ANNOUNCEMENT

I am pleased to announce that Marcus Brauchli will become Executive Editor of The Washington Post, effective September 8. Marcus brings a wealth of experience, both as a journalist and as an editor, that will help us navigate the new world of media – honoring and building on the standards of journalism blazed by Ben Bradlee and Len Downie – and move us forward to a new and bright future.

I will introduce him tomorrow, Tuesday, at 11 a.m. in the newsroom downtown and you will hear from him directly.

Marcus will oversee the editorial operations of both the newspaper and washingtonpost.com; Jim Brady, Executive Editor of washingtonpost.com, and Phil Bennett, Managing Editor or the newspaper, will report to him.

Marcus was named Managing Editor of The Wall Street Journal in April 2007. As Managing Editor, Marcus oversaw the Journal news operations, both in the U.S. and internationally. He led the integration of the Journal’s print and online newsrooms and put an emphasis on breaking news and dynamic content online and while focusing the newspaper on original or exclusive news. He also oversaw planning for a new luxury lifestyle magazine that will launch this coming September.

Before becoming the Journal’s managing editor, Marcus was a deputy Managing Editor at the Journal. In that job, he led the newsroom team that redesigned the newspaper that launched in January 2007. Earlier, as Global News Editor, Marcus oversaw the redesign of the Journal’s Asian and European editions. He was also closely involved with the 2005 launch of the U.S. Journal’s Saturday edition. Before that, as National Editor, he helped guide the Journal’s coverage of two U.S. presidential elections; the stock-market downturn and corporate scandals of the early part of the decade; and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, for which the Journal – its offices damaged and evacuated that day – won a Pulitzer Prize.

Marcus’s career at Dow Jones began in 1984, when he joined the company as a national copyreader for AP-Dow Jones News Services. Later that year, he became the agency’s Hong Kong correspondent, covering Hong Kong, China, Taiwan and the Philippines. He moved to Stockholm in 1987 as Scandinavia correspondent for The Wall Street Journal Europe. He became the Journal’s finance and economics reporter in Tokyo in 1988. In late 1992, Marcus returned to Hong Kong as Asia correspondent. He reported extensively from India, Pakistan, China and Southeast Asia, before moving in 1995 to Shanghai as the China Bureau Chief.

As a reporter, Marcus reported and wrote on a wide range of social, political, economic and finance news. Among the stories he covered were the sweeping economic and social changes that have transformed China in the last two decades, the fall of both the Marcos and Suharto governments, financial crises in Japan and Asia, and sectarian strife and political change in Pakistan and India.

Marcus is a native of Boulder, Colo., and a graduate of Columbia University. He was a 1991-92 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and led or participated in Journal teams that won two Overseas Press Club awards and two citations for excellence. He is on the board of directors of the Overseas Press Club and the International Center for Journalists, and is an advisor to the Knight-Bagehot Fellowships program at Columbia. He also is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Marcus is married to Maggie Farley, UN Bureau Chief of the Los Angeles Times; they have two daughters, Aria (8) and Zoe (6).

Please join me in welcoming Marcus and his family to Washington and to The Washington Post.

The Washington Post’s Shankar Vedantam has a killer angle today on the D.C. handgun ban: An old study found that D.C.’s suicide rate dropped off big time soon as the city enacted the ban in 1976, because handguns make it real convenient for a guy to shoot himself when he gets a suicidal impulse. I highly recommend the article.

This past Thursday, to prodigious applause and a minimal throwing of old fruit, the City Paper launched its 2008 Fringe & Purge blog.

Ever since, we’ve been positively inundated with questions, compliments, and offers of a decidedly salacious nature. Rather than responding individually, I’ve decided to offer some answers right here, for all to see.

After the jump:

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This is what anarchy sounds like.

(Click link for several representative minutes of the zooms and bangs heard throughout Petworth all night long on July 4, recorded from my porch.)

During the sets I was able to watch (1, 2, and 5) of the Wimbledon men’s final—which the media instantly dubbed a classic—I kept thinking about how sportswriters were going to handle something so big, so heart stopping, so beyond the ordinary. Federer and Nadal were already rivals when they stepped on the court. But their rivalry seemed to break down depending on court surface. If it was clay, expect Nadal to thump Federer. If it was grass or hardcourt, expect Federer to triumph. Granted, last year’s Wimbledon final was a fiver-setter. But this was…different. There were the three rain delays, the impossibility of Federer actually coming back from two sets down. And as John McEnroe said on the air during the fifth set, both players did not appear tired. This was an….instant classic.

So can I be disappointed by Liz Clarke’s lead in her Post story? After all that drama–the longest match in the history of racket sports, sports with balls, and sports played on grass–Clarke opts to jumpstart her story with the relief. Nadal kissing some royals and taking his trophy out for a stroll to sign autographs. Beatlemania reference in the second graph. Yuck.

FYI, Nadal has a blog.

Here’s my nominee for best gas-prices-are-so-insane story of all time: CP alum Elissa Silverman’s Post piece on thieves siphoning fuel from area cars and stealing gas from area stations. One Virgina man has been charged with stealing $50,000 worth of gas: “Police said that Phillip Harris, 23, had an electronic device that enabled him to turn on the pumps at the Woodbridge gas station after hours and that he sold the fuel to friends for half-price.” Wow.

Thank you Prince of Petworth for capturing on video what your neighborhood does better than any other: celebrating July 4th by setting off assloads of illegal fire works. Myself and some pals took a driving tour of your visuals after the dull festivities on the Mall ended. And, man, Petworth residents came through big time. The police seemed more concerned with traffic flow or just weren’t around. Men, boys, families were setting off major works on just about every street off Georgia Ave, on various school grounds, at street corners, etc. Some were more organized then others, lighting off their fireworks with lit flares, using a push broom to clean up their burnt works. We also saw several old-time residents sitting lawn chairs to watch the illegal stuff. It was awesome and scary awesome.

First off, the good news is that it looks like Brian Beutler is going to make a full recovery. Beutler, a local blogger, was shot early yesterday morning in Adams Morgan. He’s at the hospital, getting regular visits from family and friends.

I got a few more details from the police report about what happened. Beutler and a friend were walking west on Euclid toward 17th Street when they were approached by two young men, who demanded their cell phones. Beutler’s friend said “you’re kidding, right?” and one of the muggers said “get the gun.” The other boy took out a small, silver handgun (probably a 25) and shot Beutler three times, in the left shoulder, left side and lower back. When police arrived they canvassed the area, looking for two 16 to 17-year-old boys, “with negative results.” The incident occurred near the middle of the block, so it was probably not within the sites of the crime camera.

The Washington Kastles, the city’s new team tennis outfit, are still telling ticket buyers that Serena Williams will be playing three matches with the squad next week, starting with Tuesday’s home opener on the site of the old DC convention center.

Who thinks that’ll happen?

If Serena whups underdog Zheng Jie in today’s Wimbledon semifinal, she’ll be in London through the weekend.

Prediction: The word “fatigue” will pop up when revised lineups are announced for the Kastles’ Tuesday match-up with something called the Boston Lobsters.

According to the Kastles schedule, that’s the only home date Serena will be playing this season.

Luckily for the Kastles, Serena’s not the only team member in the news these days. Justin Gimelstob’s been very media friendly.

Jury duty is no joke. You sit. You wait. You suffer boredom or Ken Burns overload. But still. You have to do it. It’s like voting, changing your MD tags to DC tags, and reading Loose Lips. I confess: A few years back, I kinda ignored my jury duty invites. I know I failed to RSVP until after the deadline. But recently, I did show up for my federal court jury time.

Apparently, 100 residents failed to show up for their Superior Court experience. Today, the hammer fell pretty hard on these 100 no-shows.

According to the D.C. Superior Court press release:

“D.C. Superior Court Chief Judge Rufus King III announced today that he had issued bench warrants for nearly 100 people who had failed to appear on their date of jury service, and had not appeared before him at a ‘show cause’ hearing that was scheduled for them to explain their absence. Those for whom bench warrants have been issued are subject to arrest at any time, and will then be detained by law enforcement until they can be brought before a judge….

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Dan Snyder’s cheerless theme park chain, Six Flags, will debut a cheerleading squad, the Thrilleaders, at its New Jersey outpost on July 4.

Six Flags boasts that the Thrilleaders are the first official cheerleading squad ever put together by an amusement park company.

Snyder’s operation hasn’t had much to wave pom-poms about lately.

Not with the company’s stock crashing to a buck a share during Tuesday’s trading.

And word getting out that Dwight Schar, one of Snyder’s Redskins partners and a member of Six Flags’ board, began dumping two million of his Six Flags shares last week.

And, um, Saturday’s decapitation of a teenage visitor to Six Flags Over Georgia by the Batman rollercoaster.

But, long before the Thrilleaders came about, Six Flags already had an unofficial cheerleader: Some guy named Rick Munarriz of the stock tout site Motley Fool.

Yesterday, as Six Flags stock (SIX) was continuing its descent toward double figures, Munarriz had the stones to write that “the chain is clawing its way back” and made yet another pitch for Six Flags stock.

Wha?

Munarriz’ previous Six Flags writings have been just as full of bullishness. For whatever reason, he’s been touting the company since shortly after Snyder took over, when SIX was trading at more than $10 a share.

He’s never let the near-total collapse of SIX get in the way of his cheering.

Last June, in a post headlined “Six Flags Rocks Around the Clock,” Munarriz hailed several moves Snyder’s management team had made, and was particularly taken with the partial purchase of Dick Clark Productions from Red Zone LLC — a bizarre transaction that essentially amounted to one of Snyder’s private equity outfits (Red Zone) making a $40 million sale to one of Snyder’s public equity outfits (Six Flags).

In any case, Munarriz called Six Flags’ acquisition “brilliant.”

On November 2, 2007, Munarriz posted a column headlined “Four Stocks That Should Quadruple Soon,” and included Six Flags in the mix. As of yesterday, Six Flags stock had lost more than two-thirds of its value since that post.

Brilliant.

Keep the dial right here for all the breaking news in Snyder’s Six Flags soap opera.

As reported last month in the Examiner and DCist, the city is working on a plan to force intercity buses to do all their loading and unloading on 10th Street SW, just a short walk from the L’Enfant Metro stop. The move would inconvenience the burgeoning trade in yuppie bus rides between New York and the District, a service provided by BoltBus, Megabus, and DC2NY, among others.

DC2NY doesn’t like the idea and has started lobbying its own passengers to lobby the D.C. government to kill the plan. Please take a look at the company’s appeal after the jump, but we’ll abridge it for you anyhow.

DC2NY is essentially saying that ITS bus stops–at 20th and Massachusetts Avenues NW and at 14th and I Streets NW–don’t cause traffic blockage or other inconveniences. Also, it argues that a L’Enfant loading site is inconvenient for its passengers and dares to imply that such a site would be unsafe.

I can see where the bus company is coming from–nobody wants their business plan uprooted by a bunch of bureaucrats. But its arguments border on the offensive. Who could possibly argue that 10th Street SW isn’t a convenient location? It’s served by Metro and all kinds of bus lines. Whenever I’ve needed to get to Dulles for cheap, I’ve easily found my way down there to hop on the fabulous 5A bus.

The safety argument is worse: Since when is L’Enfant plaza a hive of murderers and stick-up artists? This is salaryman central, a place where NASA feddies work on their fiscal year plans, where people park to check out museums on the Mall. I mean, how much safer can you get than the federal Department of Transportation?

Go SW depot!

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You may notice a few changes on City Desk this morning: avatar placeholders in the comments, new formatting on the footers of blog articles and in the sidebar, etc. These are due to a much-needed upgrade that took place last night.

The avatars are not currently enabled, since we’re still figuring out how to handle user profiles across our blogs. This is something we want to do, but we’re working incrementally to get the infrastructure in place. The present upgrade was intended to close a few security holes in our Wordpress software and get the publishing interface up to date. Some snazzy new front-end stuff will follow, but there are no major changes in that area today.

Questions? Comments? Gripes? All are welcome.

So I have some travel plans for the weekend of the 4th, and I was wondering what the weather would look like in Corinth, N.Y. Turns out we’re looking at some cloudy skies and temperatures that’ll hover around 80 degrees or just south of that mark. If I were to bag out on my colleagues and stay several days beyond the weekend, I’d by styling: Thursday, July 10 in Corinth will be sunny and 81, the perfect summer day.

But who believes in these 10-day outlooks?

Will D.C. really be 89 with scattered T-storms on July 10?

After months serving as interim Attorney General, Peter Nickles finally gets the mayor’s nomination, as expected. But he still lives in Arlington, here, so far as I can tell from Nexis:

Apparently this Rosslyn condo compound has a nice view of the fireworks. Maybe Nickles is just waiting ’till after the Fourth.

The gun ban is history. Reason has a link to the Heller ruling here.