Big Trouble Bubbling At Newsweek

Chaos roiled the Newsweek offices Monday with the firings of the editor in chief, his deputy and three reporters who had been working on stories critical of the news-magazine's parent company.

According to The LATimes, Johnathan Davis, the co-founder and chief executive of Newsweek Media Group, ordered the firing of top editor Bob Roe, Roe's deputy editor Ken Li and reporters Celeste Katz and Josh Saul, as well as Josh Keefe, a reporter for sister publication International Business Times, a source said.

Katz, Saul and Keefe had been writing about an ongoing investigation of the company by the Manhattan district attorney's office. Their stories said it was a financial fraud investigation that started about a year and a half ago. Roe and Li had been closely involved in the editing of those stories, the source said.

"This whole entire staff feels it's clearly retaliatory," the source said of the firings.

Editors told staffers not to work until the company briefs them on what happened.  In addition, staffers at the International Business Times were not paid Monday as expected.

"The entire staff is angry, frustrated and confused," the source said.

In recent weeks, in addition to the ongoing investigation, Newsweek placed Chief Content Officer Dayan Candappa on leave following allegations that Candappa repeatedly sexually harassed a woman while a top official at Reuters.

The district attorney's investigators raided the Newsweek offices Jan. 18 and took pictures of the company's computer equipment in the server room. "They seemed interested in where and when the company got the servers," a source said at the time.