June 1, 2006
Morning Roundup: Our Loss, Their Gain Edition
City Paper Editor Jumps Ship: This won't do anything for the District's morale. Gawker and WJLA are reporting the Erik Wemple, the City Paper's Editor in Chief, has been hired away by New York's Village Voice. Wemple has manned the helm of the City Paper since January 2002, and has long been known in D.C. for his biting cutdowns of the Post. We'll miss Wemple, but we're sure it'll only be a few months before he runs back down I-95 and away from that metropolitan hellhole some people call the Big Apple. Comment war starting in 5...4...3...2...1.
Schools Forced to Cut Down on Recess: Back in our elementary school days, recess was a solid 40 minutes long, just enough time to get in a good game of four square or jacks. Kids these days don't seem to have it as good, though -- the Post is reporting that in an effort to raise academic standards and fit in tight schedules, area schools are cutting down on recess. Schools in the District grant a mere 20 minutes, while some schools in NoVa allow only 15 minutes. Some parents aren't happy with the state of affairs, apparently, and have started fighting for longer recesses as an important part of their children's development.
Immigrants May Face Deportation: Earlier this year we warned that many area immigrants from El Salvador may stand to lose a special legal designation that has allowed them to stay in the United States for years. Today the Post is reporting that it may actually be Nicaraguan and Honduran immigrants threatened, though by their own doing. According to the article, thousands of immigrants from those two countries have not taken the steps to renew special permits that allows them to remain in the country, though the deadline is today. Some immigration officials claim that many immigrants have put off renewing because they believe that they will benefit from the immigration reform currently moving through Congress.
This Day in DCist: On this day last year, we made Mom's meatloaf, asked about the District's little piggies, and welcomed Adrian Fenty to the mayoral race.
Briefly Noted: FBI raids office of D.C. school official ... Blog war goes from stupid to stupider ... Park Police chief warned of cutbacks ... Baltimore art museums to be free starting in October ... Park Service turns Snyder down.
Picture snapped by andertho
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OK, I'll start. Congratulations, Village Voice! I hope you enjoy your giant, useless "photo essays" in place of the real journalism we used to get back in the Jack Shafer era.
Hmmm... kids are getting fatter and fatter, so logically we'd want to cut out their exercise time.
NYC is like a jillion times better than DC in every possible way. Full stop.
The "Blog war goes from stupid to stupider" link is MIA.
>Wemple has manned the helm of the City Paper since January 2002, and has long been known in D.C. for his biting cutdowns of the Post. We'll miss Wemple,
No we won't. Wouldn't it be great if our main alt weekly actually produced journalism instead of constantly attacking the Post in every effing article. The constant throw away jabs got old real, real quick.
I yearn for a decent alt weekly.
Anyone else see this one? Apparently Iraq is safer than DC..
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/5/29/132706.shtml
And the debunking..
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/05/31/dc-safer-iraq/
The Village Voice will soon cease to be the Village Voice. It was bought by the horrible New Times company recently, which has specialized in buying up decent alt-weeklies and turning them into chatty, content-free embarassments.
The heads have already started to roll, or have chosen to roll. It's a damn shame.
Martin,
I think you may be the only person who will miss Erik Wemple. The Washington City Paper is without a doubt one of the worst "alternative" papers in the country. Good riddance, Erik!
Like CP bitching about the Post, the ankle-biting of CP by readers is inevitable. Odd how they miss the irony...
Good riddance, Wemple. The current makeup of any week's CityPaper:
1.) Articles bashing the Post, written by reporters not good enough to work at the Post, and thus extremely spiteful and petty.
2.) "Infinite Jest"-length arts reviews that take four sittings to read and even more sittings to determine the reviewer's opinion.
3.) Articles bashing white people for moving into the city from the suburbs, written by other white people.
4.) The aformentioned photo essays, for weeks when there weren't any stories in the hopper.
5.) One Ian MacKaye mention per issue.
6.) Savage Love (a good thing).
7.) Ads for hookers.
That's about it.
Oh, the recess thing. As GhettoBurbs points out, kids are getting fatter. There are literally dozens of scientific papers establishing a link between diminishing recess time and fat kids. They also document decreased academic performance, poorer immune function, and increased disciplinary problems.
So, essentially, dropping recess to meet education standards is like giving the kids lobotomies to do the same. But then, actually improving education would require, among other things, getting good teachers by paying them a living wage (thus decreasing the ammount available for embezzlement by school board officials).
let's hope he doesnt get the ethnic races confused up in NYC like he did here in DC when he described Peggy Cooper Cafritz as white. best wishes eric!