May 17, 2007
Washington City Paper Uses Many Words for Cover Story This Week on Investigative Journalist
If you're into the Washington City Paper, approach this week's issue with care -- it's not a quick read.
This week the city's premiere alternative weekly profiles investigative journalist Murray Waas, using some 21,514 words over the course of three articles to attack his journalistic standards and detail a long-running feud between the paper's staff and Waas. If that many words don't mean much to you, think of it this way -- only 11,000 or so made it to print, if only to save on paper (the other 10,000 are in two web-only articles). By comparison, the whole series is roughly one-fifth the word-count of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, would take up 70-plus pages in a Word document and now ranks as the longest piece the paper has ever published.
As a service to DCist readers, we'll summarize -- according to the City Paper, Waas is an odd guy whose many stories often include facts that are rarely confirmed by mainstream journalists. Was saying that worth 21,514 words? Judge for yourself.
Thankfully, though, the paper relied on Editor Erik Wemple and Senior Writer Jason Cherkis for the story, saving themselves what would be a huge payout to a freelancer charging by the word. And if you're wondering why I'm still going on about this, it's because I'm thinking of penning a 21,000-word critique. Phew. Roughly 225 words down, and lots to go.
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journalists dicussing journalists discussing journalists ...
The shit's gonna fly now. Oh wait... it already has.
because Waas wrote about the WCP editor's suit against a pet spa, they went after him.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/murray-waas/the-wag-time-pet-spa-cons_b_36927.html
looks like they didn't find much
Too bad Rees and Waas haven't crossed paths yet.
The CP always uses too many words for its cover stories. Seriously, who ever reads the entire thing?
Ever since they got that new editor-and-chief, the CP has become very, very boring to read.
the only thing worth reading in the city paper for the past many years has been dan savage and the restaurant and entertainment listings. this story is a tempest in a teapot. no one besides wemple, cherkis, waas and their respective lawyers gives a crap.
Expanding on what Ortsed wrote, Wemple holds some of the biggest grudges in journalism today. He hates the Post because they wouldn't hire his wife years ago, and he hates Waas because he exposed Wemple's little poop-throwing temper tantrum. Meanwhile, the paper he runs has gone into the toilet under his watch.
I'd say that pretty much everyone involved with this story comes across looking like a giant, flaming asshole, with Cherkis barely squeaking in ahead of Waas as the giant-est and flaming-est amongst them. The whole thing reminds me of idiotic multi-valent disputes on comment threads or message boards, where every rebuttal is met by an equally vehement but unrelated side-charge and all the players are more concerned with arguing over word choices, implications and subtext than actually discussing anything substantive.
Also, although the set of articles definitely implies that Mencimer held a long-standing grudge against Waas, it seems doubtful that it was related to the dogshit incident, since all of the Circumlocutor posts related to that ruckus went up after the article was (allegedly) well underway.
The story isn't the story. It's various people's reactions to the story. Both before and after it was published. That's the interesting part. The rest is too inside baseball.
Now look, the Stephanie Mencimer dog sh*t incident is old news, I heard that years ago, before circumlocutor (who is a fool btw). Stephanie had every right to force that doggy daycare to move from where it was. She was hardly the only neighbor who complained about it- they opened a freaking KENNEL under false pretenses, brought dozens of dogs into the neighborhood and then refused to clean up after them- that place was FAMOUS on the local yahoogroups, you know? Circumlocutor brought up something that had been known to residents for many months- nothing that person did was new.
Who here still reads the city paper instead of picking up The Onion? anyone? no one?
21,0000 words about how some journalist who most of us have never heard of isn't liked by his landlord and Erik's wife and his wife's friend-- and that is what Eric Wemple himself has written.
They haven't deployed so much resources to a story since Jason Cherkis' landlord wanted to evict him. Chump change. This rag is turning into a junior high school paper.
Who is next on their list? Their drycleaner? First Jason Cherkis attaks his former landlord. Then he attacks his roommates. Then Erik goes after the bloggers who he doesn't get along with. One can wonder whatever they think Murray Waas did to them.
But I don't want to get cross ways with Erk Wemple, ever! I'm going to find refuge in the Onion, but hop e Wemple doesn't get made I said tha!
What a JOKE Martin is!