The Solomon Scandals A Washington newspaper novel by David Rothman

Free paper copy of ‘The Solomon Scandals’ if you come up with the best replacement for ‘L Street’ and ‘WaPo’

A Wash­ing­ton Post alum enjoys The Solomon Scan­dals blog but won­ders why the devil I use “L Street” when refer­ring to the Post. After all, isn’t the paper at 1150 15th Street, N.W.?

Well, once upon a time, the Post’s offi­cial address was in fact 1515 L Street. And, maybe in trib­ute to Lon­don­ers’ old “Fleet Street” nick­name for the press, the “L Street” ref­er­ence found its way into the Post news­pa­per some years ago. What a great link between the tan­gi­ble and the jour­nal­ism I grew up read­ing; a neigh­bor of mine even helped put out the edi­to­r­ial page. That is how “L Street” ended up in the Solomon Scan­dals blog. Some might say the street ref­er­ence con­tin­ues to work. Think of a par­al­lel. Cer­tain writ­ers still say Fleet Street when refer­ring to the Lon­don press despite the actual news­pa­pers’ hav­ing moved on. It’s a lit­tle like men­tion­ing K Street when talk­ing about Wash­ing­ton lob­by­ists’ turf after the actual firms have relo­cated elsewhere.

In this era of vid­cams and Net-enabled hyper­local news, how­ever, I need to mod­ern­ize. The story I have from one Post employee, as well as a sec­ond, in pub­lic rela­tions, is that the Post phys­i­cally com­prises at least two build­ings joined together. When the Post put up the sec­ond with a more impos­ing front, among other advan­tages, the loca­tion was on L Street rather than on 15th. The Google map charm­ingly pre­serves the ves­tiges of the 1515 L Street address—well, assum­ing we can believe it, not always the case (scroll down this post for a scary story about the risks of out­dated or incom­plete elec­tronic maps). Got it now? But where does that leave me? I still need a sobri­quet for the Post—my child­hood read­ing, not just cur­rent jour­nal­is­tic fare—even if it’s a news­pa­per rather than a human and the edi­to­r­ial page is too neo-con these days for a guy reared on the old Post in the L Street era.

So here’s the deal. The reader of this blog who comes up with the best sub­sti­tute for ”L Street” will win a free paper copy of The Solomon Scan­dals (warn­ing: salty city-room lan­guage and req­ui­site cyn­i­cism, although the news­pa­per involved is most def­i­nitely not the Post). I mean some­thing good: there’s a cer­tain QC thresh­old you must cross. “15th Street,” for exam­ple, some­how lacks the same ring of “L Street.” Maybe writ­ers sim­ply pre­fer let­ters over num­bers. And for­get about the oft-used “WaPo.” Sounds too much like an intel­li­gence agency or util­ity com­pany.  I’ve used it, but only for want of some­thing bet­ter. Email me at davidrothman@pobox.com. Other than mem­bers of my fam­ily or indi­vid­u­als asso­ci­ated with Twi­light Times Books, any­one on Planet Earth may enter, Wash­ing­ton Post Com­pany peo­ple included, past and present, from Don­ald Gra­ham on down. Deadline—how’s that for a news­pa­per word?—is 5 p.m. East­ern Day­light on August 31.

Note: Just to be clear, this is not in the least an offi­cial Wash­ing­ton Post con­test. I have no busi­ness con­nec­tion with the paper other than hav­ing free­lanced for L Street occa­sion­ally in the dis­tant past.

(Updated to address the “WaPo” issue. Also, I’ve extended the dead­line for con­test entries.)

• ‘Page-turner’? Or ‘page-tapper’? Just what do you call an e-novel you like?
• Solomon Scandals hyperlocal series so far: A list for latecomers
• Hyperlocal journalism and TBD: More coming on what makes a great ‘hyper’ site
• Truth or PR spin? W. Post’s Dana Milbank fires back at TNR’s ‘Apocalypse’ analysis of L Street
• The Georgetown name game: Roffman, Rothman, Solomon and The Georgetowner