WASHINGTON — Washington Times executives are negotiating to sell the newspaper after the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s family cut off most of the annual subsidy of about $35 million that has kept the Unification Church-backed paper afloat, company officials said.
Nicholas Chiaia, a member of the paper’s two-man board of directors and president of the church-owned United Press International wire service, confirmed that the paper is actively on the market.
Current and former Times officials said one suitor has been the paper’s former executive editor, John Solomon, who resigned in November 2009.
Solomon declined to comment.
The negotiations follow months of turmoil at both the 28-year-old conservative daily and the business empire founded by Moon, 90, whose children are jostling for control over the church’s myriad enterprises, which range from fisheries to arms manufacturing.
One of Moon’s children, Justin Moon, who was chosen by his father to run many of the church’s Asian businesses, has slashed the newspaper’s annual subsidy, forcing the paper’s executives, led by Moon’s eldest son, Preston Moon, to search for deep pockets elsewhere.
