The Washington Times‘ revamped local coverage has been leaning lately on an old reporting trick: The more prudish you are, the more you have to write about.

Previously, they feigned shock that a D.C. Council opposed to gun ownership would make it hard to get a gun, and that someone with a drug-dealing conviction would receive a promotion at Metro a decade after leaving prison. But those stories look like a Norman Rockwell painting compared to the news that Mayor Vince Gray‘s son, Carlos Gray, is a cool guy:

Whether it be with Brazilian supermodels, NFL stars, or celebrity rappers and disc jockeys, there is a strong suggestion that, in the words of one social networking website, the son of the D.C. mayor “knows how to party.”

Carlos Gray apparently knows how to party so well that he has a job promoting liquors like Don Julio tequila and P. Diddy-endorsed Ciroc vodka at clubs. But reporter Jeffrey Anderson wonders whether this runs afoul of his main job at the D.C. Housing Authority:

Yet in light of his son’s more socially active second job, a different set of questions arises about whether housing authority officials allow or even knew of such outside employment.

Housing authority spokeswoman Dena Michaelson said every employee is required to file a financial disclosure form when initially employed to reveal any conflict of interest, including outside work. Employees who can affect policy must complete that form annually.

Anderson explains the rules Gray may have broken with his side job, only to reveal later that Gray did disclose the liquor promotions gig with his Housing Authority boss. So Carlos Gray’s employment raised questions for the Times, which were then answered when the Times asked them.

The other half of Anderson’s piece covers the fact that, like other young and male D.C. mini-celebrities, Carlos Gray likes to go to the Stadium Club, which you may also know as the future home of the Strip Club Queens reality show. When he’s there, he “socializes” with former drug kingpin Cornell Jones, which just seems polite at a strip club. What was he supposed to do, take it to the Exxon?

Nobody is more thrilled than me that D.C.’s most staid mayor ended up producing D.C.’s hardest-partying mayoral son (although). But unless Carlos Gray is going door-to-door in public housing with a tray of Ciroc shots, it looks like the Times is back leaning on its old crutch.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery