The Washington Post’s Style section may be saying goodbye to its top editor, Deborah Heard, who has plowed 20-plus years of service into the paper. She is weighing an early retirement package.

“I’m still evaluating it,” says Heard. “I have had a lot of conversations with a lot of people because this is a big decision for me.”

Like many of her ranking colleagues at the Post, Heard feels the pull: The buyouts are generous, full of free money, benefits, and parachutes, courtesy of the company’s deep pension holdings.

Less clear is whether Heard may be feeling a push as well. Her section is the subject of considerable intra-newsroom sniping, much of it a lamentation of how far Style has fallen over the years.

Her boss, too, apparently feels there’s a content issue or two within the hive of critics and feature writers. Earlier this year, Washington City Paper interviewed Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. about Style’s fraught relationship with washingtonpost.com, a platform whose managers have declined to give Style the presence and cohesion that the section enjoys in print. Downie steered the discussion away from Web considerations:
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OK, so I support the street-sweeping program. Think it’s a big part of the urban compact. Everyone sacrifices convenience, in the form of alternate-side parking, for the sake of a greater good, which is less debris, fewer rat carcasses, hence lower chances of hantavirus, and so on.

But one thing definitely has to happen: The street sweeper actually has to show up.

Well, that didn’t happen this morning, at least not on the 1400 block of Q Street NW, where this insane blogger happens to reside and staycation.

DPW, I want you to know that I busted my ass last night to make sure that I complied with the alternate-side requirements. I made at least four forays out of my house to see if there were any spots on the proper side. Finally, after a Studio play dumped out and some churchgoers finally got tired of spending a beautiful day inside beautiful sanctuaries, some spots appeared, and I pounced.

And for nothing. I don’t want apologies or excuses, street-sweeping team, just clean streets.

*Good smackdown of Chelsea Clinton in Sunday’s Washington Post. The piece, by Postie Ian Shapira, asks whether the 28-year-old Chelsea represents the attitude and morays of her generation. Answer: No! She’s stiff, scared, and monotonic. Shapira asked Chelsea’s handlers to comment for the piece and got this response, which is absolutely classic: “This isn’t the time or place. This is the time to talk about her mother’s views.” Hate that. Just abhorrent.

*Longtime poverty reporter Alex Kotlowitz pens a long piece in the New York Times Magazine about the concept of a “violence interrupter,” a person who stops violence at its source. It’s a breakthrough of sorts that treats urban gang violence like a disease.

*Washington Times fronts an AP piece on the kerfuffle over HRC’s comment about how she’d “obliterate” Iran given the proper circumstances. Here, another AP story on how cancer survivors believe in humor.

*DCist lights up with comments on the most significant cultural event of the year in D.C.

*Hey, D.C. Education blog–thanks for catching up on the Excel Institute story.

In today’s Slate, Tom Vanderbilt does good work in attacking the blight of playground equipment on America’s lawns. You know the landscape: Brightly colored swingsets and slides, no kids on them, sitting on a pitch of grass. They’re eyesores, they never get used, and they become a big environmental liability when it comes time to dispose of them.

So good on Vanderbilt there.

Bad on Vanderbilt here:

In her book American Playgrounds, Susan Solomon notes how the fear of injuries and their litigious consequences forced the closing, or banal “post-and-platform” retrofitting, of many playgrounds. Gone are the kinds of things that defined my own childhood: terrifying metal “monkey bars” pitched over a pit of hard gravel or the towering, twisting, all-metal “tornado slide,” as we called it, which was at once the most exhilarating and the most dangerous thing in my young life.

Here we have an exhilarating mixture of ignorance and nostalgia forming a perfect mound of bullshit.

Let’s take this thing point by point. I’ll admit I haven’t read Solomon’s book. But I can tell you this: I have a couple of very young kids and wherever I am, I’m always in the market for a playground. I haven’t had trouble finding them, either. So if there’s a big trend toward closing playgrounds, perhaps there were too many to begin with.

As for “retrofitting” the playgrounds, let’s hope so. When I was a kid, I often played on equipment anchored into asphalt. I fell on that shit many times. And no, that wasn’t exhilarating or cool or somehow character-forming. It wasn’t an experience that I’ll relate to coming generations in the same breath as walking through the snow barefoot just to get to school.

Those surfaces hurt. They’re a big reason why every year about 200,000 kids from preschools and elementary schools check into emergency rooms in this country after playground falls and the like.

The injuries and emergency visits, thank goodness, are on the decline. Why? Because playgrounds are getting safer. Rubberized surfaces are getting installed across the land, the better to cushion the impact of a fall. Insane equipment that mangles our little kids is getting thrown out. And if lawsuits are forcing these trends, then good on the lawsuits, too!

Vanderbilt should stick to aesthetics and the connection between home and its exterior. Leave out the mindless and tiresome references to the good old days.

As FishbowlDC is narrating, the Washington Times this week is following up on an ominous memo sent out earlier this spring by Editor John Solomon. Though he thanked his colleagues for tips on saving money, he noted that staff reductions were in store.

Fishbowl puts the tally of the fallen at twelve, with more likely to come. Newsroom staffing stood at about 200 when Solomon took over in late January. Word is that staffers are bracing for a meeting at 11:30 this morning to discuss the ongoing “restructuring.” As in so many other newsrooms these days, that word is just a euphemism for giving people a box and telling them to get their shit out of here by noon.

WaPo’s Juliet Eilperin clocks in today with an update on the court case over giving the polar bear a little bureaucratic love under the Endangered Species Act. Like many such cases, this one is gummed up in federal court, with environmental groups pushing the Bush administration to make a decision on the Endangered designation. The Interior Department missed its own deadline on this matter back in early January.

It all boils down to ice. That is the PB’s habitat, and that’s what’s melting everywhere. The Bushies don’t wanna act because protecting the habitat would require it to make the sacrifices it hasn’t wanted to make ever since it kicked Kyoto to the curb.

But I swear–who in good conscience can stand around while another big animal fades from the landscape. Last time I checked, there were, like, 3,000 tigers left in the entire world, a fact I’m not going to verify right now. Elephants are in trouble. Grizzlies have serious issues.

Large vertebrates! We all love them. Kids, especially, adore them. Though I am a professional journalist and unbiased and objective on all issues, I say, List the PB. I’ll gladly install solar panels, cut back on auto trips, use corn in more creative ways, eat cereal out of the same, uncleaned bowl every morning, make greater use of the hand dryer, refrain from liposuction, or do what’s necessary to stave off a planet consisting solely of humans and squirrels.

Via Fishbowl comes a killer memo from the Washington Post, concerning the possibility of a “thin-fat” epidemic in the newsroom. For any such scribes, City Desk hereby prescribes the fantastic 8 count.

A couple of weeks ago, Washington City Paper named Robert Triolo the city’s premier street performer. The designation came in deference to Triolo’s steady presence at Stead playground, where he shoots free throw after free throw, a succession of one-handed nothing-but-nets that Triolo documents in a pad that he brings with him each day. The hoop sits right above the well-trafficked sidewalk on P Street between 16th and 17th, a visibility that accounts in part for Triolo’s celebrity.

Well, the guy’s going to have to find a new spot to shoot, according to the following press release:

(Washington, D.C) — Beginning April 30, 2008, the Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) will temporarily close the play courts, plaza, and playground at the Stead Recreation Center, 1625 P Street, NW, to accommodate construction of a new playground. The recreation center and athletic field will remain open during construction. During construction, alternative access to the recreation center will be from 17th Street, NW, via Church Street, NW, to the rear of the recreation center.

**The new playground is scheduled to open in August 2008.**

Tough luck for the city’s most tireless free-throw shooter, but good luck for the community at large, which could use a shadier Stead playground. Place is brutal in summer.

Hey, D.C.ers, get ready for all those people walking around town in pink garb. The Avon Walk for Breast Cancer blankets the streets this Saturday and Sunday.

And according to the walk’s organizers, “award-winning actress” Reese Witherspoon will be “on hand.”

Well, “on hand” is fine and all, but is she going to pound the pavement like those thousands of other die-harders whose devotion to the cause gets measured in miles? I mean, think about it: Walkers get a choice of walking a marathon (26.2 miles) or a marathon and a half (39.3) over the course of a weekend.

According to a press release, however, Witherspoon will “support walkers at points along Sunday’s route.”

Hell, even I’ve done that in years past. Yeah, go get’em, I’ve yelled to various walkers in years past.

So what does Witherspoon got that I don’t?

Everyone’s talking about the Redskins’ draft choices. And, I gotta say: It’s the most idle, worthless talk of the entire sporting year, as is the talk about the NBA draft, and the NHL, and the CFL, and Bob Highfill’s fantasy league.

That’s because no one has clue No. 1 whether any of these instamillionaires will make any contribution on the gridiron come September, or the following one, or the one after that. So don’t waste your time reading draft reviews and checking out the latest from Mel “Best Job in the World” Kiper.

Instead, try perhaps this ho-hum piece on the Obama-Clinton death match.

Or this piece on why you’re not the only one who’s tired of this primary.

Looking for a break from politics? Try this DCist post on munchies.

And here’s something from the Examiner about a show with way too many commercials.

Staffers for the national page of the Washington Post gathered Thursday morning for their first section-wide meeting since the removal of top national editor Susan Glasser. They came away shaking their heads: Characterizations from attendees ranged from “bizarre” to “Orwellian.”

Why so strange? Because the folks leading the meeting failed to address head-on the extraordinary events of recent days. On Monday, the Post dumped Glasser following a months-long probe into her management practices. She was reassigned to a job with corporate. The move capped off months of sniping and gossip in the national hive, much of it concerning the boss.

Managing Editor Phil Bennett kicked off Thursday’s meeting by talking a lot about change and innovation in the newsroom. He mentioned that a staff meeting was not the proper forum to discuss the recent Glasser trauma. (Hey, Mr. ME, what’s a better forum—an online chat?)

Rajiv Chandrasekaran, who is now in charge of national, stressed the importance of communication on the staff and mentioned that his door is always open. Though he included a nod to Glasser’s innovations, he, too, was silent on the trauma of her time at the helm.

Bill Hamilton, the section’s No. 2, didn’t come any closer to addressing the elephant in the room.

“It was like nothing had happened and it was a routine planning session,” says a Postie who attended the session.

Then Post veteran and former top national editor Karen DeYoung spoke up. Though she wasn’t running the meeting, she did show some leadership. She noted that the staff was split on Glasser—some liked her contributions, others didn’t. Either way, DeYoung had apparently decided that those contributions merited some recognition, and she initiated a round of applause toward that end.

What followed was, in the testimony of four people in attendance, one of the most muted and awkward ovations in the history of journalistic morale-boosting.

The squirming, sidestepping, and half-hearted hand claps were an expression of deference to Glasser’s husband, Peter Baker, who was right there listening to it all. Baker is a ferocious defender of his wife’s work, and her fall from grace has not-so-oddly coincided with a series of talks between Baker and the New York Times. “It was like Susan was in the room because Peter was there, so that kind of stifled things,” says a source in attendance.

Other tidbits:

• Bennett said that the Post will move quickly to replace Glasser.
• Good news for competitors of the Post: The paper has reportedly overspent big time on its budget for political coverage, a topic that came up in the meeting. Chandrasekaran attributed the problem to the extended fight for the Democratic presidential nomination. Private scoffing ensued: Under Glasser, staffers were sent all over the political map with very little coordination. One of the running jokes among political reporters covering Iowa, for example, was that they’d show up at an event only to find two other Posties already on the scene.

Just a word of thanks to the high-class Restaurant K and to the Wrecking Corporation of America (WCA).

They were the stars of the night, as a family member and myself ventured down to the corner of K Street and Connecticut Avenue NW last night to watch the demolition of an out-of-date office building. We arrived at about 10:00 pm and watched as a WCA machine cut into the exposed floors of the building. The contraption was like a pair of scissors affixed to a long cranelike arm, tearing into the concrete and steel of the building, creating loud debris showers. People stopped and gawked.

The action was in full view of Restaurant K, so said family member and I went in for a quick drink. The bartender was nice enough to treat family member with a complimentary cranberry juice.

A while after we reemerged, the star of the show came out. Or came down. It was a wrecking ball that the WCA crane lofted at least 50 feet above the building’s top floor. What a noise it made upon hitting its target! More falling and flying debris. Stuff was going in all directions, though we were at a safe remove, on the other side of K.

A foreman said that the activity will be going on for several more weeks, so get down there. But take into account that the wrecking ball doesn’t start wrecking until late at night, since it disrupts traffic.

From: Susan Glasser [mailto:glassers@washpost.com]
Sent: Tue 4/22/2008 4:20 PM
To: NEWS - National
Subject: a note to the national staff

A year and a half ago, I was named AME for this section, and we set off together in pursuit of an amazing set of stories, from the earliest-starting, never-ending presidential primary camapign to the grinding war in Iraq in the twilight of the Bush era. It was a privilege and an honor to work with all of you on the tremendous coverage that ensued, all the more so because you have produced this courageous and innovative journalism at a time of great peril and handwringing over our business and our paper. And you’ve worked hard together to take on some of those challenges, whether by helping build a new political team for this most historic of elections, or making our reporting and analysis online in important new ways or by helping taking part in a major redesign of the A section and significant reorganization of an editing system that had gone largely unchanged since the waning of the transitor radio. I’m leaving to work on a new project with Don Graham but will continue to watch what happens here with great admiration and support. Many many thanks to all of you.

Susan

Several sources at the Washington Post are reporting that Susan Glasser, the top editor for national news at the paper, will be leaving her post. Glasser took over as assistant managing editor for national in late 2006 and started ginning up controversy from the very start. Underlings chafed at her sharp-elbowed, hard-driving ways, and top managers at washingtonpost.com also had difficulty collaborating with her.

This past winter, Tom Wilkinson, a senior editor at the paper, conducted a months-long inquiry into Glasser’s reign at national and found layers of dissatisfaction with her approach to motivating her people and deciding what to feature on the front page of the newspaper.

Yesterday Glasser was reportedly in and out of meetings with the paper’s two top officials, and this morning the newsroom is on fire with talk about her departure.

Details are still scarce. City Desk will be aggressively updating this story.

Sports! We all watch them. And what a weekend it was for Washington’s teams. The Caps, holding onto their postseason life, and the Wiz showing again that they’re not in the same league with the Cavs. Even though they are.

*Wizznuttz–whaddaya say about this series? C’mon, it’s playoff time, yet you fellows can’t give me a weekend update? C’mon!

*On Frozen Blog has a great meditation on the woes of Flyer Mike Knuble and the implications for the rest of the Caps series, in which the home squad is down 3-2 heading into a big game on Monday night and then–locals hope–Tuesday night.

*WaPo draws a powerful link between the local econ and one of the most environmentally devastating practice of modern times–mountaintop mining. The fundamental: Washington needs more and more power, and more and more of it is coming from coal. The coal has to come from somewhere, and it often comes from mountains whose buzzcuts make them look like “Mars,” in the characterization of an environmental activist.

*Recycling feat of the weekend: Examiner puts story on its site about how burglaries are up 21 percent in the District. Credits and links to WTOP. Go to WTOP, and find that WTOP links to and credits the Washington Post, which actually did the journalism.

*Columnist Mike Wise makes a good point about the Wiz–until and unless Abe Pollin’s team actually wins a series against this “rival,” there’s no rivalry. Just a one-sided relationship of sorts.

*Check this out on the Washington Times site: Ollie North executes hit piece on Jimmy Carter.