For the few of you who hadn't been tracking this calamity, consider this: One of Saslow's stories appeared on page A08.

Unspeakable. Prior to this slight, Saslow had placed 15 consecutive pieces on A01, stretching back to June 2009. The streak was broken, just for a second, with a piece that appeared on the front of the Style section. Then the A01 sauce starts flowing again, all the way back to President Obama's inauguration.

Saslow works in a rarefied spot at the Post—its national enterprise team, a place peopled by Pulitzer winners like David Finkel and Anne Hull. "Enterprise" means that you work longer on your stories, seeding them with some narrative and investigative elements. If they don't land on A01, you're in trouble.

Saslow didn't particularly want to answer questions about his relationship with the front page, which was all the more reason to force him to:

City Desk: Is there something in your contract that says all your stories have to appear on A01?

Saslow: No, man. I mean, I guess I have luckiness in my contract.

City Desk: Do you have a contract?

Saslow: No. Do any journalists have a contract?

City Desk: What is the agreement, then?

Saslow: I don’t know, man. I guess I feel like I owe it to the paper to get a decent number of my stories on A1, since I'm given so much time and space to produce them.

City Desk: Were you pissed when you landed on A08?

Saslow: No, I was decidedly not. That story is my new No. 1 clip.

City Desk: What about your streak? You worried about that?

Saslow: No, I have not kept track of my streak. What I keep track of is anxiety about not being in the paper or just anxiety about wanting to be in the paper. A1 is great, obviously, but I also think there are now a million other measures about whether a story is popular....There are plenty of measures by which I can fail.

City Desk: After that whole A08 thing, did you think you’d ever land back on A01 again?

Saslow: I don’t know, man. I was just hoping to write again. The A8 [thing] really did not bother me. I didn’t even know what page that story landed on.

City Desk: How do you get along with the folks who spend a lot of time on A02 through A20?

Saslow: I mean, I hope I get along with them well. I am sure that I will end up spending a lot of time on page A2 through A20, and probably that time will start when this blog post runs. I hope this blog post runs on page C96.

We've had a raft of news this past week, and stellar coverage of everything thrown our way. It started Monday with an early evening Metro crash. Anchored by Lena Sun and Lyndsey Layton, but with dozens joining in, our newsroom delivered swift, enterprising coverage instantly for the web and into the next day's paper. Throughout last week the staff stayed with the story, surfacing some of the best accountability reporting against a highly competitive field. When Mark Sanford took to the podium for his bizarre confessional, the National staff jumped in with coverage that was as colorful as the calamity itself. And when Michael Jackson died unexpectedly, right at deadline, we rose up again, this time with Style in the lead. Yesterday's paper was The Washington Post at its best, crowned by Eli Saslow's poetic masterpiece, a narrative intricately and emotionally woven together from the tireless efforts of many. The photographs and design were as compelling as the story.

Sports is now due. Perhaps a winning streak by the Nationals?

Anyhow, there was some pretty good journalism getting tossed about on this holiday weekend. The Washington Post's Eli Saslow went to Texas to monitor the GWB post-presidency and came back with all kinds of details, including an account of a dinner with the Bushes and neighbors, the efforts of some Boy Scouts to penetrate the former prez's cocoon, and the usual template about how Bush gets up early, goes to the office, keeps in touch with former administration officials, etc. I'm guessing the piece weighed in at about 3,000 words.

So how did the New York Times manage to fit more into a piece one fraction of that size? Because it had one key detail: Dick Cheney isn't coming to an anticipated administration reunion. Gotta say that the Cheney bit was worth a lot more than the fact that George and Laura don't like to cook too much.

Post's Tim Craig on how D.C. is going all liberal all of a sudden.

AP goes into some detail on the Chandra Levy–Ingmar Guandique case, talking about how the thing is riddled with holes. This is one of those stories that rests on, like, "former prosecutors" and various experts.

Missed the blossom? BYT has got you covered.