Practice what you preach, City Paper...

In this week's Washington City Paper, Erik Wemple calls out the Washington Post on a "clip job." He cites internal Post e-mails regarding a March 17 Post story on "flash point" killings--one that closely echoes a previous New York Times story on the same topic. Wemple quotes a WP staffer as e-mailing, "i, too, liked the very well done casual-killing story. i would have liked it a whole lot better, though, if i hadn't read it in the NYT a couple weeks ago."

This would be funny enough, if the City Paper had not published, in the very same section and on the very same page, a clip job of its own. This week's City Paper story by Ryan Grim on the overblown crystal meth epidemic--and the Post's inaccurate coverage of said "epidemic"--is a virtual book report on an article that appeared in Slate last week. And it also appeared in the "Dept. of Media" section, mere inches from the story about the Post's NYT envy.

Hey, takes one to know one.