Photo by brokensquare

Photo by brokensquare

Good morning, Washington. We realize that the Morning Roundup is often filled with depressing, disheartening news about what’s happening across the D.C. area, whether it’s crime, transportation accidents, under-performing schools, you name it. But we keep filling ‘er up with the news of the day, however bleak, and you keep coming back for more, so we were surprised this morning to read that Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth thinks the Post’s readers want “happier stories, not ‘depressing’ ones.” That quote comes via a Howard Kurtz piece exploring the extent of Weymouth’s involvement in spiking a Post Magazine story about a woman whose arms and legs had been amputated. Weymouth may have only tangentially influenced the newsroom decision to kill the piece, but the larger sentiment is what’s disconcerting. Freelance writer Matt Mendelsohn spent more than a year with Lindsay Ess, a Richmond resident who had been close to death and was finally receiving four prosthetics. Here’s the quote from Mendelsohn: “To label Lindsay’s life ‘depressing,’ especially as if she needs to make some advertiser comfortable, is, well, depressing in its own right.”

What is Going On With the King Solomon Lodge? Late on Friday, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty’s office sent out a notification to the press that he would announce on Monday morning that he was shuttering King Solomon Grand Lodge in Woodridge, a frequent go-go venue, after a series of violent incidents there. But then on Monday, the mayor’s office said that the announcement had been postponed, and today Nikita Stewart digs into why that happened. The official word from Fenty’s office is “a scheduling conflict,” but Stewart talked to some people connected to the lodge who wonder if the mayor didn’t jump the gun, especially considering they say they weren’t given any notice of the decision. The news conference has been reportedly rescheduled for Thursday.

Metro Suffers Another Death: The Metro employee who was struck by a train last week died on Monday, the Post reports. It took John Moore, 44, of Arlington County, four days to die after being hit by a train between National Airport and Braddock Road. This makes the fourth WMATA employee death since the June 22 Red Line crash.

Briefly Noted: D.C. school teacher gets 18 months in sex abuse caseMan stabbed outside Adams Morgan apartment building … Maryland GOP leader resigns … New York Ave. briefly closed following police chase, crash … Native Americans ask SCOTUS if ‘Redskins’ offends.