William World News William F. Yurasko's blog v.14 – Nats, Penn State, Redskins, greater DC , travel, more

Chat Valhalla — Svrluga twice, Steinberg 4 times, plus Weingarten and Boswell!

Congratulations go to Gene Weingarten for winning another Pulitzer Prize, this time for a story that I found too tough to read.
This is apparently Weingarten’s last Pulitzer since he stopped writing features for The Post. Cost-cutting is the culprit of course, but he likes the freedom to do other things.
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Gene Weingarten takes package, will only [...]

Last week, Gene Weingarten announced that he was taking a package from The Post, but would continue to host Chatological Humor monthly and write his “Below the Beltway” column weakly err weekly.
Yes, I took it because I wanted to. Generously, The Post offered to hire me back, on contract, to do the same job I [...]

Fiddling Around With History – The PostGene Weingarten’s Pulitzer Prize winning story about a world-class violinist playing before subway patrons was not original! The same thing happened in 1930 in Chicago.
PREVIOUSLYPost PulitzersWeingarten does it againQ&A: Gene Weingarten
Gene Weingarten, Joshua Bell,
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The Post just about swept The Pulitzer Prizes this year, winning six awards, a record for the paper.
The Pulitzer Prizes: 2008 Washington Post Winners
There are few stories in particular that I’ll comment on when they published:
Local Reporting, Breaking NewsVirginia Tech Shootings — washingtonpost.com was behind everybody on the story for the better part of [...]

Gene Weingarten may be a complete slacker, but every now and then he does something useful like this week’s Washington Post Magazine cover story, Pearls Before Breakfast. He recruited famed violinist Joshua Bell to perform in a Metro station. Due to WMATA bureaucracy, Bell actually performed in L’nfant Plaza underground shopping corridor rather than the [...]

One of the more controversial parts of my recent interview with Gene Weingarten was the following exchange:
WFY: Speaking of Liz, how is she holding up now that she does not have to moderate the weekly discussion? Is she relieved, or will we be seeing a column called “Why washingtonpost.com doesn’t need Weingarten” any day now?
GW: [...]

Last November the popular washingtonpost.com live discussion Chatological Humor* went dark. The decision by host Gene Weingarten was controversial even though he said he would return in April. Recently, I had the opportunity to ask Mr. Weingarten some questions about his sabbatical.
WFY: You said you were simply too busy to keep doing the chat. Specifically, [...]

Bad news for fans of Gene Weingarten’s washingtonpost.com chat:
Today marks the five-year anniversary of Chatological Humor, which has become a national model for the successful, sophisticated, wildly popular national online reader-interactive forum. Its readership is steadily and continually growing. Boldly exploring the limits of real-time technology while fearlessly challenging antiquated, patronizing notions of the proprieties [...]