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Some home news on a new Washington City Paper staff writer starting soon—and the identity of the blogger behind the DC Porcupine Tumblr. Here’s the text of an email announcing the hire:
Colleagues-
We made a hire this week: Will Sommer, former City Paper intern and current Patch staffer, is going to start in a couple of weeks as the new main voice of City Desk. We’re counting on Will to fill the blog with smart, witty, and deeply knowing pieces of news, argument, and observation from around D.C.—provoking, enlightening, amusing, and engaging with the readers who come to our website. He’ll also helm CP‘s Twitter account and be the lead writer on our morning email newsletter, among other things. He’ll be replacing the great Shani Hilton, who’s moving on to a job at Channel 4.
Madden and I took Will to lunch a couple weeks back and were impressed with his thoughtfulness about the web and our place in it—as well as his competitive instincts for ways we can grow. We’re counting on him to help City Paper find even more of the audience it deserves. He has experience in various corners of our business: On the longform side, some of you may remember the stellar cover story he did a couple years back about onetime D.C. smut kingpin Dennis Sobin. And, beyond Patch, his online voice is perhaps best displayed in—now it can be told—the media-obsessed Tumblr he’s run in his spare time, DC Porcupine. We’re counting on him bringing that media interest with him, among many others, when he starts work here on June 11.
mike