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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So the snowball incident has made it to CNN which links to WJLA's scare story hatchet job. DCist notes that the coverage was a wee bit on the paranoid side:

"As if the negative coverage doesn’t threaten to be embarrassing enough for the District, the story — headlined 'Snowball Fight Takes a Turn for the Worse' — paints a misguided picture of the day to say the least. According to WJLA and thus CNN, there was a “snowball fight-turned-unruly protest’ with 'anti-war protesters dressed in anarchist garb' crashing the fight in their all black clothes, masks, and anti-war signs."

Before the off-duty detective whipped out his gun, these "anti-war protesters dressed in anarchist garb" helped a cop get his car out of the snow. Talk about anarchy!

*photo courtesy of Matthew Bradley.

As if vending beside urinals at Redskins games wasn't viral enough: Jennifer Donelan of WJLA put BeerInTheBathroomsGate™ on her station's evening news, and even took a few seconds to give Washington City Paper kudos for blowing the lid off Snyder's newest revenue stream.

Here's Donelan's WJLA piece. Wait til the 50-second mark. Don't take a pee break or beer break or both, or you'll miss my work. And remember: TV puts on 10 pounds, and I've been watching a lot of TV lately.

Otherwise, I think I nailed my line. Thinking ahead: "I'd like to thank-thank...both my readers-readers...and the Academy-Academy..."

Reading between the lines of Donelan's copy, it looks like the Redskins fired the beer man caught on tape dispensing beer in an environment teeming with second-hand poop. A commenter on City Desk yesterday wrote that he was a vendor at FedExField, and he found the bathroom vending "disgusting." But he warned Redskins patrons who are "worried about sanitation" that they should really "stay far away from the lemonade."

Yucky!

***

Sticking with local media, via DCRTV: Two more guys fired by Dan Snyder will have a radio show to bash their former boss. WTOP will give John Riggins and Frank Herzog at least a tryout for a weekly show called "Ask Riggo." (The first installment of Riggins/Herzog is going off the air as we type. "We should do this again," Riggins said to Herzog at sign-off.)

(AFTER THE JUMP: Does everybody who despises Dan Snyder get a radio show? Will Laveranues Coles get a program? Timmy Smith's out of jail? Dan Snyder benched Jason Campbell? Jeff George who? Dan Snyder will put Jason Campbell back on the field Monday night?  Night of Quarterbacks what?)

Herzog lost his 25-year gig as Redskins announcer a few years ago to make room in the booth for Dan Snyder's sidekick, Larry Michael. Riggins had a radio show on Snyder's embarrassing Triple-X sportstalk network, but got canned by Snyder last year when he bought WTEM-AM, a station that could actually be heard in DC.

Riggins, meanwhile, has been brutal on Snyder and Vinny Cerrato in recent Youtube monologues.

Riggins and Herzog join an army of folks who've been grinding their axes with Snyder over the public airwaves. Brian Mitchell, who crushes Skins management on Comcast and during Sunday night spots on WUSA-9 TV, has been fired not once but twice by Snyder: The first firing came in 2000, when Mitchell, the NFL's all-time leader in kickoff and punt return yards, got booted off the Redskins to make space for one of the owner's early jock sniffees, Deion Sanders.

Then Mitchell got canned by Snyder yet again last year when his former boss bought the sportstalk station WTEM, where Mitchell had been a co-host of the "John Thompson Show."

And there's LaVar Arrington, the afternoon drive-time star at WJFK, a rival to Snyder's sportstalker, WTEM. Arrington was once an owner's pet, but has been blasting Snyder since the end of the 2003 season, when he went through a contract negotiation with the Redskins owner. Arrington claims that Snyder pulled a bait-and-switch during negotiations, in the process eliminating a huge bonus that Arrington says he was promised.

The turning point in the player/owner talks, Arrington said a year later, came when Snyder asked him to sign a contract that had "666" written somewhere on it.

“[M]e and my agent, we are Christian people and we were alluding to the fact that there were three sixes in the total of the contract,” Arrington told FoxSports interviewer James Brown. “Three sixes, I think if you are a Christian you know what three sixes means. It is the mark of the devil.”

Arrington then asked Snyder to crunch the numbers in his contract a little bit to “get those three sixes off.”  The team did so, and Arrington say he signed the contract without re-reading the re-worked contract. He later discovered that the way Snyder got rid of the "666" was by removing the $6.5 million signing bonus Arrington says he was promised.

Arrington has had a lot to say about Snyder, all of it brutal, ever since.

The FCC would have to open up some more frequencies if everybody screwed by Snyder were to get a radio show, of course. But if I could pick, I'd like to see Laveranues Coles get a forum where he can tell that story about Snyder threatening to ruin his career and turn him "into Terry Glenn" during a nasty contract negotiation. Recap: After Snyder threatened to send a "flat-screen" television to Coles' house so he could watch football at home, since he'd make sure that Coles wouldn't be playing the game anywhere if he didn't play along with Redskins management, Coles got his wish and was traded to the New York Jets.

***

Timmy Smith talks about the Super Bowl, not about prison. Yes, Skins fans, the team used to be in the Super Bowl pretty regular.

***

A moderator at Extremeskins.com reports that Dan Snyder and Vinny Cerrato left the owner's booth at halftime and didn't come back. Jason Campbell got benched at that time.

Did Jurgensen's cigar smoking buddy, Snyder, personally put JC on the bench? Snyder wouldn't personally get involved in lineup changes, and force a coach to to accommodate Jurgensen's whimsy, would he?
Oh, right! Jeff George who?

But now reports are that Jason Campbell will be back in the starting lineup for Monday's game with the Philadelphia Eagles. Zorn, however, wouldn't confirm that, as if he's not making that decision, either. So maybe Snyder is calling this shot, too? He wouldn't want Campbell back in the lineup, would he?

Oh, right! Snyder's still trying to sell his Night of Quarterbacks!

Here's the opening:

Sonny Jurgensen: You had one offensive touchdown...

Jim Zorn: Thank you.

Sonny Jurgensen: You've got to get into the end zone...

Jim Zorn: Yes.

Uh oh.

Dan Snyder and Jurgensen are cigar smoking buddies. Jurgensen wanted Jeff George. So it's a good bet that in private Snyder's getting everything the Redskins listening audience got from Jurgensen and then some.

(AFTER THE BREAK: Albert Haynesworth don't play that? Folks want to trade in Jim Zorn et al on something with less mileage? Even the all-news station is piling on? Snyder's dastardly deeds have trickled down to 'Bama? Everybody but the Washington Post thinks Michael Jordan's a jerk? ANOTHER blonde DC sportscaster?)

***

Watching Albert Haynesworth take a knee or lying down on the job for no obvious reason, I was reminded about what my hero Boudreaux said in 1999 about Dana Stubblefield, a defensive lineman who went from all-pro to narcoleptic bum after taking Haynesworth-like money from Snyder to come here from San Francisco. Boudreaux's words: “I can hear him saying [to Dan Snyder], ‘Football? You pay me $47 million…and you want me to play football? Mister, a man with that kind of money don’t play football!’"

Boudreaux is a genius.

***

Knowing what we now know, it's time to re-read Erik Wemple's pre-game insider analysis of what was going to take place in the Meadowlands. He nailed it.

Right?

***

The fans around here aren't happy with what they saw. Over at Dan Snyder's web site, extremeskins.com, one of the smarties proposed a "Coach for Clunkers" program, to trade in the same ol' coaches and players and give newbies a shot.

WTOP this morning offered listeners a chance to join the mob. "If you'd like to jump on the pile, call us!"

The only thing boring about the Redskins are the games!

***

What kind of flash point is Dan Snyder? Well, the Birmingham News ran a column about him as a pariah and a symbol of everything that's wrong with everything over the weekend.

The Birmingham News!

***

So Michael Jordan's still getting coddled by the Washington Post? Well, check out the write-up of Jordan's Hall of Fame speech that ran in Saturday's Post, and the write-up in Yahoo Sports.

The commenters to Michael Lee's Post story all echo the Yahoo version, which was basically that Jordan is a troubled meanie.

It got so bad that Michael Wilbon came in to try to soften the damage from the Yahoo piece a day later, with a column praising Jordan's bizarre bullying — he flew in a high school classmate to help make the old varsity coach look bad — for its "unvarnished" qualities.

Ok. In any case, after reading elsewhere about what a jerk he was, go watch this Jordan dunk over Patrick Ewing from back in the day. Still chilling after all these years. He wasn't human on the court, so why expect him to be humane off it?

And, Jordan ain't the only one holding grudges: Abe Pollin has never let go of the bitterness from his alliance with Jordan.

***

This is what diversity looks like: Former George Michael intern Lindsay Murphy joins Fox-5's Redskins wrap-up show, joining former George Michael protege Lindsay Czarniak on WRC and Sara Walsh at WUSA in DC's blonde sportscaster corps.

Get with the program, WJLA!

***

The Washington Post ran three photos of Woodson's win over Lake Braddock in the sports page on Saturday. The section named a Woodson player its star of the day. That's fine. As long as sports sections name high school stars of the day, there'll be a market for newspapers. (Really!)

But the other two shots had caption writers humiliating specific Lake Braddock players. One caption had the Lake Braddock QB throwing "an incompletion" and another photo of a Woodson running back as he "runs over" a Lake Braddock defender. Both Lake Braddock players were named in the captions for no good reason.

Whoever wrote these captions went out of his or her way to embarrass kids. This is the sports journalism equivalent of child abuse. Not nice!

***

Story tips? Wanna Play the Feud? Tube amps for sale? Send to: cheapseats@washingtoncitypaper.com

So how did the Red Line metro crash death toll jump to nine last night then fall back to seven this morning and then back up to nine? Last night, City Desk reported that three news outlets—WUSA9, WTOP, and WJLA—had confirmed that nine had died in the crash. WTOP cited the D.C. Fire Department as its source. WJLA had cited Metro.

This morning, Fenty stated that the number of confirmed dead was actually seven. That number soon increased back up to nine.

At least one fire department official is trying to figure out how and why there was so much confusion. One reporter City Desk contacted speculates that it may have to do with just the gruesomeness of the scene.

Deputy Fire Chief Kenneth Crosswhite says the death toll should not have gone up to nine last night. "I don't know how that number got out there," he says. "I'm very disappointed. We had no idea that there was nine. I called the command post and said, 'Are we at nine?' They said, 'No, we're at six.'... [They said] we have not recovered any more bodies."

Crosswhite is trying figure out who leaked the increased death toll last night. "Maybe you could help me out," he says. "Where should I look? I talked to Metro's PIO and I talked to NTSB, their PIO. I don't know where that number came from. If you find out please let me know so it doesn't happen again."

The Fire Department's own spokesperson, Alan Etter, says he isn't the source for last night's number. "I didn't talk to anyone at all last night," he says. "Nor did I get any new information—they might have talked to someone at the scene."

Dave Statter, the runs the STATter 911 blog and is a reporter with WUSA, says it may have come down to body parts. "My impression is that last night's information which came from sources around 11:20 PM was based on what the camera saw or parts of bodies being seen," Statter says via e-mail. "They had not gotten to those bodies in time for the 8:00AM press conference so the official count was left at 7. After the press conference access was made and five bodies came out bring the official toll to 9."

Councilmember Jim Graham appears to side with Statter for an explanation on the confusing death toll numbers. "I think it has to do with the way the car was crushed," he says. "There was a lot of uncertainty about what was in that crash. That's just pure guess work on my part having been on the scene."

Graham says he plans on asking about the death toll issue at this afternoon's Metro Board hearing on yesterday's crash.

*photo by Darrow Montgomery

Here's one commenter from the washingtonpost.com on the matter:

How is the Washington Post being scooped about a potentially serious metro rail collision? This happened about 45 minutes ago, and it's still in little print at the bottom of the Post web page. Come on guys. Surely you haven't all taken the buy out?

In late May, D.C. Fire Department brass tried to hose down a local reporter's Emmy nomination. Deputy Chief Kenneth Crosswhite lobbied to have a story produced by WJLA disqualified as a local Emmy nominee. The story in question was a three-month investigative piece that ran on Nov. 11. It chronicled the saga of arson investigators-turned-whistleblowers Gerald Pennington and Greg Bowyer. The two had argued that there were serious holes in how arson cases were being handled. The two had gotten demoted for saying so.

When that story got nominated for a local Emmy, Crosswhite decided to pick his fight. Show business was not impressed. Local Emmy honchos overruled Crosswhite's efforts. And this past weekend, the WJLA piece—by veteran newsman Jay Korff—won an Emmy in the investigative category.

Surely this will go down as a devastating blow to Fire Department brass. City Desk reached Crosswhite this afternoon for a response. He tried to be gracious in defeat.

"I want congratulate him that he won the Emmy," Crosswhite says of WJLA's Korff. "I wish him luck. But I still believe deep down that the story was not fair and accurate. Those guys have shopped those stories around to the other news agencies....I wish Jay well."

Korff says that he stands behind the his three-month investigative piece. "We just went where the facts took us," he says. "We were interested in nothing else other than making sure that our story was fair and balanced."

Crosswhite insists Korff did not have all the facts. "I just feel that being such a prestigious award, it should be awarded correctly," he explains, adding that not all the facts are out because Bowyer and Pennington face disciplinary hearings.

When informed by City Desk that the charges against Pennington were dropped last week, Crosswhite admitted he hadn't heard about that fact. "I don't know anything about that one," the deputy chief replied.

Harris, known for his trusty baritone and superior mustache, writes:

"I write this not as a journalist, but as a Montgomery County resident. Can someone tell me how County Executive Ike Leggett can get away with such blatant insult to our intelligence when it comes to his traffic/speed cameras? I saw the press conference where he laughed at the question of whether the cameras sprouting up all over the county were really there to make driving safer or to generate revenue to close his budget gap. He laughed and said, of course, this is only about public safety. He laughed again.

I gave Leggett the benefit of the doubt, even after I got stung while following along with traffic on River Road. I believed him when he said the cameras would not be installed in “gotcha” spots, but would only be set up to keep school zones and problematic spots safe. Then I went away on vacation and returned to find my neighborhood community 'surveilled' by eight cameras. As for their locations, four were set up near school zones, but not exactly in them. Four of them were installed behind the crests of hills (the definition of “gotcha” spots)."

Is Leggett in trouble on this issue?

Later in his post, Harris writes about his own speed ticket:

"As for the instance when I got stung, I accepted it. I was on my way to a CVS for a Valentine’s Day card after midnight (I’m a procrastinator, what can I say? At least it was the morning of the 14th!) and I was tagged by a crest-of-a-hill camera on River Road nowhere near a school. I know this may put me in line for some criticism, but I have to wonder – is there really a need to provide protection when/where there isn’t anyone to protect? There are no pedestrians, school buses or children or traffic at 1am."

Today, WTOP wonders if the speed cameras are just put in place for governments to tax residents.

Who knew Leon Harris had a blog? This guy used to fill up the dead air on CNN. He currently provides the gravitas over at WJLA which he has done for some time.  And apparently, he also invokes the common man's perspective on his blog. Of executive pay limits, he writes under a post called "Unbelievable!":

"A recurring theme among the execs and their allies has been 'if you limit their pay, the will take their talent to other companies, and things will only get worse for the bailed-out ones.' Is that the sorriest blackmail, or is it just me?"

It's not just you.

Then there's the blog post about Dionne Warwick.

In a blog post dated Jan. 12, Harris writes of meeting up with Warwick for dinner. They end up talking about her upcoming American Music Inauguration Balls. He gushes:

"I had the honor of sitting next to the Wondrous One at Teatro Goldoni as she laid out her plans for a double-header on Inauguration night.

Ms. Warwick told me she was amazed as she watched the crowd in Chicago on Election night, particularly the youths in the maelstrom. 'They get it!', she said with a light in her eyes. She was fueled by the excitement of watching a new generation get excited about their potential, and the threshold of a new age for America they were working to be a part of. That’s what inspired her to do something different, something that hasn’t been done before.

Ms. Warwick told me she was approached about bringing a thousand of those young people to Washington for the Inauguration. "I said, ‘That’s great, but it’s not enough. How about throwing a Ball for them?’". After further review, she realized her traditional fan base "probably wouldn’t want to get down to ‘Ludacris’ ", and she didn’t want to leave them out. That’s why Dionne Warwick will be hosting TWO Balls in Washington at the Marriott Wardman Park on the same night. One is for the young and young at heart – called the Urban Ball – and one called the Legends Ball for the more 'experienced.'"

I wonder if Harris ever checked back in with Warwick after her balls were canceled. Anyway, Tim Brant's blog approves of Leon Harris' blog.