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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!

Yesterday, I interviewed Washington Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli for a story I was writing on the Washington Post Magazine. I was working on allegations that Post Publisher Katharine Weymouth may have played a part in killing a magazine story written by a freelancer who happened to be a friend of hers.

And as I found out in this morning's edition of the Washington Post, Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz was working on those same allegations. Kurtz's story detailed how Matthew Mendelsohn had worked for months on a long narrative about Lindsay Ess, a woman who had had all four limbs amputated. When Mendelsohn mentioned the piece to Weymouth at a social event, she just about gagged, exclaiming that this was just another in a too-long lineage of depressing Washington Post Magazine stories. Of course, the publisher hadn't yet read the piece, but from the sound of it, BLECH! Depressing!

As Kurtz laid out in his thoroughly reported, perfectly timed piece that blew all my efforts out of the water, Weymouth didn't keep her thoughts to herself. Rather, she mentioned it to top editors, and the piece ended up on the spike.

And thus the question posed so timelily by the Kurtz piece: Did the publisher of the Post kill a story?

When I put this question to Brauchli, I got a definitive answer. The publisher, he said, played no role in killing the piece, which died via a "normal editorial decision." "Whatever Katharine may have felt about the piece was immaterial to the editorial process," said Brauchli in his chat with me.

That was a strong statement, I told Brauchli, but I told him I still needed to speak with the editor of the piece to verify the normality of this decision. I mentioned that I'd tried to reach the editor---Sydney Trent---but hadn't gotten a call back. Trent has since declared that she'll have no comment.

The top guy couldn't have been less sympathetic to my sourcing problem. "I don’t think it’s necessary for us to lay out all of the processes in the newspaper to make decisions," he snapped. "Newspapers spend way too much time explaining themselves." He went on: "Too many people call our newsroom. There are endless queries on our journalism these days. I think it’s better for us to focus on producing journalism than on our process."

When I opened the paper next morning to see the timely Kurtz piece (have I linked to that thing yet?), I discovered that the magazine editor had indeed explained her decision to kill the Mendelsohn piece. Here's the quote, which comes from a well-reported, timely piece that indirectly prompted a bout of screaming and swearing at a certain D.C. residence this morning: "Sydney Trent, the magazine's acting editor at the time, said she declined to run the story 'because it was clear the newspaper wanted to move in a different direction. That handwriting was very clearly on the wall.'"

Hmmm---is that what you'd call a "normal editorial decision"? On the face of things, it sounds like an editor frustrated with management, not business as usual.

So I put the question today to Brauchli---just how "normal" was this decision? His response:

I'd made clear to the magazine's editors that we were shifting direction, away from overlong, occasionally overwrought articles and towards livelier, more engaging journalism. Story lengths in the magazine were often too long, subjects were sometimes remote, and tenor wasn't always consistent with what other editors and I believe our readers want in a Sunday magazine. When Mr. Mendelsohn's piece landed, we were in the early stages of making the changes that the magazine editors knew were coming, and they acted in a perfectly sensible way to begin implementing those changes.

I should add that I have read Mr. Mendelsohn's piece, and it is a fine article, illustrated with some beautiful photography. Our decision not to publish it was not predicated on the quality of his work, but on the changes we were making to the magazine.

We interrupt this overlong blog item to consider that last sentence. So the magazine made a decision about a story that wasn't based on the quality of the story? Now there's an editorial principle for ya.

Actually, Brauchli's statement about the story quality not affecting the decision may be dead on. Mendelsohn says that he got the bad news about the piece from a junior editor at the magazine. Quite naturally, Mendelsohn wanted to know what the mag's boss---Trent---had to say about the piece. "I asked my editor what she---meaning, the acting editor of the magazine---thought of it, and there was a moment of silence and she said, 'She didn’t read it.'" (Update: Trent just e-mailed to say that she did indeed read the story.)

Normal editorial decision?

Executive editor's protestations notwithstanding, a publisher's opinion about a pending story is a terribly hard thing to bottle up, especially in a newsroom filled with Twittering, texting, e-mailing, mouth-talking gossips. "I probably should have kept my mouth shut," says Weymouth. "I fully expected them to publish it." As evidence that she didn't imagine she'd influence the editorial process, Weymouth noted that she'd been pushing for "four and a half years" for a wedding column---a feature that appeared only recently in the pages of the Post.

Update: Check out the piece by Slate's Jack Shafer on why the boss needs to be careful about critical ketchup-and-mustard decisions.

Stay tuned for City Desk's Next Piece on the Washington Post Magazine: What Do L&B Mean to You?

The reason for the switch? Check out the memo after the jump.

Memo from top Post editors:

On July 1, the first phase of our newsroom restructuring begins.

For many of you, the rhythms of the newsroom will change. More editors and reporters will come in early. The morning news meeting will start at 10 a.m. We expect more stories to be filed and posted between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m.

This wave of changes will help us to accomplish several things. We’ll increase the amount and quality of the content we make available to our readers during the most heavily trafficked time of day on our web site. We’ll set deadlines and story-length expectations earlier. We’ll be able to plan graphics and visual elements better.

The central elements of our newspaper section fronts also will get settled earlier, ideally by 3 p.m. for features and non-breaking news. We’ll want to see the first drafts of non-breaking story tops in contention for A1 by 4 p.m. The A1 meeting will occur between 5 p.m. and 5:30 p.m.

Our story budget system is being tweaked to reflect the new structure. It will be organized by reporting groups, not by the old AME structure. It is important that everyone budget stories as soon as they are assigned, and that the budget include delivery times, graphics, photos and other elements.

The Universal News Desk will come together over a series of weeks. By July 1, all topic editors will be sitting on the 4th floor, which will be the temporary home of the desk until the 5th floor construction is completed, probably in the fall. The topic editors’ hours will be staggered, with some coming in the mid-morning, some midday and some later in the afternoon. Day Editor Sara Goo will oversee desk operations from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., and Night Editor Vince Bzdek from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. Layout editors and copy editors should be moved to the 4th floor, soon after the topic editors. When the Home Page operation moves downtown, Trey Johnson will run the newspaper after 10 p.m.

The Home Page operation and web producers and editors on the Universal desk will move from Arlington to downtown in a few weeks. At that point, this first large step in the newsroom reorganization will be done.

Many thanks in advance for all your cooperation and patience with these changes.

Marcus Liz Sandy

Washington Post reporter Paul Duggan spent four months reporting and writing a two-part series on a juicy local murder case. The results were published on Monday and Tuesday, to great public acclaim. Yet faithful subscribers who scoop up their paper on the front steps each day found none of it in their pages---only a few teasers sending them to washingtonpost.com.

Is this a bold experiment by a savvy media institution to herd its readership across platforms? Depends on whom you ask.

When Duggan started out gathering facts on the Aug. 2, 2006, killing of 32-year-old lawyer Robert Wone, he got some welcome instructions from his editor. "I told him not to worry about length," recalls the editor, Lynn Medford.

Equipped with his mandate to go long, Duggan threw everything he had into the project. The fundamentals of the story demanded a generous treatment by the local daily: On the night of his killing, Wone, who lived in Fairfax with his wife, was staying in the D.C. home of three friends. He arrived at the house at about 10:30 p.m. Not long thereafter, he would end up murdered, with three stab wounds and a bunch of needle marks all over his body. Semen was found around his genitals and in his rectum.

The three housemates--Victor Zaborsky, Joseph Price, and Dylan Ward---claim the killing was the work of an intruder. Police allege "a weirdly elaborate sexual assault involving the injection of an incapacitating drug," in Duggan's words. Plenty of material, in other words, to keep a reporter occupied for a while.

The two-parter kicked off with a frenzied 911 call from Zaborsky, who told the dispatcher, among other things, "Oh, dear. . . . I can't believe this. . . . I can't believe this."

The full 911 call was a scoop. And if original reporting also counts as scoopage, so did many other details in the Duggan account, including an in-depth look at the bios and "polyamorous" lifestyle of the three housemates. "Who were these guys?" asks Duggan in an interview, pointing out that in previous media portrayals, they were merely "stick figures." Another high point of the series is that Duggan explains why the cops maintain that Wone was injected with an incapacitating drug even though toxicology tests have come up negative.

One more plug for the project: It was presented in a compelling and seamless thread---great, great late-spring-early-summer reading.

Craig Brownstein, one of the editors behind whomurderedrobertwone.com, credits Duggan for adding fresh material, and then some: "I think the real value of Duggan's series was putting most of the pieces into one coherent and compelling narrative....We're just glad he tackled the project and did it in a thoughtful and thoroughly informative way. He's a crackerjack reporter and writer."

Yet the series wasn't compelling enough, somehow, for the Post's top editors. When Medford, a top Metro editor, shopped the completed product to the brass, she was told that it'd have to be hacked way down to make it into the paper. It was a "newsprint issue," Medford recalls being told.

The next stop for the Wone manuscript was the Washington Post Magazine, a logical resting place for such a narrative. But Duggan-Medford got the Heisman there as well. Sydney Trent, an editor at the magazine, writes via e-mail that the story didn't quite clear the publication's bar: "We weren't let in on the Wone story until it was finished and while it was the sort of finely-executed piece you'd expect from Duggan, it wasn't written as a Magazine cover but as a story for the front page. The differences in that regard are considerable, and it was too late in the game to go back and try to retrofit."

Let's halt this blog post right here to contemplate the load of garbage in front of us. First off, who cares if you weren't "let in on" the story till it was finished? That's territorial nonsense. Second off, a narrative is a narrative is a narrative, and this whole mag. v. front page distinction is precious and illusory. How many magazine readers do you really think would have clogged the Free For All page with complaints that the Wone story read too much like a piece from the front section? Third off: "late in the game." What game? The obstruction-of-justice trial for the housemates isn't till May 2010. This thing could have held all summer---who else was going to spend four months reporting the Wone case---Express? Fourth off, retrofitting is what editors are paid to do. Trent showcases the sort of overthinking that leads to disastrous editorial decisions: Here's a story that has new facts and a tight narrative about a murder case that involves polyamorous men and an electro-ejaculation device. End of analysis!

With no foothold in the magazine, the piece wound up as a Web exclusive. Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli suggests the placement was something of a strategic coup:

We wanted to try something new, offering readers a multimedia approach to a fascinating crime narrative about which we'd already written extensively in the paper. And it worked. Readers came, read, looked, interacted and commented in droves. As for space, we have plenty of space in print and in the magazine. The Post will publish stories, in print or online, at any length they justify. If you're suggesting that we're so constrained in print that we're putting stories online, that would be wrong.

Hey Brauchli: See testimony from Medford, above. Also: The Post hadn't already "written extensively" on the case. Its coverage was pretty much limited to "day stories"---breaking news pieces---as the case has progressed over the years. Also also: There was nothing terribly new about this model---the paper did just about the same thing with Bob Kaiser's monster series on Gerald S.J. Cassidy.

Why all the fuss here about Web-only publication? Brauchli's indeed correct that readers have logged on "in droves" to check out the story. So what's the harm in keeping it out of the paper?

Well, it's that subscribers don't get the best that the Post has to offer on their front steps. Post Ombudsman Andy Alexander has written that he's received complaints from readers about the online-only presentation. I'll speak up for this group. We, the subscribers, don't want to click through five pages of Web presentation just to goose pageviews and soak in a story that we'd rather read in print---that's why we, like, subscribe!

It would take a lot of transgressions for me to cancel my subscription to the Post, but this whole Wone thing is a step in that direction.

Keeping the story out of the paper also expresses a certain amount of news arrogance on part of Post leaders. It's as if they think that all the stuff that occupies the 16-or-so pages in the front section is just so precious that it cannot possibly be preempted for something, well, far more interesting and readable.

Take a look at the front section of Monday's Post, the day that the Duggan series debuted online. There's a lot of Washington Post gruel in there, lots of places where room could have been made for Duggan. For starters, there's an AP story on Monday regarding some illegal-immigrant probe in Colorado on page A5. There's some fluff on Valerie Jarrett on A13. There's a big, tepid front-page story looking back on the tenure of former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox. And A3 carries a heading "Education Policy & The Nation," featuring a story titled "46 States, D.C. Plan to Draft Common Education Standards." Perhaps some of that stuff could have gone Web-only?

Next time, Brauchli & Co. would do well to heed the lessons of the Chandra series of July 2008. Here was a project with virtually the same formula as the Duggan series: Famous crime + well-constructed narrative + incremental advances in reporting=smashing success with subscribers. When you have something like that, you put it on all your platforms---print, Web, cellular, Kindle, flying saucer, whatever.

Now comes Memo No. 2 (included after the jump in its entirety), which doesn't quite meet the standards of its predecessor. OK, it's a turd.

As Memo No. 1 made clear, the Post is moving to a newsroom anchored by three top desks: a local desk, a national desk, and a universal desk, which will copy-edit and lay out stories and blogs and the like and then place them neatly on various platforms. The unidesk, as laid out in the memo, promises to be a grand power broker in the new Post: "It will handle editing tasks large and small, and make decisions about space allocation and story play, deciding what appears where on the paper’s news pages and online," said Memo No. 1.

As far as workflow goes, that was about as detailed as it got. After the plan was announced, staffers piled into a huge meeting with their top bosses to learn more. They didn't: Details on how everything would work in game situations were simply not available.

Until now, somewhat. Memo No. 2 drills into the "coverage groups" that'll be reporting to the paper's new editing superstructure. And the problems start in the documents first couple of sentences:

As we push forward with our newsroom restructuring, we’ve identified the central reporting groups we plan to create. These will drive coverage across our print, online and mobile editions. All of the groups will serve all Washington Post venues, although some clearly will focus more on national and others more on local issues, while others may specialize more in features than in breaking news. (Emphasis mine.)

Just what on earth are Washington Post venues? I sure hope that some staff meeting explained this mumbo-jumbo, because it doesn't quite translate into rest-of-the-world English.

Opacity, though a problem here, is not the main problem with this second memo and the emerging re-organization. Bureaucracy---that's the issue.

The first line of Memo No. 1 promised to "streamline editing desks" at the paper. And that's how it appeared at first glance. After all, moving from a structure of numerous assistant managing editors to just a few central editing desks looked like what Wall Street calls "rationalization."

Yet Memo No. 2 appears to rebuild with new titles an old org chart. Take a look at how many "coverage groups" are contemplated in the new-look Post. Under the local and national desks, there are thirteen. Foreign and sports are coverage groups, almost untouched by the re-org. And the paper's entire fourth floor, featuring the Style section and the various lifestyle sections, remain their own coverage groups, too. So we're well over 20 at this point.

But this massive layer cake has a special compartment within. "Topic Editors"! There are six of these, and they orchestrate coverage on everything from national politics to health. Just how the topic editors work with the coverage groups and the unidesk is something I can't figure out. But hold on. Let me go back to the memo and see if I can tease this mystery from Brauchli's corporatese.

OK, so let's take a look at the document: Here it says that coverage group editors will "make story assignments, and direct reporters. But they will do only limited line editing on these stories." That doesn't appear to make a lot of sense, but again, where do the Topic Editors come in?

A clue hides in this passage: "The [universal] desk will coordinate closely with Kevin, Emilio and the reporting groups but have ultimate responsibility for editing and play decisions. Those judgments will be made by the topic editor counterparts to the reporting groups, to ensure consistency and knowledge in editing. The Topic Editors for now will be organized into six groups, with a senior editor leading each team of editors."

A clue is all you're going to get from that. An answer will require some reporting, which I've already started, though I haven't reached anyone yet. But before I keep snooping around for a layman's version of Memo No. 2, I'll just throw out some questions about this whole plan:

1) I thought the the original impetus for all of this was to think out the Post's population of assignment editors. Yet this plan seems to contemplate editors flying everywhere, in constant circulation around the newsroom---senior editors, topic editors, coverage group editors, universal editors, Universalist editors.

2) How much of a re-org is it, really, if sports, foreign, Style, and all those lifestyle sections aren't dealt in on this cool new workflow?

3) Can anyone at the paper explain this arrangement in fewer than 45 seconds?

4) What do reporters do in this new world?

5) Who ever thought it would be a good idea to, like, have one editor assign something, and then a different editor edit it? Isn't that always a disaster?

MEMO:

Colleagues,

As we push forward with our newsroom restructuring, we’ve identified the central reporting groups we plan to create. These will drive coverage across our print, online and mobile editions. All of the
groups will serve all Washington Post venues, although some clearly will focus more on national and others more on local issues, while others may specialize more in features than in breaking news.

National Editor Kevin Merida will oversee these groups:
> National Politics and Government
> National Security
> Economy and Business
> Health, Science and Environment
> National Enterprise

Local Editor Emilio Garcia-Ruiz will oversee these groups:
> Local Politics and Government
> Police and Courts
> Local Business and Development (including transportation)
> Education
> Social Issues (including immigration, religion, poverty)
> Police and Courts
> Obituaries
> Local Enterprise

In addition to an integrated print/online focus in each group, National and Local also each intend to create a digital-oriented content group to help drive innovation, jump quickly on web and mobile opportunities and, in conjunction with other editors, help to organize and lead breaking news efforts. An existing example of such a group is the web innovations team created as part of our sports-department experiment in integration.

Because these groups are built primarily around subjects, not geography, we expect a lot of interaction among reporters and sections. Health, Science and the Environment, for example, will report in to Kevin but be responsible for this subject area in Washington and around the country. The same will be true for Social Issues and Education under Emilio. A political story that emanates from Virginia very well may end up being a joint-venture with the national politics team.

Foreign News, like Sports, will remain a separate coverage group. The 4th floor groups aren’t affected by these changes.

As we mentioned in the previous memo outlining the new structure, the editors who lead these groups will oversee coverage, in print and online, make story assignments, and direct reporters. But they will do only limited line editing on these stories. This will allow the coverage editors and their reporters to begin their days earlier, and to focus their attention on driving the news and enterprise to keep us competitive on all platforms, working closely with Scott Vance, who will run our minute-to-minute news coverage, and Sandy Sugawara and Ju-Don Roberts on the Universal Desk.

The desk will coordinate closely with Kevin, Emilio and the reporting groups but have ultimate responsibility for editing and play decisions. Those judgments will be made by the topic editor
counterparts to the reporting groups, to ensure consistency and knowledge in editing. The Topic Editors for now will be organized into six groups, with a senior editor leading each team of editors.

> National politics and government
> Local politics and government, police and courts, obits
> Social issues including education, religion, immigration
> Business and Economics
> Foreign and National Security issues
> Health, Science and the Environment and some general assignment

As a result of this new system, we will need some editors to oversee reporting groups, and we will need topic editors. The two editors leading these groups on each desk will be close partners, with the leader of each reporting group driving our coverage agenda and developing stories and the senior topic editor working to ensure our stories are as smart, readable and competitive as we need to be on every platform.

Although a few of these subjects have editors who would be natural candidates to take them over, emerging from their current roles, many other subject areas are wide open. Those interested in leading one of these groups, or expressing an interest in a particular kind of job or area, should see Kevin, Emilio or Sandy or Peter Perl in the next 10 days. Many of these groups are also likely to have deputies, details about which will be announced in coming weeks.

Marcus Liz Raju

Much of the gossip continues to center on the plans of acclaimed Metro columnist Marc Fisher. As reported yesterday, current Assistant Managing Editor for Metro Robert McCartney is sliding into a columnist position, and they'll be hiring yet another one soon. Fisher appears likely to move into another job with the organization, likely as an editor. It's not clear what that position is.

Yet there are many other points of discussion. Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli released the re-org memo to Posties early in the work day and then convened a Town Hall meeting in the afternoon.

Reviews of that session weren't terribly positive. Staffers apparently pelted upper management with questions about exactly how this elaborate new organization would work. The memo, you see, talks about how the paper is creating a "universal desk," to be headed by current top biz editor Sandy Sugawara, that'll shovel all kinds of content from the newsroom onto platforms.

The memo also crowned a new elite tier of editors: Sugawara, Ms. Universal Desk; Kevin Merida, national news commissioner; and Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, local news honcho.

A bunch of other appointments were made as well, filling in editors for sports and business, for example.

Just how all these editors talk to one another is an open question. Another one is how a piece of copy will proceed from conception through filing, editing, and copyediting. Brauchli reportedly conceded that workflow is something that's still going to have to be figured out.

Perhaps the biggest question mark left by the memo relates to the parts of the paper that didn't even get mentioned. Hell, the thing was 1,700 words of detailed, extremely well written blueprints for the new Post. But even at that length, it didn't address news sections such as Style, foreign, and the critical mundo of service journalism, save for a fleeting reference to health coverage. Staffers in those parts of the operation might reasonably wonder if they're even a part of the future.

The official word is that the new structure doesn't affect them too much. Well, if the new structure doesn't affect all those places, how much of a structure is it, really? I know that if a new structure were put in place at my company, I'd want to be invited to the party!

Having noted those pitfalls, the memo came off as a remarkable document, if only because it dares to contemplate an upheaval in an institution wedded to routine and a decades-old management structure. Sure, it'd be great if the bosses knew exactly how a story from the foreign desk will hop around the newsroom before getting posted on washingtonpost.com in the new, "universal" world. And it'd be awesome to know if anyone could ever win a battle with the certain-to-be all-powerful universal desk. With authority over length, copy, and play in the newspaper, that hub is going to be a beast!

But we do know one thing, and that's that the status quo isn't the way to go. If nothing else, this memo articulated a powerful recognition of that point.

However, the most pivotal figure in this whole deal isn't even mentioned in the memo. He's Metro columnist Marc Fisher. Several sources in the newsroom are whispering that something big is up with Fisher.

And that's big news for this puny blog. Fisher, after all, is the consensus Best Local Columnist, as judged by the Washington City Paper's readers, as well as its experts on the all-knowing editorial staff.

More specifically, but not terribly specifically, Fisher is said to be leaving his position as columnist and doing something else with the organization. And that's where this blog's sources dry up like water-based paint. When asked what this fellow might be doing in the re-org'd WaPo, they say stuff like, Oh, I can't go that far. Or, Nope, can't help you there.

When asked if the new assignment was cool, one source said, "Yes."

What about Fisher--can't he shed some light on this development? No---and that's saying something. Here's a guy who either picks up the phone on first ring or returns the message within five minutes. He loves to talk about the Post, about the news, about all kinds of shit. Now that the topic is him, well, he's gone AWOL on this blog. In deference to the columnist, he is reportedly out of town, perhaps in New Jersey. Convenient.

Anyhow, provided that this blog's Post sources haven't steered us wrong, the Metro section's lineup of columnists is starting to clear up a bit. Here's the way it looks, and it's not as frighteningly white and male as it appeared this morning.

*Courtland Milloy. He is on contract, and it will be up to management as to whether to renew him. He is happy to continue on the beat. He is a black man.

*John Kelly. He is writing every day and hasn't been consulted for this story. Sorry 'bout that. He is a white male.

*Robert McCartney. He is moving from Metro's assistant management editor (AME) to Metro columnist. Historically, folks who've made the switch from management to reporter have kept their handsome salaries, which in the case of Post AMEs are north of $175,000. McCartney will be covering all sorts of "metropolitan affairs" in his column. When asked if the move to columnist was his idea, he responded, "I'm very excited about it....I think it's going to be great." He is a white male.

*Columnist to be named. Since December, Metro has had an opening for a columnist. Though it appeared that McCartney might have pulled a Cheney and slipped into that spot, it's not the case. There'll be another hire coming soon. If it's not a woman, I will demand that Marcus Brauchli undergo a sex-change operation.

This morning, however, Brauchli dumped the Mr. Incremental persona in favor of Change Agent, handing down an enormous, nearly 1,700-word memo blowing up the newsroom. No more Balkanized Washington Post, with nine million fiefdoms, all with their own top bosses who tussle and muscle each other over every little thing.

In the new Post world, there'll be three top editors: Kevin Merida, in charge of national stuff; Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, the current sports editor who'll take over local coverage; and Sandy Sugawara, the current business editor who's going to be in charge of a "universal" news desk that'll funnel all kinds of content into print, the Web, and so on.

The rest of the changes kinda flow from that new structure, with massive personnel upheaval, and desks and titles moving around the place like gchats. But one newsroom change towers above all the others for Posties as well as readers.

The memo announces that Assistant Managing Editor for Metro Robert McCartney will leave his current perch to take a job as a Metro columnist. He's run excellent Metro coverage since mid-2005, when he was chosen to succeed Jo-Ann Armao. His people love him, he's had good relations with the Web folks, and he did fabulous things for the long-suffering feature hole in Metro's front page.

So the move to providing content is nothing short of a shocker. In mid-December, McCartney sent out a notice announcing that his desk would be hiring a new columnist. The memo called the move "exciting news," doubtless a reference to the extraordinary act of hiring in these tough media times. Here's what the job announcement said, in part: "We want a columnist who becomes a must-read feature in the paper and on the Web. We want a columnist who can offer a compelling and provocative read twice a week, who is an exceptional reporter, voiced writer and deep thinker. We want a columnist who has a lot to say and really looks forward to saying it."

Who knows---perhaps the boss fashioned a job description so delicious that he just had to have it himself. The Dick Cheney of the Washington Post? Or is McCartney's position separate from the one that the paper declared open in December?

Either way, management seems happy with the move, if the re-org memo is to be believed:

Bob McCartney, who has served the paper so well as AME/Metro for the last four years, will become a Metropolitan columnist, one of our leading voices in the community where Bob grew up and has lived and run coverage for so long. His distinguished career as a foreign correspondent, managing editor of the International Herald Tribune and the first AME of the continuous news desk, and as a business editor and a reporter gives him the kind of depth and wisdom that will infuse his writing with authority and insight.

Unsaid is how long it's been since McCartney scored regular bylines---that would be about 18 years, judging from a quick Nexis search. Correction 4/17: This part is wrong: McCartney picked up regular bylines in 2003, as a correspondent from Paris. I apologize for the mistake. So McCartney can management employees, but can he manage sources again? I'd say yes---he'll get the magic back.

The bigger consideration---and it's a huge one---relates to the lineup of Metro columnists. Here they are: McCartney, Marc Fisher, John Kelly, and Courtland Milloy. The relevant percentages: 75 percent white, 100 percent male.

Now, there is no way this can stand at the Washington Post. Just no way. Not at a paper that over the years has taken great pains to ensure diversity within its reportorial corps. The boys club on the Metro page this morning emerged as one of the top items of gossip in the Post newsroom.

Answers on Metro columnist diversity, though, are tough to come by right now. Sources at the Post appear to be digesting the news and not picking up the phone.

One editor in a position to know, however, says there's "more to come on columnists." The editor did say that McCartney is not moving into the columnist slot announced in December.

This afternoon, there's a "town hall" meeting on the changes at the Post. Turn off that BlackBerry, Brauchli!

Memo after jump.

To the staff:

Today, we are beginning a reorganization to create new reporting groups, streamline editing desks and anticipate the impending integration of our print and digital news operations.

The changes reinforce our longstanding belief in great reporting and writing as the vital center of The Post’s journalism. We want to empower journalists and encourage them to work across departments and platforms. In addition, we want to simplify the handling of words, pages, images and new media, building on the prescient move to “two-touch” editing under Len and Phil. Decisions about space and play must happen faster, both in print and online, and in a way that pulls together our now-separate newsrooms. A single editor ultimately ought to be able to oversee all versions of a story, whether it appears in print, online or on a BlackBerry or iPhone. Space in the newspaper and editing firepower in general should be allocated based on a day’s news priorities, not a predetermined formula.

These changes will alter the way we do things, but t hey will not affect the commitment to journalistic depth, authority and excellence that has defined The Post. Just the reverse: We think these steps will help us to adapt more easily to the economic and technological challenges that face us, while preserving the best of our traditions and values.

Key Personnel Changes:

In keeping with our strategic focus on serving readers in and interested in Washington, we will put most news reporters under two senior editors, a National Editor and a Local Editor. Much first-line editing, copyediting and production will occur on a new Universal News Desk under another senior
editor. Together with the executive editor, the managing editors and the deputy managing editor, these people will form the core leadership of the newsroom.
- Kevin Merida, now Assistant Managing Editor for National News, will become National Editor.
- Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, now Assistant Managing Editor for Sports and Weekend Editor, will become Local Editor.
- Sandy Sugawara, now Assistant Managing Editor for Business, will become Editor of the Universal Desk.

These changes, which become effective May 1, will set in motion other personnel moves.
- Scott Vance, now Assistant Managing Editor for News online, will become News Editor when our print and online desks merge, working closely with the National and Local editors to drive coverage across platforms.
- Bill Hamilton remains Enterprise Editor, working for Liz and helping to guide many major projects into the paper and online.
- Bob McCartney, now Assistant Managing Editor for Metro News, will become a columnist on metropolitan affairs.
- Matt Vita, now Emilio’s deputy, will become Sports Editor.
- Greg Schneider, now Sandy’s deputy, will assume responsibility for Business.

Coverage Groups:

Local, National and Business reporters and editors who “commission” or drive coverage will be organized into coverage groups. Decisions about what we cover and who should handle what story will be made by the leaders of these reporting groups. Each reporting group will be responsible for a
specific area of coverage and be led by an editor and probably at least one deputy, who may also write.

To give you an idea how this will work, we recently posted a job running Science, Health and Environmental coverage. That editor will have primary responsibility for coverage of those areas, across the paper and the website, and will oversee the reporters on those subjects. Most stories
from these coverage groups will be edited on the universal desk throughout the day. The groups will manage blogs and may edit major projects internally. Other groups will be created around subjects such as National Security, Local Business and Development, Social Issues, and so on. We will
announce their formation in coming weeks and post available openings for editors and deputies.

All the news reporting groups will work for Kevin or Emilio. Kevin has run National since January, but already has displayed great talent as a story conceptualizer and the special effectiveness of someone who is both a leader and a role model for many of his reporters. Together with his deputy, Marilyn Thompson, Kevin has been building a highly capable team whose coverage goes beyond the routine and brings real insight.

Emilio, a native of the Washington area, has run sports brilliantly in his second stint here at The Post. His focus on breaking news and exclusives, on strong narratives and the superb work of our columnists and photographers, has made our Sports section the best. He’s also pioneered
print-online integration for The Post this year, bringing together our sports journalists in what has been a very useful and successful experiment. We will place great emphasis on developing strong local journalism, especially online.

Emilio’s exceptionally talented and versatile deputy, Matt Vita, will succeed him as Sports Editor. A former national-security editor and Congressional reporter for The Post and a former foreign correspondent for Cox Newspapers, Matt shares much credit for the Sports department’s recent
successes.

Bob McCartney, who has served the paper so well as AME/Metro for the last four years, will become a Metropolitan columnist, one of our leading voices in the community where Bob grew up and has lived and run coverage for so long. His distinguished career as a foreign correspondent, managing editor of the International Herald Tribune and the first AME of the continuous news desk, and as a business editor and a reporter gives him the kind of depth and wisdom that will infuse his writing with authority and insight.

Universal News Desk:

The Universal Desk will ultimately combine what is now spread across departments and two separate newsrooms, bringing together many people now in the ranks of assigning editors, copy editors and the news desk, as well as many producers at the website. It will handle editing tasks large and small, and make decisions about space allocation and story play, deciding what appears where on the paper’s news pages and online. Most stories will be edited on the universal desk, rather than in reporting groups. Stories edited during the day for use online will form the basis for their print
versions, and vice versa.

We still have a lot of planning and consultation to do before the desk will be up and running. We invite your input and ideas, and expect to be discussing with many people both downtown and in Arlington what the right organization is.

Anyone who has watched Sandy’s incredibly agile oversight of the business and financial staff, especially the way she and Greg led The Post’s super coverage of the economic and financial crisis, will understand immediately why she is the right person to take on the immense task of creating a new, high-octane news engine.

Greg, a smart, seasoned editor with experience on National as well as Business, will take over the business staff from Sandy and become The Post’s main national economics and business editor. Greg has more than learned this field promotion after the often-heroic hours and exacting editing he put into the business staff’s outstanding coverage of the financial and economic crisis. Like Kevin, Emilio and Sandy, Greg will work with us in mapping out the detailed newsroom structure.

The bridge between the coverage groups and the Universal Desk will be Scott, when he becomes News Editor. Among his many roles will be setting intraday deadlines, guiding our homepage and ensuring that The Post is competitive on all platforms, on all stories that matter to our readers. A
veteran of National and the printside before he took on a key news job at washingtonpost.com, Scott has worked with just about everyone here, and to great effect.

Another central figure in the universal desk will be Ju-Don Roberts, Managing Editor of washingtonpost.com, who has steered our digital edition’s continued success and whose print and online experience are vital to re-imagining our editing operations. She’s been a top-class leader and
will remain point person for The Post’s digital edition, working with Raju on innovations and development of the best possible website for our readers.

Future Changes:

While we have outlined major changes here, there are many gaps still in our plan. As you will see, there are unanswered questions about some departments, including Style and the presentation, visuals, interactivity and web tools/innovations groups. Working with the new leadership team, we
will come back to you with more specifics in coming weeks. We plan to move as quickly as possible to announce further details of the structure of the reporting and editing groups. Some new roles will emerge from this process, and we expect to post those jobs as well.

We are, as you know, embarked on a number of big projects. Most notably, we plan to bring in a new content management system—production software, in plain English—and are rethinking aspects of our newspaper’s design. We expect that system will take a year to go live, but our reorganization
anticipates the changes in workflow that will result from a single editing and production system. Design changes in turn will reflect what the new technology and newsroom organization will enable.

We also are on track with plans to meld our print and digital newsrooms over the summer and into the fall. Shirley Carswell, Claudia Townsend, Peter Perl and a small army of others are leading various efforts, and we undoubtedly will have more to say about these plans in coming weeks.

We believe the changes we are undertaking will enhance our competitiveness by focusing our journalistic energy on coverage of core areas and by simplifying editing processes. As we integrate editing and production, print and digital, we will be able to deliver smarter, faster news online, while preserving the writing, depth and range of coverage that define The Post.

Finally, for anyone who gets this far, we have one final tidbit: We’ll hold a town hall meeting at 2 p.m. today in the auditorium to take questions and discuss these plans or any other issues.

Marcus Liz
Raju

A wide-ranging editorial reorganization is afoot at the paper, and staffers are busy exchanging whatever details they can pick up. But they're hard to come by. Several top editors confirmed that the plan is coming soon but get touchy when pushed on details.

"I think people in the newsroom are going to be quite happy with the choices of the people who are going to be leading the paper," says Peter Perl, a top newsroom official. "That’s really as far as I can go."

All week long, sources in the newsroom have speculated that an announcement on the editorial reconfiguration could come as soon as today. But Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli and others apparently have too many fine points to nail down before making anything official. Brauchli passed an inquiry about the changes to spokesperson Kris Coratti, who wrote via e-mail, "We don’t comment on rumors."

One element that appears certain for inclusion in the plan is a "universal" editing hub for much of the newsroom---a super-high-energy locus of editors and specialists who can process news copy and transmit it via blogs, Tweets, online articles, and print stories as well. Unclear at this time is how many topical areas of the Post ---i.e., Metro, Style, Sports, Business, etc.---will feed this multimedia sweatshop. Sections that already have expertise in feeding multiple platforms, for example, could remain pretty much intact.

Once all the hubbing and platforming is done, there'll likely be fewer editors touching copy at the 700-strong Post newsroom. Under the current configuration, assistant managing editors (AMEs) lord over a vertigo-inducing hierarchy of deputy editors, assignment editors, assistant editors, and so on. The changes now under consideration would flatten that setup, creating more or less two distinct classes of editors: Those who assign stuff in the various sections and those who take custody of it in the newsroom’s hub.

Somewhere along the chain of custody, the paper’s now-mighty AMEs would lose a chunk of their portfolio, because workers in the hub would presumably respond to another manager, not to mention the demands of all those killer platforms they’d be serving.

Post brass is reportedly working overtime on the plan so that editors can take a close look. Details are critical because some editors are now evaluating the buyout that the paper announced in late March. How can these people make a reasonable decision on the buyout if they don’t know their hub status?

Joe Kahraman, a rep with the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, which represents Posties, says the company has moved “very quickly” to present the buyout package to editor-level personnel at the paper. That’s the best indication yet that the Post is targeting its editor ranks for shrinkage in this fourth round of buyouts since 2003.

Our business coverage will shift into the main news package in the A Section Monday through Saturday. We will have a new business and economics display page inside the section, designed to signal to readers the centrality of economic news, as well as the increasing overlap of political and economic events, in today’s world. The expanded A Section will allow us to make better decisions about story play and length, and to run a leaner, better-organized newspaper.

The A Section will take readers through National and International news, then into the new Economic & Business section, a Washington Business page, the Fed Page, and the Editorial and Op-Ed pages.

The shift of business coverage into A will result in other changes. Rather than run a single section once a week on Washington Business, as we now do each Monday, we will have a daily page dedicated to local business issues. On Monday, our business page will look ahead to the week’s news.

The Post no longer will run full listings of daily stock-price movements Tuesday through Saturday. Instead, we will add a new daily half-page package of statistics and graphics that will show how major national and local stocks fared, how world markets and commodities performed, and what is happening to key interest rates. Readers who want to find comprehensive stock prices will be directed to washingtonpost.com.

We will enhance our Sunday Business section, by including not only full stock-price data from the week, but new tables listing the schedule for major and local earnings releases, U.S. market performances over the past quarter, maps that depict the performance of global markets, a graphic of S&P 500 sectors performance changes, foreign-currency exchange rates and interest rates.  Also on Sunday, The Post will include more personal-finance stories aimed at helping individuals and small businesses survive the economic downturn.

In Style, we are shifting some comics online, where readership of such features already is high. One of our two crossword puzzles will end because the syndicate that provides it three days a week has decided to discontinue it, along with the weekly chess and poker columns. In addition, we are adjusting the television listings we offer to reflect prime-time programming.

These moves will allow us to continue providing the features that our readers tell us they most value in the newspaper. They also allow us to save on newsprint—an important objective in these times.

We remain absolutely committed to the strongest, in-depth and authoritative coverage of business locally, economics and economic-policy nationally, and the hugely important intersection of government, politics and money. The new approach will make that abundantly clear.

Marcus          Liz          Raju          Sandy