David Von Drehle is a former Washington Post editor and staff writer---one of the paper's towering figures. He left the paper in 2006 for Time magazine but is always worth consulting about things that go down at the Post. I asked him for his take on the Allen-Roig-Franzia fracas and got quite a few thoughts. I was going to pick and choose some things to quote, but there's no point in filtering this stuff:

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In December came the execution of Sunday Source. Now Book World. At the same time, top editors are taking aim at duplication, yielding a fun little brouhaha over "Appreciations."

None of it surprises. Ever since classified sales essentially absented themselves from the Washington Post, this type of haircut/retrenchment/gutting was inevitable. I really liked Book World, on those rare Sundays when I had time to read it. I don't miss Sunday Source but appreciate it for what it was: An effort by a well-funded newspaper to solve a demographic problem by, hey, just launching a new section. There'll be more casualties throughout the year. (See Washington City Paper's re-org plan)

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