District Weakly: RIP?
As the Washington Post contemplates its new life with less staff and fewer resources, allow me to toss out some unsolicited advice: Kill the District Weekly, that now-useless little tabby thing that’s hidden deep inside the classified pages of your Thursday Post. This insert has gone through more ups and downs than a Six Flags rollercoaster.
I can remember some really lame editions back in the late ’90s, with a big improvement a few years back, when a woman named Judy Havemann made it her personal mission to freshen the damn thing. Havemann wrote stories, assigned them, edited them, and accounted for what may have been the District Weekly’s only heyday.
What’s left these days, if you can even find it in your print copy, is a couple of items on local politics, a piece on high school sports and–maybe–a feature worth a minute or two of skimming.
I am not sure what is happening with the Extras in the ‘burbs but have heard that they’re hollowing out as well.
6 Responses to “District Weakly: RIP?”
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May 30th, 2008 at 11:12 am
The P.G. County edition usually fronts “good things happening in the area”—lotsa fluffy pieces about schools. Anything genuinely newsy about Prince George’s usually winds up in the Metro section. Nice to have the police blotter, tho.
May 30th, 2008 at 11:12 am
For the last three years, the only thing I’ve read in that section is the crime listings.
May 30th, 2008 at 11:12 am
But I love the animal control stories! They make the entire paper worthwhile!
May 30th, 2008 at 11:19 am
At least Jacqueline Dupree’s website no longer bears a disclaimer denying relationship with WaPo while the material is re-edited and printed in District Weekly.
May 30th, 2008 at 11:49 am
Well, the fact that Joyce Jones now is the editor should tell you something. She made the Weekend section unreadable under her watch, and now she’s doing the same in the District Extra.
May 30th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Thank you for the kind words, Erik. Editing the District Extra was a great job because there is an absolutely inexhaustible number of good stories that need to be covered. I always believed that it should be folded into the metro section, which is zoned anyway, because tiny freestanding sections get lost in the larger paper and anything worth putting in the Extra is worth running in the broadsheet.