rhetoric from the Planet's publisher, outside contributors and readers' letters, many of which frequently contain egregious factual errors. Our position with advertisers is this: The Daily Planet is not good for your business. No bullying, no threats. Advertisers are free to decide for themselves. Indeed, lacking the resources of the Planet, we are exercising freedom of speech in a humble way to inform our community of the facts.

Let me offer an analogy that may help further clarify our perspective: Assume your father runs a hardware store in a small town in Georgia, and the local paper prints racist commentary (op-eds and letters to the editor) vilifying African Americans. Would you not advise your father to withhold his advertising in support of those the paper regularly offends? Might you not advise your father that advertising in such a publication could hurt his business's reputation and have a negative effect on sales to the town's 25% population who are African American? That is the situation we have here, except it's the Jewish population in the East Bay and Israel who are being vilified.

I hope this elucidates our position. It's not a question of free speech, but rather a question of not sitting idly by while hate speech is permitted to flourish in our midst. If you'd like to see examples of the Daily Planet's constant stream of anti-Semitic, anti-Israel editorial content, it's posted here: http://dpwatchdog.com/1anti-semitism.html.

Jim Sinkinson

Publisher, Bulldog Reporter

Cityfile reports that the suit was settled for no money, and the site was taken down, and all that remains is for Drew Kerr to get his cheap ass insurance company to pay his legal bills in this very important case of the fundamental right to douchetaggery. "All's well that ends well," Kerr told us this morning.

As you can see, it is officially legal to call Ronn Torossian a "douche." It is also accurate, when you contrast Ronn's $20 million LOLsuit with Ronn's own tendency to have his firm buy up web domain names of competitors (and bloggers) and impersonate people in online comments in flagrant examples of sock puppetry and scrub the Ronn Torossian Wikipedia page on what must be a near-daily basis.

"Much a-douche about nothing."

[A commenter went to the trouble of scanning this item below, which "may be the single greatest item ever run by the New York Law Journal." Thank you, sir.]

When Bloomberg bought BW last month, expectations were grim—one preliminary report said that Bloomberg was planning to lay off the entire staff. Insiders told us at the time that was "nuts," (which it was), and made vague sounds about not being able to tell how many layoffs would be necessary.

Which was at least mildly hopeful! But the signs were pretty clear: BW's editor left immediately, Bloomberg started canning the magazine's celebrity columnists, and began the early stages of the layoffs on Monday. An internal memo at the time promised "a meeting (in person or by telephone) to learn next steps." Staffers got that yesterday. And 130 of them are gone, including many high-level writers, editors, and some of the mag's most visible columnists:

Most of the columnists were let go, including Inside Wall Street writer Gene Marcial, Media Centric columnist Jon Fine, tech columnist Steve Wildstrom, the longtime Business Outlook columnist Jim Cooper and tech writer Steve Baker, a 23-year veteran.

When you work for the media these days and your first instinct is that the future is dark, you're probably right.
[More on BW layoffs here]

Earlier this week, we used New York's open records law to obtain email exchanges between reporters and Eliot Spitzer's communications director during last year's hookergate fiasco — a story that the Times broke. We turned up examples of Times reporters asking for permission to call sources, previewing copy for sign-off, and generally being surprisingly collaborative with a woman who was paid to manage and mislead them.

In an editorial, PR Week's response is, What's so wrong with that?

True, there are places where it seems the journalists went above and beyond what was necessary in a professional relationship, such as asking for permission to call a source, but let's not forget who broke the story. The fact is that it often takes negotiation to get a great story. We can only see the emails; we don't know the content of the phone calls and meetings that no doubt also took place to put the initial piece and continuous follow-up stories together. It takes trade-offs with your sources and, yes, many times those sources are communications staffers.

So there you have it. Sometimes good journalism requires engaging negotiations and trade-offs with the people who are paid to make sure reporters have to engage in negotiations and trade-offs, according to the people who are paid to make sure reporters have to engage in negotiations and trade-offs. And, to judge by the response we got to that item, according to a lot of reporters, too.

British gossip email Popbitch pulled up a story today from an obscure European website with pretty compelling evidence that state-run news agency Ria Novosti is taking pitch meetings in Brussels and want someone to play up the good things that the paranoid, genocidal dictator did. Good 'ol Joe kind of thing. (Even Hitler liked dogs.)

The conversation between a representative of the state-run agency and a bemused PR guy went thusly, as per the report:

the aim... is to help portray Russia as a benign great power entitled to negotiate with the likes of the US, China and the EU on global security and energy issues.

He added that part of the PR effort would be to cast a positive light on the actions of the Soviet Union before and after World War II in order to justify the idea that modern Russia should also impose its influence on neighbouring countries for the good of the world.

A senior executive at the PR firm in question recalled one particular exchange with the ...envoy: "I asked him 'Do you want us to say that Stalin was not such a bad guy?' And he said 'Well, I know it will be difficult.' I said 'So, you want history to be rewritten?' And he said 'Yes, in a way'.

There is no word on whether any agencies bit and took the contract, but the source also says that we should expect to see more 'but Stalin also did good things' news stories soon. It's part of an existing campaign, say Russian journalists, to rehabilitate Stalin within the country. New school textbooks now refer to him as "an efficient manager". Which I suppose is technically true.

Just reading this press release once is equivalent to obtaining a master's degree in Communications from a mid-tier public university.

"The Tyra Show"

International Exclusive: Woman with TWO Vaginas!

Click Here for Video: http://tyrashow.warnerbros.com/2009/01/woman_two_vaginas_lauren.php

Air Date: 11.6.09

(New York, NY) — It's a "Tyra Show" international exclusive, meet the woman who was born with two vaginas in an episode scheduled to air on Friday, November 6th.

Lauren Williams, who is now 29 years old, was born with two vaginas.

Lauren Williams: "I've got two uteruses. Just one to each (fallopian tube), then they go down to two cervixes, and then it did go down to the two vaginas."

Williams, who was diagnosed with two vaginas when she was 25-years-old, also believes she has 2 periods.

Lauren Williams: "I think so because my periods generally last about 21 days...When I was a teenager I had really heavy periods...I would have to change pads every hour."

Tyra also questions Williams on her ability to have children and was amazed by her answer.

Lauren Williams: "The doctor in England said pregnancy wise, it should be okay...if I do get pregnant it should push the other uterus over to one side and keep it out of the way. Me and my partner would need to plan on using condoms just in case I got pregnant in the other one."

Tyra Banks: "You're the only pregnant woman that can get pregnant while pregnant."

Tune in to find out what sex is like for Lauren and what 2 vaginas looks like!

MUST INCLUDE TUNE IN
"The Tyra Show" airs weekdays on The CW at 4:00 PM.

A redesign of MSN.com to contain "significantly less blue." Arrington, who loathes embargoed tech "news" (so do we), used to make an exception for Microsoft, and sat on this one until midnight last night. But a dastardly marketing blogger spoiled his exclusive by running the story an hour early, due to some kind of WordPress error. The startup information chieftan tells us:

They came in and briefed me, took an hour. Then I rearranged my evening to write the post, took more time. the embargo broke by at least 45 minutes and they [Waggener] didn't bother to let me know.

So now Google is the last big name in tech allowed to supply Arrington with embargoed news. Until one of their orchestrated PR news releases blows up in his face, too. And so Arrington's worthwhile, if ignoble, war on Valley flacks continues.

(Pic: Arrington, by Randy Stewart)

EPIC, a new luxury lifestyle, waterfront boutique hotel located in the heart of downtown Miami, is offering special rates for those visiting Miami to enjoy White Party Week events and festivities from November 25-30, 2009. Rates start from $119 - $249 per night, proceeds from each room booked will be donated to Care Resource.

To book, guests can visit www.epichotel.com and enter the rate code "WHITE."

Enter the rate code "WHITE." All the conspiracy theories are true.

[Thanks, M!]

The Washington Post's Jason Horowitz offers a who-put-this-chocolate-in-my-foul-rancid-tub-of-weeping-peanut-butter profile of leftie PR operative Hiltzik, pegged to the fact that he works for Beck. It's crazy, because Hiltzik is a liberal Democrat who worked on Hillary Clinton's 2000 Senate campaign, Eliot Spitzer's 1998 attorney general campaign, and Harvey Weinstein's lifelong megalomania campaign. So how can such a mensch, with all these Hollywood liberal friends, work to advance the career of an increasingly popular nativist demagogue?

The close friendship and lucrative business relationship that has developed between the 45-year-old conservative firebrand and the 37-year-old former Democratic operative shows how partisan media personalities get discovered, promoted and catapulted into the political stratosphere, even when the talent and the talent broker have opposing ideologies. But for Hiltzik's former Democratic allies, the alliance is still mostly shocking.

It is truly a puzzle. It's almost as though Hiltzik is more interested in making money, or accumulating power, than in devoting his life to advancing the political ideals he has claimed in the past to endorse. What sort of self-respecting flack would work for a client whose ideas he doesn't personally advocate and live by?

And how can someone who has flacked for souls as pure as Hillary Clinton, Eliot Spitzer, and Harvey Weinstein turn around and offer his services to a monster like Beck? It's a crazy, crazy world.

"Younger employees help senior executives unlock social media mystery," declares a Chicago Tribune headline [via PRNewser]. What is this amazing mystery that has been unlocked? For Edelman—the world's largest independent PR firm, and one that loves to market itself as a "digital" expert that will help you, the corporation, navigate the wilds of the internet for a large, large fee—the mystery is, "How can we get people to pay us so much for this shit?"

"I am so all over this Delish thing," Cabot bubbled, punching up delish.com on her computer in her office at Edelman, a Chicago-based public relations firm.

"Oh, you're doing so well!" Spohn said delightedly, counting the recipes Cabot had collected on the food lovers' Web site. "Look, you've got so much!"

Her pride was as evident as the exchange was notable. Though Cabot, 56, is Edelman's central region president with more than 30 years in the business, she is the student. Spohn, a 23-year-old account executive on the firm's digital team, is the teacher.

Hahaha. Do you see what is going on here? Edelman, like many of its peers, is a PR firm that will charge your company a hefty fee for all the digital insight that its 23-year-old account executives can deliver. Because the people in charge aren't really so good on this "internet" thing. Which would be fine if they were not the same people in charge of convincing you, the client, to spend tens (or hundreds!) of thousands of dollars with Edelman for their expert strategic online influencing services. Their mentoring program for the olds is called "Rotnem" because that's "mentor" backwards and you must be a backwards-ass fool to pay money to a bunch of 23-year-olds to teach you how to make a Facebook page and shit at an Edelman markup, when you could get them off Craigslist for much, much cheaper.

"Edelman strongly advocates that companies participate with and engage online influencers." Did you know that Edelman, a massive corporate PR firm, started a blog called "Authenticities"? Edelman, how much do people pay you for your services? Because I am totally going to undercut your prices by one dollar, once the last media outlet finally stops paying employees. Please engage.

[Pic of Edelman's Global Head of Digital Strategy via Flickr]

The Facebook communications manager communicated the first news of his gig on archrival social network Twitter, according to Business Insider. If only it were possible to make such public pronouncements on Facebook.

UPDATE: Noyes writes, "To clarify, the news came first as my Facebook status msg, not via tweet." That's cool. Thanks for telling us — via Twitter again.

(Pic: Noyes, by Andrew Feinberg)

Plenty of guests must have tons of pics of the wedding. Why let the Kushner-Rubenstein-Post cabal control its entire image? If you have any wedding pics, email us—anonymity guaranteed—and we'll make our own unauthorized wedding album. The people want to see their betters in their full regalia!

Update: The conspiracy deepens! PopSugar just posted a gallery of the photos with the credit line "Photo courtesy of Brian Marcus/Fred Marcus Photography via Getty Images." When we called Fred Marcus Photography to find out who's licensing these photos, the not-very-helpful lady who picked up the phone just repeatedly said "No comment." More: Star appears to have shelled out for the pics, too.

The PR world is so backstabby.

Manhattan p.r. princess Ali Wise would hack into the voice mails of one of her love rivals to gather ammunition against her — then turn around and call her to taunt her with it, a source close to the case said yesterday.

Wise also made hang-up calls to pals of the victim, Briana Rasinski, with a device that left Rasinski's phone number on their caller IDs, the source said.

That's pretty psycho, allegedly! To be completely fair, I got an email from an (alleged) anonymous friend of Ali's defending her, saying "The tabloid press is mean-spirited and they don't fact check" (true) and "the girl is going thru hell" (probably true) and "She is funny, smart, pretty, vivacious and guys have always LOVED her" (seems plausible) and "Guys have been obsessed with her to the point where her friends jokingly ask Ali advice on how she make guys fall so hard! Ali could write the book!" (dunno).
There are two sides to every crazy, crazy story.
[Pic: Getty]

After former D&G flack Ali Wise got charged with four felonies yesterday for electronic eavesdropping and other fuckery, the New York Post asked itself: "Will her friends and colleagues stick by her crazy ass, now?" Which was itself a response to the question, "How can we keep this story going another day, in order to run another photo of Ali Wise in our newspaper?"

Anyhow the answer to the first question is "No," obviously. Nobody in their right mind would hire her for a similar PR position now, which is what everyone told the paper, duh. But the story was worthwhile for this paragraph alone:

Wise's spokesman disputed that she was unhireable, noting she "has been approached about many different opportunities and is currently serving as a consultant on several high-profile, philanthropic events in the media and entertainment industries."

MMM HMM. Haha. We hope so!
[Pic: Getty]

Despite the impressive profit numbers, former Valleywag Owen Thomas notes at NBC Bay Area, the internet company's revenue is down 12 percent, which means Yahoo is cutting its way to profitability — rather than growing like Google. "No wonder she's feeling under the weather," Thomas writes, in a refrain that will be all-too-tempting for the financial press. It's enough to make an executive want to suck her thumb.