With all of the changes happening in journalism, it seems to be a good time to opine and report about the media. Plenty of blogs and bloggers do so brilliantly, but so do a few hearty souls in traditional outlets. A quick brainstorm session brought forth a list of high-profile names: Romenesko and Beaujon, yes. But also, The Daily Beast's Howard Kurtz, NYU's Jay Rosen, the Maynard Institute's Richard Prince, plus four more City Paper alumni: Reuter's Jack Shafer, the New York Times' David Carr, former New York Observer media beatster Tom Scocca (now at Deadspin) and the Post's Erik Wemple.

Aside from Prince, all of these people are white men. It's generally accepted that diversity (geographical, economic, gender and race) bring differing perspectives to the newsroom and can enhance coverage. That's why journalism has been fighting (and some could say, losing) a battle for greater diversity for decades.

Beaujon has a theory for why white men are so prevalent in the field: "Media criticism, which is a fly-in-the-soup job, is fundamentally an alt-weekly pursuit, and alt-weeklies' DNA is heavily white and male. In turn, I have a couple theories about that, but my working one is that it's because working at such places gives white males such as myself a chance to feel like an underdog for once in our lives."

I think he's onto something. Alt-weeklies—including the one you're reading right now—are super white. And this particular alt-weekly has at various points employed half of the critics listed. (Maybe the real problem is diversity at City Paper? Hmm.)

At any rate, reporting on longtime acquaintances, colleagues, and even friends, can be a pretty rough business no matter what your demographic background. A willingness to be frequently unpopular—something all journalists have to learn to deal with, though usually not within their cohort—is definitely part of the description.

But maybe more importantly, the ability to criticize probably comes a bit easier for folks who don't ever have the question, "Should I even be here?" hanging over their heads as they look around a room and don't see anyone who looks like them. To that end, it seems highly unlikely that media criticism will diversify until newsrooms do.

Staffers at TBD.com, launched with great fanfare by Politico's parent company last summer, were informed one at a time this morning by editor Erik Wemple that significant layoffs were on the way, and then told whether they were among those laid off. At least 12 staffers, and possibly more, will lose their jobs. Wemple (who left a job as editor of Washington City Paper to go found TBD) is not one of them.

"TBD will become a niche site on arts and entertainment," Wemple says. "We are building out a big new presence on WJLA.com."

The layoffs, according to two staffers, eliminate the site's sports staffers, and will also take away most, if not all, of its news staff. Though TBD's editorial-staffing policy eschewed hiring into traditional beats like city hall or courthouse reporters, it had staff assigned to blog, tweet, and do longer stories about topic areas, including several regional neighborhoods, as well as local pedestrian life.

"They're laying off half the staff," says a TBD staffer who requested anonymity to discuss the changes. "Pretty much all the news people."

After a launch that was praised as visionary by journalism professors and others who spend their days pondering the troubled industry's future, TBD had a harder time becoming a must-read for ordinary news consumers—a perhaps inevitable challenge given the size of the D.C. region and the website's genesis in a merger between Allbritton's well-established WJLA-TV and its new web property.

TBD founder Jim Brady left after three months. Several weeks ago, it was announced that WJLA manager Bill Lord would be given authority over both his station and the website. At the same time, officials announced plans to give WJLA its own website and strip the TBD branding from Allbritton's local News Channel 8 cable station.

"I still have concerns about whether it’s going to exist at all in a year, because I don’t think a lot of the public pronouncements they’ve made have born out over time," Brady tells City Paper. "It was pretty publicly stated when we started that we had a three to five year runway... We’ve gotten some pretty good buzz. [The site] hasn’t been perfect, but there’s nothing that’s happened since we launched that would suggest the massive changes that are being made are really necessary."

The change also means the end of TBD's community-engagement effort, which, at least in the early days, saw the site cultivating relationships with a network of local bloggers via regular bar-room get-togethers. Some of the news-side people may be able to keep working for WJLA, but they will have to re-apply for their jobs.

"They’re saying it’s financial. That, basically, they don’t see the lines crossing any time soon," says a staffer.  The logic, though, baffles those who came in with the understanding that Allbritton would be patient with its novel new property. "We all came here under the expectation of that widely-quoted 'three-to-five year' ramp."

Several sources described a funereal scene this morning in the website's Rosslyn newsroom, which TBD shares with Politico, WJLA, and the freshly rebranded News Channel 8. Several staffers appeared to be in tears.

Does this picture make you sad? I call it Last Robin of Spring

One time in an edit meeting, Erik Wemple said I'd make a terrible profile subject. Drawing a line on a piece of paper, he put me at one end and Jonathan Rees at the other. Rees was too nuts, he said (paraphrasing here) and I was too boring. The ideal City Paper subject, he posited, straddled the center of this continuum. He was right about all three things, so I'll try to keep this goodbye brief.

This is the best job I've ever had. I choose that superlative carefully. Here, I've been privileged to work with the best reporters and critics, the best photographer, the best co-workers, and the best stories I've ever known. I came here from magazines, where fact-checkers sweep up behind writers whose primary talent is being good at parties. I took my first correction not long after landing and realized I had learned next to nothing about journalism in the previous decade. The joy of this job isn't turning out product reviews between languid lunches, it's telling stories well and getting the details right, week after week, day after day.

Here I learned to despise trend pieces and Q&As, but more important I learned that often the best way to tell a big story is through a small one. I learned that puns don't work as headlines on the Internet (just try searching for an old District Line EVEN IF you know the jokey hed! (e.g.: 1, 2). And I learned the importance of chronicling crushed dreams.

Like this one! After City Paper was purchased by Creative Loafing in July 2007, it became a different place. We lost half of our staff to budget cuts, and those and the recession let the air out of many of the paper's cherished traditions–great copy-editing and general-assignment writers, for example. For a while, we mourned. Then we started finding the humor in the situation (some people never got the joke, which to me is the hallmark of a good City Paper comedy piece). Then we tried to figure out what we could do well given the circumstances. Results have been mixed, but Internet-wise, I'm proud of where we stand in relation to our early attempts.

I'm going to miss this project, you know, the one where we keep trying to figure out how to inject the alt-weekly DNA into what's now a daily, vertical-driven publication. And I'll miss the bike commute (new office is too close to my house). But mostly I'm gonna miss the people I worked with, even the ones who sometimes made me bash my head into my screen. For all of you, here's another anecdote from a meeting: In a plenary session, one person who has managed this company said that life was like a crap sandwich. The more bread you have, he said, the less crap you have to eat. I wish my coworkers, their sharp new editor, and the people on our business side nothing but bread.

I will stay in touch with them, but it'll be harder to stay in touch with the readers, who I love in a way that may not always be apparent to those of you who've called to yell at me. (Except the guy who screamed for 27 minutes and threatened to "expose" me after I said I didn't know why our receptionist had trouble transferring me his call: You, pal, can kiss my ass.) Now I'm gonna become one of you, which is more comfort than one usually gets in a goodbye. I'll miss the view from this side of the WordPress interface, but I can't wait to see what the people with the best job in the world do next.

"I get it if Wemple doesn't want to read about my kids," Dvorak writes. "That's fine. Lots of readers also don't want to hear about homeless teens when I write about them, either."

Dvorak casts Wemple's blurb as an assault on the very act of writing about children.

"The fact is," she writes, "the business of raising humans is an inextricable part of our daily world, whether we're parents or not. And, too often, we shun writing or even talking about it because our workplace culture doesn't want to hear that every coin has two sides. "

I don't think Wemple's point is that she shouldn't write about her kids. His point is she's not that great at it. But you read the item and decide. The Post, of course, doesn't provide a link to the piece she's writing about.

Good morning.

So, in no particular order: Marion Barry is "truly, truly" sorry. Erik Wemple is leaving City Paper. Dick Cheney has had another (!) heart attack. And more snow could be on the way!

Speaking of Barry's apology, some people think poems are a good way to express regret. For example, the Web site perfectapology.com offers the one below, explaining: "This poem works well in a situation where you've been a little stubborn and haven't been able or willing to acknowledged your wrongdoing." That is perfect!

Three words, eight letters, so difficult to say.
They're stuck inside of me, they try and stay away.
But this is too important to let them have their way.
I need to do it now, I must do it today.
I am sorry.

Unknown Author

Speaking of Wemple, where did DCist get that picture of him wearing a tie?

Speaking of Dick Cheney, Wonkette says "he didn't die so you all can make fun of him."

But seriously. Speaking of snow, did you know that the District's Online Snow Removal Tracking Tool has been recognized as one of the best in the nation? I'd direct you to the press release, in which Chief Technology Officer Bryan Sivak is quoted as calling the Snow Map "just one of many examples of how the District has leveraged technology to make city services more efficient and helpful for our residents," but the link there from DDOT's home page is broken.

Luckily, I received a copy in my electronic mail.

A website that monitors creative government initiatives has confirmed what many District residents already know: the city has one of the best online tools for tracking snow removal efforts. OhMyGov says the DC Snow Map, provides a “snow mountain of useful information” and is ranked a close second [Editor's note: behind only Spokane, Wash.!] in a review of government snow removal websites across the nation.

So, basically, D.C. has an awesome tool to track how awful it is at snow removal? The press release goes on:

In the period between January 29 and February 15, which included back-to-back blizzards in 5 days, 40,071 users logged on to snowmap.dc.gov to track the snow plows. Traffic on the site peaked on February 8 when 7,804 people used the tool, and February 11 when 7,473 people logged on. [Editor's note: Admirable traffic indeed, even if all 40,071 logged in screaming, 'Where's the freaking plow?']

And so. Happy hump day.

Big news: Gilbert Arenas' Twitter account has been disappeared! Yesterday, we provided a "Time to Last Tweet" clock (Arenas had made it more than a day and a half). Now, go to his page and you'll get only, "Sorry, that page doesn't exist!" Lawyers! His Web site remains intact.

Less big news: It snowed—not a lot, but enough to freak out (get your forecast from the Capital Weather Gang here).

The Washington Examiner got the words "Love Child" on the front page of the paper. Never in a million years would I have predicted the words "love child" and Peter Orszag (as in the director of the Office of Management and Budget) would be uttered in the same sentence. But there you go. Joel Achenbach over at the Washington Post put it this way: "The office of OMB has just become the office of OMG."

Want to read a great police story? It involves a few too many shots of tequila, a lost laptop, a burly cop with dreadlocks and a diamond earring, and a secret hat signal. (For some reason, when I saw the word "Extortionist" in the headline, I read it as "Exhibitionist," so I kept waiting and waiting and waiting to get to the part where someone took his clothes off, and that never happened. But it's still a great police story. I must have had yesterday's naked jogger limerick on the brain.)

Something else to read: a post on City Desk yesterday by Editor Erik Wemple about whether Washington City Paper should delete abusive/offensive/nasty comments. Don't miss the chance, people: Comment!

One other thing to think about when you have nothing else to think about: How long is it acceptable to say, "Happy New Year"?

Plans for the weekend? Try the No Pants Metro Ride 2010. Sunday. 3 p.m to 5 p.m. Important instructions:

****The Mission****
Arrive at C Street Park for a brief meeting.
At the designated time / location – remove your pants!
Act completely casual or unknowing that your pants are missing.

Don't miss it!

Photograph from the No Pants Metro Ride Facebook page

Prepare yourselves for all kinds of anti-Islam vitriol in the coming days and weeks; stuff that will likely dwarf anti-teabagger sentiments and provide some sort of twisted justification for prolonging our military's stay in Iraq and Afghanistan.

-On a more upbeat note, Will Wilkinson maintains that Maine was just a hiccup:

"My new dog groomer has a husband. He told me so Tuesday afternoon. We live in Iowa where, since April of this year, a man can legally marry a man. Since May, it has been possible in Maine to do the same. Or it was until Tuesday, when a slim majority of Maine voters chose to repeal their state’s new same-sex marriage law. Some conservatives are elated. Over at National Review, Maggie Gallagher was dancing a jig. "The People have exercized [sic] their veto. This is huge. I am so happy," she gushed. But traditionalists shouldn’t be so happy. Because this is not so huge. My dog groomer still has a husband. And marriage equality is coming back to Maine."

-Erik Wemple's "Final Thoughts on Allen v. Roig-Franzia" is a worthwhile read, and not just for the gratuitous cock-sucking references.

- The National Journal reports that the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a leading conservative think tank which prides itself on rejecting any sort of government approach to environmental preservation, is in the red:

But this year, amidst economic turmoil, contributions are down 15 per cent and the group is running a deficit of roughly 10 per cent, Smith told National Journal's Under The Influence. That comes to about $450,000 worth of red-ink–though some sources suggest the hole may be deeper. Smith says the group's reserves have cushioned the loss and that he has seen an uptick in fundraising recently.

This kind of financial upset isn't just common in the think tank community–the American Enterprise Institute, home of the Iraq War, faced calamity earlier this year–it also gives layers of meaning to the phrase "currency of ideas."

-To bring us back full circle, The Agitator has the link to a series of ACLU video profiles of "Gitmo prisoners detained, tortured, and then released without charge." Proving, once again, that sick shit begets sick shit.

*UNWANTED SLUMBER PARTY: WTOP reports that a Georgetown student discovered a strange man in her bed yesterday morning. The G'town Cuddler strikes again? Police aren't sure:

"She screamed, he fled, and detectives responded," says D.C. Police Commander Matt Klein, "and subsequently took a report for a second degree sexual abuse."

The only description detectives have is the man had a scruffy beard.

*ALONG THE SAME LINES: WUSA9 has the story of Richard Abner Simon, who is being charged with "Felony Indecent Liberties" after being accused of exposing himself to a 10-year-old girl in Arlington.

*WASHINGTON POST WRITES GRAF ABOUT INTERVEW SUBJECT TWITTERING ABOUT WASHINGTON POST INTERVIEW:

Kaitlyn [Maher], one of the top 10 finalists on "America's Got Talent," who has an upcoming Disney movie and debut album, was still very much a 5-year-old. Already, though, her Twitter account read: "kaitlynmaher Is looking forward to 'Washington Post' reporter visiting tonight to do an interview with her! :)."

*...and Rebecca Armendariz of the Washington Blade takes the Post to task for its NOM "puff piece." To wit:

Did everybody read the Washington Post's puff piece on the hate-spewers at the National Organization for Marriage that ran on Friday? The one that basically said, "Hey gays, we're going to not only run this sunny portrait of a bigot, but also plaster a photo of him and his lovely wife across the top of the page!" The one with the headline, "Opposing gay unions with sanity and a smile"?

*TONIGHT'S CITY LIGHTS PICK: Traffic at AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center. As Erik Wemple observes: "Stress is the essence of Michael Douglas." Also, special prize for anyone who can answer the following: Why does AFI use the British spelling for "Theatre" but the American spelling for "Center"?

Photograph by Flickr user striatic, Creative Commons Attribution License.

Why the whole world loves/hates the Washington City Paper, Michael Jackson's immortal soul, and some Friday zen, after the jump.

• Howie "the Howitzer" Kurtz sums up what Gawker called a "beautiful" cover thusly: "...it pushed the journalistic envelope with a three-word phrase in the cover headline, which was posted online Tuesday. The phrase–which can be rendered here only in sterile, Starr report-like language–is a colloquial term for an act of oral sex performed on a man. The headline sparked a wave of angry calls to the alternative weekly, complaints from a handful of distributors and charges of racism from Barry supporters yesterday." One of those offended was this lady, who, for lack of a name, we will call "Pinker Bell." Word around the office is that Pinker Bell lit into Jason Cherkis' ass over that cover (that blurry thing to the right is Cherkis). Is that funnier than the cover itself? YOU DECIDE! Editor Erik Wemple makes an appearance and defends the decision really well (seriously). Only problem with Kurtz's column: "City Paper trumpeted its cover online as a "collector's edition"–a bit of a joke, since all of its 72,000 copies are free." Actually, if he cared to look inside the front cover, he might've seen that we doubled the newsstand price (DOUBLE-FREE) for this special collector's edition.
• NEXT: Is Michael Jackson in Heaven? All the MJ coverage made me gag, but this Daily Beast hypothetical by the guy who writes all those religious pocket books considering Jackson's soul is just too good to pass up: "God’s pity aside, Jackson exhibited behavior one doesn’t expect from the heaven-bound, from his alleged drug addictions to his accused pedophilia. Still, those don’t automatically exclude him from paradise, says Chris Seay, the pastor of Ecclesia Houston and president of Ecclesia Bible Society. “We shouldn’t be surprised to find someone like Jackson in heaven,” he says, calling attention to biblical passages like Matthew 7:21-23. “Jesus makes it most clear that we will all be surprised to see that the beautiful and upstanding people we thought were ‘locks’ for heaven did not make it in, and the people we thought hell was created for might have the largest palace on our golden street.”" My take on Seay's philosophy is that to get into Heaven, we should all commit a sex crime right before we die; groping your Hospice nurse should do.

• And now a video for your summer, courtesy of Cinco products:

For the second year in a row, contributor Jeffry Cudlin won the arts criticism category for his work, which this year included the following: "Pine of the Times" about the Martin Puryear retrospective at the National Gallery of Art, "Sheet Smart" about the Christo and Jeanne-Claude exhibit at the Phillips Collection, and "Pain by Numbers," a wrap-up of what D.C. museums did and didn't offer in 2008.

Editor Erik Wemple won first place for media reporting/criticism with his cover story "One Mission, Two Newsrooms" about the Washington Post's struggle to bridge the cultural and geographic divide between its print and online operations.

In the elusive "innovation/format buster" category, the cover story some loved and others hated—"Washington City Paper Files for Chapter 86 Content Bankruptcy"— also took home first-place honors. The piece by Wemple, Managing Editor Andrew Beaujon, and Asst. Managing Editor Jule Banville was written and presented in the form of a legal document spoofing both the changing nature of City Paper's journalism and and the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by our paper's owners, Creative Loafing.

Creative Loafing's Atlanta paper received second-place honors in the feature category for the first-person account, "Sober," by Thomas Wheatley. The Chicago Reader, also our sister paper, received two second-place awards. Ann Ford was so honored in the arts feature category for "Life Without a Script" and columnist Ben Jarovsky's "The Works" was named in the column (political) category

The AAN Awards are open to its 130 member papers. Most of the altweeklies in U.S. cities (plus a few in Canada) enter the contest each year. This year, the top all-time AAN Award winner, the L.A. Weekly, led the pack with four first-place awards. In the 14-year history of the awards, Washington City Paper has won the second-most overall awards in the top-circulation categories: 51.

On to the day's business.

• Tom Morello has a new album out. The eponymous Street Sweeper Social Club features someone even more politically incoherent than the joker who sang dirges for the UAW while mainlining Sony's green: Boots Riley of the Coup. If you don't know anything about the Coup, then congratulations, you don't listen to shit! Like Morello, Riley is a delusional tool. Unlike Morello, he never found a way to turn his band into a major-label commie megaphone. Morello has come a long way since huffing tear gas at that Miami free trade protest–despite evidence that free trade has lifted millions of people out of poverty and that tear gas is bad for you. His promise that he would do something outrageous during the Republican National Convention was overshadowed by people who actually did outrageous things during the Republican National Convention. If Street Sweeper Social Club is his idea of a revolutionary followup, well, I'm not one to call him out. The album has some funny lyrics thanks to Riley, who could've gone places if he wasn't so caught up in trying, at various times, to start race and class wars. Is the album worth the money? No. But if you're hellbent on listening to their radical leftism–and no, radical isn't over the top: these dudes advocate domestic terrorism against wealthy folks–download that shit for free. (It's revolutionary! Fuck capitalism!)
• In case you missed it, Housing Complex Day occurred/was/happened yesterday. Nothing was good enough for Walter Gagliano. Head honcho Erik Wemple harassed interviewed folks outside of Home Depot. With Darrow Montgomery beside him ("not in front of or behind" him), Jason Cherkis interviewed the kind of salt-of-the-earth people who make people like me feel guilty for bitching about ANYTHING. And that's not even the half of it. Seriously, spend a little time perusing yesterday's coverage at the Housing Complex.

The Association for Alternative Newsweeklies announced finalists for its annual prizes today, selecting Washington City Paper as a top contender in four categories: Photography, Arts Criticism, Media Reporting/Criticism, and Innovation/Format Buster.

Staff photographer Darrow Montgomery, who's been shooting for City Paper for 23 years, is among the top three entries for the highest circulation category (50,000 and over). This is the fourth time Montgomery will be honored by AAN. He was given honorable mention for his work in the 2008 awards.

Galleries writer Jeffry Cudlin, who won the top prize for arts criticism last year, was again named a finalist for 2009.

Editor Erik Wemple was named in two categories. His cover story about the Washington Post's struggle to merge its print and online operations, "One Mission, Two Newsrooms," is a finalist in the Media Reporting/Criticism category.

Wemple also contributed to the finalist in the Innovation/Format Buster category, "Washington City Paper Seeks Content Bankruptcy," along with Managing Editor Andrew Beaujon and Asst. Managing Editor Jule Banville.

The Village Voice takes home the most nominations this year with nine. Our sister papers were also nominated. Creative Loafing Atlanta is a finalist for Feature Story for a first-person piece, "Sober," by Thomas Wheatley; the Chicago Reader's Ben Joravsky is a finalist in the Political Column category. Entries from 57 papers made the final cut. Winners will be announced at the annual AAN convention on Friday, June 26, in Tucson.

Only one other paper, LA Weekly, which has a grand total of 68 nominations, has received more AAN awards than Washington City Paper, which now has 51.

Finalists for the Blog category have not been announced.

Pictured: One of Darrow Montgomery's nominated photos, which appeared with Ruth Samuelson's cover story, "Truce and Consequences," about a turf war in Shaw.