Washington Post Executive Editor-in-Waiting Marcus Brauchli today addressed his new colleagues for the first time. In a set of prepared remarks that spanned just a few minutes, Brauchli spoke with firmness but little emotion. Everyone says that he’ll have plenty of occasions to deliver his inspirational, pump-up-the-newsroom address. When he does that, he may want to ditch the written script that he fumbled with in his opener today.

I combed my way through Brauchli’s speech in search of the most inspirational stuff. Please help me come up with a winner.

Which is Brauchli’s most inspirational moment?

1. “For me the Post has always been a beacon of what is right in American journalism.”
2. “Change is bearing down upon all of us equally, and we will all be called upon to navigate this critical passage.”
3. “With the many brilliant journalists in this room, over the water at Washingtonpost.com, and around the world—whether in Bethesda or Baghdad—and with the commitment of the Grahams, I am confident we will meet every challenge and thrive.
4. “For me personally the biggest challenge will be being measured, even in the smallest increments, by the soaring standards set by you and the leadership of Len and Ben Bradlee.”
5. “I believe absolutely that first-rate journalism will have an audience, and where there is an audience, there is a future.”
6. “I look forward to getting to know all of you.”
7. “Thank you very much.”

Votes encouraged in comments section.

Can you find it? Please scroll down to look for it. Answer after the jump.

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Over the past year, politics-oriented Web sites have attracted record amounts of Internet traffic, and the Washington Post has apparently concluded that it’s not commanding enough of it. Top thinkers at the paper are currently discussing a brand-new, semi-autonomous site that would package the Post’s politics reporting, multimedia offerings, and other stuff.

“We’re exploring whether or not it would be feasible or advisable to create a niche Web site on politics in parallel with our political coverage on washingtonpost.com,” says Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr.

Users could find it all at Postpolitics.com.

But just what they would find isn’t clear. “I don’t know what it is yet,” says Jim Brady, executive editor of Washingtonpost.com.

Whatever it is, it all bears some resemblance to a concept advocated two years ago by Post politics veterans John Harris and Jim VandeHei. They wanted the paper to have a strong and separate identity on politics, a refuge for junkies uncluttered by weather reports and stories on the region’s latest double murder. “This sounds similar to what Jim and I had proposed,” says Harris, who left the Post along with VandeHei in 2006 to launch the Politico.

The Post project may gain some clarity in high-level meetings this week, as Brady and others sprint to flesh out their options. If a new product is launched, it has to be ready in time for the conventions later this summer. The goal would be to create something with greater appeal than the site’s current politics front page, which gives the reader an inventory of the Post’s work in this realm. Today’s iteration, for example, presents a story by staff writer Eli Saslow on false rumors about Barack Obama in the country’s heartland, links to Post.com bloggers, and a display of polling numbers.

Says Brady: “The question is, basically, that we already have a politics page that kind of aggregates everything we do in politics.”

Not exactly a full-throated endorsement from the company’s Web boss. Though embryonic, planning discussions on the politics page pack all the ingredients of a classically divisive Washington Post Web venture–and help explain why Publisher Katharine Weymouth is looking at ways to mesh the D.C.-based main newsroom and the Arlington-based Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive (WPNI).

The revival of a separate politics site reportedly originated from talks on the D.C. side of the Web divide, with Weymouth and Downie insistent on exploring its possibilities, according to knowledgeable sources. A June 20 memo from national desk honchos Bill Hamilton and Rajiv Chandrasekaran drives home the point that “[t]he site has to feel new…” “It cannot simply be a version of the current politics page, now also called Post Politics.”

In seeking uniqueness, Hamilton and Chandrasekaran propose a great deal of same-oldness. Their outline of the site advocates, for example, “News and analysis…”; “Emphasis on our best political enterprise stories”; all kinds of archival functionality; “More photography…”; “Video–with an emphasis on quality and exclusivity over quantity”; and, my favorite, “Interactivity: Regular chats and online interviews with newsmakers.”

The memo’s indirect slight toward washingtonpost.com lies in the history: Many, if not all, of the specified functions are things that the dot-com troops long ago instituted, in some cases over the protests of the newsroom staffers.

And its direct slap-in-the-face to the Web site comes in this passage: “Many of WPNI’s resources are currently tied up in their re-design. We need their best designers on this project. That did not happen with The Trail….,” reads the memo, referring to the online campaign diary launched last summer.

The memo’s weirdest part states that the Post is a “late entrant into this field.” What field would that be? Semi-autonomous news sites by the paper of record in Washington, D.C.? Coverage of politics? Having a Web site? Writing?

Who knows. What is clear is that the Post has choked on campaign 2008. Though departed top national editor Susan Glasser put together some nice pre-primary candidate profiles, the newsroom has come up short on the sort of scoop-driven coverage that would do more to drive traffic than any fancy Web apparition. Too often the Post has been scrambling to follow its competitors.

And not just on the news-breaking front, either.

Around the time that operatives at Albritton Communications were working on the launch of Politico, they went on something of a bender in terms of registering domain names. Along with purchasing all kinds of URLs relating to Politico, a staffer at the paper’s Web-hosting outfit had the bright idea of registering Postpolitics.com.

The Post Co. found out months later about this instance of legal identity theft. At first, says a source, the Post people said they didn’t particularly want the name. Later, they said they did.

After some negotiating with the the Albritton/Politico folks, the Post paid around $20,000 to secure its very own franchise.

By now stories of Iraq War vets and PTSD have become incredibly common. I mean USA Today was running stories on the mental anguish of returning soldiers three years ago. There is now an Iraq War PTSD clinical guide. The guide is in its 2nd Edition. This just means that a new story on the subject will usually produce a big yawn from the serious reader. Frank Rich recently noted that most Americans view the war as all but decided: it was a mistake, bring the troops home, etc. All this just makes this weekend’s Post story titled “Treating Wounds You Can’t See” by Linda Blum that much more amazing. Her story is one trend story that enriches rather than dulls. Blum, a psychologist who went to Fort Dix as a civilian contractor, began treating returning soldiers for PTSD a few years ago. Her access translates into a great read.

Blum’s story takes us to a riveting, maddening place—one a reporter just could not tell. Some of it is even morbidly funny: “This soldier remains in immense distress, like many of the people I treated who needed to grieve for lives they had taken in combat. Once, after he killed at least nine people in one week, he experienced acute anxiety and depression and was taken off work for a week. “They had me pet a dog,” he said.”

And then there’s this type of warmed-over journalism Ambien: the Post’s discovery that gee West Virginia is leaning deep red while Virginia is turning blue. Alex MacGillis’ dutifully dissects the trend but this is the type of dull story that the cable chat shows would dismiss in a quick segment. Everyone knows VA is trending for Obama–you don’t need to be Chuck Todd to know this is one musty piece!

You want a killer trend piece? You’ll find no better trend story than the New York Times’ Sunday entry on Obama supporters “adopting” his middle name–something Fox News never seems to fail to mention–out of solidarity:

“Jeff Strabone of Brooklyn now signs credit card receipts with his newly assumed middle name, while Dan O’Maley of Washington, D.C., jiggered his e-mail account so his name would appear as “D. Hussein O’Maley.” Alex Enderle made the switch online along with several other Obama volunteers from Columbus, Ohio, and now friends greet him that way in person, too….“I am sick of Republicans pronouncing Barack Obama’s name like it was some sort of cuss word,” Mr. Strabone wrote in a manifesto titled “We Are All Hussein” that he posted on his own blog and on dailykos.com.”

Judging by a google search, this is one trend story that’s going to stick around!

This morning a City Paper staffer walked into my office ridiculing this morning’s WaPo Metro feature about toenails. He said it looked like a lame story, typical empty daily feature fare.

I’d read it at breakfast and liked it quite a bit. What I liked more than the story itself was the amazing photo presentation by Sarah L. Voisin. NEVER before has the front of Metro looked so inviting, mold-breaking, and all that other good stuff that design experts talk about at journalism conventions. Whereas the old and tired convention with a toenail-painting story would have been to take a shot or two of a woman getting the nails painted, Voisin, here, just took tons of pictures of painted toenails, and the layout people arranged them like a lei around the story text. It was stunningly good.

But not on the Web, goddamnit! I just spent a good ten minutes on the Post site trying to find the story. Nowhere on the homepage, so I went into the Metro page; I clicked through twice on the Metro “more stories” thingie before giving up. I refused to do a search, because a visual treatment that good shouldn’t have to be fetched online. I also refused to click on the “Day in Photos” box because it fronted a shot of gray horses, not my toenails.

I mean, when you have two boxes on the homepage dedicated to Wall*E and nothing to original content as good as the toenails, someone’s gotta be pissed, even if it’s just me.

The news that Washington Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. gave to his newsroom just a half-hour ago barely qualifies as news at this point. As has been suggested, intimated, reported, and gossiped about for months, Downie is stepping down from his post.

The timeline, however, is something of a shocker: Downie will vacate his post effective Sept. 8, at which time the new executive editor will take over. Downie was to announce to his staff today that Washington Post Publisher Katharine Weymouth would announce his successor “soon.” No telling whether that announcement would come before the 4th of July holiday or after. Conventional wisdom within the newsroom has long held that the changeover would never occur before the fall elections. Downie says that the break between the conventions, which he’ll attend, and the fall campaign provides a convenient time for the transition.

The move, says Downie, “was a mutually agreed thing” between himself and Weymouth. When asked whether his opinions are weighing on the search for a new top editor, Downie replied, “In all things dealing with the present and future of the newsroom, Katharine and I have worked closely together and I’ve enjoyed the relationship.”

Like his predecessor, the legendary executive editor Ben Bradlee, Downie, 66, will move into something of an emeritus position at the paper, with the title of Vice President, At-Large. The position is unpaid, says Downie, but comes with an office and other perks. He’ll keep his assistant of more than 20 years, Patricia O’Shea, who figures among the paper’s most beloved workers.

OK, but what’s he going to do?

A lot, if you take his word for it. First comes his novel, The Rules of the Game, which will be published in January. He’s also got another novel “in mind” and is pondering a nonfiction tome of some sort–probably a memoir about his times at the Post. Teaching and researching, too: Downie says that he wants to explore opportunities in academe. “I will try to do whatever seems feasible and reasonable in a less-than-full-time job of seeing the news media through this transition,” he says. That’s a strange role for someone who’s leaving his job to let a younger leader do the same thing at the Post, but hey.

In his 17 years helming the Post, Downie has hauled in 25 Pulitzer Prizes, an astonishing tally considering that the paper, over more than a century, has a total of 47. Yet when asked what his biggest accomplishment is, Downie goes straight for sort of vanilla-flavor quote that he’s been giving to media reporters for decades: “The newspaper has grown in its content and its relationship with its readers on the Web as well as in print. It is really a leader in accountability journalism,” he says.

Of the Pulitzers, Downie is particularly proud of the three Post projects that won the lofty public-service awards: A series on the D.C. police department’s record of shooting people; a series on the D.C. government’s management of group homes for the mentally retarded; and last year’s series on the treatment of soldiers and Marines at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. In all three cases, says Downie, the stories brought about change in their respective spheres.

Downie started at the Post 44 years ago yesterday–in other words, long enough to see a lot of things go right and wrong. He looked on, for example, as the paper, under Bradlee, published Janet Cooke’s fabricated story about a boy living in the District.

Unless something goes terribly wrong over the summer, Downie will take off with a record unblemished by such scandal–a feat more stunning than his Pulitzer count. While the New York Times was sliming itself with scandals and misguided coverage ranging from the Jayson Blair fabrications to the Wen Ho Lee coverage to the John McCain-has-a-close-friend-who’s-a-lobbyist embarrassment, the Post was motoring along with a bulletproof news report, day in, day out.

The biggest embarrassment that I can recall from the Downie years was when the Metro page reported that a 7-year-old girl had driven her unconscious father to the emergency room. In fact, she hadn’t. That happened about 10 years ago.

The critics may say that Downie ran a boring paper fixated on federal wonkdom; that he never quite got Style; that he didn’t innovate on the Web; that his paper wasn’t flashy enough. But try running a newsroom of 800 or 900 journalists for 17 years without bringing shame on the profession. In a profession where it’s so easy to err, that’s a towering achievement.

We’re hearing from sources at the Washington Post that Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. has called for a paper-wide staff meeting today at 4:30. Gee, I wonder what this could be about?

We’ll keep the updates coming.

Well, summer is upon us, and so is seasonal journalism at its best and worst. In recent days, the Washington Post has done a raft of these old standbys, including the one about the guy who built his own baseball stadium, the one about the lifeguards from ex-Soviet republics (rip-off of this story?), and the one about the last day of school.

So that’s what the Post has been up to. Over at the Washington Times, those folks don’t have the resources to cover the seasons quite as exhaustively. So they do other things, like this piece on the EU from the AP. I must confess to great troubles making my way through stories on the EU, but this one is different; it’s about the EU’s action freezing the assets of Iran’s biggest bank. This could signal a critical turning point in the EU’s relations with this rogue state and send ripples throughout the Western alliance, such as it is. Or perhaps it’s just another act of bureaucracy–only time will tell.

But one thing about the Washington Times‘ presentation of that EU story: Has anyone out there mentioned or pointed out that this great new site is a bit too much? I mean, check it out. It’s too much black space, with altogether too many bells and whistles attached. If you’ll recall, this is the site built by the great Interneterian Roger Black. Credit WaTi with signing up the best in the biz, but in this case the best in the biz may have gone just a bit too designy on us. Check it out for yourself.

One of the most versatile talents of the modern Washington Post has been talking with Publisher Katharine Weymouth about running its newsroom. David Von Drehle, who left the paper in 2006 for a post at Time magazine, has interviewed with Weymouth, according to two Post sources, and has written a memo on how to guide the paper through these difficult times.

When asked for a comment on the matter, Von Drehle did not deny his candidacy but declined to elaborate on his discussions with Weymouth.

Earlier this spring, Weymouth launched a hush-hush search to replace longtime Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. Among other top candidates for Downie’s job are current Post Managing Editor Phil Bennett, former Wall Street Journal top editor Marcus Brauchli, and Jonathan Landman, the Web boss for the New York Times. Landman’s candidacy was reported earlier this week by Politico.

During a 15-year career at the Post, Von Drehle worked as a national correspondent, the top editor of the Style section, and a magazine writer, in addition to other postings. He was master of what’s known at the Post as the “Haynes Johnson” story–that is, the broad-brush analysis piece that mixes writerliness and thinkiness to the day’s top news story. He’s also an accomplished author of books, including Triangle: The Fire that Changed America, about an historic blaze in New York’s Greenwich Village.

Weymouth’s search is a sprawling thing, involving talks and breakfasts and lunches and coffees with many of the leading lights in journalism. Discussions with nicely credentialed people can harden into something resembling an interview process. The first stage appears to be a one-on-one with Weymouth plus a memo on the Post; the second is more formal, involving a trip to the paper and interviews with the ranking people on the commercial side, including Bo Jones and Steve Hills. The third is serious shit–talks with Downie and perhaps Chairman of the Board Donald Graham.

Thus far, at least two people–Landman and Brauchli–have made it to the Downie stage. Von Drehle has made it to the second, according to a Post source. It’s not clear where Bennett stands in the vetting.

Weymouth didn’t respond to a list of questions on her editor search. One of those questions concerned dates. Though informed sources say the publisher is working without a deadline, other informed sources say things should go pretty quickly from this point. In other words, who knows?

The job candidates sound like job candidates when called about the interviews. No comment, it wouldn’t be appropriate, I’m sorry–those are among the refrains. Nor are the candidates too eager to be spotted commuting from office to office at 15th and L. Landman, for instance, wanted to sneak in and out of town but made the mistake of having breakfast with Downie at the Hay-Adams Hotel, which doubles as an off-site cafeteria for the New York Times’s Washington bureau.

Dean Baquet, the Times’s D.C. bureau chief, happened to be there at the same time. Busted!

Yeah, so the weekend featured some good stories, including the essay in WaPo’s Outlook section by Washington City Paper alumnus TaNehisi Coates on the role played by his father in his early years; Joby Warrick has a scoop on some pretty lethal stuff obtained by smugglers; all kinds of stuff on Obama, everywhere you look; and then there’s this insufferable NBA Finals.

But really: This is Washington. And a Washington without Tim Russert is a tough thing to contemplate. Howard Kurtz on Saturday had a great piece on the guy’s life and his contribution to political journalism and NBC. TV critic Tom Shales, too, had an appropriately overwritten piece to contribute.
As for the broader reaction, it’s wall-to-wall tributes for this god of TV journalism. Tributes here, tributes there, tributes all over the place.
The loss is a really tough thing to get your head around. Here was a guy at 58 who certainly showed no sign of slowing down. Loved the game as much as ever and was producing the same, high-caliber reporting and interviewing as ever. Sure, he knew he had issues with his heart, but he’d had a stress test in April and had done fine.
It’s been reported that “cholesterol plaque” ruptured one of Russert’s arteries. Turns out that one of the drawbacks of stress tests is that they don’t detect this kind of plaque.

It looks like the Washington Post/Redskins feud could be impacting the copy at the sports page.

The last two Skins features by beat reporter Jason La Canfora, against whom the Redskins have mounted a juvenile PR campaign, have been incredibly kind to the organization. The stories have heaped attention on new personnel guy Morocco Brown’s great fabulous attitude and Clinton Portis’ new great fabulous attitude.

The only hint of negativity in the pieces, and clearly the stick-out line in each, comes when La Canfora makes sure readers know Vinny Cerrato, the team’s GM-on-steroids, has put him on his ignore list: “Cerrato, who declined requests to comment for this story…” and “Cerrato, who declined to comment for this story…” respectively.

The disclosures read less like a reporter’s due diligence than an announcement: “Hey, everybody! Vinny won’t talk to me even when I’m blowing him kisses!”

And now I can’t wait to read La Canfora’s next feature…

Photo by Tavallai

I pity the parent who must turn to Laura Sessions Stepp to form an educated opinion on freak dancing. “What should we think about freak dancing?” a parent asked Stepp recently. Do I note a trace of self-deprecating humor in Stepp’s reply—”What, indeed?” Even Laura Sessions Stepp must know that she can’t be the authority on getting freaky. I mean, check out this line:

… I, too, have been wondering what to make of kids and teens grinding their bodies together to the sexually explicit lyrics of hip-hop or rap, in twos, threes and chains of four or more. [Emphasis mine]

What follows is an exploratory column on the effects of “freak dancing” that confirms my darkest fear: Laura Sessions Stepp is not joking. In a rare window into Stepp’s mind, we find that she really has been thinking about kids and teens grinding their bodies together to sexually explicit lyrics. (Just add scare-quotes around “hip-hop” and “rap.”) Let’s see what she comes up with.

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One of the better corrections I’ve seen in a while, from today’s Post: “A May 31 Metro article about the Scripps National Spelling Bee misspelled last year’s winning word. The correct spelling is serrefine.” —Mark Athitakis

Two out of three ain’t bad, for Meatloaf or John Scheinman.

Scheinman says he’ll ride with Denis of Cork in the Belmont Stakes on Saturday, not Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Big Brown.

The Washington Post’s turf writer has done well for himself betting against prospective Triple Crown winners.

Scheinman says that in the 2004 Belmont, when Birdstone beat Smarty Jones, to that point an undefeated colt and the feel-good story of this era of racing, he cashed a Pick 4 ticket worth “about four grand.”

Barbaro’s breakdown in the 2006 Preakness gave racing a feel-bad story for the ages. Scheinman had some financial help getting over whatever wounds the episode caused him: Barbaro’s finishing out of the money meant Scheinman’s triple ticket was “worth over $3,500.”

So, while everybody else will throw money at Big Brown, Scheinman’s $2, give or take a few zeros, will be on Denis of Cork.

“You’ve got to visualize the alternative reality,” he says.

Speaking of big paydays and alternative realities, why hasn’t the Washington Post hired Scheinman, instead of paying him a freelancer’s wage while working him like a staffer, after all these years? The buyouts must have freed up a slot or two.

Sunday’s Washington Post had a hilarious Iraq editorial.

Even the headline is laugh-out-loud funny: “The Iraqi Upturn: Don’t look now, but the U.S.-backed government and army may be winning the war.”

And the chuckles keep coming! Someday, humorologists will regard yesterday’s piece as the Post’s most knee-slapper-friendly editorial since the one in 2003 headlined “Irrefutable” — that was written a day after Colin Powell’s guffawish U.N. routine about weapons of mass destruction.

All these years later, it’s still hard to keep a straight face while reading all those Powell punchlines.

Sunday’s satire has inspired over 400 comments on the Post’s website already. Many of those are really funny.

Really.