John Solomon has been appointed executive editor of The Washington Times to succeed Wesley Pruden, who is retiring after 25 years in the newsroom. In recent years, Soloman has strengthened The Washington Post, where he has helped lead its national investigative and political reporting.

Frances Coombs, Pruden’s longtime number two, has said that he will be resigning, so that Solomon can pick his own staff.

The move by many media insiders as seen as an attempt to tone down the sharp editorial and controversially conservative edges the paper has become infamous for displaying.

Earlier: Shakeup @ Wash Times?

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Did you know that there’s a whispering campaign going on inside the Washington Times newsroom against George Archibald, an award-winning former journalist with the publication (with some top editors calling him a “drunk” and making fun of his love life)? Well, there is. Yesterday, editors had a chance to direct their whispers directly to his face, as he unexpectedly showed up at the Times’ headquarters to snap some pictures for his forthcoming tell-all book about the newspaper. Instead, they kicked him out of the building.

“I was with a photographer who I retained to take pix for my book cover and inside pix for Journalism Is War, coming out in January, and to talk to my friends at the Washington Times about what’s going on there since I left in September 2005 and the brain-drain since,” Archibald tells Big Head DC. “National reporter Audrey Hudson walked through the lobby while I was signing in with my photographer…. It was moments later the lobby security receptionist got a call saying not to let me into the building.”

“Upper management” had dictated that Archibald be ordered off the property, although several old friends and colleagues stopped by to offer pleasantries to him. Read more…

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“[T]his latest dust-up reported by the FishBowlDC and Big Head DC Web sites shines new light on huge continuing problems for The Washington Times if Fran Coombs is presumed ascendant editor-in-chief of to succeed Wesley Pruden, Jr. at the newspaper,” George Archibald, a former reporter at the Times for more than 21 years writes today.

He calls Robert Stacy McCain, who offered his resignation to the Times yesterday after a newsroom fit of gigantic proportions, “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.”

“Stacy McCain…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,” according to Archibald. “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.”

McCain has yet to respond to these allegations.

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Top editors are apparently getting crankier and louder as Preston Moon, son of Korean Unification Church leader and Washington Times financier Sun Myung Moon, prepares to announce a more liberal replacement for editor-in-chief Wesley Pruden.

Managing editor Frances Coombs’ loud outbursts have already been well-documented by Big Head DC, but yesterday another scathing yelling match broke out among top staff, we hear from newsroom sources. More details to follow…

Earlier: Life As They Know It Inside the Washington Times

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It’s no secret that The Washington Times has long been gawked at and whispered about, due in part to the conservative slant of a popular paper within an awfully liberal town, partly to its ownership by a religious zealot like Rev. Sun Myung Moon, and partly to the management styles of editor-in-chief Wesley Pruden and managing editor Frances Coombs.

Rumors of sexism, racism and general ill-will within the walls of the Times are pretty much commonplace. Most current and former employees, though, don’t go on the record to add weight to the gossip. After all, many want to keep working in this town, and some don’t want to face the wrath that would likely ensue from their bosses.

Slowly and surely, however, voices are coming out of the woodwork. Read more…

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We’re hearing unconfirmed reports that Preston Moon, the youngest son of Korean Unification Church leader and Washington Times financier Sun Myung Moon, has found a more liberal replacement for editor-in-chief Wesley Pruden.

Send details to tips@bigheaddc.com

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