BREAKUP AT THE WASHINGTON TIMES?

FishbowlDC, an Internet Web site of MediaBistro, reported on August 22, 2007, a huge blow-up in the newsroom at The Washington Times involving bad-tempered white supremacist assisatant national editor Robert Stacy McCain and fellow editor Victor Morton, an orthodox Catholic – with McCain agbrily resigning and slammi9ng his way out of the building through side-doors where he always went every 20 minutes to smoke a cigarette.

I have confirmed the details of FishbowlDC's account through several Washington Times newsroom sources who I trust and with whom I worked for many years. These sources witnessed the ugly blow-up.

I know Stacy McCain, an ill-tempered racist who sat on the other side of my desk for many years and carried on loud telephone conversations almost every day full of racist and ultra-right comments, and often got into loud verbal fights with both reporters and editors in the newsroom.

I also knew Victor Morton for many years, hard-working night editor whose  editorial skills in juggling copy and myriad incoming stories at once on deadline were marvelous and unquestioned.

In more than 21 years as a national news and investigative reporter at The Washington Times, Victor Morton was among the best and most capable editors I ever worked with on deadline –- which is crunch-time as stories are finally coming together and the paper is being made up decisions on page-placement, photos, graphics, and headlines.

Stacy McCain, on the other hand, who has run the Page A2 Culture page for The Washington Times for many years under national editor Kenneth Hanner and Managing Editor Francis B. Coombs Jr., is a friend of neo-Nazis such as William A. White of Roanoke, Virginia, and had the favor of Coombs and his wife Marian Kester Coombs, who in her own right has a long-reported history of white-supremacist writings.

Fran Coombs and Stacy McCain for many years have ridden roughshod over newsroom colleagues of all ethnic and other backgrounds at The Washington Times with their explosive and vitrioloic racist white-supremacist tirades on a frequent basis.

Coombs, the newspaper’s managing editor and presumptive heir-apparent to Wesley Pruden Jr. as editor-in-chief of The Washington Times has always supported McCain –- even when he wrote blog messages on the Internet that were patently racist, anti-black and anti-Jew.

But this latest dust-up reported by FishBowlDC and BigHeadDC Web sites shines new light on huge continuing problems for The Washington Times if Fran Coombs is presumed ascendant editor-in-chief of to succed Wesley Pruden Jr. at the newspaper. Here are the links:

http://bigheaddc.com/2007/08/22/washington-times-on-pins-needles/
http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowldc/

Fishbowl DC’s posting on August 22 was written by Patrick Gavin, deputy editorial page editor of the competing Washington Examiner newspaper, where former Washington Times chief White House reporter Bill Sammon and former Washington Times chief Pentagon correspondent now work.

Here’s what Gavin wrote:

Wednesday, Aug 22
Posted by Patrick Gavin | 09:50 PM

"Stacy McCain Resigned?!?

"That's what we're hearing this evening, that Washington Times Assistant National Editor Robert Stacy McCain called National Editor Ken Hanner today and declared his intention to resign.

"Why? Well, McCain was the person mentioned in our earlier blind item. During a heated moment in the Times newsroom yesterday, McCain's temper rose over what others described as his frustration with having too many jobs to juggle (the same sources also confirm that McCain does, in fact, contribute in myriad ways for the newspaper).

"Sources told FishbowlDC that they heard McCain get into a charged debate with Deputy National Editor Victor Morton and then, fully irate, McCain proceeded to storm into Hanner's office where voices were raised and "I quit" was overheard by those outside Hanner's door. This carried into the newsroom -- "a yelling fit," said one -- and everyone in the newsroom heard and watched McCain's dramatic exit.

"Upon leaving the newsroom, McCain violently slammed through a pair of heavy steel doors, kicking them open and nearly hitting Assistant Metro Editor Lyn Pusey, who just barely dodged the flying doors.

"But the assumption was that McCain would return to work on Wednesday and all would be well, but that did not happen. And now we hear that McCain called into Hanner today to confirm his desire to quit. Still, word is that this has happened before (a few times, even) and there is some speculation tonight that Managing Editor Fran Coombs is prepared to try to sooth McCain's ruffled feathers and try talk him back into the newsroom."

The reason why is an open secret in the Times newsroom: "Perhaps the biggest reason Coombs would like to soothe McCain's ruffled feathers and bring him back into the klavern is an angry, resentful McCain could become a serious threat -- the tales he could tell if he goes off the reservation," one veteran there told me.

"Stay tuned," FishbowlDC says. "For what it's worth, McCain's Facebook page still has him with the paper."

Well, the hemorrhaging of talent from The Washington Times has gone on for years because of the racially-tinged white-supremacist and ill-tempered management of Fran Coombs and his sycophants.

Now, one of them, Stacy McCain, has quit when faced down by another editor with good values and courage, and there is applause in the newsroom as he may be history. The reports that Coombs and Hanner are working overtime to soothe his ruffled feathers and bring him back are an interesting commentary as they did not go to great lengths to keep Bill Sammon and Rowan Scarborough and scores of others who left because of their incompetent, vilifying, and bullying management style.

The effort of Coombs and Hanner to bring Stacy McCain back to The Washington Times following his petulant walkout speaks volumes about the breakup at The Washington Times still under way unless the owners step in and stop the nativist white supremacist juggernaut that has controlled The Times’ editorial product for many years.

This has been so unfair to the hundreds of hard-working, decent, and loyal reporters and editors at The Washington Times over more than two decades -- especially people like Mary Lou Forbes who formed and nurtured the best Commentary section in any paper in America for many years and won a Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of racial segregation and massive resistance in Virginia following the 1954 Brown versus Kentucky Board of Education decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.

It’s long past time that owners of The Washington Times stepped in to clean house and put in place responsible new editorial and business leadership at the conservative alternative to the left-liberal Washington Post in America’s capital city. Otherwise, the scandal within the paper's editorial leadership will continue to grow and ultimately destroy the newspaper.