Washington Post photographer Michael S. Williamson writes in a Facebook post that he filed his picture of Capitol Hill townhouses through a rain-streaked car window to "see how 'artsy'" his employer would be "willing to go...Then THE BOSS calls and says that it will grace the front page of the Washington Post tomorrow. Pinch me."

Front page courtesy the Newseum. Click front page for larger view.

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The Wrap
The Washington Post has suspended William Booth, Alexander C. Kaufman reports. The Post apologized earlier this week, saying Booth lifted copy from an article by a University of Southern California professor in a story he wrote about the Panama Canal.

Booth is the paper's bureau chief for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.

Kaufman has a letter from Post Executive Editor Marty Baron to Andrea Hricko, the professor to whose work Booth helped himself. The plagiarism "represented a serious violation of our ethics standards," Baron writes.

We are also taking severe and appropriate action with regard to the reporter, William Booth. Violations of The Washington Post's standards bring serious consequences.

"I believe that the Washington Post acted with integrity and responsibility in this case," Hricko told Kaufman.

ABC News | The Washington Post | The Washington Post
Representatives from the nation's fact-checking apparatus will gather Wednesday at the National Press Club to discuss "the less-than-factual lines President Obama and Mitt Romney are likely to spin" at their debates, Amy Bingham reports. FactCheck.org, the Associated Press, The Washington Post and Politifact, which is owned by Poynter's Tampa Bay Times, all plan to send red-pencilers.

The first debate is scheduled for Wednesday, Oct. 3.

Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler appears to be all set for fact-checking's Super Bowls: Monday morning he published a takedown of a claim in a political ad based on a Marc Thiessen column that ran in The Washington Post.

In the piece, Kessler goes to work on Thiessen's thesis that "more than half the time, the commander in chief does not attend his daily intelligence meeting." He goes into wonk-glazing detail on the presidential daily briefing (PDB) and concludes it's a "a misguided attack because Obama has chosen to receive his information in a different manner than his predecessor." Three Pinocchios, ruleth the fact-checker.

Thiessen fired back Tuesday morning. (more...)

CNN | ReadWriteWeb

Time to hit the app stores, politics junkies. As the party conventions and fall election season arrive, a bunch of new mobile applications are launching that help users get the latest news, engage in conversation, fact-check claims … Read more

Recovering Journalist | International Business Times | American Legion Magazine
Mark Potts writes a what-might-have-been essay, tracing the rise and stall of digital innovation at The Washington Post in the 1990s. It begins with a 1992 memo from then-Washington Post Managing Editor Robert G. Kaiser to Publisher Don Graham, after attending a conference of leading technologists in Silicon Valley.

The Kaiser memo, sent 20 years ago this month, forecast that computers would cause seismic changes in media and called for the Post to invent new forms of digital news:

Many at the conference talked about the way we tend to use new media first to replicate the products produced by old media -- so early TV consisted of visible radio shows, for example. With this in mind, our electronic Post should be thought of not as a newspaper on a screen, but (perhaps) as a computer game converted to a serious purpose. In other words, it should be a computer product.

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The Daily Beast | Politico | Mother Jones | RedEye | The Huffington Post
The Washington Post has corrected a story that accused Fareed Zakaria of lifting a quote from author Clyde V. Prestowitz:

This story incorrectly states that in the initial hardcover edition of his 2008 book, “The Post-American World,” Fareed Zakaria failed to cite the source of a quote taken from another book. In fact, Zakaria did credit author Clyde V. Prestowitz.

The Post added this to the correction late Wednesday:

Endnotes crediting Prestowitz were contained in hardcover and paperback editions of Zakaria’s book. The Post should have examined copies of the books and should not have published the article. We regret the error and apologize to Fareed Zakaria.

Tuesday, The Post's Paul Farhi reported (and I repeated) Clyde V. Prestowitz's contention that Fareed Zakaria didn't cite a quote of his in Zakaria's book "The Post-American World."

"This charge is false, as 10 minutes' work by the Washington Post would have shown," David Frum writes. The 2009 paperback edition of the book does contain a citation, Frum writes. That directly contradicts a sentence in Farhi's piece.

I asked Farhi whether he had done anything to verify Prestowitz's complaint of quote-stealing by Zakaria. We agreed that the conversation would be off-the-record, so I won't quote Farhi's answer. But I don't need to. The pages speak for themselves.

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Tara Doolittle, one of the University of Texas press officers who recently reviewed a Washington Post story prior to publication, is a former reporter for The Austin American-Statesman. So did she ever allow sources to do what she did?

"The answer has always been no, whether I was the reporter or the editor,” Doolittle said, noting that she spent 10 years as an editor.

Doolittle, who became director of media outreach for UT in November, was a reporter when I worked at the Statesman.

Gary Susswein, director of media relations at UT, went through de Vise’s article "with a heavy red pen,” according to the Texas Observer. He, too, worked at the Statesman, serving for some time as metro editor. (He's on vacation this week.)

Doolittle said Post reporter Daniel de Vise told UT media representatives that sharing his story drafts was part of his normal process, and his editors knew about it. The Post has since tightened its policy on allowing sources to review stories, saying editors will grant permission to do so "extremely rarely."

Aside from saying de Vise’s offer was unusual, Doolittle declined to comment on another reporter’s methods. Given the opportunity to review a story again, she’d take it. “I’m not a reporter anymore.”

Related: Washington Post reporter sent drafts to sources (Texas Observer) | What are the arguments for, against sending stories to sources before publication? (Poynter)