Washington City Paper, 2390 Champlain Street NW, Washington DC 20009, Tel: 202-332-2100. Mail subs are $35/year (52 issues).

Every major American city apparently offers a free tabloid weekly that specializes in community calendar listings, movie and play reviews, personal ads, a witty column or two, and lots of advertising. Some of them offer occasional investigative pieces, usually on local issues. Washington's version of this phenomenon is called "Washington City Paper," and the editor in recent years has been Jack Shafer. City Paper is perhaps more interesting than most, because the local investigative pieces often have national implications. That's just the way things are in this city.

Apart from the Iran-contra articles we liked, one good investigative piece in City Paper was the 1988-08-12 article by Jon Cohen on the "Finders." (They are an information-gathering cult in DC that made sure they got the first copy of NameBase in 1984; it was confirmed much later that they have significant CIA connections.) Another good piece was the 1993-06-11 article by Alan Green and Larry Zilliox, Jr. on Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church. Hopefully our DC friends will continue to send us similar City Paper articles now that we've moved to Texas.

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