Tea Party Website Staff Quits En Masse

Most of the editorial staff of the Tea Party News Network resigned this afternoon following a Daily Beast exposé on the website’s desperate efforts to generate traffic. TPNN began in 2012 to give voice to the conservative grassroots and quickly grew a mass following among Tea Partiers, even scoring interviews with major figures in the Republican Party. But shady business practices that blurred the line between the company’s nonprofit political wing and its for-profit news wing—as well as increased reliance on fight porn—led to nearly the entire staff quitting Thursday. “The audience is regarded as unsophisticated simpletons,” read the resignation letter to the site’s owner, Todd Cefaratti. “The activism that built all of the infrastructure is considered ‘a pain in the ass,’ not as an opportunity to save the country. As a group we can no longer tolerate being associated with these despicable practices.”