Salem Media, owner of the influential conservative outlet RedState, froze the site on Friday and dismissed many of its writers.

Bloggers were locked out of their accounts — some just temporarily, while the cuts were made, and others permanently.

Erick Erickson, the site’s longtime editor who left in 2015, tweeted about what he called the “mass firing” on Friday morning.

“Very sad to see, but not really surprising given Salem’s direction,” he wrote. “And, finally, after all these years, they’ve turned off my account.”

Multiple sources told CNNMoney that they believed conservative critics of President Trump were the writers targeted for removal.

“Insufficiently partisan” was the phrase one writer used in a RedState group chat.

“They fired everybody who was insufficiently supportive of Trump,” one of the sources who spoke with CNNMoney said, adding, “how do you define being ‘sufficiently supportive’ of Trump?”

But if it was about politics, it was also about money.

Related: Trump’s call to ‘Fox and Friends’ explains why we don’t hear much from him

RedState writers work on contract and are paid based on the amount of traffic to their posts.

“Those who had been under a contract with a higher per-click rate were mostly all tossed, only keeping those who were pro-Trump even if their traffic was comparable,” another one of the sources said on condition of anonymity.

“Of those who make less under their contracts, they mostly tossed those who had been openly critical of the president,” the source said. “It seems to have been a cost saving measure, but the deciding factor between any two people seems to have been who liked the president and who didn’t.”

Salem had no immediate comment. But an internal memo obtained by CNNMoney confirmed the housecleaning.

“We had to make some tough changes to RedState today,” Townhall general manager Jonathan Garthwaite wrote in the memo. “While these changes are painful, they were necessary once we reached the conclusion that we could no longer support the entire roster of writers and editors.”

RedState, a 13-year-old blog that was founded by Erick Erickson, is one of several sites in Townhall Media’s portfolio. Townhall, in turn, is owned by Salem Media Group, a conservative media company that also operates radio stations and publishes books.

Salem has previously been scrutinized for its treatment of radio hosts who weren’t toeing a pro-Trump line during the presidential campaign.

A source with ties to RedState said bloggers had been “wondering if this was going to happen at RedState,” meaning “anyone who wasn’t a big fan of Trump would be dumped.”

RedState has been reflective of the divides within the GOP and the conservative movement, with a spectrum of writers with varying reactions to Trump’s political choices and personality conflicts.

Garthwaite did not respond to a followup request for comment on Friday.

His initial email to writers said, “there’s no getting around the fact that this is awful news, but I value your contribution to RedState and I hope you will stick with it through this tough period and keep RedState going.”

However, some contributors then received a separate email indicating that they were out. Their accounts were locked, meaning publishing rights were revoked.

Caleb Howe, one of the site’s lead editors, was among those dismissed.

He cryptically tweeted on Friday, “There is a right way to do something and a f—ed up way.”

His tweet aimed at an unknown person, saying, “You can call me back or you can watch this unfold right here, guy.”

Howe did not respond to requests for comment from CNNMoney. </s> Salem Media, owner of the influential conservative outlet RedState, froze the site on Friday and dismissed many of its writers.

Bloggers were locked out of their accounts — some just temporarily, while the cuts were made, and others permanently.

Erick Erickson, who founded the site 13 years ago, and left in 2015, tweeted about what he called the “mass firing” on Friday morning.

“Very sad to see, but not really surprising given Salem’s direction,” he wrote. “And, finally, after all these years, they’ve turned off my account.”

Multiple sources told CNNMoney that they believed conservative critics of President Trump were the writers targeted for removal.

“Insufficiently partisan” was the phrase one writer used in a RedState group chat.

“They fired everybody who was insufficiently supportive of Trump,” one of the sources who spoke with CNNMoney said, adding, “how do you define being ‘sufficiently supportive’ of Trump?”

But if it was about politics, it was also about money. </s> Right-wing outlet RedState has been frozen, and many of its most anti-President Donald Trump voices were fired after the site’s owner, Salem Media Group, alleged that it could “no longer support the entire roster of writers and editors."

Many of the site's writers were reportedly locked out of their RedState accounts without warning. And while some writers are in limbo status but have not yet been fired, others were caught by surprise and left wondering if the decision had anything to do with how critical they are of the president.

Erick Erickson, one of the site’s founders, said that “RedState is all but dead now” after these firings. He left RedState in 2015, so he was not involved in the mass firing.

“I have invited the fired writers here," he wrote.

"My understanding from the writers is that there were two contracts, one more expensive than the other. Most of those on the expensive contracts were tossed, though some very good ones will stay," he added. "Of those under the cheaper contracts, it seems the dividing line was loyalty to the President. In fact, among those under the expensive contracts, I'm aware of some writers having near equal traffic generation, and those insufficiently loyal to the President were fired.”

According to The Hill, the site had often given anti-Trump conservatives a voice.

CNN released the memo put together by a general manager of Townhall.com, which is also owned by Salem, confirming that the site was going through changes.

"We had to make some tough changes to RedState today," wrote Townhall general manager Jonathan Garthwaite. "While these changes are painful, they were necessary once we reached the conclusion that we could no longer support the entire roster of writers and editors."

On Twitter, many former RedState writers confirmed they had been kicked out. Others said they were uncertain of the future.

Other conservative personalities felt sorry that the site had acted this way, while many other online users simply mocked conservatives for being hypocritical regarding free speech.

If this mass firing was, indeed, associated with the writers’ unwillingness to pretend to like Trump, it’s going to be hard for conservatives themselves to see the RedState website as a credible outlet again.

In no time, the site may lose a significant amount of its audience. And, ironically, it’s all going to be thanks Trump. </s> Conservative outlet RedState fired most of its staff Friday while its owner, Salem Media, froze the site, citing an inability to "no longer support the entire roster of writers and editors."



"The site name will linger, but RedState is all but dead now. I have invited the fired writers here," Erick Erickson, a RedState founder who left the site in 2015, wrote in a blog post.

Fired staffers said the cuts focused on writers who have been critical of President Trump Donald John TrumpTrump awards Medal of Valor, civilian honors to responders in Dayton and El Paso shootings Texas Democrats unveil 'path to victory' plan for 2020 The Hill's 12:30 Report: Congress returns with gun violence, funding atop agenda MORE. RedState had often distinguished itself since 2016 as a home for Trump critics within the GOP.



RedState staffers were reportedly locked out of their accounts on a temporary or permanent basis, depending on job status, while the firings were being carried out.



Patrick Frey, a RedState blogger who goes by the name of "Patterico" online, wrote on Twitter that "those let go are all Trump critics" while "his supporters remain."

The rumors are true. There has been a mass firing at RedState, and those let go (including me) are all Trump critics. His supporters remain. — Patterico (@Patterico) April 27, 2018

Erickson also echoed Frey's sentiment in his Friday blog post, stating the dividing line was drawn between supporters of the president while "those insufficiently loyal to the President were fired."



"My understanding from the writers is that there were two contracts, one more expensive than the other. Most of those on the expensive contracts were tossed, though some very good ones will stay," wrote Erickson, himself a critic of the president.



"Of those under the cheaper contracts, it seems the dividing line was loyalty to the President. In fact, among those under the expensive contracts, I'm aware of some writers having near equal traffic generation, and those insufficiently loyal to the President were fired," he added.



A memo to staff obtained by CNN by a general manager of Salem-owned Townhall.com confirmed the "tough changes" made at RedState.



"We had to make some tough changes to RedState today," wrote Townhall general manager Jonathan Garthwaite in an internal memo. "While these changes are painful, they were necessary once we reached the conclusion that we could no longer support the entire roster of writers and editors."



The Hill has reached out to Salem Media for comment. </s> RedState was a rare thing these days in the conservative media: a platform for an array of different opinions about President Trump. That now seems to be a thing of the past, as media on the right has split into two camps: the full-on Trump boosterism of Breitbart or Fox News’s opinion programs, or anti-Trump critique as exemplified by National Review. On Friday, several contract writers were let go from the conservative website RedState and its editor, Caleb Howe, was fired. One thing many of them had in common was their vocal criticism of Trump. Howe got the news while driving from his home in North Carolina to Washington to meet with Townhall Media, the arm of Salem Media which owns RedState, about Facebook strategy. Jonathan Garthwaite, the vice president and general manager of Townhall Media, called him before he got to the meeting and fired him over the phone, Howe told me. Garthwaite did not reply to multiple requests for comment.

I spoke to Howe while he was still in his car in D.C. He said that around 10 writers had been let go, and their contracts (which pay writers based on the number of times their articles are viewed) terminated. “The site has been doing well. I don’t think there’s any reason to panic or that they would need a sudden and instantaneous change to how things are done,” Howe said. The site had drawn roughly 7 or 8 million pageviews each month, according to Howe, down from 10 or 12 million a month during the election. Dips in audience after elections are common throughout the digital media. Howe said that even the impact of Facebook’s algorithm change, which conservative publishers have blamed for a decline in traffic, was relatively moderate: “We took a relatively small traffic hit from the new Facebook guidelines,” he said. His brother, the conservative writer Ben Howe, passed along the email he had received from Garthwaite cutting him loose. The email suggests that the cuts were made for financial reasons. “Unfortunately, we have reached the conclusion that we can no longer support the entire current roster of writers,” Garthwaite wrote. “Therefore, effective today, we are terminating our independent contractor agreement with you with your writing responsibilities ending immediately. This is a 30-day notice of the end of our compensation payments to you. You will be paid for April 2018 in the normal manner. At the end of May, we will tabulate the total page views that accumulated during May for content written prior to April 28th and you will be paid for May 2018 page views based upon those reports.” (Garthwaite did not respond to a request for comment.)

But sources I spoke with were skeptical of that explanation. “I think the ones who were shitcanned—and this is just my opinion—could probably be easily defined as the loudest and most vocal Trump critics,” Ben Howe said. “There’s a clear pattern that the people who were let go were all critics of Donald Trump,” said Patrick Frey, a lawyer who blogs as Patterico and whose contract was also terminated on Friday. “It was a complete surprise,” Frey said. “There’d been rumors of contract changes but being fired was a complete surprise.” Jay Caruso, a former RedState editor, now works for The Dallas Morning News but maintained a contract with the site until Friday morning. “When you look at he names across the board, the people that were let go had a clear bias against President Trump,” he said. Caleb Howe pointed out that RedState is keeping some Trump-critical writers. But he emphasized that one of those fired was Susan Wright, an anti-Trump writer who, he said, had consistently been one of the highest-trafficked writers on the site. “The most Trump-critical people, the most vocally critical were on the list, especially Susan Wright,” he said. “Susan also happens to be the number one traffic draw at RedState, so it’s sort of weird if it’s a monetary decision.” “Over the last two years I’ve been working for them, I’ve consistently been one of their top three writers,” Wright told me. “More often than not their top writer … They can’t say it’s a money issue.” She tried to file a piece on Friday morning, and found herself locked out of the system. She then received an email from Garthwaite nearly identical to the one Ben Howe received.

In the modern conservative media, is there an audience for RedState’s mix of views? Or is it bad for business to not choose a side? “If nothing else, this shows you how deep, how solid that wall is down through the Republican Party, the conservative movement, what happened when Trump got introduced into the bloodstream,” Wright said. “Partisans on one side, conservatives on the other side.” The Conservative Political Action Conference earlier this year showed the extent to which Trump has overwhelmed the conservative movement. His ascendancy has either marginalized movement conservatives or co-opted them, remaking their worldview in his image. RedState, which was founded in 2004, now seems a relic from a time when Tea Party activism propelled a new set of writers into the conservative media, blessed with a certain freedom in being in the opposition to the party in power. It’s not that there weren’t intra-party and intra-movement fights; there were. But the fighting over Mitt Romney pales in comparison to the savage infighting caused by the rise of Trump. Before Howe, the site was led by Erick Erickson and then Leon Wolf, both now vocal critics of Trump. Erickson wrote on his website on Friday that he had felt even before the firings that RedState was in decline. “They've really stopped driving a conversation among conservatives in the past few years as they turned to clickbait and now will really just be a clickbait site it seems,” he wrote.

“One of the things I was always really proud of at the website was that it’s representative of the current schism in the Republican movement,” Caleb Howe said. “RedState gained and retained traffic in a way that many conservative blogs were not able to, and we survived the slaughter of the Trump years and the slaughter of being anti-Trump,” Howe said. “We kept never-Trumpers on the front page, like Susan Wright, all the way up until this week, successfully.” Frey says he’s grateful for his time at RedState and emphasized that the company has the right to fire people. But he worried that the remaining writers were being sent a clear message about what kind of views were now permissible. “It seems like the message of the firings is very clear,” he said. “We won’t tolerate strong criticism of this president.” “What this says is ‘Toe this line,’ and it’s not behind a movement, it’s behind a man,” Wright said. Though it’s not yet clear what will become of RedState, Caleb Howe said his impression is that management will not install a new editor to replace him, instead turning the site into a Twitchy-style network. “RedState as an independent editorial point of view will no longer exist. It will now be subject to the editorial control of Townhall,” he said. </s> The Weekly Standard — the right-leaning magazine that has remained doggedly anti-Trump since the president’s election — is shutting down after 23 years.

Staffers got the news at an all-hands meeting Friday morning that they were to clean out their desks by 5 p.m. The weekly will publish its last issue Dec. 17.

Beforehand, editor-in-chief Steven Hayes had met privately with Ryan McKibben, CEO of the magazine’s parent company, Clarity Media.

“The Weekly Standard has been hampered by many of the same challenges that countless other magazines and newspapers across the country have been wrestling with,” McKibben said in a Friday statement.

“Despite investing significant resources into the publication, the financial performance of the publication over the last five years — with double-digit declines in its subscriber base all but one year since 2013 — made it clear that a decision had to be made,” he added.

The publication was launched in 1995 by News Corp., which publishes The Post, with founding editor-in-chief Bill Kristol. In 2005, it was sold to Colorado-based conservative billionaire Philip Anschutz. The publication in recent years was one of the few conservative outlets that was sharply critical of many of the policies of President Trump.

Kristol, most recently an editor-at-large, was an unabashed “Never Trump” pundit. Years earlier, Kristol had been a staunch backer of George W. Bush and the Iraq War.

“This is a volatile time in American journalism and politics,” Hayes wrote in a letter to staffers. “Many media outlets have responded to the challenges of the moment by prioritizing affirmation over informations, giving into the pull of polarization and the lure of clickbait.”

Initially, Anschutz and MediaDC, the subsidiary of Clarity that ran the Standard, said they would allow Hayes to search for a new buyer. But CNN reported earlier this month that Hayes was told recently the company was no longer interested in selling.

Around that time, MediaDC was unveiling plans to take its weekly Washington Examiner from an inside-the-Beltway publication and transform it into a national conservative weekly. The Examiner had been generally more supportive of Trump in its editorial slant.

The closure drew immediate criticism in some conservative media circles. Writing in Commentary, columnist John Podhoretz — who also writes for The Post — said he did not believe the criticism of Trump was the main reason its owners decided to kill off the Weekly Standard.

“Rather, I believe the fissures in the conservative movement and the Republican Party that have opened up since Trump’s rise provided the company man with a convenient argument to make to the corporation’s owner, Philip Anschutz, that the company could perhaps harvest the Standard’s subscriber-base riches and then be done with it.”

Staffers are being paid to the end of the year, but their severance packages are said to be contingent on signing non-disparagement clauses. </s> The Weekly Standard, a conservative news outlet known for being unabashedly critical of President Donald Trump, announced Friday it is closing its doors after over two decades.

Weekly Standard editor-in-chief Stephen Hayes tweeted: “I am profoundly disappointed in the decision to close The Weekly Standard. For nearly a quarter century TWS has provided an unapologetically conservative and fiercely independent voice on American culture and public affairs. The voice is needed now more than at anytime in our previous 23 years.”

Hayes wrote in a message to employees obtained by CNN, “This is a volatile time in American journalism and politics.”

“Many media outlets have responded to the challenges of the moment by prioritizing affirmation over information, giving into the pull of polarization and the lure of clickbait,” he continued. “I’m proud that we’ve remained both conservative and independent, providing substantive reporting and analysis based on facts, logic and reason.”

Co-founder and editor-at-large Bill Kristol added: “All good things come to an end. And so, after 23 years, does The Weekly Standard. … We worked hard to put out a quality magazine, and we had a good time doing so.”

Politico noted that Kristol, a regular guest commentator on MSNBC, became one of the more prominent faces in the “Never Trump” ranks during the 2016 Republican primary.

He was among those adding his name to National Review’s list of conservatives against then-candidate Trump.

Kristol’s animus carried over into the Trump administration, as exemplified by an October 2017 Twitter battle with Fox News political analyst Brit Hume.

Hume described Kristol’s thread of tweets as the “never-Trump creed in full rhetorical flight.”

In his tweets, the editor charged that conservatives were standing on the sidelines as Trump destroyed the party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan.

CNN reported, based on “people familiar with the matter,” that the leadership of The Weekly Standard had butted heads with MediaDC, the publisher of the magazine, which is owned by Clarity Media Group.

Hayes and Kristol reportedly asked for the opportunity to seek out new investors for the news outlet, but Clarity ultimately decided to close it down instead.

The company, which also owns the Washington Examiner, is said to have wanted to retain The Weekly Standard’s subscriber list to support the launch of a new Examiner weekly magazine.

Clarity released a statement on Friday announcing The Weekly Standard’s last issue will be on Monday.

“For more than twenty years The Weekly Standard has provided a valued and important perspective on political, literary and cultural issues of the day,” said Ryan McKibben, president and CEO of Clarity Media. “The magazine has been home to some of the industry’s most dedicated and talented staff and I thank them for their hard work and contributions, not just to the publication, but the field of journalism.”

“The Weekly Standard has been hampered by many of the same challenges that countless other magazines and newspapers across the country have been wrestling with,” McKibben said. “Despite investing significant resources into the publication, the financial performance of the publication over the last five years — with double-digit declines in its subscriber base all but one year since 2013 — made it clear that a decision had to be made.

“After careful consideration of all possible options for its future, it became clear that this was the step we needed to take.”

The New York Times reported that Hayes and Kristol are hoping to launch a publication similar to The Weekly Standard under a new banner.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards. </s> The Weekly Standard, a conservative publication known for being critical of President Donald Trump and a key intellectual force behind the disastrous U.S. war in Iraq, is set to close after 23 years.

Clarity Media Group, which owns Standard publisher MediaDC, announced Friday that the magazine’s final issue will publish on Monday, according to CNN.

“For more than twenty years The Weekly Standard has provided a valued and important perspective on political, literary and cultural issues of the day,” Ryan McKibben, chairman of MediaDC, said in a press release. “The magazine has been home to some of the industry’s most dedicated and talented staff and I thank them for their hard work and contributions, not just to the publication, but the field of journalism.”

Staffers have known something “bad” was coming since at least last week, when Clarity Media revealed it was “exploring a number of possibilities” for the publication, according to Politico. The magazine’s founder, William Kristol, had already publicly floated a possible sale or merger with its expanding sister publication, the Washington Examiner.

Some say the Standard shuttered as a direct result of it resisting moving further right under the Trump administration.

The New York Times said The Weekly Standard was in danger specifically because it found itself on the wrong side of Trump, and because editor-in-chief Stephen F. Hayes had a penchant for investigative reporting and banning “alt-right-style, partisan clickbait stories.”

“And the outcome has called into question whether the conservative media world can abide journalism that questions the new orthodoxy,” the Times’ Jim Rutenberg wrote earlier this month.

The paper’s most lasting legacy may be its role in promoting the Iraq War, as its editors wrote in the months after 9/11 that they hoped “the president will courageously decide to destroy Saddam’s regime.”

“It is past time for the United States to step up and accept the real responsibilities and requirements of global leadership,” reads an editorial co-bylined by Kristol in January 2002. “We’ve already tried the alternative.” </s> The Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine critical of the Trump administration, is closing after a 23-year run, its parent company said Friday.

The D.C.-based publication, which helped shape conservative thought and rose to prominence during the George W. Bush administration, stood out among conservative outlets for its steadfast opposition to the Trump presidency. Co-founder William Kristol, who edited the magazine until late 2016, called himself a “Never Trumper.”

The final edition of the magazine will publish on Dec. 17, said Clarity Media Group Inc., the owner of Weekly Standard publisher MediaDC. Weekly Standard subscriptions will be turned into subscriptions to sister magazine Washington Examiner, which will be redesigned and expanded on Jan. 1, Clarity Media said.

The Washington Examiner was described by a Weekly Standard staffer as “friendlier to Trump” but not a cheerleader. A spokeswoman for Clarity Media declined to comment on that observation.

Clarity Media CEO Ryan McKibben said in a statement that the financial performance of The Weekly Standard over the past five years “made it clear that a decision had to be made.” He said the publication “has been hampered by many of the same challenges that countless other magazines and newspapers across the country have been wrestling with.”

Fred Barnes, The Weekly Standard’s executive editor and also a founder, said the publication’s financial issues stemmed in part from its stance on President Trump. “We’ve discovered that criticism of Trump affects circulation negatively,” Mr. Barnes said in an interview. “That was definitely a factor.”

Mr. McKibben said The Weekly Standard’s subscriber base shrank by double digits in percentage terms “all but one year since 2013.” The magazine claims a total of 90,000 subscribers, according to the MediaDC website.

John Podhoretz, a Weekly Standard founder and contributing editor, on Friday tweeted that the magazine’s owner had agreed to let editor Steve Hayes find a buyer and that a New York venture-capital firm was willing to broker a sale but Mr. McKibben later instructed Mr. Hayes to cease all contact with the venture-capital firm.

“Never in the annals of American publishing have I heard of such a thing,” Mr. Podhoretz wrote, stating that Clarity Media owner Philip Anschutz and Mr. McKibben “wouldn’t even entertain AN OFFER.”

The Clarity Media spokeswoman said the company had “explored a range of different possibilities for the future of the publication over the past year. A number of conversations were held with a variety of different parties about their interest in acquiring the publication but none led to any viable offers.”

Mr. Podhoretz, who is editor of Commentary magazine, declined to comment further. Mr. Anschutz, a billionaire entrepreneur, and Mr. Hayes couldn’t be reached for comment, and the Clarity Media spokeswoman said Mr. McKibben wasn’t available for further comment.

The Weekly Standard, first published in September 1995 by News Corp, has provided both national and international coverage, and attracted some of the country’s leading conservative journalists. It was bought by Clarity Media in 2009. News Corp is the parent of Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones.

Mr. Barnes, one of The Weekly Standard’s founders, said he believes the publication will be remembered as a conservative magazine that was livelier than most, well written, and one that identified with the “younger conservative forces” in the Republican Party.

“We supported tax reform, Paul Ryan, and an aggressive foreign policy that believed the U.S. should support the spread of democracy around the world,” he said.

Mr. Barnes said President Trump had some supporters at the publication, including himself, but noted that Mr. Trump “divided conservative journalism. A number of people here believe we don’t need to love him personally but that he’s succeeding with tax reform, deregulation, and judges.”

In a tweet Friday, Mr. Kristol, who is editor at large for the magazine, said: “All good things come to an end. And so, after 23 years, does The Weekly Standard.”

Write to Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg at jeffrey.trachtenberg@wsj.com and David Marcelis at david.marcelis@wsj.com
Conservative media site RedState fires most of its staff and its owner Salem Media Group freezes the site, stating they could "no longer support the entire roster of writers and editors". Staff claim they were fired for their opposition to U.S. President Donald Trump.