Praising the fledgling flight of the much-discussed new Web site.

For the same reason theater critics don't review new musicals during their pre-Broadway tryouts at the La Jolla Playhouse, I refrain from assessing new magazines—or Web sites—at first launch. There's just too much debugging going on to make a review fair, let alone coherent. I know all about the creative confusion of a Web launch, having been at Slate when it went live in the summer of 1996. (Here's Salon's review of our debut.) And twice I have tried to remake a weekly newspaper against the high expectations that my first issues would raise the dead, solve de Polignac's Conjecture, and fix readers' leaky toilets.

So if you're looking for somebody to rip TBD.com—the much-anticipated local Washington Web site owned by the same fat Allbritton wallet that operates local ABC affiliate WJLA-TV, Politico, and Newschannel 8—look elsewhere. For a four-day-old site, TBD shows such great promise that I can no longer hear the running water echoing from my bathrooms.

Before I continue, disclosure. Friends of mine work at TBD, my wife applied for and didn't get a job there, and in a column published a year ago, I described the site's general manager, Jim Brady, as adorable. All that said, I'd spit bile on TBD if it deserved it. I've ruined friendships before by writing negatively about my chums' work, and I'm sure to do it again. So, caveat emptor.

What I like most about TBD is its tabloidy goodness. By "tabloidy" I don't mean the sensationalism one associates with tabloid newspapers, although if TBD starts dispensing large helpings of crime, sex, drugs, gossip, political exposés, opinion, and other basic tabloid units as its reporters ramp up, count me as a loyal customer. By "tabloidy" I mean useful, portable, direct, devoid of unnecessary adornment, entertaining, immediate, and … useful!

Various publishers have talked about breaking into the Washington newspaper market with such a daily tabloid over the past 30 years. But nobody got around to it until 2003, when the Washington Post Co. (which also owns Slate) started its free tab, the Express, designed in part to pre-empt a free-daily tabloid competitor from entering the market. Although the Express was up and running, Philip Anschutz still bought into the market to launch his Washington Examiner in 2005. Although both newspapers are popular with Metro riders, neither has realized tabloid destiny.

Could TBD be the one?

Its site design is airy, comfortable, loads quickly, and doesn't look awful on a mobile device thanks to its big, sans serif headline typefaces. I suspect all this elegance will disappear as the site starts to incorporate advertising, but I hope not.

I expected TBD to launch with a wireless access protocol site especially designed for mobile devices, but instead its team concentrated on building iPhone and Droid apps first. "App before WAP," Brady told TBD arts editor Andrew Beaujon, who informs me that a WAP version is forthcoming. The iPhone app has yet to be approved by the Apple fascists, but the Droid app can be downloaded for free and it works great.

In its opening incarnation, TBD is wisely running the three fundamental plays that have earned local television a trillion dollars over the past four decades: weather, traffic, and sports.

Weather: Weather rises to such a level of importance at the site that the temperature and forecast share billing with TBD's logo at the top of every page. This morning, I was awoken by a flash-flooding, tree-toppling, power-line-felling Washington summer deluge. By the time I clicked onto the site, it had already posted mini-disaster pictures from the storm and a good Flickr feed of damage pix soon followed. The usual array of weather tools that can be localized are laid out in usable fashion. So long, WeatherUnderground; TBD is my new weather site.