More hard times ahead at the Washington Post, which you may recall is the money-losing newspaper division of the Kaplan test prep and for-profit education empire. This morning, editors sent staff a memo offering a voluntary buyout, at least the fifth since 2004. All the staff reductions have apparently taught the Posties a lesson in efficiency; editor Marcus Brauchli reports that the latest cuts "won’t affect the quality, ambition or authority of our journalism. We believe this is possible, given the changes in how we work and the great successes we have had building our digital readership lately." As denizens of a smaller newsroom than in the past ourselves at Washington City Paper, we're curious to see how that works out for the Post.

UPDATE: Postie and former City Paper and TBD.com editor Erik Wemple has more details from the meeting the paper held to discuss the buyout offer. "We did feel there were coverage areas where we could afford to absorb reductions," Brauchli told staffers. "In general we want to maintain a strong newsroom across all of our core areas." What are those core areas? According to Jim Romenesko, "National politics, National enterprise, National security, Foreign, the Sports columnists, Capital Business, the Style critics, digital designers, graphic designers, Outlook and Weekend." What that list doesn't include? "Business, Metro, the Magazine, Style, news designers and copy editors on the Universal desk." Only staffers in the latter group of departments are eligible for the buyouts. Post ombudsman Patrick Pexton says the paper is looking to eliminate 48 jobs out of about 200 eligible positions.

Which means the Post doesn't consider local news coverage a "core area" for the paper anymore.

Read the full memo announcing the buyouts below:

To the staff:

Today, we are announcing that we will offer a voluntary buyout to some Newsroom employees. Our objective is a limited staff reduction that won’t affect the quality, ambition or authority of our journalism. We believe this is possible, given the changes in how we work and the great successes we have had building our digital readership lately.

To preserve that momentum, we do not intend to offer this program to every department or individual in the Newsroom. The reality is that we’re able to absorb staffing changes better in some areas than in others. In those departments where we do offer the buyout, there will be caps on the number of people who can participate, in order to moderate the impact and preserve our competitiveness in core coverage areas. In addition, we may turn down some volunteers if we feel their departure would impair our journalism. That said, it is important that we achieve real savings.

The exact details of the buyout, technically a voluntary Separation Incentive Program, will come later, after the company talks to the Guild about its proposed terms. Here’s what we can tell you now: The program does not accelerate pension benefits. It will include enhanced separation payments and company-paid COBRA (health insurance) premiums for eligible fulltime employees. Post representatives will be discussing the proposed program with the Guild over the next two weeks, consistent with the terms of the labor contract. The terms they agree on also will be included in an offer to Newsroom editors in eligible departments.

This program will be available for a specified period of time only; employees will have 45 days to study this offer and decide whether to accept it or decline it. The Post will schedule the final date of employment for those who elect to resign as part of this program; for most employees this will mean a resignation date of May 31, 2012.

Any measure like this is difficult. But we believe this approach is a sensible and effective way of addressing the economic forces affecting our industry. We constantly rethink how we do certain things in order to become more efficient, agile and competitive; this will require more such thinking. The Post’s Newsroom remains formidable, and we will continue making tactical hires so that even as we get smaller, we get stronger.

We plan to distribute SIP packages to eligible employees in a few weeks. We will have two Town Hall meetings today, at 11 a.m. in the Community Room and at 4:30 p.m. in the Auditorium, to answer your questions.

Marcus Liz Shirley Peter

When asked if his decision was motivated solely by the pull of the Times, the 31-year-old Appelbaum responded, "I have loved working here. It's been a tremendous place to work. It's incredible in one journalism life to work at both places."

Appelbaum got a plum of a job at the Times. He'll be working an enterprise post on business and economics, from which he'll be able to "dig in deeply" on lots of issues. Not that the Post didn't afford him some enterprise moments as well: "I've had some enterprise opportunities here," he said.

The departure is a tough blow for Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli, a biz-reporting veteran who has taken a personal interest in the reporting churned out by Appelbaum and his cohorts on the nat-biz beat. Brauchli didn't respond instantaneously to an inquiry about what significance Appelbaum's departure may hold for the Post.

The possibility that Brauchli and Quinn could have BlackBerried their way through this embarrassing episode, however, isn't going to stop the Washington City Paper Reenactors from putting their own spin on things.

So much for the Brauchli Doctrine!

Moving to the subject on the minds of all those who pay too much attention to the Washington Post, Brauchli e-mailed City Desk a statement saying the following about Quinn's execrable column, "The Party": "Sally and I have agreed that the column will return to what had been its original focus on faith, family and entertaining and will appear online at "On Faith," a section of washingtonpost.com that Sally guides."

So, the wrapup:

1) The column is killed from the print edition. That's not to say that if Quinn gins up an incredible piece, it won't appear in the dead-tree version. But at the Washington Post, at least, a move to online-only counts as a significant demotion.

2) Sources consulted on the matter indicate that Brauchli wouldn't have taken kindly to the column if he had reviewed it before its launch. He likely would have killed it. But the Post has long given a nice amount of leash to its section editors—in this case, Style co-honcho Ned Martel, who was utterly unreachable on this matter today, as was Quinn and many others.

3) The column was originally supposed to be something that focused on holiday cheer. As Quinn put it in her opener back in November: "I originally thought to do a column for 'On Faith' called 'The Sacred Table' about entertaining. When you think about it, there is a sacred quality to the sharing of a meal. Just think of Jesus's last supper as an example. The table can be a kind of altar, with a cloth, candles, wine and bread. Every religion has some kind of 'breaking of bread' associated with its rituals and traditions. Many Christian denominations even call the bread itself 'the host!'"

Somehow, the thing survived into the doldrums of January and the squalls of February—just long enough, in other words, for Quinn to lay down an enormous turd that'll eventually get mentioned in another story about how the Post has lost its way.

Today in The New Republic, Gabriel Sherman takes a long look at what the subhead calls the "messy collapse of a great newspaper," the Washington Post. There are some great moments in there, like when Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli kills a spider in the car of Katharine Weymouth, the Post's publisher.

Strangely, though, Sherman's Twitter feed has a lot of things that didn't make it into the story, some of which are much, much better than what actually landed. Don't worry if you told him that you call Brauchli "Count Brauchula," though—that's in there. What's not? Some of Sherman's more intriguing Tweets after the jump.

Before WP, Brauchli almost didnt get WSJ gig. Press release drafted to announce Paul Ingrassia, but Steiger protested. Brauchli won bake-off

WaPo-60 Minutes divorce: in '08, Brauchli asked Jeff Fager to pay WaPo for collaborations. 60 Mins said no. Investigative partnership over

Brauchli on bureaus: "If Hurricane Katrina hits, we'll be there. But we don't need a staff on the ground covering snow storms in Chicago."

Brauchli on WaPo's great multipart A.I.G series beating Michael Lewis in VF to the story: "He didn't come close but I bet he got paid more."

Walter Pincus proposed merging WaPo website with NYT website. But WaPo execs nixed idea. "Never been able to get it through our own people."

Walter Pincus on Politico: “It wouldn’t work at the Post. Politics is a much narrower audience...Most people don’t give a shit."

But Jim VandeHei at Politico doesn't mind. A senior DC journalist said VandeHei claims "he no longer reads the Post in any detailed fashion"

In addition to salons, WaPo wanted to plan a half dozen medium size conferences during the year and one epic conference like Davos

Downie says WP considering putting ads on A1: "There may be advertising on Page 1 as soon as this year." Weymouth wouldn't confirm or deny

Weymouth on spiders: ""I think I'm a normal person and I don't want to sleep in a bed or be in a car with a bug. But I don't have a phobia."

In 2008, WaPo execs discussed a tiered-pricing scheme, where consumers could buy a cheaper, scaled-down version of the paper. Idea didnt fly

Morning salongate broke, Brauchli went to WaPo national desk. “I didn’t know about it!” he told group of editors. “I didn’t approve flier”

The author of a new Washington Post Style section column on entertaining as well as a book on the same subject has lofty goals for her get-togethers: "I want everyone who leaves my house to leave feeling better about themselves," said Quinn in an interview with City Desk.

Judged against her own standards, Quinn may have stumbled last Friday night.

The event was a holiday bash for Style staffers, and the venue was not Quinn's house but the Georgetown residence of Style co-boss Ned Martel. In any event, Quinn, the queen of the party, felt compelled to play the headlining role, delivering the keynote toast. According to attendees and Quinn herself, the toast hit on the following themes:

I've been with Style for 30 years, and Style is back! Back to where it was in the good old days. I talk to people these days who read Style every day and it's been a long time since I've heard that. There's energy and creativity and vibrancy now. Ned and [co-boss] Lynn [Medford] are doing great work. Blah, blah.

When asked how people should have responded to the message, Quinn responded: "I think they should have been ecstatic."

Ecstasy, though, was scarce among this crowd. "Everybody thought [the toast] was inconsiderate of all the people who’ve been there for some time, that it was a failing operation that people didn't read," says a source.

Another interpretation from another attendee: Quinn was singing the praises of the section decades ago, back when she was a star social correspondent—i.e., the "good old days"—and now, when she is again a regular contributor, via her weekly column "The Party." "This was clearly Sally talking about Sally," says the attendee.

No narcissism here, protests Quinn. "I wasn’t talking about me. I was talking about the energy and excitement that we had, and I see that now and it’s just thrilling."

A couple of partygoers claim that Martel was wincing when Quinn was gushing over the turnaround in Style quality, a charge that Martel denies. "I have never winced at anything that Sally Quinn has said." As to the elegance of Quinn's toast, Martel took a pass: "I think it’s best for that night to exist without the host’s next-day or next-week commentary."

Whatever the feelings about Quinn's attempt at holiday cheer, the gossip that lingers days later attests to a number of issues:

Issue No. 1: Quinn is right that Style is improving, as City Desk has pointed out previously.

Issue No. 2: The quality and avant-garditude of the Style section is one of the great agonies of the Washington Post. Oh, it was so awesome decades ago, goes a popular refrain. Everyone loves to wax nostalgic about its classic writers. Hendrickson! Allen! Quinn! The debate about when the section was great and when it sucked is the journalistic equivalent of "Man, it's cold outside"—a waste of breath that'll never accomplish anything. When the section turned 40 early this year, Style writer Hank Stuever tilted at the craziness:

There's a kind of longtime Washington Post reader who is only too smug about informing us how great Style was in the 1970s, or the '80s or the '90s (the early '90s, they sniff, like oenophiles distinguishing vintage). We are certain that by the end of Style's first week, someone complained that it was better on Monday and Tuesday. At a Style staff meeting a few years back, art critic Paul Richard, who's been here since the Earth cooled, said that anyone who tells you Style was so much better back-when should be condemned to crank the microfilm and forced to read it, day in and day out.

Issue No. 3: Quinn couldn't abide a certain top editor at the Post. When asked to expand on her claim that Style is back, Quinn obliged: "I would say that Ben [Bradlee, former Post executive editor and husband of Quinn] invented Style and he really cared about it. It was priority No. 1. When he stepped down as editor, it was not the No. 1 priority anymore. And when Marcus took over, it was a big priority for him."

Let's see—think there might just be a subtle little elbow in there between the lines? What do you know—that non-priority period just so happens to coincide with the editorship of Leonard Downie Jr., who ran the Post newsroom from 1991 to 2008.

But this is one pissing match for which Downie won't whip it out. When informed of Quinn's analysis, he declined to comment.

Issue No. 4: Quinn is a lovely person to talk to, a true believer in fine entertaining, perky-yet-tough, a great family woman, a co-moderator of an innovative Post Web page on religion, and surely many other good things, but her "The Party" column isn't one of the things contributing to the Style section's resurgence. Thus far, it's a jumble of reflections and peeves from a woman for whom entertaining is a touch too important. And if you actually read it, there's no way to avoid the self-aggrandizing land mines that can hit you at any point. My fave thus far: "One of the nicest compliments I ever got was at a large New Year's Eve party I had. A man came over to me and said, 'I love this party. Everyone here looks so beautiful.' (Candles, rose-colored walls and pink light bulbs never hurt.)"

A Dec. 5 Page One article incorrectly said that Ben Edwards is the only doctor within a 45-mile radius of Post, Tex. Edwards is the only doctor within a 25-mile radius.

That treatment leaves unanswered who made the mistake. And at a place like the Post, that could be any number of people—a line editor, a copy editor, the reporter, Marcus Brauchli.

It's just this reticence that is right now biting Akeya Dickson on the ass. She's the author of a recent piece that produced one of the all-time great Washington Post corrections:

A Nov. 26 article in the District edition of Local Living incorrectly said a Public Enemy song declared 9/11 a joke. The song refers to 911, the emergency phone number.

Published last week, that little nostra culpa got tons of rotation on Twitter and elsewhere. And since there's no specificity in the correction about the error's origin, the presumption is that Dickson is the one plagued with tone deafness on pop culture.

A few inquiries, however, turn up a rumor that it wasn't Dickson who made the mistake but rather a copy editor. Post spokesperson Kris Coratti confirms the scuttlebutt. Efforts to ID the copy editor who made the mistake have thus far been unsuccessful.

Dickson declined to comment on the matter—and why would she react any differently? After all, telling the truth would entail ratting out an editor. That's the job of a good correction. Hasn't the Post ever heard of the term "Due to an editing error....."?

So far, so murky: "Being for, and about Washington" doesn't clarify too much, especially when you consider that "Washington" is the locus of infinite local and national stories.

Item No. 2 in the Mystery of the Washington Post's Murky Mission: Last week, just after news broke that the Post would be closing its remaining domestic bureaus in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli is quoted in his own paper as follows: "We are not a national news organization of record serving a general audience. Nor are we a wire service or cable channel."

So far, so more murky: So you're not a "national news organization of record." Are you a national news organization of unrecord, or off-the-record? What does this whole "of record" thing mean? And if you're not a national news organization, why do you retain a sizable "national" desk. And if you're not a national news organization, why do you cover television with as many resources as you do? If there's one thing that's national, it's tube.

Item No. 3 in the Mystery of the Washington Post's Murky Mission: In the course of reporting a blog post about the Post, City Desk wrings the following statement out of Post spokesperson Kris Coratti: “We cover news of interest to our audience, whether it is local, national or international. That hasn’t changed and that won’t change."

So far, so terribly murky: Now, it seems, the Post's whole reportorial outlook is merely reactive. If it appears that some readers want more national stuff, then Congress and global warming legislation they'll get. If it appears that they want a bit more local, then, hey, let's go long and hard on Mayor Fenty. And if they develop a bit more curiosity about foreign affairs, double down on troops in Afghanistan.

The Coratti quote reflects just how much chaos is at work in the Post's control room. Depending on how you define it, poll it, and focus-group it, your audience can be anything; it can want anything and everything. If your strategy means that you'll cover pretty much everything so long as some people want to read it, then the strategy isn't saying too much.

When asked by in-house media reporter Howard Kurtz what was going on here, Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli said, "We are not a national news organization of record serving a general audience. Nor are we a wire service or cable channel."

The Brauchli remarks prompted much brow movement among folks in the Post newsroom as well as media watchers. Well, if the Post isn’t a national news organization, why does it invest so much in covering the federal government? And if the Post isn’t serving a general audience, just what kind of audience is it serving?

Those questions have preoccupied the strategy sessions of Brauchli and his boss, Post Publisher Katharine Weymouth, not to mention other top company thinkers. Yet within minutes of Brauchli’s strange pronouncements, a few hard-working reporters started framing an answer.

As guests started filing into the White House for Tuesday night’s state dinner honoring Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, reporter Robin Givhan and Reliable Source columnist Roxanne Roberts double-teamed the scene. They watched as a Marine called out the names of the more than 300 lucky ones who’d been invited to the high-profile affair.

When the names of Tareq and Michaele Salahi rang through the corridor, Roberts went into I-can’t-believe-I-just-heard-that mode. She did some thumbnail social calculations: “How on earth did they manage to get an invitation to the Obamas’ first state dinner? I knew they were not wealthy. I knew they were not politically connected, and I didn’t know of any connection to the Indian government,” says Roberts, who checked the guest list for the Salahis. They weren’t on it.

Handsome, well-dressed, all smiles—the Salahis at first glance looked just as dignitarian as any other folks who walked down the White House red carpet. Roberts knew otherwise, based on the various items that she and Reliable Source co-columnist Amy Argetsinger had written about the couple. The Salahis won mention in the Reliable Source whenever their family dispute over ownership of their $4 million Oasis Winery in Fauquier County took another ugly twist. And the name surfaced again following Bravo’s announcement that it would be taking its “Real Housewives” franchise to Washington, an opportunity that Michaele pounced on.

Givhan, too, had a short history with the Salahis. She'd gone to a salon opening attended by the couple, not to mention a camera crew from "Real Housewives"; she left after a producer tried to get her to sign a nondisclosure form.

With their strange appearance at the White House, the Salahis were on the verge of breaking out of their blurby confines on the Reliable Source page and onto A1. The first step in that direction was an e-mail that Roberts sent to Argetsinger saying, in effect, guess who's here? Argetsinger postulated that the couple had simply crashed the party, a notion that was slow to catch on with her colleagues. “No one I was talking to that night was willing to believe the gate-crashing thing,” says Argetsinger.

Team Post on Tuesday night settled on throwing in a line about the couple in the news wrapup of the dinner: “The most curious and unexpected sighting: Tareq and Michaele Salahi. The notorious Fauquier County vineyard socialites, who are filming ‘Real Housewives of D.C.,’ swanned in, even though their names did not appear on the official guest list.”

Then, restlessness. Argetsinger couldn’t sleep that night because she thought other media outlets would be all over the story, eclipsing the small mention in the party summary that the Post had just printed. In a preemptive strike, she threw a post on the Reliable Source blog early Wednesday morning, digging into the mystery and including a quote from the source: “Tareq Salahi told us in an e-mail overnight that their connecton came from the fact that a team from India is scheduled to play the U.S. in his next polo tournament. ‘They are very excited in this first ever cultural connection being hosted on the DC National Mall since Polo is one of the primary sports in India,’ he told us.”

Later that day, the Posties secured White House confirmation that the Salahis had crashed the affair, sealing the story as a Washington Post exclusive. The gossip columnists then went their separate ways for the holiday, figuring they’d pretty much finished their business with these Virginia socialites. Then the 24-7 media biz crashed their party, requesting all manner of interviews and sound bites on their reporting. More stories, official White House photographs, more stories, official investigations, and more stories followed.

When Argetsinger returned on Saturday night from her Thanksgiving “break,” a car service was waiting to take her to CNN studios for some chit-chat on the Salahis.

And just like that, the Post was leading the march on a national story for a general audience. Granted, this was a national story with local roots: The reason that the paper was so far ahead on the drama is that other outlets had no idea what poseurs the Salahis were. A Thanksgiving Day story in the Los Angeles Times, for instance, discussed how the state dinner reflected the “heightened profile” of Indian Americans—good, but standard, stuff.

While the Los Angeles Timeses of the world hustled over the weekend to confirm what the Post had nailed by Tuesday night, the Post was busy running away from the field, via this piece on the Salahis' life and times and this piece on the couple's charity work, not to mention this piece on their attempt to get into the White House via a contact at the Defense Department. The point here—this wasn't a story that the Post's competitors could match via parachute over a holiday weekend.

When asked how the Salahi reporting fits into the Post’s evolving strategy, Brauchli passed the inquiry onto spokesperson Kris Coratti, who issued the following statement: “We cover news of interest to our audience, whether it is local, national or international. That hasn’t changed and that won’t change. This particular story fits squarely into our strategy: it is both for and about Washington.”

In corralling its little secret about the gate-crashers, the Post was reaping a nice return on investment. For 20 years, the company has paid Roberts to stand around at parties in search of tidbits and occasional long narratives. If anyone was to arbitrate who belonged at a state dinner and who had slipped past the Secret Service, it was she.

“There was probably no other reporter in the press area who had written about Salahis before that night and questioned their presence at a White House state dinner. It’s kind of a fluke from that standpoint—I happened to be the right place at the right time,” says Roberts.

Hit play and find out!

Let's mark the start of hostilities as mid-week. That's when, according to an informed source, Allen raised questions about a Roig-Franzia story about a woman who had undergone multiple abortions. In the back and forth, Roig-Franzia allegedly called Allen a "dick." No punches were thrown.

Peace prevailed until Friday morning, when Style staffers convened to discuss their journalism. According to sources, Roig-Franzia at one point in the meeting reached across the table and grabbed Allen's notepad, tearing a page from it. Allen barked, "Give me my fucking notebook." Roig-Franzia complied, pushing it back across the table.

After that incident, not much went according to the Post Stylebook. Allen, an assignment editor for Style, learned that one of his reporters, Monica Hesse, had been tasked by Style co-boss Ned Martel to do a funny-type story coming off the big news on the congressional ethics investigation. Allen wasn't apprised that Hesse had been so assigned and let Martel have it. "Next time you want to assign a story to one of my writers, you come talk to me. I'm right here," Allen said to Martel, according to a Post source. They discussed the matter and came to an amiable conclusion.

The story then moves from errors of protocol to errors of journalism. Allen eventually got his hands on the copy that Hesse and Roig-Franzia had been dispatched to generate. It was a "charticle" on famous incidents in which key actors in history have unwittingly coughed up sensitive information to the wrong people.

One of the headlining incidents in the charticle was how a Confederate solider had lost some military plans of Robert E. Lee in a field that later found their way into Union hands. The original story reportedly said that the offense occurred in Virginia. Wrong–Maryland.

There were other errors as well.

Allen made clear his displeasure with the integrity of the piece, proclaiming that it was the "second-worst piece I've ever had handed to me in 43 years," according to a source. The first-worst was a mistake-ridden profile of Paul Robeson that never saw the printed page. Those 43 years include Allen's 39 years of service at the Post along with a tenure at the New Haven Register.

The veteran editor gave pretty much the same sharp-elbowed spiel to both Hesse and Roig-Franzia. Hesse responded by asking for the story back so that she could iron out some of the wrinkles.

Roig-Franzia responded by saying, “Henry, don’t be such a cocksucker.”

At that, Allen leapt into action, shoving Roig-Franzia. He then popped him in the cheek. According to an eyewitness account, Roig-Franzia didn't try to match the 5-11, 200-pound Allen punch for punch, instead opting for more of a civil-rights-movementy kind of stance.

Into the one-sided faceoff jumped Chris Richards, the Post's pop-music critic. One of the first responders, Richards stood between the hostile parties. Brauchli reportedly intervened as well.

After the set-to, Allen spent some time behind closed doors with managers. Brauchli told him that the Post just can't have this sort of conduct in the newsroom. Allen agreed. They left it at that.

Then it was on to the office of Style co-boss Lynn Medford, who was apparently briefed by Brauchli on what to say to Allen. Medford told Allen that Brauchli had said that this was a new era at the Post and we can't have violence in the newsroom. (What, did the smelling-salts lady take a buyout?) Another message from Brauchli to Allen via Medford: You can't come into the newsroom again for your entire career.

That sanction is not as harsh as it sounds: Allen's last day was to be Nov. 20. He is 68, had already accepted a buyout, was working on contract at the time of his lunge, and had already announced his retirement.

Of his swing, Allen says, "The last time I threw a punch at anybody was in the spring of 1963 in Parris Island, S.C., in Marine Corps recruit training." Allen served in Vietnam for four months. Roig-Franzia hung up when called on this matter.

UPDATE: Be sure to check out City Paper's exclusive reenactment of this historic event: Allen v. Roig-Franzia ~ The Movie!

Though it's unclear exactly what they were arguing about, it is clear that the mood was testy. Testy enough, that is, for Roig-Franzia to quip to Allen, "Henry, don't be such a cocksucker."

Allen didn't take kindly to the suggestion and went after Roig-Franzia, in the testimony of an eyewitness. Limited combat then broke out, though, again, it's not terribly clear how many punches landed.

The mayhem broke out not far from the temporary office of Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli. A lean man, Brauchli reportedly was among the first Post males on the scene to perform the time-honored "break it up" duties. A few others helped out, too.

We have calls out to both principals and will keep prosecuting the story as the day progresses.

Update 11:28 am: Attempts to get Brauchli on the line regarding his alpha-male heroics have proven futile thus far. The executive editor is apparently on travel today. However, WaPo spokesperson Kris Coratti issued this statement in response to questions about the matter: "I can't discuss private personnel matters but that doesn't mean we haven't taken this incident seriously and addressed it appropriately."

Just what "appropriately" means here isn't quite clear yet. Before taking on that question, we're looking to speak with Allen and Roig-Franzia, not to mention other individuals.

Update 12:25 pm: Reached Roig-Franzia on his cell phone. After I identified myself, his phone hung up.

UPDATE: Be sure to check out City Paper's exclusive reenactment of this historic event: Allen v. Roig-Franzia ~ The Movie!

That assessment came from a 66-page report obtained by Woodward. Over the weekend, Woodward and Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli, along with other Post officials, held some tense discussions with Pentagon higher-ups about which parts of the report are suitable for public consumption and which parts could endanger operations on the ground in Afghanistan.

The two sides ultimately reached agreement on the particulars and the Post ran the story on Monday.

So here you have a newspaper discussing redactions of a critical document with government officials. Now there's a process that calls for a little explanation from the executive editor, right?

No, wrong. When Kurtz asked Brauchli for comment on the negotiations, Brauchli declined. "I asked him for an interview and he declined to talk to me, perhaps because he knew Woodward had spoken to me," says Kurtz. When asked whether he thought Brauchli's input was pivotal to his story, Kurtz said, "It's always good to have another participant when you're writing about high-level meetings."

Woodward shed some light on Brauchli's silence: "He generally takes the position now that he’s not going to spend a lot of time talking about how stories are done or not done."

Aha! That sounds a lot like the Brauchli Doctrine, which holds that newspapers spend too much time explaining themselves.

In this case, says Woodward, Brauchli essentially delegated the press-talking to him, with no resulting harm to public accountability: Since Woodward sat through the entire process, he was conversant with all the details of the negotiations—and reports that Brauchli did a bang-up job in handling the defense establishment.

Brauchli didn't immediately respond to an e-mail requesting comment on why he didn't comment.

A seasoned consumer of news had every reason to furrow a brow at the XX Files column in last week's Washington Post Magazine. The first-person essay touts the author's one-woman campaign against kiddie thieves in a local pharmacy.

Here's a sampling: "As the child scurries past me with his pilfered beverage, I reach out for the hood of his coat. I pull him in and press my hand on his back. 'Put it back,' I say. Though he's the one in trouble, my own heart races. A whimper seeps from his mouth; a gurgle of stuttered syllables follows. 'I'm s-s-orry. I'm s-sorry,' he repeats."

It's a powerful, well-told episode, but how do we know it ever happened?

First of all, the neighborhood isn't identified by name—only as a "well-to-do neighborhood of popular restaurants that serve not food but 'cuisine' and shrimp that is never spicy fried but 'Crispy Dangerous.'" The police officer hanging out at the store isn't identified by name—only as a cop whose "stern countenance is surpassed only by a severe haircut and biceps so chiseled that any squirming thief could be brought to his knees with one arm twist." The beverage being heisted by the kid isn't identified by brand—only as "orange soda."

Fanta? Sunkist?

One more: Not even the store is mentioned by name—only as a "chain pharmacy." And the Post didn't even attach one of those anonymity explainers here, which could easily have been worded as follows: "The chain pharmacy requested anonymity over fears that publicizing its troubles with teen pilfering could depress sales of Diet Coke."

And lurking behind all this anonymity and uncheckable data is columnist Wanda E. Fleming, author of one of the most embarrassing episodes in the mag's history. In January, Fleming wrote a column in the same space titled "Suspended Disbelief," about the travails of a friend's husband who'd been accused of child molestation by a girl. The man accepts a plea, spends some time in jail, and comes home to find out how it feels to be treated like a monster.

Except it didn't happen that way. The man hadn't accepted a plea agreement but, rather, was convicted in a trial. Another critical point: He didn't have just one accuser; he had "more than one" accuser, according to a black-eye-inflicting editor's note by the magazine's editor at the time, Tom Shroder. "The inescapable conclusion is that the man’s guilt was not as ambiguous as presented. No names were used, but the families of the victims only too readily recognized the circumstances and were understandably upset by the implication of the story," wrote Shroder.

Not exactly your garden-variety, Page A2 correction.

Weeks later, Fleming wrote a blog post about the problem with her piece: "In a 750 word 'personal essay,' much is omitted."

Despite all that, Fleming managed to regain favor at the magazine in time for her piece on petty theft from a pharmacy. One commenter wondered how she'd pulled it off so quickly:

This story asks us to believe an unverifiable anecdote; normally, that's okay, but this writer does not deserve that trust. In her last contribution to the XX Files just a few months ago, this writer totally misrepresented the facts about a child molestation case, resulting in a correction and an abject apology from the magazine editor in his column. What gives? Why are we supposed to believe this?

I put the "What gives?" question to Debra Leithauser, the current editor of the magazine. I asked whether Fleming was put through any extra paces, whether staff had checked out the pharmacy, whether the security people were interviewed, and so on.

This is the answer that came back: "As editor, I am responsible for what appears in the magazine. Right now, I am focused on the future, and we have an incredible new magazine launching next week."

As media critic, I am responsible for critiquing what has appeared in the magazine. Unfortunately, I cannot critique stuff that will appear in the magazine in the future, unless I am given access to galleys.

In rebuffing questions about Fleming, Leithauser is in good company. Questions in hand, I contacted Managing Editor Raju Narisetti (who oversees the magazine), Managing Editor Liz Spayd (who doesn't oversee the magazine), and Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli. The questions remain unanswered.

It's unclear whether the silence is the first step in the Post's implementation of the Brauchli Doctrine (i.e., newspapers spend too much time explaining themselves) or whether the Fleming issue is just too sensitive to touch.

Perhaps it's all just a resource question. The Post, after all, has suffered through four buyouts this decade, and maybe they don't have the people to fact-check any freelance columns, even one filled with anonymous characters and penned by someone who prompted an editor's note.

So I took it upon myself to track down this nameless pharmacy and figure out whether Wanda Fleming had ever nailed some fresh-faced kid trying to steal a generic orange soda. Fleming herself is listed as living near the Tenleytown commercial strip, and the "Crispy Dangerous" shrimp she refers to appears to come off the menu of a Thai restaurant in Tenleytown.

Next stop, Tenleytown CVS. I show the Washington Post Magazine story to a clerk at the store. He skims through, as customers pile up behind him. "That's what it sounds like," he says, acknowledging the problem identified in Fleming's column. He requests anonymity, like everyone else in this whole damn affair. When I ask him about the incident in which Fleming busts some kid, he says he doesn't remember it.

That means nothing, of course. No clerk can possibly monitor everything that goes down in a store. There are only two people who know whether that incident happened—Fleming and the unnamed alleged thief.

I head over to Fleming's house, hoping to have a long sit-down to discuss the incident and perhaps track down the boy and the cop—anyone else who can corroborate this story.

Fleming opens the door. I identify myself as a reporter for Washington City Paper and note that I've tried to contact her via e-mail and phone. Fleming closes the door, saying, "I'm not speaking to anyone."

His feelings about Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli aren't nearly as charitable. "Marcus should quit while he's ahead," says Mendelsohn.

What accounts for this rankling? Comments by Brauchli in Howard Kurtz's news-breaking story of Tuesday morning. In explaining why the paper didn't run Mendelsohn's piece on Lindsay Ess, Brauchli said this: "While the piece was beautifully photographed and nicely constructed, it was also similar to other pieces we had run in the magazine recently," Brauchli told Kurtz.

Just what pieces were those? Brauchli cited one such "similar" story in a Monday evening interview with me: A piece by Caitlin Gibson on a 13-year-old girl with dwarfism who was struggling to extend her limbs. "I'm not into hammering readers with repetitive stories on similar themes," says Brauchli.

First things first: The No. 1 editor at the Post appears to be committing what the towering former Washington City Paper Senior Editor Tom Scocca calls a "false plural." The limb-extension piece appears to encompass the entirety of his showcase of "other stories." A more precise articulation would have been "another story."

Second things second: Mendelsohn argues that the story of the 13-year-old undergoing limb extension and his story aren't actually similar. "I haven’t seen any other stories about a quadruple amputee who’s teaching fashion at VCU," he says. Comparing the two, argues Mendelsohn, shows an insensitivity to the handicapped. "It's lumping disparate disabilities in the same group....That's like saying we did a story about an Asian last year" as a reason for turning down further stories on Asians.

Maybe. Certainly Brauchli could have been more general on the matter, saying that the consensus among editors was that mag fare focused too much on death, destruction, and misery. But Brauchli's grouping together the two limb-related stories seems like a fair journalistic judgment. Readers don't make the fine distinctions that Mendelsohn makes about how his piece may differ from the other one. Their thought process goes more like this: Oh, another story having to do with arms and legs and pain.

Even so, Brauchli has been a touch schizophrenic in his references to Mendelsohn, switching between two distinct personas: Wise Executive Editor and Unwise Executive Editor.

Wise Executive Editor: "While the piece was beautifully photographed and nicely constructed, it was also similar to other pieces we had run in the magazine recently," Brauchli told Kurtz.

Skinny: Good move to credit the freelancer with good work. He's the little guy.

Unwise Executive Editor: "We're not running 10,000- or 15,000-word articles anymore. It's not because we don't value subtle writing and long-form journalism. But great journalism is not defined by story length or extended, novel-worthy dialogue."

Skinny: Bad move to discredit the freelancer. He's the little guy. Let's break this down into a couple of subcomponents:

a) It's true that Mendelsohn handed in a draft of about 10,000 words. That's what writers do after they've spent a year immersing with a subject. But when a freelancer hands in 10,000 words, it's not an "article," as Brauchli suggests, but rather a "draft." And drafts get broken down by editors, cut to pieces, shrunk, tightened, whatever. There are tens of editors at the Post who could have taken Mendelsohn's draft and distilled it into something far more digestible. For Brauchli to say length is an issue here is a pure cop-out.

b) Why is Brauchli slamming "extended, novel-worthy dialogue"? For one, he sounds like a traditional newsman hammering a precious, self-indulgent writer. Not too generous.

For another, why slam extended, novel-worthy dialogue? Seems to me I encounter some of that from time to time in the Washington Post. Just a few weeks ago, for instance, Post reporter J. Freedom DuLac did a fine story about D.C. lawyer Patrick Hand struggling to organize a tour for '60s band Love.

Here's an excerpt:

Steve Baenen, wearing a Deep Purple concert T-shirt, approaches the table where Hand has set up shirts, CDs and posters. His long hair pulled back in a ponytail, Baenen has made the two-hour drive from Green Bay, because "it's hard to find a trippy show anymore." He buys $30 worth of CDs. Hand gives him a concert poster that still lists the three original acts.

"What happened to the Prunes?" Baenen asks.

Hand: "Not enough advance sales. Not enough money to pay for everything."

Baenen: "That's a bummer, man."

Hand: "It is a bummer."

Now that's novel-worthy!