First official weekend of summer, and from a news perspective, it feels that way. Just not too much popping out there. Our regional paper of record has started out summer with a lot of sappy seasonal fare, from the guy who constructed a baseball field in his front yard, to the women from the ex-Soviet Union who come here to work as lifeguards (huge ripoff from this Washington City Paper story), to the piece on the last day of school.

Over at the Washington Times, they have fewer resources with which to exhaustively cover the seasons. So they go for the AP story on how the candidates are sparring over the federal role in flood-prevention, given the disasters going on in the Midwest in recent days. But as you shop for your AP on the WT site, you do notice that the redesign went, well, perhaps a bit too far into the future. Open this site, and it’s like WHOA, I’ve just stepped into Web 200.0! I mean, I know those folks at the WaTi were all talking about vid and multimedia and bells and whistles, but this is whistling perhaps a bit to much.

And regarding what is certainly the hottest topic in local news—our Nabe Issue, that is—a certain blogger appears to be hammering us a bit for our take on the Carryouterbanks!