Times challenges worldview of elites

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Whatever else was happening in 1982 -- the country's worst economic slump since the Great Depression, a war in the Falklands, trouble in Lebanon, Olivia Newton-John's "Physical" on top of the charts -- prospects weren't good for founding a newspaper, much less one that confronted the titans of the news establishment.

It hadn't been done in a major American city since 1940, and that enterprise -- New York City's PM -- had gone belly-up in eight short years.

Locally, the Washington Star had shuttered in 1981, with The Washington Post slurping up its physical remnants and the fledgling Washington Times taking on some of its staff.

If you had asked a member of that hardscrabble newsroom if The Times would be the vanguard of a media insurgency, you might have elicited a look of puzzlement or perhaps a modest line about ignoring the construction noise and just trying to put out a newspaper.

Yet with 25 years in the rearview mirror, it's clear The Washington Times helped unlock the liberal media's grip on the news.

"The arrival of The Washington Times was for conservatives both a breath of fresh air and a daring challenge to the media establishment," former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says.

While conservative periodicals catered to intellectuals, The Times, as a daily newspaper in the nation's capital, had a louder megaphone; it constantly challenged the agenda-setting capability of major newspapers and television broadcasters.

"From day one, conservatives on Capitol Hill and throughout the city looked to The Washington Times for lively, aggressive reporting and bold conservative editorial commentary," says Mr. Gingrich, Georgia Republican.

An important lesson