The road which lies ahead for the Bhutan Times just got tougher.

Three weeks ago, the country's only publicly-traded publisher changed hands as it faced a loss of Nu 5.39 million (US$115,790) South Asia Media reported Saturday. Then, along with new chairman and CEO Wancha Sangey, the newspaper secured written pledges from all employees to do their best to help bring the newspaper back from the economic brink. Now, half of those same employees abandoned ship Friday, citing irreconcilable differences over how much editorial control management should reasonably be permitted to exert for the sake of commerce.

Sangey views the dispute as centering instead on issues of defamation and a plot to bankrupt the company. "Since I joined, I made one request to them that, while freedom of speech is very important, we shouldn't forget that we're Bhutanese and that you can slur a ministry if it's wrong but not Bhutan as a nation."

Seven former journalists signed a rebuttal to Sangey's charges in a letter to the editor published by Bhutan Today. Concurrently, Bhutan Today's managing director, Tenzin Dorji, denounced the resignations as immoral, adding that he had no intention of hiring them to his sole proprietor publication.

The other privately-held concern, the Bhutan Observer, was more concerned with the mass resignations' impact on the local media scene in general. Editor Nidup Zangpo said his instant reaction was to doubt whether a Sunday issue of Bhutan Times would go to press.

According to blogger Tshering Togbay's post today, though, Sangey leaned on K4 Media for help and satisfied the Sunday deadline by turning out a 32-page edition that outdid some of its predecessors.

Kuensel Newspaper blames a lack of training and experience in journalists and management alike at Bhutan Times for a failure to distinguish the interdependent nature of their respective roles and keep the enterprise afloat.

There was no immediate word on whether the paper would sue its former employees for breaking their contracts or meet its Nu 3 million (US $64,450) in overdrafts as yet owed to the Bank of Bhutan.