I knew that not many people read the Washington Times, but I didn’t know its numbers were this bad (via GOS):
down 17 percent to 67,148
That’s amazing pathetic. Pick a random second-tier city and google their newspaper. You’ll generally find the circulation to be around 100K or higher (I just did this with Syracuse and Tacoma).
By 2002, Moonies had spent $1.7 billion subsidizing the paper. And that was when papers were doing well. So God only knows how much money it is losing today.
I don’t see how Sun Myung Moon is getting his money’s worth from this ridiculous little venture, even granting that its “reporters” show up on the tube a lot more than reporters from any other paper with such shitty circulation numbers.
Update. Yes, I know it is a propaganda front. But, to put it in perspective, the paper was losing $85 million a year for 20 years and certainly much more than that now. The operating expenses of the Heritage Foundation — also a propaganda front, of course — is about $49 million. And that’s 2007 dollars. It’s a good bet that the Moonie Times loses three to four times the operating budget of the Heritage Foundation now.
That’s just not a good way to spend your propaganda dollars.
Redshirt
It’s a propaganda front. Circulation and revenues don’t matter.
Mr Furious
Wingnut welfare sure is a wonderful thing…
DougJ
It’s a propaganda front.
But such an expensive one!
The Ace Tomato Company
By 2002, Moonies had spent $1.7 billion subsidizing the paper…
Socialist bastards.
kommrade reproductive vigor
What Redshirt said. I don’t think the paper has ever come close to breaking even, much less pulling a profit. I know the only time I’ve ever seen their vending machines empty was on a certain day in September of 01.
Redshirt
Rupert is doing the same thing with most of his newspapers — heavily subsidized. The calculation is, no doubt, they get a lot of bang for their buck by controlling the conversation. The money losses are insignificant compared to influence.
The Bearded Blogger
I think what wingnuts spend on keeping people crazy enough to vote against their economic interest is probably more than what they would pay in taxes in a sane democracy
kommrade reproductive vigor
And yes, your title is teh awesome.
Zifnab
He gets reprints in the WaPo and the NYT. And the paper was the proof-of-concept for FOX News. Depending on how much you value controlling any media venue, the WaTi was a good enough buy. But Moon aspires to be the next freak’n Jesus. I have no idea what’s going to happen once he kicks it and people start slipping on the illusion of grandeur.
Count out how much he saved in Bush Tax Cuts and investments in the military industrial complex. Then we’ll talk about cost-benefit.
The Ace Tomato Company
Moderation? Again? Wow, that’s 6 for 6 in the past week.
linda
nothing like gettin home, flipping on hardball and watching 4 middleaged white men discuss restricting abortions.
or shorter tweety — there must be consequences for those bitches fucking.
The Bearded Blogger
@Redshirt: I don’t know… dishonestly distorting democracy ain’t cheap… maybe they could serve their own interests better putting their money elsewhere.
The spending choices of rich people are really disappointing. If I had huge wads of money to throw down the toilet, and didn’t want to use them to help others, I’d have people working on a functioning lightsaber and/or jetpack
Bubblegum Tate
How long have you been sitting on that title, Doug? It’s a great one.
geg6
Wow. Those are really, really, really low circulation numbers there. My little pissant county paper here in Western PA has circulation numbers only slightly lower than that, around 50,000.
demkat620
How is this possible? We are a center right nation. Doesn’t everybody love the Moonie Times?
geg6
@linda:
Tweety is always in a state of horror about bitches fucking. I swear, Tweety has never been laid in his life.
DougJ
And yes, your title is teh awesome.
Thanks! I’m proud of this one. I love this song and I heard some Chet Baker on the radio today so it was on my mind (I can’t find him doing this, but here’s Art Blakey).
DougJ
How long have you been sitting on that title, Doug? It’s a great one.
About six months.
beltane
But the Reverend Moon can sure put on a heck of a wedding. That’s got to count for something.
Redshirt
For those wondering if it this propaganda money is worth it: Consider how America has changed attitudes about banks and investments since the Regan era – i.e. the rise of this breed of Republicans and their reliance on FUD: All the New Deal separations of power were removed in 1999, allowing all the banks and investment companies to mix up. The stock market was going through the roof during this period. How much money was made at these times, for these folks?
How many defense contracts came their way because the “perpetual war” atmosphere that has enveloped us?
I could go on and on and on, but I think Occam’s razor suffices: These people aren’t stupid. If they were really losing “real” money, they’d pull the plug. That they don’t indicate the “investment” is worth it to them.
LD50
Last I heard, FOX News was also a money loser for Murdoch. Evidently, it must be real important for him to prop it up as he does.
Calouste
OT via the GOS:
Assistant state AG in South Carolina is caught with a stripper in a car at a graveyard. Has sex toys in said car “just in case”. Gets sacked two hours later. No points for guessing which party he is from.
Article in the State
beltane
@Redshirt: True. If the larger picture is looked at, they have gotten a big return on their investment. Perhaps the biggest return in history.
jimBOB
$1.7 billion /67,000 = $25K per subscriber. Yowsa.
I should write the reverend and tell him I’ll subscribe if he pays me just 12K; that’d be a real steal for him.
handy
No points for guessing which party he is from.
The (Self) Pity Party, perhaps?
MikeJ
@Calouste: Didja hear about the guy who was bribing Ted Stevens? The feds told the locals to hold off on their child sex investigation so they wouldn’t blow the corruption case.
Shell
Huh. This guy probably uses 100 dollar bills for toilet paper. (And ten dollar bills for his dog’s toilet paper. Stole that from the ‘Simpsons.’)
Didn’t I hear he’s cornered the market the U.S. sushi market?
DougJ
$1.7 billion /67,000 = $25K per subscriber. Yowsa.
Holy shit.
SpotWeld
I assuming there’s some quid pro que going on where someone will get column inches in trade for some other favor.
Either someone gets a gig writing for the W. Times, or they get some “Face Time” (and therefore some quotable text from “legitimate media” that they can have scroll on the chryon)
It’s not that the paper in of itself is a source of slanted info, it also can be counted on to backstop the “story” when it’s played out at other media outlets.
The Bearded Blogger
@Redshirt: Those are good points. Not quite sold yet… from a pure investment perspective, I think there could be better uses for that money… I think wingers like to make money by screwing people over
Redshirt
Now that I think about it, subsidies might be an actual strategy: Who’s going to last longer? The NY Times, which struggles to maintain a business model (a failing one), or Newscorp, or the Moonies, who don’t care if they lose money?
Give it ten more years and the only major media left might all be money-losing propaganda fronts.
Or, perhaps we’ve already reached that point.
Calouste
@jimBOB:
$25K per subscriber over say a decade. That works out to about $6.85 per newspaper delivered.
linda
@geg6:
i actually just applied for a job today with ppfa and researching for a writing sample just really fucking pissed me off. have you heard about that oklahoma law that was to take effect Nov 1 requiring doctors to post: age, marital status, race, number of children, education level and the mother’s relationship to the father. It would also require the reason for the abortion, the cost and the type of payment used. it’s temporarily blocked; anti-choice zealots convinced they have the support to pass it.
the patient’s name was not to be revealed. however, as pointed out, it’s oklahoma, how friggin difficult is it to hunt down those women who dare to engage their right to medical care.
Christian Norton
This also means that it’s only the second most widely read conservative newspaper in DC. The widest read conservative newspaper title goes to The Washington Examiner, with readership at 93,000. That’s the free, crappy, alternative to the Metro Express that people hand out near metro entrances.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Examiner
El Cid
If you’re a stupendously rich and fiendishly venal right winger, any price is worth it to have a nationally quoted, right wing newspaper which has access to any elected Republican leader and most Democrats that you want.
It’s not a key feature of propaganda favoring the wealthy and the warmongers that it be self-sustaining or profitable or whatever. The propaganda is the point.
And there was a day that daily newspapers, particularly in the nation’s capital, was viewed as truly prestigious thing to have, and to have a completely far right daily newspaper was seen as the ultimate challenge to all the other newspapers, which were ACORN sponsored Communist party dailies.
Anne Laurie
@geg6:
… without feeling filthy & used about it afterwards. (It’s his heritage: favorite Irish Catholic male birth control method for at least the last three centuries.) Why should us bitches walk away unscathed when Tweety feels so, soooo horrible about the employment of his nasty bits?
linda
@Calouste:
hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha….. seriously, what the fuck is up in south carolina. senator huckleberry really needs to stfu for any future lectures on anything.
handy
This got me thinking. Our major local alternative weekly now is just a shell of itself just five years ago. Times they are a changing, I suppose.
linda
@LD50:
the nypost is estimated to lose several millions a year for rupert.
dmsilev
@Calouste:
OK, I just have to ask. ‘just in case’ of what? He gets attacked by a sex fiend, and the only means of escape is to distract him/her with a toy? He needs to come to the rescue of a friend who has the two wetsuits, but forgot to bring the dildo?
-dms
Calouste
@dmsilev:
Obviously the correct answer is: all of the above and then some.
Anne Laurie
Rev. Moon bought the Washington Times before Matt Drudge demonstrated how to do the same propaganda-propelling online. The WT continues to publish, losing money as it lurches forward, because institutions have inertia: shutting it down would involve making tons of very public decisions, from the red tape involved in firing people to selling off the printing presses & the leftover office supplies to subleasing the office space. Barring some catastrophic incident, it’s easier for the hundred people most involved in the keep printing/stop printing decision to choose the predictable slow daily trickle of red ink over the very unpredictable shut-down scenario.
valdivia
but but they get read by The Village and quoted by the Kaplan Inc Editorial writers as sources for true investigative journalism. They are essential!
Xenos
@Redshirt: Thom Hartmann claims that Murdoch subsidized Fox News to the tune of $500,000,000 before it began to break even as an ongoing business (no cite on that). While I understand it is profitable now, I wonder if it has ever recouped the modern equivalent of that initial half billion dollar sunk investment.
bago
Fixed.
Tsulagi
Like freedom, wingnuttery isn’t free. I’m sure the Korean messiah was happy for his followers to pony up the $1.7B so he could channel God’s politics to the nuts on Earth. .
In business, kinda like a yellow-skin version of GW isn’t he? Daddy’s friends (his followers) set him up and his “competence” only costs them a few billion.
El Cid
By the way, never forget that a few millions spent on propaganda fronts or a few millions spent
bribinglobbying politicians yields billions, if not hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks, tax dodges, subsidies, and contracts.It’s completely worth it.
Funkhauser
I recall from David “Media Matters” Brock’s first book at the Rev. Moon uses the WT as a symbol of his power in America. His ownership is used to play up his popularity back in Seoul. I don’t have the cite.
Mnemosyne
Since Moon has had US legislators crowning him as the “King of Peace,” I think he’s buying more than just propaganda with his little rag. More like a fig leaf of respectability.
(And just to prove that there’s no monopoly on idiocy, Democrats and Republicans were both present at the ceremony.)
joe from Lowell
The Lowell Sun has a circulation of about 48,000.
Lowell is Massachusetts’ fourth largest city.
skippy
best headline for a blog post in a long, long time, here or anywhere, doug.
Woodrowfan
and yet the Washington Post seems intent on copying the Times’s model. huh.
marcel
Hey – I grew up in Syracuse. There’s nothing 2nd tier about it. More like 3rd or 4th. Once upon a time it may have been 2nd tier – say in the post-war golden era, but by the mid-60s it had begun to slide. By now it has, in Dizzy Dean’s words, slud into 4th – and from what I hear it is keeping on sludding.
SiubhanDuinne
Truly, DougJ, your titles just get better and better. This is one of the best. Evah.
trollhattan
Somebody or other may have thought the MooTimes was filling a huge void in the publish-o-sphere at the time they started it, but have to have abandoned that thought after, oh, five weeks.
I’m convinced its sole reason for being today is to supply wingnuts with Actual Published Talking Points to cite from here to Timbiktu. Gives them gravitas, doncha know?
Sashimi
What really keeps the Washington Times afloat:
In a remarkable story that has gone largely untold, Moon and his followers created an enterprise that reaped millions of dollars by dominating one of America’s trendiest indulgences: sushi. …
Adhering to a plan Moon spelled out more than three decades ago in a series of sermons, members of his movement managed to integrate virtually every facet of the highly competitive seafood industry. The Moon followers’ seafood operation is driven by a commercial powerhouse, known as True World Group. It builds fleets of boats, runs dozens of distribution centers and, each day, supplies most of the nation’s estimated 9,000 sushi restaurants.
Although few seafood lovers may consider they’re indirectly supporting Moon’s religious movement, they do just that when they eat a buttery slice of tuna or munch on a morsel of eel in many restaurants. True World is so ubiquitous that 14 of 17 prominent Chicago sushi restaurants surveyed by the Tribune said they were supplied by the company.
flukebucket
Late to the party but holy shit that title is kick ass.
DougJ
best headline for a blog post in a long, long time, here or anywhere, doug.
Thanks!
PaulW
I’m not so much bothered by the loss of money the Mooninites are wasting on the paper and other media fronts… I’m wondering where the hell are they getting their money to PAY for all this waste in the first place? Who’s funding them? How are they making ends meet to where they haven’t all filed for out-and-out bankruptcy yet?
Phoenix Woman
By the way, did you catch that the Moonie Times is now working with CBS News? Tonight they collaborated on a “let’s slime Obama with a variant on the ‘Lincoln Bedroom’ gotcha we used on Bill Clinton” kind of story.
Mario Piperni
But conservatives needed a paper that sounded similar to the Washington Post and it’s amazing how many times the WT get’s quoted on Fox and right wing blogs. It’s a voice of authority for these wingnuts.
Brachiator
@DougJ:
Easy. They have collaborators in the mainstream media.
For years, so many years that it became an institution, Southern California talkradio station KFWB was all news (“give us 22 minutes and we’ll give you the news). They were bought by competitor KCBS (yep, CBS) and turned into a conservative talk station, carrying Dr. Laura and others.
But the propaganda coup is the morning drive time news show, with a male and female anchor, seemingly delivering the straight news to thousands of listeners who wrongly assume that at least the daily news portion is like it was before.
But America’s Morning News, with Melanie Morgan and John McCaslin is produced and managed by the Washington Times, and is worse than Fox News in its deliberately slanted news coverage.
The uber-conservative Talk Radio Network is pushing this crap into other media markets.
luc
But did the Washington Times project not succeed in that sense, that is seems to drag down the Washington Post into mediocrity and stupidity?
Wile E. Quixote
What a great title. After reading the post I only have one question: How can we make this even more expensive for the Moonies?
pahoo
First let’s get the figures up to date. George Archibald who worked as a reporter at the WT for 20 years put the figure at $3 billion last year. Moon’s daughter recently boasted that said she asked her friends at MTV and VH1 if they knew her father had spent “over two billion dollars” on the paper.
The money has always been secretive which is why it has been insane for our nation to sit back and watch as this con man with a goal of replacing “American style democracy” has brought bags of cash from overseas to successfully manipulate our political system.
We do know the primary origin of 70% of the cash – according to the WP and the Moon org itself – the primary source of funding is Japan. The UC admits that the “church” in Korea went from 16,000 members in the 1960s to 14,000 in 2005. Japan keeps the UC alive in Korea and around the world. Daniel Junas believes that Japanese corporations back Moon. Moon has had ties to people who run gambling on boat racing in Japan.
However, we also know one source of the cash for sure. The Unification Church has been found responsible for swindling hundreds of millions, likely billions, of dollars, targeting widows with their elaborate scams in Japan. The claims for these scams have topped 30,000 as of 2008 with the cash total going over billion dollars. The group which has banded together to fight these “spiritual sales” scams says those figures represent less than one tenth of the damages to the citizens of Japan. The scams continue even though they were exposed decades ago. One widow settled for over $2 million just last year and the Japanese authorities have been making more arrests in these scams since this past summer. The Moon org simply has designated Japan the “Eve” nation and therefore it must supply money for Moon’s “messianic” mission.
Most recent swindle totals chart:
http://www1k.mesh.ne.jp/reikan/japanese/sitte/madoguti.htm
Moon sees papers as the nervous system to his whole world political efforts and uses the paper for many reasons such as to gain face around the world which he then uses to push his other fronts and goals. He uses it to help his friends politically both here and abroad. The paper also helps Moon keep his thumb on the minds of his followers when he flashes video and news reports of all those dignitaries who accept and honor the paper and through the paper members see it as accepting Moon. Moon doesn’t care if you don’t convert to monism as long as you “accept” his organization. But showing off the paper’s power is gold when you are trying to convince people you are the messiah and to keep hundreds of thousands of people in the coral.
But all that is on the side, Moon started the paper because he believes he is the messiah. I know it might be hard to believe but being the messiah is always in the forefront of Moon’s thoughts. Everything he does, and what his followers all work for, is centered on that and Moon’s goal to manipulate the world’s political structures. The paper has protected him and changed the USA. Moon boasts that he has influenced America though the Washington Times and his other activities and he has. He has also said he created the paper so his followers could “influence” America. The current heads of the Moon owned UPI and the WT are both former pastors of his church in DC. You know how we talk about separation of church and sate? Moon really hates that, and so he blends all his political fronts and “church.”
Many editors have quit the WT over a lack of editorial independence from Moon’s church, but don’t let that become the focal point of any debate about the paper. Moon does not have to come into the WT office and bark orders. All he has to do is hire people like Wes Pruden, wind them up and let them go. Moon and Bo Hi Pak allowed people to run the paper who they knew would do what they wanted, instinctively. That would be drive the USA’s political number line right and empower the theocrats. (Moon’s ultimate goal is a world run by the religious that take direction from Moon and or his organization.)
I am surprised to see people pooh pooh the paper or Moon, both have played major, key roles in the rise of the hard right, the theocratic right’s takeover of the Republican Party and the nation in 2000.
Do you think “Newt’s” revolution would have happened in 1994 absent Moon? Nope. Many of you may not know it but the WT has been the spine of the right in print and feeder of the BS into the nation’s body politic. The WT started in 1982, Rush came around about 1987, do you think he quoted the National Review? ha
You think today’s right would be as far from reality absent Moon’s propaganda unit and “other activities”?
Here’s one for you. In 1984 MacNeil-Lerhre had a guest who said the religious right was going to take over the Republican Party so the party might as well get used to it. The guy who said that is still a Moon operative.
Not just the paper but Moon was there funding key figures on the hard right for decades – hell he kept Richard Viguerie afloat. He funded Terry Dolan who has been called the father of the attack ad. His front the American Freedom Coalition, Doug Wead said it was one the two most powerful conservative grassroots orgs in the nation when it was going full steam in the late 80s and early 90s before the Christian Coalition came into being. The AFC printed 30 million voter guides at no cost to Bush 41 in 1988. Moon called the president of the AFC, Robert Grant, one of his “three musketeers.” Grant said the AFC was to gather the religious right for political power.
US News and World Report stated that by 1989 virtually every conservative organization in the USA had ties to Moon’s “church” which is a political organization.
Hey, I am just touching a few of the bases.
In short Moon created the WT because it is, like all his fronts, to bring in the Kingdom of Moon. They would call it the Kingdom of God but do note that Moon is the arbiter of God’s will in the Kingdom and he is a right wing, union hating, homophobic, authoritarian theocrat and if you think he hasn’t played a prime role in today’s right proudly brandishing those traits to the degree that they do, you are not paying attention.
Moon knew and knows exactly what he is doing, everything may not come off as planned but he is on the march around the world and the USA is so self-absorbed they have missed it. Moon says nothing can stop them now for there is no meaningful opposition to him around the world. He is right.
Moon like to sue the expression — “while you slept I did…” judging by how this nation continues to not understand what he has done to it and why, we are still dead asleep.
Name me someone who outspent Moon funding and propping up today’s right? You can’t.
If you have not watched this 1990 panel discussion featuring three former editors of Moon’s print media, you don’t have much of the picture about how the paper works and why.
This is a quote from James Whelan the first editor of the WT – form the video.
http://tinyurl.com/yqqbmz
“They (the Moonies) are subverting our political system. They’re doing it through front organizations–most of them disguised–and through their funding of independent organizations–through the placement of volunteers in the inner sanctums of hard-pressed organizations. In every instance–in every instance–those who attend their conferences, those who accept their money or their volunteers, delude themselves that there is no loss of virtue because the Moonies have not proselytized. That misses the central, crucial point: the Moonies are a political movement in religious clothing. Moon seeks power, not the salvation of souls. To achieve that, he needs religious fanatics as his palace guard and shock troops. But more importantly, he needs secular conscripts–seduced by money, free trips, free services, seemingly endless bounty and booty–in order to give him respectability and, with it, that image of influence which translates as power.”
pahoo
US News and World Report stated that by 1989 virtually every conservative organization in the USA had ties to Moon’s “church” which is a political organization</I.
should read:
US News and World Report stated that by 1989 virtually every conservative organization in DC had ties to Moon’s “church” which is a political organization.
here’s the excerpt:
U.S News and World Report March 27, 1989
Rev. Moon’s Rising Political Influence
His empire is spending big money trying to win favor with conservatives.
On New Year’s Day, 1987, South Korean mystic Sun Myung Moon, who considers himself to be the son of God, told his Unification church followers that he wanted to expand the church’s political influence in the United States. His aim, Moon said, was “the natural subjugation of the American government and population.” […]
…the [Unification] church has established a network of affiliated organizations and connections in almost every conservative organization in Washington, including the Heritage Foundation, the largest of the conservative think tanks and an important source of government personnel during the Reagan administration. Although Heritage officials deny it, the foundation has dramatically changed its policy toward the Unification Church. In the early 80’s the foundation, wary of the church’s aims, prohibited staff or fellows from being associated with Unification Church organizations or taking money from the church or church-financed institutions.
As the Washington Times has become the voice of capital conservatives, the Heritage Foundation has become far more tolerant of church ties. […]
The Unification Church’s newfound influence has occasioned intense debate among conservatives. One group of worried young conservatives meets regularly in private to compare notes about the problem. But little of the debate has surfaced in public forums. “Most people are afraid to address the issue because they don’t want to publicize the extent of the church’s involvement,” says Amy Moritz of the Conservative National Center for Public Policy Research.
Because almost all conservative organizations in Washington have some ties to the church, conservatives also fear repercussions if they expose the church’s role. That happened when one organization, the Capital Research Center, published a newsletter last November warning of the church’s attempt to create a “centralized world theocracy.” One of its board members, who was also on the board of the International Security Council, resigned in protest, and conservatives charging that the paper was creating discord on the right, besieged the center with angry calls. “We got a very, very strong reaction — almost as if we were the enemy — because we raised the issue,” says CRC Chairman Willa Johnson, a former president of the Heritage Foundation.
bjacques
@PaulW:
God knows I threw a lot of quarters the Mooninites’ way in the Seventies.
kommrade reproductive vigor
@trollhattan: Moon just wanted a paper. I don’t think they knew what the fuck they were doing when they started out but the paper was a lot more like a Shock Horror tabloid.
Keep in mind the WT ran its Boy Prostitutes in the White House story while Reagan was in office.
Redshirt
This issue — ownership of major media outlets – is one of the most important issues of our times. I have zero faith, however, it will be addressed any time soon.
The quick and dirty solution to these problems is to re-institute ownership rules in the various media markets — you can only own so many of X, so many of Y, etc. It ensures competition and variety of opinions — which, again, sounds like it should be a Conservative goal, ja?
Brachiator
@pahoo:
This doesn’t sound like fear. It sounds as though conservative organizations have decided that getting the Moonies to help push their position is worth the indulgence.
pahoo
Keep in mind the WT ran its Boy Prostitutes in the White House story while Reagan was in office
And the WT promised details and additional reports but never followed up. The story went silent.
Ultimately, Moon doesn’t give a rat’s rear about conservatives, Bush, Reagan, America or anyone but himself in his role as the greatest being to have walked the face of the earth. He mocks Bush 41, who has shilled for Moon all over the world. Moon thinks Bush is weak for not following his directions completely. Bush is a tool, a pawn to used. He sees America, the “Second Israel,” as the nation he has to tackle to influence the world.
Our nation, our politicians, our religious leaders, are all pawns used by Moon if they will allow him in, many have.