Over the years, we've had as much fun as any other readers when it comes to tweaking the Washington Examiner. But, really, in hyping non-existent Big Brother schemes or publishing comically slanted screeds against bike lanes that just happened to inconvenience parking spaces near the paper's office, our local right-wing tabloid was only doing its job—ie, being a local right-wing tabloid.

That identity, though, may not sit so well with certain members of the Examiner's extended corporate family. This week's New Yorker features a lengthy profile of the paper's owner, Philip Anschutz. The story focuses mainly on Anschutz's entertainment-industry exploits, notably his innovations in building stadiums, and the ways his Southern California entertainment complex has become a lightning rod in local Los Angeles politics.

The media-averse Anschutz doesn't comment in the story, but Anschutz Entertainment Group C.E.O. Tim Leiweke does. And, in one passage, he talks about the difficulties of representing a conservative mogul before an overwhelmingly liberal city government:

Although the Anschutz newspapers belong to a division, Clarity Media Group, that is affiliated with A.E.G., Leiweke insisted that Clarity is not under his aegis. "I don't need any more loss leaders. The Examiner in D.C.—not good."

The good news: We doubt he was referring to Harry Jaffe's controversial criticism of Harry Thomas, Jr.

Reports the Examiner:

Occupy DC has raised at least $20,000 since it arrived in the District in early October, according to the group. Protesters say major labor unions like the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union are among the donors to the movement, but spokesmen for both unions denied giving any cash to Occupy.
Occupy's finance committee, which oversees the account, was quickly overwhelmed with requests for money from various protesters, Occupiers say. There are 23 committees at Occupy — all of whom request funds for their activities — and Occupy spends money on everything from sleeping bags to kitchen supplies to bail for jailed demonstrators.

Last week, a man known to the protesters only as "JT" withdrew at least $5,500 from the account and disappeared.

Occupiers said JT, a finance committee member, has taken as much as $9,800 from the group. JT, who didn't respond to an interview request, wrote on Twitter that the money he took was "well-spent around camp."

There's a weirdly ironic tone to the rest of the Examiner piece—but that doesn't change the fact that this kind of conflict is to be expected.

Photo by Amagill via Flickr/Creative Commons Attribution Generic 2.0 License

Some good news for Metro workers today. Unionized employees are finally getting a long-negotiated 9 percent raise:

The dispute began in 2008 after Metro and the union reached an impasse on contract negotiations.

In November 2009, an arbitration board ruled on some issues for the union, but Metro appealed the decision. The case went before a federal judge, who ruled in July in favor of the union. In August, Metro’s board of directors decided not to appeal the judge’s decision.

Union and Metro officials said employees will get their retroactive pay in mid-October.

Meanwhile, the Examiner is ... examining why 116 employees get take-home vehicles:

All Metro employees get free rides on the transit system, but 116 of them also get to drive agency-owned vehicles home each day.

Of those, 88 mid-level managers and superintendents in the bus, rail, track maintenance and engineering divisions drive the vehicles, according to information obtained through a public records request. The remaining 28 are assigned to Metro Transit Police.

As one would imagine, 116 people is a tiny percentage of the Metro workforce (less than 1 percent, says spokesman Dan Stessel). And even if it cost $759,000 for the agency to lease all of the cars, which it doesn't since they own some of the vehicles, that's still the tiniest of drops in Metro's $1.4 billion operating budget.

It's easy to hate on Metro—we do it, too. But aside from the occasional pushy driver, most employees are just decent people trying to do a thankless job while being crushed by the weight of bureaucracy.

A 1993 Katherine Boo Post story "Class Wear: Pride, Prejudice and the Not-So-Subtle Politics of the Working-Class Uniform" serves as a wry reminder of what it was once like working for Metro:

...across the spectrum of uniformed occupations, some uniforms – police and military garb, pilots' gear — are far more equal than others. While UPS's brown shirts may top uniform dealers' list of ugliest uniforms, to service-industry cognoscenti they signify a secure job that pays real money. Ditto for the maroon cardigans of Metrobus drivers. "I've seen girls walk up and hand the driver their phone numbers when they're getting off the bus," says Killens. "That stuff never happens to me."

Hmm—maybe we should just bring back the maroon cardigans.

Photo by Christopher Jetton via Flickr/Creative Commons Attribution 2.0

One way to stop the phenomenon, at least when the flash mobs involve black youths attacking whites, is simple: Shoot at them. Or at least, that's the solution conservative black Examiner columnist Gregory Kane came up with yesterday.

Kane called out the "villainous mob of black youths" who allegedly attacked whites at a Wisconsin State Fair on Aug. 4 for being racists, as well as concocting a theory about how the mob assumed that because black athletes "dominate" the NBA and NFL, white people are "soft targets."

Getting even wackier, Kane pulls the Rev. Jesse Jackson into it, claiming Jackson's okay with the mobs because, in the past, Jackson has offered a power analysis that says racism acts institutionally, and so can only be inflicted by whites, because they're in control.

"With such a failure of leadership, is it any wonder you have crowds of young blacks attacking whites in Chicago, Wisconsin and Baltimore?" Kane wrote. "Jackson, with his words, condoned the racist practice of black mobs attacking whites."

Kane, who waves the Second Amendment whenever possible, is ready for marauding black youngsters to encounter white people capable of hurting them back:

... I guarantee you that these mobs will run into a Jack Dempsey or Rocky Marciano type one day. I hope they run into several at one time. Here's what else I hope: that the black flash mobs will run into a white or group of whites who take seriously the Second Amendment and their right to carry.

I don't often take Kane too seriously; he's a paid polemicist who pushes the same kind of sensationalistic rhetoric Ann Coulter does, except under the protection of a black identity. Black thinkers like him mine the id of white right-wingers to emerge with a scandalous argument they defend by claiming to push against racial group-think.

That's fine—I'm all for widening the public conversation, even when it makes a nerdy black leftist like myself uncomfortable. But hoping an already violent situation will escalate to gunfire, and likely, mass casualties, crosses a line.

The doomsday clamor about flash mobs a Google search currently turns up isn't unlike the clamor about "wilding" in 1989, when the city of New York was convinced that a group of 30-40 youths from Harlem had raped and beaten a morning jogger while participating in some chaos dubbed "wilding." The idea that violent teenagers were taking to sunny parks en masse likely helped usher in the controversial tenure and racially-tainted policing policies of Mayor Rudy Giuliani years later. That means flash mobs are dangerous in more ways than one.

People certainly have a right to self-defense, but hoping wrong-headed black youths encounter a hail of bullets instead of arrest is blood lust, maybe even hate, that could operate as the pretext for darker times.

Which brings up a point: If Kane is eager to expand the definition of “racist” so that it can be applied to black flash mobs, might it also apply to race-baiting black columnists?

That's because the Examiner has now assigned two Maryland and Montgomery County reporters, Hayley Peterson and Brian Hughes, to alternate their coverage of the suburbs and Annapolis with coverage of the White House. When the paper's former White House reporter, Julie Mason, left to go to Politico, editors decided Barack Obama may as well be Ike Leggett.

"We decided that Hayley and Brian had been doing such a terrific job that they were ready to take on something bigger," says editor Stephen G. Smith. "We couldn't afford to take them both out of Maryland, and we need that local coverage... We just think it's really important to show that if people do well here, we don't have to go outside the paper to bring in people who succeed in important beats."

So one week, Peterson covers 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, and Hughes covers Maryland. The next week, they swap.

"This is not a temporary thing—this is the way we're filling the White House [beat]," Smith says. "We're not looking for a White House correspondent or anything like that."

Taking on a demanding beat with lots of breaking news and the need to build sources—like either Maryland or the White House—and juggling it with a completely different job that has no overlap sounds like a recipe for overstretched reporters. Having once covered suburbs (albeit in Philadelphia), and then later covered the White House, I told Smith it seemed like a tough assignment to do both at the same time. But Smith isn't worried: "We all figure that just reorienting to Maryland, you can't help but lose the thread a little bit. We understand that."

That's because, at the Examiner, they're dealing with a whole different caliber of reporter, Smith says. "Young reporters today are so far ahead of where I was when I came out of school, because they've done all these internships and worked for extremely good college papers," he tells me. In fact, once the school year ends, the Examiner will have another new reporter starting on the local staff, in part to help offset the time Peterson and Hughes are spending at the White House.

Some Examiner staffers, none of whom wanted to be quoted complaining about the paper, have been grumbling privately about the arrangement—which, despite Smith's explanation, seems like it has more to do with budgets than college internships. After all, why spend the money to hire—and pay—a new White House reporter when you can just throw someone else into the job part time? But it could wind up looking prescient, if Martin O'Malley runs for president one day.

What Snow?: Reports filtered in this morning of commuters taking as long as 13 hours to get home from work yesterday, thanks to the snow that smacked the region just as evening rush hour got going. Which, adding insult to injury, probably meant those commuters were already late for work today by the time they got home last night. But don't try to read about it in today's Examiner—the free tabloid apparently went to press before the storm hit. (As did the Express.) News as wishful thinking! +3

Taxation Without Representation, In Person: The District government was closed today, but Mayor Vince Gray apparently counted as an essential worker, as he showed up for work. (Or maybe he was just trying to escape his cold, dark house.) Gray met with House Speaker John Boehner on Capitol Hill for the first time since Republicans took over, a day after Boehner introduced a bill to reinstate a voucher program for D.C. school kids. The meeting was closed to the press, which means no one knows if Gray made Boehner cry. +2

Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word: Pink Line Project mastermind Philippa Hughes is not easy to mug, as a would-be assailant learned last October. "Did you really think you could take me down?" she asked him at the time. Whoever her attempted robber was—Hughes won't say—apparently learned some lessons from the failed attack; he's now sent a hand-written apology to her for the attempt. Let this be a lesson to us all: Do not, under any circumstances, mess with Hughes. (We already learned that lesson here.) +1

New Metro Boss Is Old Metro Boss: Times are tough at Metro; after all, there's only so many fare increases you can get away with while service deteriorates before riders revolt. Which may be why the new contract for interim general manager-turned-permanent general manager Richard Sarles is a little less lucrative than the one the previous GM, John Catoe got. Sarles, whose contract was finalized by the Metro board today, will make $350,000 a year—up from Catoe's $325,000—but won't get the $60,000 annual housing allowance Catoe also got. No word on whether Sarles will get any subsidy to actually ride the transit system, but if fares keep going up, he may need some help, even on that salary. +1

Yesterday's Needle rating: 46 Today's score: +7 Today's Needle rating: 53

It was a good discussion, the lede turned out well, and the 12,000-word story ended up winning us a nice prize.

We don't do that stuff anymore—summoning groups of people to obsess over the fine points of storytelling. If we're lucky enough to get a long-form story from one of our freelancers, we edit it in a vacuum, in between blog posts and tweets. Hopefully it'll make sense once it hits the paper and the Web.

Oh well.

There's not much to lament here. Moving from a weekly frequency to one that refreshes washingtoncitypaper.com many, many times per day has been a blast. Perhaps the greatest input-output machine civilization has ever seen, the Web rewards news, original thought, and finely articulated outrage. When we manage to pull off any of those things, the feedback is immediate and engaging. Compare that to the grind of yore, in which we'd drop a big stack of words on the public every Thursday. Those stories would routinely "bounce like a box of rocks," in the words of a former colleague.

Of course, we still do put out a weekly paper—it's just that it rarely has that gaping cover hole and often has content republished from our Web site. Though the double-platform world often feels tyrannical, it's more often exhilarating. Anything that demands more writing, more editing, more riffing on headlines, more collaboration with the staff—that's more fun for me.

The Boilerplate Editor Farewell Letter requires at least several expressions of gratitude, and who am I to break this particular mold? So here goes.

Thanks to our readers. Without you, we wouldn't have this shaky business model that we've been trying to fix for several years now. I've closely observed you in cafes, restaurants, and Chipotle, grabbing Washington City Paper and flipping straight to the ads and the syndicated content with which my editorial staff and I have nothing to do. Yet I still love you. You are motivated, smart, clever, and hip people, though I'd appreciate it if you showed more of those attributes in the comments section.

Thanks to my sources. Yesterday marked the end of the coverage of local media under this byline. Over eight years, I've written about many local outlets, including the Washington Times, the Examiner, the Washingtonian, the InTowner, the Northwest Current and so on. The preoccupation of the coverage, though, has been the Washington Post, an outfit that's one of the easiest conversation starters in the region. In recent months, I've had numerous discussions with friends in the industry, and the feedback I get about the paper is pretty uniform: The Post has dropped to a new low, it's missing key stories, it's boring, it's [insert other pejorative comment here]. There's no question that the newsroom has lost some bandwidth via four buyouts and general attrition. Yet it remains the greatest bargain in the household budget of my family—and we are aggressive Costco shoppers. How do I reach this clinical determination? Easily: There's a stack of old Post sections sitting on my bedstand; they represent all the stuff that I didn't get a chance to read in the morning before rushing out, plus all the stuff I didn't read on the Web during work. I try to plow through them before I fall asleep at night, and I never make it through the pile. The point here is that the Post is giving me more interesting stories—coverage I really want to read—than I can possibly digest. So there.

Before I started covering the Post, I wondered how I'd get sources. A friend told me, "They'll help you," referring to staffers at the paper. He was right—Post journalists, for the most part, welcome scrutiny of their work. Despite my rantings about the Brauchli Doctrine, named for current Executive Editor Marcus, the paper remains a transparent and accountable place. To all the people at the paper who have trusted me with their accounts of internal deliberations and a fistfight, un abrazo.

Thanks to my colleagues. This is the part I really can't write without breaking down, so I gotta call it a day. Plus, it's a Friday afternoon and the audience for this thing is dying. I'm just going to post it—no updates or followups this time.

The front page of the Examiner rarely breaks form. There's usually a string of anti-Obama blather, a Redskins-in-turmoil blurb, and a big oversight story on WMATA.

Except today.

Today, the Examiner went all TMZ!

*follow me on Twitter.

Morning all. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty: Everyone knows he's had a bad year. A slip on the firetruck thing, a stumble on the pool heater, and a general haughtiness that casts doubt on his image as a champion of the everyday D.C. resident.

But does all that hurt his chances for re-election next year?

The Examiner kinda-sorta suggests that it does. On the front page of today's editions, it is shouting the news that just 30 percent of respondents in a recent poll say that the incumbent "definitely" has their vote.

You listening, Vince Gray?

From Michael Neibauer's piece: "The new poll, commissioned by the business-backed Nation's Capital Committee for Good Government, implies the incumbent's popularity has waned. Only 30 percent of respondents said they would "definitely" vote for him again, while 13 percent said definitely not, and 46 percent said they would consider someone else."

Implies? What does that mean. The problem with this piece is that there's no comparison with a previous set of polling numbers. The poll gives Fenty a 68 percent favorable rating and a 25 percent unfavorable rating. So, OK, fine—but compared to what? That question goes unanswered. Other points about the poll: It covers only registered Democratic voters in Wards 1, 3, and 6, leaving out Fenty's home base in Ward 4. It was commissioned by the Nation's Capital Committee for Good Government, a front for "downtown business interests," according to Neibauer. Those folks have never been too big on the mayor.

In a companion piece, Neibauer explains the implications of the poll for council races. The upshot? Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh, Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham and Ward 3 Councilmember Tommy Wells all appear safe.

Who isn't safe? Well, it's the same guy who's never safe. The guy who every four years has a target on his back, who the entire political class insists is vulnerable, whose days on the council are numbered. Yeah, Mendo: "At-large Councilman Phil Mendelson has the toughest road ahead, if the poll numbers are to be believed. Mendelson, who soundly defeated lawyer A. Scott Bolden three years ago, had the definitive support of only 32 percent of those surveyed. Thirty-four percent would consider a challenger, 8 percent would oppose Mendelson and 25 percent were undecided."

Examiner commentator Harry Jaffe also spins a piece out of the poll. Here's the key part: "Next most popular city official [after Fenty]? Council Chair Vince Gray? At-large member Kwame Brown? No and no. Most favorable ratings after Fenty went to schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee. The hard-charging school reformer got high favorables in Ward 3 (69 percent), Ward 6 (58 percent) and Ward 1 (57 percent)."

Jaffe also gets a laugh line out of the data: "Attorney General Peter Nickles might not want to enter any popularity contests. His fave rating was 17 percent."

Examiner's Nei-man also covers the aimless wanderings of the mayor's "blue shirts."

CHARLES COUNTY COURTHOUSE MADNESS UPDATE! OK, we advertise LL Daily as providing as much D.C. politics as "humanly possible," but recent events compel coverage of the hinterlands. Seems that a judge in Charles County may have gotten pissed enough about parking hierarchies that he allegedly deflated the tire of a car belonging to a courthouse cleaning staffer. This gem comes courtesy of the Washington Post's Ruben Castaneda: "Jean Washington, the owner of the Toyota, said in an interview that she had just entered the courthouse for her work shift when a sheriff's deputy alerted her, 'Jean, you need to move your car. Judge Nalley's going to let the air out of it.'"

Tattoo parlor entrepreneur who allegedly killed her husband will be held in jail, not in a halfway house, as her lawyer had requested.

GOOD POINT DEPARTMENT: Post editorial notes that even though Congress long ago lifted its ban on the District's paying for needle-exchange programs, language in pending legislation could have the exact same effect: "The House voted to end a 21-year-old ban and allow federal funding of needle exchange programs. It also voted to allow the District to use its own money for such a program. There's one catch: the programs cannot be located 'within 1,000 feet of a public or private day care center, elementary school, vocational school, secondary school, college, junior college, or university, or any public swimming pool, park, playground, video arcade, or youth center, or an event sponsored by any such entity.' This would render whole sections of cities off-limits."

Verizon Center not doing it for you? Well, the Washington Biz Journal is reporting that reps from Madison Square Garden LP are scouting the District for a new location. "The sports, entertainment and media company began contacting the office of Valerie Santos, deputy mayor for planning and economic development, and major landowners in early summer, according to Steve Moore, executive director of the Washington, D.C., Economic Partnership. 'They are shopping the District ... They're very interested. It's a question of finding the right spot,' Moore said."

Also on the development front: See breakdown from Washington City Paper's Ruth Samuelson on Fenty's unveiling of Northwest One, the Walker Jones Education Campus.

Here's a scoop from NC8: The District is preparing to close its Brentwood DMV facility. It'll cease operations at the end of the day Friday.

Lots of gunplay out there on a summer eve: Seven shot, one killed in less than nine hours in the District, according to WUSA-TV.

Fenty Today:

9:15 am: Remarks, Wheatley Elementary School Grand Opening
Location:Wheatley Education Complex, 1299 Neal Street, NE

10:15 am: Remarks, Chevy Chase Play Courts Ribbon Cutting
Location: Chevy Chase Playground, 5500 41st Street, NW

5:30 pm: Remarks, Convention Center HQ Hotel Bill Signing
Location: 9th and L Streets NW

Big news coming out of Daytona. I mean, Kenseth is a monster.

Good feature on the front of Washington Post Metro today about an ages-old killing in Virginia, a confession, and the aftermath. I've been hearing some grumblings of late that the Metro people are having a tough time making it to A1. If so, this'd be Exhibit A in my case to the page-placement jury.

NYT has a great piece on an inquiry into corruption on part of U.S. officials in Iraq just after "Mission Accomplished." Something about big wads of money in pizza boxes and the like. Also, this guy Burris–perhaps the best approach was indeed to send him out into the rain.

WashTimes, with the unscoop that Obama administration says stimulus key to economic recovery.

Examiner's Nei-man needles Fenty for nominating two jogging buddies to posts.

This morning, some of us volunteered to pass out our special inauguration issue at various metro stops. The issue includes a great essay on what Obama's relationship with D.C. should be, a behind-the-scenes look at some of the more obscure balls, a look at how local politicos will be making the scene on Jan. 20, among all kinds of other cool stuff. You can read it all and much, much more at our special inauguration guide page.

While the links suggest that passing out papers is unnecessary, we decided to do it as a way of getting this issue directly into the hands (or mittens) of our readers. We braved the winds. We endured the cold. We waited for our papers to arrive (they were a bit late). And we suffered through an initial indifference!

We also faced serious competition from the savvy hawkers pressing the Examiner and the Express. Those guys really know how to pass out a free paper! They had special vests. They had gloves.

What did we have? We had Obama magic. It was amazing to see how many people picked up WCP with just the mention or shout of "Inauguration Guide!" Once we started shouting "Inauguration Guide" or "Special Inauguration Issue!" it felt a lot like 1997 (pre-Internet days when people liked to read).

So thank you Obama.

We left those Examiner and Express guys in the dust.

*picture of WCP logo courtesy of DCist. Ha.

The whole shebang, including some signature comic strip exegesis, below the jump.

Trouble viewing? Try the YouTube version.

In the beginning I took my column pretty seriously, shouting out stories I'd written for other publications, and including some original content. It quickly became a slog. My hits were 200 or 300 a day, not terrible, but translating to pennies (or perhaps quarters) per day. Then, around the time of the Republican convention it occurred to me that the idiots who dial up Examiner don't want to read about Jamie Lidell or whatever, they want to read about Sarah fucking Palin. And so I began posting about her, every day. My hits went way up, well over 1000 for this Sarah Palin drinking game.

I was immediately told by an editor — a different one — that this was unacceptable, that I had to write about music only. I pushed back, noting my agreement with the first guy. But he couldn't be swayed, and since I was near a payment threshold I capitulated. I silently vowed to get over the threshold as quickly as possible, and to entertain myself in the process. And so I began to blog about nothing but Lil Wayne and boobs — Katy Perry's, mostly — in as absurd a manner as possible. Oh, and I still talked about Sarah Palin via ridiculous musical tie-ins. "Katy Perry and Sarah Palin to wrestle in Jello?" one was titled.

My hits stayed high, probably because nearly every post included a picture of Katy Perry with her tits hanging out, which were splashed across the site's front page next to headlines like "Katy Perry voted biggest boobs in music." (The first line of that particular post was, "By my friend Darryl"). After about a week of this they cut me off. My page is still up, but as of Saturday I can't post to it anymore. This annoyed me at first, but this morning I got paid so I'm over it.

Westhoff's post includes links to his Examiner posts, but they're all dead now.

* Seven years later, a Pentagon memorial is unveiled. [Via Washington Post]

* The Examiner asks if we're safer than we were in 2001.

* Via Politico: Republican foreign policy experts don't have much to say on Palin; Obama and McCain call a 9/11 "truce"

* In alterna-9/11 news, Busboys and Poets kicks off the "9/11 Truth Film Festival" this evening at 6 p.m.

* In case you missed it: Check out Brightest Young Things' comprehensive Large-Hadron-Collider-Will Kill-Us-All Doomsday coverage from yesterday, complete with stellar crying baby photo accompaniment. And via DCist: How to tell if the Hadron Collider has destroyed the Earth yet.

* And in this newspaper:

- Arthur Delaney on winning and losing rec centers

- Jule Banville on the long, slow investigation of an Adams Morgan hate crime

- Mike DeBonis on why Kwame Brown loves Love (and the Park at 14th)

- Dave McKenna on the Redskins' struggle to quit smoking

- And our arts & entertainment column, Show & Tell, meets its makers.

* Find your sex & gender roundup over at The Sexist.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery