Examiner Web Site Blocked by D.C. Government?

The Examiner editorial staff is understandably outraged that the D.C. government appears to have blocked access to its web site on all city-owned computers. Given the ongoing tumult at the Office of the Chief Technology Officer, it's certainly plausible that the news site has been blocked by OCTO (hopefully, by employee error—blocking a legit news web site on purpose would be an incredibly stupid policy).

Without knowing any specifics though, we'd speculate first that the newspaper's ever-changing urls are a possible culprit here. Not long ago, you accessed the D.C. version of the Examiner at http://www.examiner.com/dc, which, for whatever reason, now directs to a live, separate version containing only the paper's blog-style, opinion-oriented online "Examiners" content. Last summer, the paper redesigned its actual news web site, and started publishing at www.dcexaminer.com. But lately, that url has started automatically redirecting to www.washingtonexaminer.com. None of this is to say there would be a legitimate reason for the D.C. government to block access to any of the Examiner's urls, but we can at least imagine a scenario where the newspaper's constantly shifting location might have innocently confused the OCTO's internet filtering protocols. We'll be as curious as anyone to find out what the city's explanation is.