A Different Alternative   

Former Chicago Tribune staffer Howard Witt becomes editor in chief of the weekly Washington City Paper.

Former Chicago Tribune staffer Howard Witt goes alternative as editor in chief of the weekly Washington City Paper in the nation's capital. "It feels pretty liberating," he says of the switch. "It's just a chance to really practice the kind of long-form narrative...intensive stories, magazine-style stories that newspapers don't normally do." Witt, 40, spent 18 years with the Trib as a reporter, foreign correspondent, Los Angeles bureau chief and, from 1997 to 1999, associate managing editor for interactive news. He had short-lived Web gigs with Brill's Content and a failed Internet startup before succeeding David Carr , who left his job of five years at the City Paper to write for the astonishingly hyped media Web site Inside.com .