I keep in touch with a bevy of Washington reporters in my work as director of a journalism school and as a frequent writer for D.C.-based publications. I also have been researching this topic for more than a decade. This article captures just about everything I have analyzed or know by contact and experience. The reference to the McClatchy D.C. bureau is spot on. I first observed the disease that has led to the demise of Washington news bureaus when I was a judge two years ago for the D.C. section of the Scripps annual journalism awards ( http://scripps.com/foundation/news/releases/06jan10.html ). Why, I wondered, were so many D.C. reporters covering Iraq, Europe and South America? Then it occurred to me: Those overseas bureaus were being closed, and because these reporters occasionally covered the State Department or other agency with international obligations, they were sent abroad. The domino effect hit me then: If business continued to erode, with publishers not understanding that the online audience differed from the print one, then the next bureaus to go would be in Washington itself. John McQuaid has documented all this in excellent online journalism, replete with links, a huge fact-base, and responsible interpretations. I only actually disagree with one small paragraph about the prestige factor of D.C. bureaus; yes, that is true; but 600 reporters covering Johnson and Nixon differs from a hundred covering Clinton and a dozen covering Bush.