Suddenly there are commercials for this Washington Examiner newspaper and people giving it away at Metro stations. I’ve never heard of it before. Anyone have the straight dope? What is it, who publishes it, where did it come from? Is it part of the international communist conspiracy? What’s the deal?
See http://199.249.170.220/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000780461.
This is actually the second incarnation of the Examiner. An earlier incarnation was published by O. Roy Chalk, the owner of D.C. Transit, the private company that later became part of Metro.
The Editor and Publisher has some of the details.
Oh, I see. Apparently it’s the reformed Arlington Journal.
:eek:
The DC Examiner is a product of the San Francisco Examiner, which is also a free newspaper. I’m not sure why they made a big to-do locally about their new DC edition, but they did just that about two weeks ago.
I wouldn’t quite say that… I worked at The Journal Newspapers as a copy editor for two years (that was over two years ago). The Journal (which had editions for Arlington, Alexandria in VA, and Montgomery and Prince Georges Counties in MD) had been around for like 30 years and was a truly local daily paper. But in the 90s, they fell on hard times and the paper has been bought by several different owners until finally being bought by the present owner last year, who has now changed it to The Examiner. It’s a completely different paper. The Journal had a full staff of local reporters but I understand that now, most of it is wire copy crap.
It’s really sad actually. The Journal used to be really respected in the Northern Virginia area but has been in decline for a while. Basically, when I was there, the people who owned it were crazy assholes and drove out all the talent and ruined it. After I left, it got even worse, then the current owners bought it. They probably got a good deal too, because the crazy assholes had ruined the paper so bad, they were probably desperate to get rid of it.
Oh, also, here is an interesting article in the Washington City Paper about the questionable circulation of the paper in DC (heavy delivery to the rich white areas, almost no delivery to the poor black areas):
https://secure.washingtoncitypaper.com/cgi-bin/Archive/abridged2.bat?path=q:\DocRoot/2005/050211/BLACK&search=examiner&SearchString=examiner&AuthorLastName=&IssueDate=mm%2Fdd%2Fyyyy&SelectYear=All&next.x=60&next.y=16
After reading the thing for the last few days, I’ll have to say I’m not impressed. The news material is mostly wire stuff, as you say. The editorials look like they’re written by college students who don’t study seriously.
There’s a lot of knee-jerk reactionism. Today’s edition includes an item that is nothing more than a three-sentence ad hominem attack on the National Organization of Women with no logical reasoning and no backing up of facts:
They also have a section where they reprint what looks like online exchanges between editors and readers. Today’s edition includes an exchange in which a reader reminds the editors (in response to an editorial item in an earlier edition) that the Emancipation Proclamation did not free the slaves in Maryland. The editor thanks the reader for the correction and then asks, “But if the Emancipation Proclamationdidn’t free the slaves in Maryland, when did slavery officially become illegal there?” The reader then responds “I can’t do all the work. Maybe it’s still nto illegal.”
This is worse than pathetic. Have these people attended high school? They should have some idea about the 13th Amendment. And if they don’t, they should have the self respect not to put their appalling ignorance on display.
They don’t know about something as important to our history as the 13th Amendment and yet they feel free to pontificate on all kinds of issues of the day.
Sounds about right. The Ex isn’t terribly impressive over here either, and it’s been to the point that they have to have people on street corners trying to hand out the already-free papers.
It’s worth the price, at least. 
Washington has a paper, it’s called The Washington Post. It also has a Rev. Moon-owned right-wing shitrag called The Washington Times. Ironically, they get poor black kids to hawk it on streetcorners (“Pennies, quarters, nickels and dimes, twenty-five cents for the Washington Times”) In this era of declining newspaper sales, I would presume this “me-too” product will be disposed of by market forces in fairly short order. The Journal was kind of hokey, but it at least published letters to the editors that weren’t just from some shill from a special interest group.