'Washington Times' Executive Editor Resigns

Less than a week after three top executives left, the Washington Times has also lost John Solomon, its executive editor.

This comes via Politico's Michael Calderone, who's been tracking the strange, internecine goings-on at the Unification Church-owned newspaper. (Talking Point Memo's Justin Elliott has also been all over the story.)

Solomon's resignation was announced in an email from a publicist, which Calderone describes as being "one line" and listing the editor's last day as November 6. This followed the firings of president and publisher Thomas P. McDevitt, CFO Keith Cooperrider, and chairman Dong Moon Joo this past weekend, which led to a newsroom disappearance by Solomon. TPM's Elliott described the reason for the firings as a power struggle within the Moon family, owners of News World Communications, parent company of the Times.

The Times' official take on the matter comes in the form of a story by Jennifer Harper today, with a quote from acting president and publisher Jonathan Slevin who said, "We will conduct business as usual under the able leadership of Jeff Birnbaum, managing editor-digital, and David Jones, managing editor-print."

Offering a bit of spin, he continued, "While John Solomon was our executive editor, the Times moved from a print newspaper with a website to a multimedia enterprise, following the business strategy developed just prior to his hiring…. I salute our newsroom during a difficult week."

One of those newsroom employees told FishbowlDC's Matt Dornic, "[W]e're in trouble without John. Solomon had the vision, heart, and had begun to make the Times a real force in Washington news media."

The New York Times' Richard Pérez-Peña noted on the Media Decoder blog, the paper has seen its circulation fall to 67,000 this year.

(As noted in the previous post on the Washington Times, J. Jennings Moss, editor of Portfolio.com, used to work for the paper.)