Click on the papers below to see full images.

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Click on the papers below to see full images.

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Sent in by a reader:

(clockwise from top left) Shira Toeplitz, Josh Kurtz, Charlie Mitchell, George Cahlink, Doug Graham, Ted Goldman, Lauren Whittington and David Meyers.

Former Portland Press-Herald reporter Jonathan Kaplan pens a piece in today's Washington Post Outlook section about the closings of various D.C. bureaus:

The biggest losers in these cutbacks, of course, are the citizens of Maine and the other states where newspapers have closed their Washington bureaus. My main gripe is that the loss of regional reporters just gives one more advantage to incumbents seeking reelection. Even in 2006, a year in which a Democratic tide swept Republicans out of office, 94 percent of incumbents in the House were reelected, as were 79 percent of those in the Senate, according to OpenSecrets.org, a nonpartisan Web site that keeps track of election spending and data.

The downsizing in mainstream newspapers does not, of course, spell disaster for the Constitution. We reporters, as much as we might want to think otherwise, are not the last line of defense against the misuse of government power in the republic. These days, people get their news from plenty of other sources, including television, radio and the Internet. So the problem isn't that all those press releases that lawmakers send out will go unchallenged, although they might go unread in standard newsprint.

But readers will miss some nuance simply because there's nobody in the Capitol. They won't know how Sen. Olympia Snowe's eyes light up when she recalls being selected as an intern for the state's Democratic governor in the summer of 1967, even though she considered herself a Republican. They'll probably never learn that, at a press conference in May, just minutes before a vote on a massive farm bill, Collins praised a provision in the measure to close the so-called Enron loophole. She then headed straight to the Senate floor and voted against the bill.

Read the full thing here.

...off to Politicker, that's where. Politico associate publisher Waldo Tibbetts is leaving the Capitol Hill newspaper to become the executive vice president and associate publisher of the Politicker publications.

The paper is conducting a national search for a general sales manager who will oversee its operation, including a new national brand sales unit and an expanded marketing department.

One Politico'r says that the paper is now profitable on a monthly basis and will soon launch "Politico Network," a vertical network that will offer political content in exchange for the right to sell the revenue of other national newspaper sites.

John Harris and Jim VandeHei's internal memo, obtained by FishbowlDC, after the jump...

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Competitors The Hill and Politico do...(And how long before someone steals the Twitter username?)

The Hill gets a nice plug in, of all places, the juror questionnaire from The United States v. Ted Stevens:

Sen. John Cornyn's campaign manager, Rick Jesmer, send the following email, obtained by FishbowlDC, to the campaign's "closest supporters:

Friends:

Since you are among our closest supporters, I want to make you aware of some problems Senator Cornyn is experiencing with the Houston Chronicle, and particularly its editorial board.

On Tuesday of this week, Senator Cornyn spoke to a Pachyderm Club meeting in Houston that was covered by the Houston Chronicle. The subsequent article focused on health care and led off with the sub-headline "Senator says state is a model for nation, despite having so many without insurance." Needless to say, the headline did not accurately reflect Senator Cornyn's views.

Read the rest after the jump...

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Lots has been written about the closing of various bureaus around town and what this means for readers.

So, how about this: Although the Portland Press Herald recently closed its D.C. bureau (meaning reporter Jonathan Kaplan), it did decide to send a reporter to Beijing to cover the Olympics.

Smart decision? Have at it in the comments...

Twitterer extraordinaire Robert Bluey posted this photo of all the journos at Newt Gingrich's press conference on Capitol Hill today: