Just hours after news broke on The Daily Caller of Breitbart News severing ties with its Editor-at-Large Ben Shapiro, the organization has suddenly managed to secure a deal with Shapiro to keep him on as their senior editor-at-large. Breitbart News announced the news in a release on their site Sunday night. They hilariously and cleverly headlined it: “Ben Shapiro still at Breitbart News.” The Daily Caller‘s Mirror blog broke the news that Shapiro and Breitbart were breaking up. Breitbart News called the report “unattributed and unsourced.”
“Nothing has changed,” said Editor-in-Chief Alexander Marlow in the release. “It’s business as usual.” Also in the release, Shapiro says he’s “excited to be staying in the Breitbart family.”
And families do have quarrels. Despite Marlow’s blasé explanation, according to insiders as well as outsiders familiar with the situation who spoke to The Mirror on condition of anonymity, relations between Shapiro and the conservative news site have been on shaky ground for several weeks with no conceivable resolution in sight. This is a scenario that is playing out repeatedly with a number of irritated journalists associated with the publication.
While Shapiro declined to talk for this piece, The Mirror is hearing numerous grumblings and stories of serious hardship about how difficult life is there since the death of their beloved leader Andrew Breitbart. Some current and former employees are pained by some of the things they see happening there, bizarre, inexplicable directives and childish grudges for example, and other things they say Breitbart never would have tolerated.
As many already know, Dana Loesch, who was one of Breitbart’s closest cohorts, filed a $75k lawsuit against the company in late 2012 because she claimed execs wouldn’t let her out of her contract and badmouthed her to other suitors interested in hiring her. She settled with Breitbart News in July of 2013. She now works for Glenn Beck over at TheBlaze.
Internally, the general feeling was that once Shapiro started TruthRevolt, the right-wing media watchdog site, that he’d be venturing over there full time and leaving Breitbart in the dust. But Breitbart has managed to keep him on in a limited capacity that allows him to go full-time at TruthRevolt as well as retain a position at Breitbart News.
Phew! That was a close one.