the kicker

WaPo-Induced Flashback

July 15, 2008

Surely I’m not the only person who thought I’d clicked on an old washingtonpost.com link — like, one from 2001 — when my eye caught the headline “Who Killed Chandra Levy?” on the paper’s homepage today.

Turns out, the Post dedicated three reporters (with help from a researcher, a photographer, three graphics people, three editors and two copy editors as well as twelve individuals from the Web staff) and an entire year to “find[ing] out why “[Chandra Levy’s] murder remains unsolved” and “to produc[ing] an in-depth reconstruction of the case that would reexamine all avenues of the investigation.” (Really? Or is that a distinctly outside-the-Beltway reaction to this treatment of “Washington’s most famous unsolved crime?”)

Anyway, it’s all being doled out serially (and sort of Unsolved Mysteries-esquely. Today we get “Chapter 3: A Private Matter. Calls from women alleging affairs with Rep. Gary Condit draw police attention. Officers begin to wonder whether their stories have something to do with Chandra Levy’s disappearance.”)

I’m looking forward to “Chapter 9: Media Frenzy” which is “Coming Tuesday, July 22.”

Liz Cox Barrett is a writer at CJR.