The Washington Post's Alex MacGillis sent the following note, obtained by FishbowlDC, to Washington Post staffers yesterday:

A quick public service announcement, for what it's worth: there's a mistaken notion about Obama's biography that's been popping up here and there for months now, including in our own pages, and seems to be gaining steam, with Brand X making the mistake twice in an A1 story today and the WSJ letting it through in a Ralph Nader interview over the weekend: that Obama went into community organizing in Chicago after going to Harvard Law. He did not. He went into organizing earlier in his life, after his undergrad years at Columbia. It was after getting burned out in organizing that he decided to go to Harvard Law. After law school, he went to work for a public-interest law firm in Chicago. Noble, sure, but not as big a jump as going from law school back to the streets, which he did not do.