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It didn’t take long for the daggers of the employees and the new owners of the Washington Blade to appear. Only four days after Window Media LLC assumed ownership of the paper on May 25 (“Switch Blade,” 04/06), 12 Blade employees marched into the office of Window President William Waybourn with a written declaration of their intention to unionize under the umbrella of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild. Publicly, both sides are putting the best face on the abrupt labor confrontation. Waybourn says that he regrets that employees did not present him with any concerns before organizing; veteran Blade reporter Lou Chibbaro says the new bosses should view the move as an expression of employee pride in the potential of the expanding gay-and-lesbian media chain. Other accounts, however, suggest that Waybourn missed the intended “compliment” from Blade staffers. As local Guild rep Calvin Zon tells it, Waybourn cut off the group mid-statement with raised arms, saying that he had heard enough. For his part, Waybourn insists that further discussion was superfluous. “If they had anything more to say, they should have put it in the written statement,” says Waybourn. —Eli Muller