When Dan Froomkin surveyed the fresh digs where he would set up shop for Huffington Post’s larger Washington bureau three months ago, he realized its potential: rooftop party central.

“I grew up in Washington,” he tells me, “and I have never seen a view like this. You have to see it.”

The roof on the building on Pennsylvania Avenue is a block from the White House and it was the setting for a small gathering when the office opened. Last Friday Froomkin hosted another gathering of reporters and sources.

The mood was less festive in the building next door where Newsweek houses its DC bureau. The money-losing weekly, owned by the Washington Post Company, had just announced another round of layoffs. The Washington bureau didn’t take much of a hit but the bureau already had lost its swagger: Newsweek had moved to smaller quarters; reporters and editors had been asked to move from offices to cubicles.

“Yes,” says Newsweek bureau chief Jeff Bartholet, “we’re facing the same financial pressures afflicting other news outlets. But until now, anyway, we’ve tried to find savings in Washington by cutting back on travel and by moving into smaller offices to save on rent.”

There have been several sob stories about the death dance of the traditional Washington news bureau, including those of the news weeklies. Gone are the robust bureaus for the Los Angeles Times, Newhouse News, and other once-healthy news organizations. Digital media bureaus now are taking their places with as many reporters and plenty of swagger.

“I mourn the loss of those bureaus,” Froomkin says, “but there’s a lot of optimism, a lot of energy in the kind of Internet journalism we are doing.”

Having taken a beating for trying to set up evening salons where reporters could mingle with corporate types who’d pay big money for the privilege, the Washington Post now is attempting a more benign way to raise revenue: wine tastings—with reporters as guests.
    
This week’s event is scheduled for Thursday from 6 to 8:30 PM at the Post’s downtown DC headquarters.
    
The failed salon plan would have brought reporters together with politicians and businessmen for “off-the-record” chats, sponsored by corporations for as much as $25,000 a pop. This time the main event is the tasting of the wine; reporters are invited as an added attraction for the event, which is open to TastePost members.

You want to read a sweet piece of prose, check out Henry Allen’s most recent, and perhaps last, essay for Style. His review of Edward Burtynsky’s photographs of big oil’s beginning, middle, and end starts with the image of an oil-soaked cormorant that became a metaphor for the Persian Gulf War, walked us through the exhibition, tried to tell us something about ourselves, and ended with the oiled water bird.
    
Allen on Friday got into a scuffle with Style writer Manuel Roig-Franzia after hurling this line about a piece written by Roig-Franzia and Monica Hesse: “This is total crap. It’s the second worst story I have seen in Style in 43 years.”
    
Readers want to know: What was the number one worst Style story?

UPDATE: Tell us what you think the #1 worst Style story is here. 

It’s come to this: The Washington Post Style section, for years known as “the sandbox” because it was a playground for sometimes immature writers, has turned into a boxing ring because one of the editors was revolted by a story that came across his desk on deadline.

Details are sketchy, but numerous witnesses report that veteran feature editor Henry Allen punched out feature writer Manuel Roig-Franzia on Friday. The fracas took place in sight of Post executive editor Marcus Brauchli’s office. Brauchli rushed to separate the two.

It should be noted that Allen is nearly seventy, but he served in the Marines in Vietnam. He also won a Pulitzer prize in 2000 for criticism. Both apparently came into play when Allen jumped Roig-Franzia.

Robert Allbritton says he’s not aiming to compete with the Washington Post.
    
“That’s not the plan,” he says.
    
But what he’s doing indicates the opposite.
    
Taking a page out of his creation of Politico, Allbritton has put his money on a veteran Post staffer -- this time Jim Brady -- to build a web site that could again strike at the Post’s heart. Politico challenged the Post’s command of national politics; the new venture will take on the Post’s coverage of local news.
    
“We have been talking about lessons learned from Politico in news, the web, and the economy,” he says. “Now it’s time to put something together. If we wind up competing, that’s the way it goes.”
    
Allbritton’s new “something” will debut in the spring, separate from Politico. “Different name, different brand, different staff.”
    
Same kind of leader: a journalist who bridled under the Post’s bureaucracy. Two years Allbritton convinced Post political stars John Harris and Jim VandeHei to leave the capital’s dominant daily news operation to start a new venture based on high-speed, high-intensity coverage of political news. Now he’s brought in Jim Brady to apply the formula to local news.

Dahlia Lithwick is Ben Brad­lee’s kind of woman. She’s got the Yale undergrad and Stanford law degrees, the talent to pen brassy features about the Supreme Court, a sense of humor, and an eye for the jugular. Back in his day, Bradlee might have roped her into a beat on the Washington Post Style section alongside Sally Quinn.

Lithwick doesn’t write for Style—you have to read Slate, the Washington Post Company’s online magazine. Covering legal affairs since 1999 and now also writing a serialized chick-lit novel, Lithwick is a Don Graham kind of woman.

The Post Company head adores Slate. The Post in print is his albatross, a newspaper that loses millions; Slate represents his digital dream, with the potential to do great journalism and make a profit.

“Slate itself is now a good business,” says Jacob Weisberg, the New York–based chief of the Slate Group. No one will provide proof, but word is that the magazine will make money this year.

Slate is also a good place for Grahams to work. Washingtonian has learned that Laura Graham, 32, one of Don and Mary Graham’s four children, has been hired as director of product development and strategy. She will work out of Slate’s Arlington office. She becomes the second member of the third generation of Grahams to work at a Washington Post publication. Her cousin, Katharine Weymouth, is Post publisher and head of Washington Post Media.

The Washington Post and the Columbia School of Journalism have spent much of this week celebrating the latest report on how to save journalism, this one by former Post editor Leonard Downie and Columbia University professor Michael Schudson.

But all the self-congratulation didn’t sit well with Jim Farley, head of news and reporting at WTOP radio, Washington’s all-news station. He called the report’s denigration of radio journalism “thin gruel—not based on any serious research.”

The Post devoted a chunk of Monday’s opinion page to a Downie-Schudson essay promoting their ideas, which boil down to suggesting ways for charities, government, and universities to help finance journalism. The new business model, they argue, is handouts and subsidies of various kinds.

Post media reporter Howard Kurtz used his Monday media column to give the Downie report more attention. Kurtz focused on the report’s listing of new ventures that show “journalism is being revived and reinvented in some encouraging ways.”