Life is coming full circle for best-selling author Michael Schaffer. "The first story I wrote at Washington City Paper, I was living with my parents at the time," he says. "I think I'll be staying with them again during this transition, although I better ask them first."

The 36-year-old D.C. native and City Paper alum, currently living in Philadelphia, was named the paper's new editor on Monday. (Schaffer and his family will be moving back to the D.C. area as soon as he can find a place, or gets sick of riding Megabus, or whichever comes first.)

"I'm sort of over the moon right now," Schaffer tells City Desk. "City Paper was the first job I ever had and the most fun I've ever had at a job. I cherish the place."

His appointment plugs a nagging gap at the top of the masthead left by former editor Erik Wemple's departure in March.

Schaffer, who previously worked as a reporter and senior editor at the paper from 1997 to 2000 (before slumming it at U.S. News & World Report and, later, the Philadelphia Inquirer), met with editorial staffers over lunch last week, a powwow he described as encouraging.

Schaffer says one early priority will be filling some of the holes caused by a spate of previously announced staff departures, including several City Paper stalwarts, such as managing editor Andrew Beaujon, senior writer Jason Cherkis and Loose Lips columnist Mike DeBonis.

"A lot of really good people," Schaffer says. "But I also see it as an opportunity to bring on board some people who I feel comfortable with, and who the staff feel comfortable with ... who have strengths that I might not have."

In accepting the post, Schaffer will be taking the reins of an almost entirely different beast than the one he left a decade ago. But he's just fine with that.

"In my life, I tend to not believe in going back," Schaffer says. "One of the things that is most exciting to me about it is, even though it is still Washington City Paper and some things are the same, a lot is really different and it's a very different organization that I'm taking over. It's a multi-platform media organization. I'm not one of these nostaglic people who's trapped in the Why Can't Everything Be Just Like It Was in 1984 kind of mentality. I'm really keen on making the paper, as well as the web site, as excellent as they can be."

Herewith, the official press release from company headquarters:

Washington City Paper Welcomes Noted Journalist Home As Editor

(April 26, 2010, Washington, DC) – Michael Schaffer, a DC native, best-selling author, and an editor and writer whose assignments have taken him from Afghanistan to Adams Morgan, has been named editor of the Washington City Paper.

City Paper Publisher Amy Austin, in announcing Schaffer's appointment, called attention to his previous experience in Washington, including three and a half years at the City Paper as a reporter and senior editor from 1997 to 2000.

"Michael honed his journalistic talent at City Paper and then went on to further develop his skills at US News & World Report and the Philadelphia Inquirer," Austin said. "We are so pleased to welcome him home as our editor."

As editor, Schaffer will have overall responsibility for the content of the Washington City Paper, one of the nation's best known urban weeklies, and its website. The City Paper was founded in 1981 as an alternative to the traditional press. It focuses its coverage on life and politics in the nation's capital.

Last year, Schaffer's first book, "One Nation Under Dog," a critically acclaimed examination of America's mania for pets, was published by Henry Holt & Co. Schaffer spent two years on the project, which combines investigative reporting, narrative journalism, and cultural history.

Previously, Schaffer spent four years as a reporter at the Philadelphia Inquirer. In addition to coverage of local politics and corruption, he covered the 2004 Presidential election and spent time in Iraq. Knight-Ridder Newspapers recognized his Iraq coverage with the James K. Batten Excellence Award in 2003

Schaffer joined the Inquirer from US News, where he served on the national and world news staff from 2000 to 2002. He was dispatched to Pakistan for the fall of 2001, and also reported from a dozen US states, covering the 2000 Florida recount, poverty issues, and scandals in the Catholic Church.

Schaffer's freelance work has appeared in Slate, The New Republic, The Daily Beast, The Washington Monthly, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, New York Press, Obituary Magazine, Philadelphia, and Men's Journal.

"I grew up reading City Paper, and later got my first job in journalism there," Schaffer said. "Back then, we printed a paper weekly; now, we also update a website 24/7. I'm incredibly excited about tackling the new media landscape while using the values I learned here at the start of my career: Curiosity, fearlessness, humor, and a deep knowledge of the city we call home."

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Washington City Paper is one of six of America's leading urban weeklies owned by CL Inc. The group also includes the Chicago Reader, Creative Loafing Atlanta, Creative Loafing Tampa, Creative Loafing Charlotte, and Creative Loafing Sarasota. CL Inc.'s holdings also include websites associated with those newspaper properties, the Straight Dope (straightdope.com) and Listen.com sites, and the Digital Advertising Network.

Photo by Ryan Donnell

6. Following the lead of the Washington Post, link less. The effectiveness of this strategy came through for the daily during the Great Snowball (Gun)Fight of 2009, at which an off-duty D.C. cop got out of his Hummer and drew his weapon for no reason other than his vehicle had been hit with snowballs. Rather than link to existing video and photos that clearly showed what happened, the Post ran an inaccurate and incomplete story quoting a load of bullshit from police. Because, you see, to link is to lose. If only we here at City Paper could be so Web savvy.

Stay tuned to City Desk for the rest.

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:

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.

In a youth conference today at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, Gerald said that his staff was "the wind beneath my wings."

That wind, indeed, has generated some altitude for Gerald. Via the hard work of CFSA employees, Gerald cut the backlog of CFSA cases from 1,800 ten months ago to zero by December 2008. His agency also had a 25 percent staff vacancy rate, which he has slashed to four percent—more wind beneath his wings!

Gerald made clear that his agency still has some tough numbers to fight. Sixty percent of the kids in CFSA's care are 13 and up. Though clients have complex problems, Gerald insists they "have a right to a future." One of his primary objectives is to reduce the amount of home-hopping that the kids do. "Too many children are shuffled around in too many placements," he said. "Every time they move, we injure their future."

Reporting by Jason Cherkis

Happy Wednesday, D.C.! You might remember City Paper's kind-of-a-big-deal Inauguration Photo Contest, whereby we elicited "dope" photographs from readers across the land. Two weeks later, we announced the winners. Recently, we even decided to send the winners their super-special swag, inspiring fourth-placer Aziz Y. to photograph his pooch in our delightful knit cap (above right). I think Beaujon's was more of a statement, natch (above left)—but hats off to Aziz and his BFF, regardless.

Newsier stuff below the jump.

*In (much) more somber canine news, the Post reports that a District Heights boy is in critical condition after being mauled by a pit bull yesterday morning. Prince George's County EMS said the boy's face and eye wounds are "not considered life-threatening." It's a sad story with a weird twist:

Officer Evan Baxter, a spokesman for Prince George's County police, said county animal control had taken custody of the pit bull. Any pit bulls born after Feb. 3, 1997, are illegal in Prince George's, Baxter said

Anyone know why that is?

*The New York Times has some admirable coverage of the man-trips-over-pet trend. Looks like dogs get the short leash on this one:

The data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that while we sometimes trip over our cats, dogs are the primary cause of pet-related falling accidents.

*Speaking of pooches, Farm Fresh Meat has some thoughts on the Washington Humane Society's fundraiser this past weekend. (His headline, "Val Kilmer To Save Cats And Dogs, Get Drunk," pretty much sums it up.)

*And in this very paper, Jason Cherkis has written an excellent cover story on the March 21 triple homicide in Northeast. Nothing to do with dogs, and definitely not an April fool's joke. Just damn good reporting.

Staffwriter and Obaman Jason Cherkis reports he's been walking for two hours and is not happy about his progress. He's at M and 19th Streets and trying to get home to Mount Pleasant. Cops and "army dudes" (going to go out on a limb here and say they were Army National Guard soldiers) are giving people bad directions "because they don't know the city" and, at one point, one man in cammo "threatened us with pepper spray." Cherkis said the man said, "We have cops and they have pepper spray" and also shouted, "Soldiers! Man your posts!"

Old people were stranded. People walked up and down Independence trying to find a way out.

"They dumped a lot of people in Southwest, which isn't the easiest grid to master," says Cherkis, who had a good spot at 3rd and Independence during the ceremony. He left right after Obama's speech. Since then, he's found crowds and security to be less than orderly. People are "off-roading it" wherever they can, he says.

Cherkis, losing his sense of hope, appears to be gaining a sense of crankiness.

Flickr photo by justpat

Last week, Wikipedia rolled out its first-ever Frank Winstead spread, which includes a précis of the glorious "Connecticut Avenue ping pong battles of 2008."*

In profiling the former ANC Commissioner's one-man crusade against rapscallions, racket sports, and most known forms of fun, Wikipedia draws significantly on the intrepid reporting of Amanda Hess, whose "Frank Winstead Gone Wild: The Recordings" post includes incendiary audio from the ANC meeting in question.

Wikipedia:

The extraordinarily well-attended hearing became quite raucous when Winstead accused [Comet owner] Alefantis of "trying to turn this into Adams Morgan with the murders, the rapes..." and questioned him whether he had ever spit in a customer's food.

The wiki-article closes with a bang:

All through this matter, Winstead has refused to respond to reporters' inquiries. On June 23, 2008, Washington City Paper reporter Jason Cherkis and videographer Ted Scheinman attempted to visit Winstead in his apartment at The Brandywine. Winstead again refused to speak to them.

No mention of the unusual bird that attempted to escape through Winstead's jealously guarded front door. Perhaps the anonymous wiki-author never watched our "Confronting Frank Winstead" video, after all.

*Their terminology, if you can believe it.

Ping pong photo courtesy of mknowles

Photograph by Darrow Montgomery

Delaney Projections Done Right:

I thought of all my friends from one end of the country to the other and how they were really all in the same vast backyard doing something so frantic and rushing about.

—Jack Kerouac, On the Road

ANC 6B08 is one of the District of Columbia's great bellwether jurisdictions. Long known as Barney Circle or east Capitol Hill or just plain "D.C., man," 6B08 is the land of low-slung town homes, down-to-earth political activists, and well-kept front lawns, not to mention the occasional astro-turfed front stoop. Sandwiched among RFK Stadium, the campus of the now-defunct D.C. General Hospital, and the more prosperous western Capitol Hill, 6B08 is a proving ground for politicians across the city–a dynamic that makes it a particularly critical ANC race in 2008.

What Delaney has going for him:

• Youth
• The element of surprise
• Clean pants

What Delaney doesn't have going for him:

• Nothing

— Will Atwood Mitchell, Ted Scheinman, Erik Wemple