THE POODLE

After The Nation left-wing magazine published an accurate cover story by reporter Max Blumenthal October 9, 2006, "Hell of A Times," about an internal battle within The Washington Times to replace retiring editor-in-chief Wesley Pruden Jr., the newspaper’s national editor, Kenneth Hanner, sent around an email complaining that he had not been elevated to an assistant managing editor position as promised 10 years ago -- a path he apparently gleaned as a way to more senior editorial posts.

I was on the national desk of The Washington Times as a reporter for 21 years, and Ken Hanner was my boss and supervisor for 11 of those years. I’m grateful for all the good performance reports he wrote about me on a yearly basis. We had a good run.

But there’s a problem in a work environment that has abusive, bad-tempered senior management.

Ken’s predecessor as national editor was Francis B. Coombs Jr., who is now managing editor, the newspaper’s No. 2 editorial post, who is angling to become editor-in-chief to succeed retiring Wesley Pruden Jr.

But the problem is, Fran Coombs is a bully and abusive manager. His wife, Marian, runs him ideologically, particularly on racial, cultural, and immigration issues. I know this personally, because Marian Coombs often called me over the years when I was a reporter to tell me how she thought I should cover a particular story.

She came out of the far-left as a hippy in California and moved to the far-right. Marian Coombs is a racially-oriented cultural warrior, as shown by her writings for The Times, Chronicles magazine, Human Events, American Renaissance, and other publications, which are posted on her personal web site set up and registered by web-master George R. McDaniel of Raleigh, North Carolina, also a white-supremacist:

http://www.mariancoombs.org/

Fran and Marian Coombs expressed worry to me on many occasions that black, brown, and Asian immigrants are taking over this country. Fran Coombs told me and others at The Times, including Ken Hanner, on at least a dozen occasions, that they support abortion as a way to cut out minority black, brown, and Asian babies. They told us they oppose inter-racial marriage because they believe in white supremacy.

I did not agree with these views, but what do you do when your boss and his wife and others around them supported these views, except distance yourself from them and keep reporting honestly and completely all stories assigned, despite their bigoted views? A person has to maintain home and family and can't keep changing jobs just because of an abusive manager or other nuts in the workplace. So one carries on.

Ken Hanner also came from California, where he grew up, and married lovely Donna who with her sister were active in Hollywood movies and TV shows as actresses. They’re both gorgeous and very talented.

But something went badly awry after Ken Hanner got bumped up to national editor of The Washington Times and Fran Coombs became an assistant managing editor, then managing editor.

Ken Hanner did not have the talent needed at a pacesetting national newspaper in the nation’s capital to run the national desk, and everyone knew it. So Fran Coombs has always run the national desk, with Ken Hanner as his dutiful poodle.

In fact, when Hanner runs in and out of Coombs’ office every fifteen minutes each day to get instructions on everything, because he’s got a very strong reporting staff and doesn’t know how to handle such strong talent, his own reporters chuckle when they are seen together in the newsroom, saying, “There’s Fran walking his dog.”

It’s disrespectful, but understandable. Hanner is Coombs’ poodle.

Hanner played around with other women in the newsroom – an assistant national editor with whom he had an affair, and even young female interns – and his wife divorced him because of his infidelity.

It’s a shame. And as the poodle of Fran Coombs, he has helped enable an abusive workplace environment, sexual harassment, a blowout of reporter morale, and a hemorrhaging of the newspaper’s best reporter talent as people have left in droves to go elsewhere since he became national editor in 1994.

Hanner complained in a recent email that he was passed over for an assistant managing editor appointment in favor of "a minority woman with much less experience" -- an apparent reference to the very capable and lovely Maria Stainer, who runs The Times' features and special sections. Recently, Carleton Bryant, black former metro editor, also extremely capable, bypassed Hanner to become another Washington Times assistant managing editor.

Hanner has no college degree, little reporting experience, cannot write well, does not actually edit stories as national editor. He's basically an administrative assistant for managing editor Fran Coombs and does the news tout.

He’s the poodle.