The Solomon Scandals A Washington newspaper novel by David Rothman

16Jan/100

‘Conversations with Papa Charlie’ book review: Thumbs up—and toes, relax

image The Schmid­offs’ wind­mill burned down in 1908 in Lip­nick, Rus­sia. An upshot was a real estate empire half a planet away, includ­ing Crys­tal City, the huge office and res­i­den­tial com­plex across the high­way from Rea­gan National Air­port. How did it hap­pen? A rabbi saw the fire and other events as signs for the Schmid­offs to leave Rus­sia. They sailed to New York and even­tu­ally became the Smith fam­ily of Wash­ing­ton, D.C., so leg­endary in real estate and phil­an­thropic circles.

David Bruce Smith, grand­son of Charles E. Smith, recounts the rise of the man and fam­ily in Con­ver­sa­tions with Papa Char­lie, a 119-page col­lec­tion of sto­ries that should please many in the local busi­ness and Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ties. Papa Char­lie came out a decade ago but is timely in the wake of the death of Robert H. Smith, the author’s father, on Decem­ber 29. I’ll review the book, enlivened by the warm draw­ings from the younger Smith’s gifted mother, Clarice Smith, and then, in keep­ing with the family’s inter­est in char­i­ties, I’ll sug­gest a new phil­an­thropic ini­tia­tive that just might reflect David Bruce Smith’s per­sonal passions.

The younger Smith aimed for a mem­o­rable tri­bune, not a full-length, objec­tive biog­ra­phy with all the good and the bad. He has suc­ceeded, aided by the many idio­syn­crasies of his subject—from dis­tain toward Big Macs to a fond­ness for deep-breathing exer­cises and self-hypnotism, body part by body part. “Toes, relax,” Charles Smith would start, nod­ding off before he could com­mand his head. As required of all Jew­ish fam­i­lies by the Almighty, much of the inter­gen­er­a­tional talk focused on food. Papa Char­lie was an anti-cholesterol hawk, remind­ful of my father, who, given a ham­burger, could squeeze cow remains to a sec­ond death with his nap­kin, lest any artery-clogging juices remain. But Charles Smith may have been even more relent­less in push­ing his David toward fruits, veg­eta­bles and low-fat yogurt.

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15Jan/100

Bible of newspaper biz reincarnated under new owner, Duncan McIntosh

image Good news: Edi­tor & Pub­lisher, the bible of the news­pa­per busi­ness, is back from the dead and will be pub­lished by Dun­can McIn­tosh. Mark Fitzger­ald, an E&P vet­eran, is the new top edi­tor. Online report­ing has resumed, and a Feb­ru­ary issue will appear. Dun­can McIn­tosh is  a boat­ing mag­a­zine publisher—it also orga­nizes boat shows. Sep­a­rately and also on the pos­i­tive in the news­pa­per world:

–The Wash­ing­ton Post news­room staff will not par­tic­i­pate in single-sponsor con­fer­ence as a rule, at least when the topic relates to a company’s busi­ness, and there are other pol­icy improve­ments, such as a require­ment that the con­fer­ences with peo­ple in the news be on record. An uproar arose last year when the Post was invit­ing cor­po­ra­tions to spon­sor issues-related salons at the publisher’s house. The Solomon Scan­dals is in part about a cor­rupt and very imag­i­nary D.C. paper, and I would rather not see real life imi­tate me.

–Real estate adver­tis­ing is on the rise, at least slightly—which is good as long as news­pa­pers don’t let it influ­ence cov­er­age, as hap­pens in Scan­dals.

Papa Char­lie review update: Lookin’ like Sat­ur­day, tomor­row, and I’m expect­ing per­haps 1,500 words, much longer than I was think­ing originally.

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13Jan/100

‘Papa Charlie’ book review is still set for this week, Jefferson quote included

image The review of Con­ver­sa­tions with Papa Char­lie is still set for this week—most likely Thurs­day or Friday—along with some related obser­va­tions on char­ity, one of the top­ics of the book. I wanted to run it ear­lier but was unavoid­ably delayed.

Memo to self: Remem­ber the Jef­fer­son quote. At least from afar, it would appear to be help­ful in under­stand­ing the Smith family’s long-range goals, a mat­ter highly ger­mane to Papa Char­lie. The left photo is of Mon­ti­cello, a ben­e­fi­ciary of the late Robert H. Smith’s charities.

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11Jan/100

TheGeorgetownDish is eying D.C. suburbs—plus Greenwich, Palm Beach, other upscale markets

image image So what’s ahead for The­Ge­orge­townDish—the new Web-based news­pa­per in the D.C. neigh­bor­hood where so many high-powered media types live? How can I not be curi­ous when the pub­lisher is named Solomon? Beth S. writes back:

“We are work­ing hard to cre­ate a world class site for George­town. As we per­fect The­Ge­orge­townDish, we will be look­ing at expan­sion to nearby com­mu­ni­ties. We are also inter­ested in notable neigh­bor­hoods like Green­wich, The Hamp­tons, Palm Beach, Napa Val­ley, Brent­wood and Santa Mon­ica, and are lay­ing the nec­es­sary ground­work for sites locally and nation­ally. We are pre­pared to spin a lot of plates.”

Good luck, Beth! And don’t let the reces­sion get you down. As I recall, none other than Google got started when the econ­omy was less than stellar.

And speak­ing of the local news scene: Three ways to save the Wash­ing­ton Post: A few ‘Post Apoc­a­lypse’ obser­va­tions from Alexan­dria.

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10Jan/100

TheGeorgetownDish starts up: Hyperlocal newspaper war ahead? Or a friendly buyout?

image A new online news­pa­per, the The­Ge­orge­town Dish, is start­ing up right in the neigh­bor­hood of Ben Bradlee, Sally Quinn and other VIP journalists.

Beth Solomon—no rela­tion­ship to the fic­ti­tious gov­ern­ment land­lord in The Solomon Scan­dals, thank you—is the edi­tor and pub­lisher. She has worked at ABC News and Voice of Amer­ica among other places.

Robb Hoffheins, co-founder and chief oper­at­ing offi­cer, was at Amer­ica Online on the busi­ness side.

The “beta” ver­sion of the Dish comes across as promis­ing, with a lively mix of the enter­tain­ing and the use­ful, while mak­ing good use of link­ing to sites else­where. Its top­ics range from crime news and gov­ern­ment news to, yes, real estate price overviews.

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