By Paul Iorio
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Some of the best editors I've ever worked with have been at The Washington Post -- except in one case: a Travel section editor (apparently no longer at the paper) who edited my piece on Kurt Cobain's Seattle in 2002. I submitted a well-crafted, accurate article based on my own original reporting and research -- and an editor there botched it a bit and then became hostile when I caught him in an error.
Judge for yourself; here is the original pre-edited story I submitted for publication (complete with the pitch letter I emailed to the editor who commissioned the piece) alongside a scan of the published story that appeared in the print edition of the Post on November 10, 2002.
As you can see, I wrote, reported, researched and originated the story. I also contributed four original photographs that I shot in Seattle -- and I came up with the production design of the piece. As you can also see, the edit by an editor at the Post made the piece slightly less excellent.
For the record, the published piece reverted to the lede graf I'd written for my May 2002 version of the story, which started this way: "More than eight years after his suicide, Kurt Cobain's stature and influence as a pop icon have only grown. Today, Cobain and his band are enjoying something of a revival, what with the recent release of new Nirvana albums and the publication of Cobain's journals. And in Seattle, Cobain's last hometown, mourners still gather in the park next to his former house to light candles and write graffiti."
Which is another way of saying, they didn't craft a new lede; they merely used the one I'd written months earlier.)
Here is the original pre-edited manuscript (including the accompanying pitch letter). 
And here, below, is the edited version of the story as it appeared in the print edition of The Washington Post on November 10, 2002.
