I give up. Editors and Metro Desk reporters are clearly untrainable.
J Schools obviously don’t teach Geography anymore, and reporters today are much too hip to have been scouts with Orienteering Merit Badges or use GPS systems as anything but Happy Hour locators.
Therefore, regard the map above.
Do it. We’ll wait. tap-tap. tap-tap. Ready? Okay.
Whereas reporters and editors insist on referring to all of the two-dozen District of Columbia neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River collectively as “Anacostia,”
Henceforth all of the neighborhoods west of the Anacostia River shall be known collectively as, um, “Petworth.”
Therefore, all Washington reporters and editors must enter the figure above in their iPhones and BlackBerrys with the following formula:
If A = Anacostia, Then B = Petworth.
Thank you.
Mike Licht lives in Petworth, just east of Lincoln Park.
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NotionsCapital 
January 30, 2008 at 11:28 pm
goddammit, mike, thank you for saying what i’ve been trying to express forever to just about everyone who doesn’t pay attention in this town! we could maybe make it easier for the geography-impaired and divide the city into three parts….potomac to rock creek = georgetown, rock creek to anacostia = petworth, east of anacostia = well, anacostia.
brilliant though, sir.
January 31, 2008 at 11:15 am
We need to keep correcting the media on this, especially now that WaPo has reduced the number of Metro reporters, their turn-over rate is so high, and their editors are so blasé about this.
Keep an eye on your kid’s teachers, too. This is just another example of general U.S socio-geographical insensitivity, more painful since it’s so close to home.
I caught Cosby on Leno the other night, feigning outrage that Canadians correct us when we say “American” and mean “the United States.” He was being facetious but I’ve seen U.S. tourists in Canada genuinely outraged at this, very good for relations with our neighbors o the north.