Washington Times up for sale, financial troubles dictate the decision

Washington, May 1 (ANI): Washington Times executives are in negotiations to sell the newspaper after founder Sun Myung Moon's family cut off most of its funding.

The Myung Moon family financed the paper's operations with a 35 million dollar annual subsidy.

Nicholas Chiaia, a member of the paper's two-man board of directors and president of the church-supported United Press International wire service, confirmed that the paper is actively on the market.

"We recently entered into discussions with a number of parties interested in either purchasing or partnering with the Washington Times," he said in a statement to The Washington Post.

Times officials have said that one possible candidate for the paper's ownership is its former Executive Editor John Solomon, the Post said.

Solomon resigned in November 2009 following which he assembled a group of investors to buy the Washington Times or launch a new multimedia outlet called 'The Washington Guardian', it added.

The decision to sell out comes in the wake of months of financial turbulence at both the 28-year-old conservative daily and the business empire founded by Moon, 90, the Post said.

According to the paper, Moon's business empire contains an exhaustive gamut of enterprises including fisheries and arms manufacturing.

Squabbling amongst Moon's children triggered off financial problems in the paper, with Preston Moon, Sun Myung's son and legatee of the paper, and his younger brother Sean Moon issuing memos claiming power over various portions of their father's global business empire, it said.

This irked his brother Justin Moon who was chosen by his father to run their various Asian concerns, that led him to order the subsidy slash in retaliation. (ANI)