Why Did WAMU Close DCist?, Washingtonian, Andrew Beaujon, April 19, 2024

We really can’t afford to lose more real, local journalists—people who tell real stories about what’s going on in the area at a granular level, not just filler and content creators. But we did.

“Diane, thanks for your feedback,” Pulley-Hayes [the company’s awful manager] said, as the 50-plus-year veteran of public broadcasting appeared to continue to try to speak. “But it’s really inappropriate to talk about HR decisions in a public forum. So I’m not at liberty to address it in this forum, to talk to you. You’re asking HR questions that I cannot answer.” Pulley-Hayes then called on another employee.

The decision, to gut the reporting staff and focus on audio, is moronic, which is what’s being said a little nicer here:

“Nobody is pivoting to radio. It doesn’t make sense,” one former staffer says. “How can four people cover an entire area?” says another, referring to the fact that WAMU now has four reporters total. That staffer calls the new plan “content strategy word salad.”

Worth a full read if you’re in the region and care about news.

Washingtonian isn’t perfect either, it should be noted—then and current CEO Catherine Merrill penned an infamous piece in 2021 threatening her employees who chose to work from home, even though for some reason she permitted that choice.

Japan’s Southern-Style Conservatism, Modern Age, Allen Mendenhall, April 30, 2024

Interesting premise. I once compared Hawaii to the American South—I detected a similar sense of local pride imbued with some bitterness over a sense of what was lost (Hawaii actually being an independent nation at one time, the South, of course, giving it a go). Morally and geopolitically these sentiments may not be the same, but in a human sense, I suppose they are.

Having studied Japanese for one semester during college, I had enough facility with the language to navigate the train system, ask directions, order meals, and flirt with women. Otherwise, I was clumsy and green. I don’t like the term, but I became something of an ethnographer, simultaneously immersed in and detached from the culture, which I researched and observed daily.

This culture felt strangely familiar and likeably conservative. Although I grew up in what is today a restless suburb of Atlanta, during my childhood my hometown was remote, the sprawling city still out of reach. My family and I spent much of our time in Alabama and the Florida panhandle. We weren’t the Old South, but hospitality, politeness, and reverence for heritage were our holdover virtues. I recognized those qualities in Ogaki, where people valued tradition and honor and respected their elders.

And:

Perhaps the most poignant commonality between Japanese conservatism and that of American Southerners is their response to parallel histories marked by defeat. We’re both defined by our loss in major wars. The Japanese and Southerners struggle with their heritage, striving to uphold its virtues while modernizing, revitalizing, and adapting their unique cultures to the demands of a global economy. We’re burdened by feelings of shame and guilt. The transition from a basic agrarian society to a vast industrial hub, driven by progress, causes sadness and nostalgia, even in those like me who recognize the economic advantages of the change.

I don’t entirely agree with the article, but it’s interesting and rings true as a sociological observation.

Hand-Cranked Ice Cream Against Despair, Front Porch Republic, Dixie Dillon Lane, May 22, 2024

A friend recently joked to me that “Extroverted Me often makes decisions that Introverted Me sorely regrets when the time comes to face them.”

Don’t I know the feeling. I almost forewent a flight ticket to drive to Cincinnati for the pair of urbanism conferences I attended there. On the morning of the flight I was very happy to sit on an airplane for a couple hours.

The scheme in question here was an ice-cream-making party at park with dozens of kids:

We eventually arrived, and I began to set up the machine and pack it with ice nervously, wondering to myself whether nobody would come (and I would be left with six quarts of ice cream to split among five people) or too many people would come (and we would run out of ice cream before everyone got a taste).

What I did not anticipate was that, as Extroverted Me had in fact sensed when she sent out that email three weeks earlier, the next two hours would turn into one of the most wonderful afternoons of my entire year so far. Indeed, although there was still some whining and roughhousing (for nothing is perfect), on that day we experienced an overflowing abundance of rare and beautiful goods.

What a lovely read.

I Thought I Was Safe at L’Enfant Plaza, Washington Post, Marilyn Basil Austin, September 24, 1989

This appears to be a letter to the editor—it’s short and the author isn’t a journalist—but it’s an interesting time capsule into the way we talked about cities in that time.

In some places, at some times, we dare to feel safe, even in the city. For me, L’Enfant Plaza was one of those places; daylight rush hour was one of those times. But that's where I was knocked down not long ago, that’s when I had my purse snatched. Authorities said that it was not an isolated incident but that such crimes are too small to make the press. The frequency of incidents at L’Enfant Plaza is less than in other areas, they said, but there is a lack of public awareness.

Also this!

One police woman gave me money to call home and put $2 in my pocket just so I would have money. All of them were sympathetic, and all of them went out of their way to make sure I felt safe until my husband arrived to take me home. (One odd thing: the phones in the Metro security booths can’t reach outside lines. The officer, realizing that I’d want to call home, apologized for this as we waited for my police report number.)

A different world in many ways.

Related Reading:

New and Old #20

New and Old #21

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