It looks like the drama at the Washington Times isn’t quite over yet.
Newsroom sources tell TPM they aren’t expecting executive editor John Solomon — who hasn’t been seen since the firing of three top executives late Sunday night — to come back and suggested there may be a larger problem with the paper’s growth and revenue figures. But Solomon’s in a three-year contract — which began in January 2007 — so it may be difficult for him to break with the organization. Staffers were surprised he didn’t check in amid all the turmoil and bad press yesterday, and as he lost one of his top reporters.
TPM reached Solomon on his cell phone this morning. He declined to comment.
Jonathan Slevin, formerly a vice president at the paper who had his own mini-controversy over the weekend, is now acting president and publisher. TPM reached Slevin on his office phone this morning, though he declined to talk — referring us instead to a public relations firm, Rubin Meyer Communications.
“I literally have to get on a conference call right now,” Slevin told TPM. “I don’t have time, and you need to call Don Meyer.”
Meyer, a spokesman for the Washington Times and a partner at Rubin Meyer, said he had “no updates” on Solomon’s status, but that he would have more information sooner rather than later.
“It will be weeks rather than months, or maybe less,” Meyer said.
“I don’t know his exact location,” Meyer said of Solomon, adding that “I do expect I will have some information on his status at some point in the near future.”
As for Slevin’s mini-controversy, in which the newspaper issued a year-old clarification the day before Slevin was promoted, saying that the newspaper had broken its own rules when it allowed Slevin to recommend a writer to review a book he coauthored, Meyer downplayed that it had any effect on the staff shakeup at the paper.
“I don’t see any link between that issue and the personnel announcements whatsoever,” he said. “I really don’t think one has anything to do with the other.”
And are there more announcements of personnel movements coming?
“There are none expected at this time,” Meyer said.
Late Update: Regarding Solomon’s contract, a former Times staffer tells TPM: “When you’re in positions like that, you know where the bodies are buried. They would give him a buyout to keep quiet.”
