Posted on 04/27/2018 1:28:55 PM PDT by ethom
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."
RedState writers work on contract and are paid based on the amount of traffic to their posts.
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.
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 it through 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
The Gateway Pundit:
#NeverTrump Troll Website Redstate Finally Shut Down Over Lack of Interest
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/04/nevertrump-troll-website-redstate-finally-shut-down-over-lack-of-interest/
Ouch. lol.
Isn’t that eric echerson? conservative my ass. They are going under because they stood in Trumps way and tried to destroy him. national review next.
Another group of Never Trumpers bites the dust.
Erickson career is on life support. 1st he got canned by Fox, his website has failed and his “radio show’ is 3 minutes of narcissistic self promotion interrupted every 6 minutes by traffic/new/weather reports.
Habitually propagandizing against your own reader/viewer base tends to have this effect on your career prospects
Fake news.
RedState is a Chamber Of Amnesty site for the neoconservatives.
Not a site for actual conservatives.
Anyone that enables Susan Wright deserves what they get.
More people in the ATL care about traffic than EE.
Doing my happy dance.
Salem Media has always been a bit dodgy to me.... they lost me when they dropped Dave Ramsey because they expected him to pay them to actually have his show on the air.... He told them no thanks and found another local station.
Selling the cancer of the illegal alien inundation is hard.
Hope the entire website folds.
It is owned by RINO Hugh Hewlett.
He does not guest host for Rush anymore either.
Rush knows Erick The Red is bad for ratings.
Very bad.
Good! Shutter the whole thing before it sullies the media world any more with its whinning anti-Trumpism.
Very good point.
WINNING!!!
If I owned a conservative site, I would long since have gotten rid of anti-Trump “conservatives.”
One con to another.
CNNMSNBCCBSABCFOXCNBCBLOOMBERG continues their liberal projection...that is what they hoped to be true even if it isn’t...unicorns and rainbows...
No, redstate is trump haters, not conservative...
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