It appears as if the Washington Post's plans to name their new lady-blog "That's What She Said" has run into a roadblock -- namely, some other women, who had already named their blog that. more ›

Naming a blog is an incredibly important thing. It's the first thing that people see when they come to any given corner of the internet, and a bad name can really get your blog off to a rough start, regardless of the quality of the content found therein. more ›

For those of us who follow local media commentary, today's a big day -- Erik Wemple, formerly of Washington City Paper and TBD (both outlets where he was not shy about criticizing his current employer), launched his Washington Post blog last night. more ›

At 12:26 this afternoon, Arlington blogger of record ARLnow reported that a bomb threat had been called in to the office building at 1100 Wilson Blvd. in Rosslyn, which houses the main offices of WJLA, Politico and the remains of TBD. This was apparently news to local beat reporters working inside. more ›

Friday afternoon, Steve Buttry, TBD's Director of Community Engagement, emailed members of TBD's Community Network to let them know about how the changes to TBD/WJLA will affect their relationship (full disclosure, my neighborhood blog is a member of the network). TBD will get rid of the "News Near You" feature currently on their website. They will begin to only link to content that is of interest to the metro region in general, instead of localized neighborhoods. more ›

Hey, you know who hasn't done something really stupid in at least a couple of weeks? The Washington R******s! What's with the stars, you ask? Well, us media types apparently have to be really careful with how often we use the name of Washington's National Football League franchise, since they informed the Washington Post that they weren't allowed to use the name in the publication's team blog. Yes, you read that correctly. more ›

There's a whole lot of hubbub clogging this editor's Twitter feed this afternoon about some contest involving D.C. Twitter users, the Washington Post and some kind of vote. Usually, we tend to keep our hands out of such popularity contests, fully content with our unshakable status as the best damn whale cake-eatin' blog in the District proper. But we couldn't help but notice that DCist commenter favorite Spike Mendelsohn was one of the Post's big winners, being named the voters' favorite restaurateur who expresses themselves 140 characters at a time. Or, as our managing editor, Heather Goss, puts it: "Which reminds me, when is Spike Mendelsohn opening his social media-promoted, hunter-themed restaurant: To Kill A Mockingtweet?" I'm not calling it a throwdown, commentariat, but...yeah. more ›

With crisis comes opportunity -- a lesson that 31-year-old District resident Danny Harris learned a few years ago, as he stood in line at Whole Foods after having spent time overseas for his government job. more ›

TBD's community network, which encompasses dozens of local blogs and websites who serve as an extra set of eyes in exchange for an occasional place on the big kid's homepage, has been thoroughly analyzed, praised, and criticized as one of the more interesting experiments in recent local media history. But did TBD bite off a little more than it could chew when it thought that it would be able to sell advertising on 208 affiliate sites, ranging in size from the incredibly small to some of the more recognizable names in metropolitan-area blogging? It certainly appears that way. more ›

Washington is no stranger to unique, strange and/or experimental neighborhood names: Swampoodle, Burleith, Foggy Bottom, Stronghold and Civic Betterment have always tickled my fancy for one reason or another. Point being: it's hardly surprising when somebody comes along with a suggestion to carve out a new neighborhood from one or several larger hoods and then brands it with a silly-sounding name. more ›

WMATA, at least part of it, has officially joined the blogosphere! We'll fully admit to not noticing that Metro's Office of Long Range Planning had started a blog -- cleverly titled PlanItMetro -- until this morning, but I'll be the first to admit that its got some interesting stuff to share. more ›

As we noted this morning, the Committee of 100 on the Federal City fired off a letter to Mayor-elect Vince Gray earlier this week asking that he sack Department of Transportation director Gabe Klein and Office of Planning director Harriet Tregoning. The committee, which is made up of 153 people who advocate for planning and development based on the "values inherited from the L'Enfant Plan and McMillan Commission," argued that Tregoning and Klein ruled their roosts much like their boss, Mayor Adrian Fenty, had -- without any concern for public input. more ›

We can't blame Courtland Milloy, really. His last column got so much attention (guilty as charged!) that he'd be foolish not to keep it up, right? (He sure is hauling in the pageviews.) It's said that there's no such thing as bad publicity, and, to be honest, this is probably the most that people have read Milloy in a long time. more ›

Next week. That's when TBD -- which is focusing all efforts on pulling up an ergonomic rocking chair to the stiff-backed Washingtonian media table -- will make its much-hyped, multi-platform, eagerly-anticipated launch. So what can you expect from this thing that you've been hearing about for what feels like forever? more ›

A Bloomingdale blog has republished emails exchanged between ANC Commissioner Gigi Ransom, Big Bear Cafe owner Stu Davenport and blogger Tom Bridge which really give some insight into what kind of mess can result when a small business in D.C. wants to expand in the face of community opposition. more ›

Considering how many local blogs obsessively cover the District Department of Transportation, it only makes sense that the city's transpo officials get into the game themselves. In social media, as it is on The Wire, it's play or get played. more ›

An addition to your RSS readers: the Washington Post's new All Opinions Are Local site, featuring original and aggregated opinion-based content from seven prominent area bloggers, including yours truly. Several other writers involved you're also likely familiar with include David Alpert from Greater Greater Washington, Dan Malouff of Beyond DC, and Topher Mathews from Georgetown Metropolitan. Rounding out the group are a few bloggers whose work I'm anxious to get to know better: Kenny Burns of Maryland Politics Today, Paige Winfield Cunningham of Old Dominion Watchdog, and Peter Galuszka of Bacon's Rebellion. more ›

Neighborhood blogger U Street Girl acknowledged in a post late last night that she had removed a comment that had been posted to her blog after receiving an email from David Shott, the owner of planned new wine bar Du Vin Osteria. Shott had threatened legal action against the blog, according to its author.

It is with regret that I write this post and removed the comment. I wish Mr. Shott had come to me in a more friendly manner and had not immediately written the words “legal action” to a young professional who blogs on her spare time. I was trying to promote Mr. Shott’s business. I posted the comment because it seemed to raise relevant concerns about Mr. Shott.

Via the Post's Breaking News blog, a YouTube video from 2006 has turned up of alleged Pentagon shooter John Patrick Bedell, in which he lays out a online software product he invented called "Information Currency." With the use of crude stick figure diagrams, he describes a vague process that will "create a financial market for information." more ›

Let's clear some things up, eh? Alright. Curling -- which always takes its place every four years alongside speed skating, moguls, and other sports that Americans, without any sort of contextual knowledge, obsess over for two weeks during the Winter Olympics -- is much more involved than you think it is. It is not like shuffleboard you play at happy hour, nor is it a game that you can do while drinking (at least, not that we recommend). Curling isn't a constant cardiovascular activity, like most popular American athletics; but you'd be hard-pressed to convince this writer that your hamstrings and your arms are prepared to go 10 rounds of sliding on the most slippery ice you've ever been on, occasionally throwing 42 pound rocks at a one-foot wide bullseye, but mostly balancing on one foot to slide down said sheets of pure cold while avoiding obstacles and vigorously sweeping in front of said rock while someone is screaming instructions at you like a banshee. more ›

We wanted to extend our hearty congratulations to Prince of Petworth, aka Dan Silverman, who announced on his site last night that he has quit his day job in order to devote himself full-time to neighborhood blogging. Dan's been talking about making this move for a long time, so it's great to hear that his dream is finally coming true. As a 2+ year veteran of the Guild of Professional Bloggers, I can tell you that Dan is about to join an elite group of individuals who find themselves spending a preposterously high percentage of their time searching for coffee shops with reliable wireless internet, and far less time worrying about showering or putting on pants. Way to live the dream, Dan! more ›

Don’t get in Hagan Blount’s way this weekend if you run into him in a D.C. bar or restaurant. He’s got mouths to feed—or more accurately, one mouth, 24 times: his own. Blount, who blogs under the name “Wandering Foodie,” is invading D.C. this weekend in an attempt to test 24 of the area’s eateries in 24 hours. He performed a similar feat in Boston last month—video footage available here and here—and has now been scouting D.C. for the better part of the last two weeks: testing routes, interviewing fellow foodies, and talking with some of D.C. food industry insiders. Some of his interview footage is already posted here. more ›

You know, a wise man once told me that if you make it really easy for someone to do something they feel compelled to do, then they'll probably do it -- despite all warnings to the contrary. Put a warm cookie in front of a child and tell them it will burn their mouth, and the kid will still grab and chomp. Put a cocktail in front of an alcoholic in distress and he'll probably drink it. Make it incredibly easy for someone to siphon your work for a few extra pageviews despite all conventional mores, and damn it, they'll be slapping Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V faster than you can get the words "fair use" out of your mouth. more ›

Credit goes to the increasingly excellent local blog Unsuck DC Metro for the news that a Metrobus operator will soon be fired for talking on a cell phone while driving a bus. more ›

I would bet a pretty large sum of money that Deadspin's Tommy Cragg has never set foot inside Nationals Park, despite having attempted to tear it apart in a feature he's started called "Why Your Stadium Sucks." Not that there aren't plenty of legit reasons to complain about Nationals Park, but Cragg bases his entire post on stuff other people have written about it or the team, and fails to talk about the most crushingly obvious complaint anyone who's ever actually attended a game there would mention: the horrible, horrible service you get at the concession stands. The long, slow lines and rude service haven't really gotten better this year with the new caterer, Levy Catering, either. Now of course, not every single concession worker at the stadium is terrible. You can luck into a short line or a competent cashier every once in a while, and the staff at the Red Porch Restaurant is actually top notch when it comes to service with a smile. But go to virtually any other ballpark in the country and you (gasp!) don't have to wait 20 minutes to buy a hot dog and aren't treated to disdain and/or total incompetence at the majority of snack counters. more ›

UPDATE: Wow, huge apologies for directing anyone to this site, as an alert tipster points out that much of it appears to be blatantly plagiarized from The Phat Phree's Look at My Striped Shirt!. We weren't familiar with that particular work, but you should definitely not count on the DC Summer Interns blog for anything good after all, based on this evidence. more ›

Last year, local NBC news affiliate WRC/NBC4's web site got a major facelift. Gone was the relatively dull NBC4.com, and in its place was a nationally-launched web site template, in this case nbcwashington.com, that's trying to be both a home for the news content of WRC, as well as its own online brand, offering aggregated and exclusive content on top of the station's regular stories. more ›

Local blog 14th & You has been doing a pretty good job of keeping tabs on the conflict between nightclub The Space and ANC2F, as any quality neighborhood blog would do. But proceedings between the two took an interesting twist when, during the ANC's monthly meeting last week, the proprietors of the much-maligned hotspot at 9th and N Streets used a comment from 14th & You's post on the subject to solidify their club's case. more ›

Just in case you hadn't yet checked out Prince of Petworth this morning, we feel it is our editorial obligation to point out that the prince has penned a brief profile, complete with photo, of resident commenter and enfant terrible Monkeyrotica. Having met Monkey and his lovely wife before, nothing much in the article was a surprise to DCist — apart from the fact that he appears to be wearing jeans, and not leather pants, with his signature Hawaiian shirt. Now don't get us wrong, we love us some Monkey more than anyone, but we couldn't help thinking while reading the piece that this sort of public ego-stroking only serves to encourage him. We'll admit that the phrase "don't feed the animals" ran through our minds more than once. Then again, if this sort of exposure ends up producing one of the funniest, foulest, most expletive-laden comment threads DCist has even seen, who are we to question. So congrats on your moment in the sun, Monkey. This post is cursed. Maybe! more ›

Yesterday afternoon, the Examiner's Leah Fabel first reported that Ward 1 Council member Jim Graham planned to introduce legislation today that would allow D.C.'s bars and restaurants to serve alcohol until 5 a.m., and to keep doors open 24-hours per day, between Jan. 17 and Jan. 21 to accommodate inauguration tourists. We then linked to it in our end of the day roundup. D.C. Wire posted its own version this morning. Then about an hour later, D.C. Shadow Representative Mike Panetta posted the following message to his Twitter feed:

DC Council extends "last call" to 5 am during inauguration week. Sounds fun, but I'll be happy to stay awake past midnight :)