Washington (Hard) Times: Staff Layoffs Mount

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Roughly 20 Washington Times staffers were pink-slipped today, with the photography department and Web desk especially hard hit, according to reports by rival Washington Post and the Washington City Paper.

Times Executive Editor David Jackson imparted the bad news in a group announcement. Reportedly, terminated employees will receive a half-week's severance pay for each year of service and continued health care coverage through January.

Although the Times hasn't formally identified those who were laid off, staffers who tweeted that they were among the casualties include sportswriter Patrick Stevens and Steve Repsher, who had the dubious honor of being laid off by the Times in 2009, and later reinstated, only to be axed a second time.

The Washington Times was founded in 1982 by a media conglomerate of Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, News World Communications ("NWU"). Rev. Moon and a handful of former Times editors acquired the broadsheet daily from NWU in 2010 for $1, and apparently, got a raw deal.