After the jump.

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If you worked at the Washington Times before John Solomon came on board, you might not like what new Washington Times employee Jeffrey Birnbaum has to say about your work then:

It’s a turnaround situation at the Washington Times. . … the paper was allowed to, in effect, decline and lapse and its journalism faded and that was a terrible situation. It was a lost asset. There are nearly 200 reporters and editors at the Washington Times. For it to survive and thrive what it needed was real journalistic standards to be applied.

Watch Birnbaum’s comments on this C-SPAN video (starts about nine minutes in).

We are making the Washington Times, helping to push the Washington Times

That’s not a typo: We hear that the wind blew off the U off the USA Today’s building in Virginia today.

UPDATE: Picture after the jump.

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An internal Washington Post staff email, obtained by FishbowlDC:

Subject: Inauguration Day – January 20, 2009
As you know, Tuesday, January 20, 2009 is Inauguration Day. As with every presidential inauguration, this will be an important day for Washington Post Digital and The Washington Post Company. As you can imagine, it also will be a logistically challenging day for many employees commuting to work in the Washington, DC area on that day.

Current crowd size projections for the inaugural and related events indicate that an extremely large number of people will be in the city for this historic event, which will make commuting to work difficult.

In addition, we understand that many Washington Post Digital employees
may want to take the day off to participate in inaugural events.

Accordingly, each Department will determine which employees and/or roles will be required to report to work on Inauguration Day. Of course, Editorial employees, because of their Inauguration Day responsibilities, should talk to their managers as soon as possible to determine their status for that day.

In any event, we will need all employees required to work on January
report to work that day to ensure effective operations. In addition to our normal operational needs, we anticipate an increased demand for copies of The Post, with many online requests and phone calls to our office, similar to the days following Election Day.

Employees who are not specifically required to report to work on Inauguration Day may use a vacation day if they would prefer to avoid the heightened challenges of travel to and from work on January 20.

These vacation leave requests, however, must be approved in advance by
your manager, and must be made in accordance with your vacation leave
policy. Any other special arrangements or exceptions must be approved by the department’s VP.

For those employees who normally drive to work, we encourage you to carpool with other Washington Post Digital employees where possible to help reduce congestion in and out of the city.

We appreciate your flexibility and understanding as we endeavor to accommodate as many employees requests as we can while ensuring operational effectiveness on this historic day.

Thanks!

Click on the papers below to see full images.

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After the jump.

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An interesting correction to the New York Times’ 12/23 story on River Road’s flooding in D.C.:

Because of an editing error, an article on Wednesday about a water main break in Bethesda, Md., misstated the amount of water released each minute because of the rupture. It was 150,000 gallons, not 150 million gallons.

The most recent edition of the Post’s Date Lab ended quite well, and it seems the two daters have been out several times since. This brings the ratio to 46 successful dates out of 122, or just under 38 percent.

Our Top Ten most popular posts from the previous week. After the jump.

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