OK, I don’t generally follow the comings and goings of newspaper personnel, though I do read Romenesko, a kind of gossip central for the news gathering biz.
So, when there was sudden and abrupt bloodletting at the Moonie Washington Times, fired senior editorial staff, including the right wing hack John Solomon, I figured that this is simply an artifact of some bizarre family thing with the Moon Family, patriarch Sun Myung Moon will be 90 in January, and there was some sort of weird family thing.
After all, many family owned businesses are dysfunctional family owned businesses, and without a board of directors, any institution under private ownership can pretty do whatever they want.
Well, so I snickered, and then moved on, until I read that armed security guards had been stationed on the 3rd floor, where senior management works, and that staff had been told that they could not use the elevators.
When you are using armed guards to keep out editorial staff, it’s odd.
There are rumors that the paper will be shut down, though considering the nature of its management, they could be constructing a giant statue of papa Moon out of Brie cheese too.