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L. Beasley: Address to World Summit 2014
Written by Mr. Larry Beasley, President, The Washington Times, USA
Sunday, August 10, 2014
Address to World Summit 2014, Seoul, Korea, August 9-13, 2014
The Washington Times continues to promote the values and vision of our co-founders, and the mission has not changed at all since the time that we started being the conservative watchdog for Washington, D.C., the nation and the world. Our mission and our guiding principles and vision are very clear. We have not changed these since the beginning when Father Moon started The Washington Times, along with Mrs. Moon.
We give thanks and respect to the co-founders, Rev. and Mrs. Moon. Our commitment to investigative journalism and very strong opinion section to advocate what’s right and wrong is based on the founder’s core values and principles, which we stand for today: freedom, faith, family and service. I have sincere and deep appreciation for the very strong support Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon has shown toward myself personally, The Washington Times, and the very strong commitment to empower us to create the most effective multimedia digital and print organization with a very powerful content that will make us financially strong for the future.
Just to give you an example of what we are doing and what our mission is, the Washington Times needed about $26 million in financial aid from the parent company in 2012. We fully expect that by the end of 2014 that figure will be under $6 million and that in 2015 we will be profitable. We think that this is a tremendous achievement, and we couldn’t do this without the support of Dr. Jenkins, Mother Moon and many board members, and I thank you very much.
Let me share with you some key developments that I think are very important. Ben Carson, one of our key people, joined The Washington Times in the last year as a columnist; he probably will be running for president in 2016. Gen. Michael Hayden was head of the CIA and NSA and is one of our true and valued conservatives in America and a protector of freedom around the world; he is a columnist for us. He sits on many panels for The Washington Times, along with other big names who have joined The Washington Times recently: Tom DeLay, former House majority leader; Matt Staver, Liberty University law dean; and many of the other well-known columnists.
Monica Crowley, from Fox News, is a radio and TV commentator and the author of several books. She sits in for the John Hannity Show, and every Tuesday night she’s on with Bill O’Reilly. She is our online opinion editor. She came to work for us about three months ago, and we think that it’s fantastic that she’s joined an organization like The Washington Times to lead us into the digital age.
We captured more awards this past year than any time that we can remember in The Washington Times history, and these were very significant. A few years ago the sports section of The Washington Times disappeared. We brought it back, and this past year our sports editor won the Sportswriters Association Editor of the Year award for all of North America.
For more information about the World Summit, click here.
We do a lot of special sections. We just came out with a fantastic one on Israel. We’re doing ones on drones, Nigeria, another one for Israel, Russia and immigration. Our special section on the National Organization for Marriage just a few months ago was spectacular in the Washington D.C. area and online around the country; it’s very important to what we stand for. The National Rifle Association is a great partner. We’re doing a Constitution section. These are the things that set The Washington Times apart from the rest of the media.
We’ve got a newly designed Washington Times website. I hope all of you go to it: www.washingtontimes.com. Keep going to that website to help us grow page views. You’ll see a newly designed website that is very user friendly. Our comments right now are surpassing all of our expectations. This last week, on Thursday alone we had 1.4 million page views in the very slowest time of the year, with Congress being in recess for five weeks. We are reaching new levels with our digital site, so we’re very happy.
Our national digital edition has launched. Our new app is in the store; it’s $39.95 a year, and it’s just spectacular, a seven-day-a-week digital program.
One thing that’s very key to us is our videos online. A year ago we had about 120,000 video views a month. Now we’re averaging well over 3 million. In June we had 4 million. Last month we had about 3.2 million. This is a great new revenue source for us, and it creates more page views and people are reading the website longer.
The Washington Redskins, which is one of the most dynamic franchises in North America, is a partner with us this year for the first time. It’s going to mean quite a bit of revenue for us in the future and will help us continue on our road to profitability.
I thank you for your time, and I appreciate your going to washingtontimes.com.