The dog ate Chi Trib's homework.  The computer did it to yesterday's paper, the publisher explains today. 

"[A] computer system failure caused by a software coding error (italics added) significantly delayed production and delivery of Monday's print edition,"

the publisher tells readers.  This is standard blame-taking.  Nothing personal, you know. 
 
"The source of the problem has been identified," never mind by whom.  This is Modern Times in the Charley Chaplin mode.  They (editorial, monarchic "we") "sincerely apologize . . . and are committed to improving safeguards.  . . .  We thank you . .. for your commitment" to Chi Trib.
 
That's really nice, especially the sincerely part. 
 
Meanwhile, the story is covered, and not impersonally, by newsgatherer professionals, and computer expert James Coates puts it in technological perspective in "A story we never thought we'd print," which is a good way to put it and with the news story shows us how good journalistic writing differs from the corporate variety.  Coates even mentions people in the first sentence:

"Nothing built by humans can go wrong in as many ways or with as nasty an outcome as a computer system."

In fact, his whole account is a tale of derring-do, including hour-by-hour retelling.  Maybe it will enter the lore.

Chi Trib has page one story 7/19 about Iraq rebels gaining force, expanding power, citing (regretfully, to be sure) a U.S. colonel a year ago talking about Saddam's henchmen's last gasp.  Gotcha!
 
This is part of the drumbeat of negativism appearing not in its editorials but in its so-called news coverage.
 
Meanwhile, you can easily find reports from the ground on the web that tell you we are winning.  Who's right?  I have my opinion, but so what?  Point is, why is Chi Trib so consarned one-sided in its so-called news reporting?  It's getting ridiculous.  Really. 
 

GRAZIE . .. Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg recommends Chicago Newspapers today, with special attn. to the 5/15 "As the Trib turned" item. He calls it a "keel-hauling of the . . . painfully shallow and criminally dull Dawn Turner Trice" and refers to "the funhouse mirror of Trice's mind" that led her to get things so confused. Read it all here.

STYLE MAKES THE WOMAN

Chi Trib's huge "special report" 7/18/04 is about "one girl's struggle to find a future." It opens this way:

Rayola Victoria Carwell sits quietly on a wooden bench in the principal's office and folds her arms across her stomach to calm the whirling butterflies.

Now. What would Strunk & White say? Elements of Style, you know. Omit needless words (Rule 13) and all that. Try this:

Rayola Victoria Carwell sits on a bench in the principal's office and folds her arms across her stomach to calm the butterflies.

Gone are quietly, wooden, and whirling, which clutter the copy. Ms. Banchero might feel put upon at the excisions, but the copy editor should do it anyhow, because purple is for king's garments and sunsets, not for prose.

Equally cluttered is paragraph 2:

She straightens the leg of her favorite jeans, the ones with the embroidered purple daisies, the ones she creased to perfection at 6 this morning. She grabs a braid cascading from the ponytail atop her head and slips it into her mouth.

Which should be:

She straightens her freshly creased jeans and reaches for a braid from her ponytail and slips it into her mouth.

Enough already of purple daisies and 6 in the morning and cascading things. The 'graph is overloaded. We are newspaper readers in a hurry, for one thing. Banchero is introducing us to 4,400 words, for God's sake. Our coffee is getting cold.

She may have a story here, but it's off to a soppy start. And it's a three-parter. Oh boy.

Re: M. Moore's technicolor op-ed showing in your neighborhood theater. The Scandinavian Spectator Blog: Stambord runs "The Lies of Fahrenheit," by Michael Moynihan in Stockholm, who picks this out of the movie of the week. It's Condoleeza Rice making this claim:

"Oh, indeed there is a tie between Iraq and what happened on 9/11.”

"Pretty damning stuff, isn’t it?" asks Moynihan. "But that was the truncated, Michael Moore version. Now for the full, unexpurgated quote:

“Oh, indeed there is a tie between Iraq and what happened on 9/11. It’s not that Saddam Hussein was somehow himself and his regime involved in 9/11, but, if you think about what caused 9/11, it is the rise of ideologies of hatred that lead people to drive airplanes into buildings in New York.”

In other words, Moore doctored the quote to make Rice claim what the administration never denies it claimed. Naughty, but people eat it up. And P.T. Barnum would be pleased as punch.

Just came off a failed experiment in flying Republican ideas past 100 or so newsies in an E-mail grouping. Advice: don't do it. A) They are not interested. B) Some of them object strenuously to the ideas themselves - it's not what they are used to hearing and their minds are made up.

So on to the wild world of the blog, as I told another member of the group, where sensitivities are not so finely attuned to the tried and true even if false. Charge!

Dennis Byrne (registration required) compares the pro-late-term-abortion judge to Joseph Mengele, the Nazi boy from Brazil. It's worth reading.

Ex-Chicagoan Roger Simon fell in love with a wonderful column in 1980 and has nourished the flame ever since. Read this on Ronald Reagan.

SUNDAY HEADLINES . . . Sun-Times has huge p-1 pic and headline for city schools' worst principal, as voted by her teachers. Most unpopular, they mean. Anyhow, why the huge head and pic? It's like the suburban superintendent they featured some months back who had made a bundle and a half. Really. Tabloid headlines are supposed to grab you, but with what? These represent an expense of credibility in a waste of ink, to adapt Shakespeare.

Then (as ever) there's Chi Trib, with its "Prison leaders had past woes" story about Abu Ghraib. This is a surprise? And what about pursuing the s.o.b. Zarkawi, the bin Laden buddy who beheaded Berg on camera. How about something on him and how he got so twisted? Without giving his gripes about U.S. so much space he comes out looking justified? Not likely in this case, beheading and all. But come on, Tribsters, he's not Sunday-headline material?

AS THE TRIB TURNED . . . There are times when Chi Trib seems populated by graduates of politically correct campuses, editors and reporters who speak mostly to their own kind. Take Dawn Turner Trice, who as a fledgling "about 14 years ago," per her 5/3/04 column, almost got a Mike Royko column killed by complaining about his use of the N-word. "Just starting out" at the Trib while working "one Sunday evening," she "decided to read an electronic version" of the Royko column set to run the next day. "The column contained the N-word," she wrote. Royko had used it before, "often," she said, "mostly in quotes to disparage racists."

Mostly? She knows where he used it except to disparage racists? Or is she just writing sloppily?

"The tragedy," however, "was that even he couldn't understand fully how painful and demeaning it was to see it in print," wrote Turner Trice, who "honestly [did not] recall the exact point of Royko's column." Neither could she remember the name of the "white woman" editor who was not offended by the word because of its context and even after some "back and forth" between them did not kill the column.

A DIFFERENT TWIST . . . But Turner Trice apparently forgot elements of that story and maybe never knew yet others or never read F. Richard Ciccone's Mike Royko: A Life in Print (Public Affairs, 2001), in which he recounts apparently the same incident. Or she read it and forgot that too. Or Ciccone, veteran reporter and political editor and Trib managing editor, got it wrong. The odds, however, would not be with Turner Trice if she chose to enter the journalism-expertise ring with Ciccone.

The word was "monkeys," as used by cops in Los Angeles in conversation with a police dispatcher in 1991, according to a transcript which Royko obtained. "Were they monkeys?" one cop asked the dispatcher, meaning African Americans. Told they were not African Americans, he regretted the lost opportunity for some "monkey-slapping."

Royko finished the column at 6:30 Sunday night and went home, Ciccone writes. About eight o'clock "a young African American editor" discovered the column and "became incensed" over it. "She rounded up several colleagues and urged them to read it. All . . . were young; some were minorities." They complained to Carl Sotir, the news editor on duty, who agreed with them. The column was "offensive."

Sotir called Ciccone, the managing editor, who was not at home. Then he called the deputy managing editor, Howard Tyner, who ordered the column killed – the first to be killed in Royko's seven years at the Trib. Royko blew up. "I am resigning from that fucking newspaper," he told Ciccone when he reached him at home at 10:30. "Those fucking assholes killed my column. I quit."

Ciccone called the paper, listened to the column read by an assistant news editor, and said, "Put it back in the paper." This meant keeping trucks and drivers waiting, late arrivals at commuter stations, and putting a crimp in the day's sales, but presses were stopped and the column was restored. Ciccone called and told Royko, who said he quit anyway. But next day he came in as usual.

AFTERMATH . . . The column ran, and of 600,000 Trib readers none complained. The only complainers had been those staffers alerted apparently by Turner Trice, whom Ciccone does not name. The cause became celebre. Wash Post's media writer Howard Kurtz wrote it up. So did Editor & Publisher. Royko blamed "naive young staffers more interested in political correctness than good journalism" (Ciccone's words), not Tyner, who hadn't read the whole column. Which seems overly generous to Tyner: it's like the driver whose view of traffic was blocked but went ahead anyway.

It also seems overly generous of Trib managers to have given a column (years later) to a minor talent such as Turner Trice -- unable to get facts straight but willing to call up the incident, as her column lead, no less, to bolster her case against politically incorrect language. In which column she, neither sadder nor wiser, can vaguely, fecklessly recall her own inverted touch with greatness as an object lesson.

Chi Trib is a crafty creature. Items are searchable outside its archives for one week and no more, which may not be unusual. But there's no advice to look in archives if you can't find what you're looking for, boo-hoo. So I missed the John Kass column of one week ago 4/15, "America needs Bush to lead, not Oprah," , which archives has for you at $2.95. UNLESS you get at it via the Kass page under "recent columns." So yes, Chi Trib did have comment on Madame Gorelick and Chi readers were not as deprived as I said.

Eric Zorn in today's Chi Trib -- on the trial of racist-and-proud-of-it Matthe Hale -- is as measured and readable statement of constitutional rectitude as we are likely to find in a daily noosepaper.

And in Chi Sun-Times Monday 4/19, irregular columnist and onetime TV reporter Mary Laney blows whistle on Clinton aide Jamie Gorelick as member of 9/11 commission. [Not linkable] Fox in chicken coop is this Gorelick, who herself tied investigative hands in 1996 with a memo, adopted as Unholy Writ by AG Janet Reno, that prevented FBI from searching computer of suspected Al Quaeda terrorist Z. Moussaoui. Gorelick gives new meaning to chutzpah by (a) serving on the commission when she should be one of those testifying and (b) grilling C. Rice et al.

No one at Chi Trib commented on this, though its web site has a thorough airing of the matter in an AP story. The reliable Robert Novak reported on it in three lead paragraphs to his 4/18 news-item column in S-T. Otherwise, Chicago readers have been out in the cold in this more than ordinarily crucial matter.

BOOK TIME! . . . The books they are a comin' out. Now comes Woodward with fixation story. Cheney "fixated" on Iraq, says S-T head 4/17. Look for more of that in the next few days, until it peaks. It's more proof that Clever Sigmund, that investigator of upper-class Jewish women's minds (whatever did they want?) in pre-WW1 Vienna, did one big thing if nothing else: He gave a new, sophisticated passive-aggressive ways to say "Your father's mustache" or "Up yours" or "asshole." Thanks to him, we can easily avoid something like "firm intent" to do this or that (vs. fixation on same) or "longstanding conviction" and instead chalk it up to something really crazy.

COMPARED TO WHAT PRESIDENT? . . . An interesting question is, were Bushies more fixated on Iraq (and is it news that Wolfowitz et al. were for radical solution of the world's Middle East problem?) than FDR was on Nazi Germany and the Axis (of evil) of his day? To the exclusion of worrying about Stalinist Russkies, for instance? Get lost, FD heatedly told normally trusted advisor-with-access Adolf Berle when B. came to him with W. Chambers's damning and credible accusations of Alger Hiss as Commie agent -- which he was, we know now, thanks to Venona papers, not to mention what came out of two trials as excellently anatomized by Allen Weinstein in Perjury: the Hiss-Chambers Case (Knopf, 1978). There he went again, FDR and his fixations.

Bottom line regarding new books a'comin': This be partisan politics, folks. Libs at it again, big time. Fixated.

LET THE PRESSES ROLL . . . As for mainstream newsies, hey, the latest Woodward book is a peg wherewith to keep ball rolling, from here not to eternity but to the 1st Tuesday in November.

GW deceived us, they say. FDR didn't? New book coming out comparing the two as to deception quotient? Not that we know of, though Right Wing Conspiracy Publishers might find it a good idea.

As for deception, what about supposed newsie Woodward sitting on all those good quotes while helping to put out a daily newspaper, his Wash Post? I'm trying to imagine how daily paper editors I knew would have liked that.

STUMBLING THROUGH . . . Chi Trib headlines "a leader stumbles," page one, 4/14. Of ACLU, which pre-9/11 would have said fingering of suspects was profiling and would have hauled law enforcers into court for violation of civil liberties and even now objects to Patriot Act, our best shot so far at nailing pre-crime perps? No, the U.S. -- dare I say "our"? -- president, who if he had only bombed an aspirin factory and let it go at that, would be an A-OK moderate Republican handwringer not to be analyzed by Michael Tackett on page one just left of the headline story.

Tackett's back with page one analyses. Analyze this, says m.e. James O'Shea or some other editor, and away he goes. Plus ca change here. Chi Trib of Col. McCosmic days did it on page one with a Carey Orr or Parrish cartoon showing FDR with cigarette holder and raised chin or wide-eyed bomb throwers with scraggly beard and hair askew. Now the same effect is achieved in this more sophisticated age by a Tackett analysis. "Analyze this," say editors, and he does it.

WHO, ME? . . . Plus Ashcroft vs. accusatory FBI man. Is FBI at least as much in a CYA mode as anyone else in these days of finger-pointing? What's this commission up to, by the way? It's circus time in Washington. Ashcroft makes "pointed [counter]attacks," Cam Simpson writes, apparently upset at A's saying he did not want to add to our pain. B.S., mutters Simpson, whose 4th paragraph offers an interesting succession of blamers-of-others. It would have made a good lead paragraph if one were not playing to the get-Ashcroft gallery.

Accusatory FBI man says he did not know why nobody else in the FBI took him seriously either? Oh? But accusation of Ashcroft is lede, whether put there by Cam or moved up by an O'Shea minion?

Ashcroft found or says he found -- who in the gallery can believe him? -- no Clinton effort to off Bin Laden. That's been said for months in the right-wing press, which adds that on one occasion that Bill was finishing up a golf game. But no mainstreamer has willing to muck up its skirts in such an investigation. Yuck! The people who raise those issues do not turn up at the parties. And nobody Pauline Kael knew voted for Nixon in '68.

WHAT DID HE NOT KNOW AND WHY DID HE NOT KNOW IT? . . . NBC White House correspondent Dave Gregory, asked by radio host Don Imus this morning on MSNBC whether previous national security advisors had testified under oath before commissions such as the currently seated 9/11 Commission, said he did not know. To which Imus: Why don't you know? You're the NBC White House correspondent and you don't know that? To which Gregory, bristling, voice rising: Hey, I'm honest enough to tell you I don't know.

Honest enough? Not to lie to us? He wants a medal?

Imus: Find out and tell us, OK? Gregory: OK. Then Gregory went on to Iran-Contra testimony and other things he JUST HEARD ABOUT from newscasts, naturally to bolster the anti-administration argument.

Gregory has no reading background in these matters? He takes not the time for a Google search, for God's sake, to discover precedent for this testimony that Condoleeza Rice won't give because she's National Security Advisor? Where's the context beyond what happened yesterday? Where's the compared-to-what factor? These jokers get on the air and feed us the news they think is important but know so little?

Nay-sayers of Drudge miss the point. He's treated as a reporter, of gossip at that. But he's an editor (& publisher). He lays out his paper with headlines that blare forth what he considers important (editors do it every day), and he has a very good eye for that. He's a brilliant editor, in fact, in the business of gaining readers. His readers keep coming back for more, by the millions, every day. An amazing performance.

Many newsies eat hearts out at that. And it's no accident he's conservative. Only a conservative could do this, because only for conservative news is there a yawning vacuum to be filled. Chi Tribbers et al. don't get this. They are too busy reflecting views of people they meet at parties who, like them, have got the hot gospel of liberalism from the tenured radicals who taught them. Hermetically sealed from the hoi polloi, they revel in their isolation and look through their pince-nez down at Drudge and his ilk, who are beating them at their own game.

Here is the entire "open letter" by Chicago priests complaining about Vatican statements vs. gays & lesbians, with names of writers not reported by Sun-Times 12/21, as found on web site of St. Mary of Celle parish, Berwyn. Link found on site of gay newspaper Windy City Times, which names the priests in its 12/24 story.

(Deep mystery remains: why did Sun-Times omit the priests' names?)

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE HIERARCHY OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH
REGARDING THE PASTORAL CARE OF GAY AND LESBIAN PERSONS

As Catholic pastors, we have become increasingly disturbed by the tone and, in some cases, content of documents and statements from the Vatican, bishops’ conferences and individual bishops on issues categorized under the heading of “homosexual” or “gay/lesbian.” We respect the teaching authority of the Church. Because of this, we find particularly troubling the increase in the use of violent and abusive language directed at any human person. Such language is inappropriate. This is especially so when addressing members of the community of the faithful. These divisive and exclusionary statements from the Church are contrary to sound pastoral practice.

The life journey in faith is unique and sacred, including the personal integration of sexuality and spirituality. Condemnations leveled at sincere Catholics attempting to make sense out of their journey are inappropriate and pastorally destructive.

As priests and pastors we are speaking out to make clear that our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters are all members of God’s family, brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus and deserving of the same dignity and respect owed any human being. Recognition of the inalienable dignity of the human person is the only path toward justice and reconciliation. We affirm the goodness of all homosexual persons. We root ourselves in the U.S. Bishops’ statement “Always Our Children.” Additionally, we re-affirm the understanding of the goodness of the human person as put forth throughout the papacy of Pope John Paul II. Further, we want to state clearly that ministering to and with our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters is mutually beneficial, as is all ministerial activity. Pre-judging where any believer’s journey will take them is inappropriate. Walking with them, as we do with our heterosexual brothers and sisters, is the appropriate Christian response.

In the recent past, individual bishops, bishops’ conferences and the Vatican have assumed a tone of such violence and abusiveness toward these sons and daughters of the Church, we can no longer remain silent. Has any other group of people within the Body of Christ been so assaulted and violated by such mean-spirited language? Examples from the most recent Vatican document show all too clearly the demonization of these children of God, referring to homosexuality as a “troubling moral and social phenomenon,” “a serious depravity,” “the spread of the phenomenon,” “approval or legalization of evil,” “grave detriment to the common good,” “harmful to the proper development of human society,” “intrinsically disordered.” Does anyone consider this vile and toxic language invitational?

For many gay and lesbian Catholics, this most recent series of attacks has forced them, out of self-respect and self-love, to withdraw from active participation in the Church and question how they can remain members of a Church they experience as abusive. It is not possible to minister to and with the needs of our homosexual brothers and sisters with language of this tone as a foundation.

The Catholic Church is most catholic when it is inclusive and embracing, and least reflective of the gospel of Jesus when it is exclusive and rigid. For this reason, we also want to affirm the many pastoral and positive statements by certain bishops and bishops’ conferences (e.g. “Always Our Children”).

The Church’s theology, including her moral teaching, is always in dialogue with the broader lived experience of her members, which shapes and rearticulates the ancient deposit of faith. We encourage a new atmosphere of openness to dialogue which includes the lived experience of many Catholic members. We recognize the blessings of countless homosexuals in a variety of relationships. We believe their experiences must be listened to respectfully.

While we do not know the reasons for the increasingly violent and abusive language, we deplore it as ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ and ask that it stop immediately. Furthermore, we request that all those in official positions of teaching authority in the Church refrain from any more statements directed AT the gay and lesbian members of the Body of Christ, and instead begin an earnest dialogue WITH those same members of the Body of Christ.

For our part, we pledge to treat all who seek to continue their faith journey with us with respect and dignity, regardless of their sexual orientation.

We join the countless men and women, heterosexual and homosexual, who seek justice, mercy and compassion in and through the Catholic Church.

We extend an invitation all who share our concern to duplicate this letter, sign it, and send it to their pastor, local bishop, National Bishop’s Conference or the Vatican.

(Parish names are listed for identification purposes only.)

Rev. David Baldwin
St. Benedict the African-East
Chicago, IL

Rev. Daniel Cassidy
St. Mark
Chicago, IL

Rev. Dennis Condon
St. Marcelline
Schaumburg, IL


Rev. Lloyd Cunningham, S.V.D.
Catholic Theological Union
Chicago, IL

Rev. Nicholas Desmond
St. Aloysius
Chicago, IL

Rev. Brian Fischer
St. Gregory the Great
Chicago, IL

Rev. Donald Headley
St. Mary of the Woods
Chicago, IL

Rev. Robert P. Heinz
St. Alphonsus Liguori
Prospect Heights, IL

Rev. Michael Herman
St. Sylvester
Chicago, IL

Rev. Thomas Hickey
St. Clement
Chicago, IL

Rev. John Hoffman
St. Teresa of Avila
Chicago, IL

Rev. Richard Homa
Sacred Heart
Palos Hills, IL

Rev. Terry Johnson
St. Francis Xavier
LaGrange, IL

Rev. Patrick Lee
Immaculate Conception
Chicago, IL

Rev. Robert McLaughlin
Mary Seat of Wisdom
Park Ridge, IL

Rev. Dennis O’Neill
St. Martha
Morton Grove, IL

Rev. Thomas Pelton
Maternity BVM
Chicago, IL

Rev. Richard Prendergast
St. Mary of Celle
Berwyn, IL


Rev. Michael Shanahan
St. Mark
Chicago, IL

Rev. William J. Stenzel
St. Francis Xavier
LaGrange, IL

Rev. Patrick Tucker
St. Bernardine
Forest Park, IL

Rev. Daniel Whiteside
St. Catherine of Siena/St. Lucy
Oak Park, IL

Rev. Bart Winters
St. Gregory the Great
Chicago, IL

WUXTRY, WUXTRY, READ ALL ABOUT IT.
HOLE IN SUN-TIMES STORY

See "Pastors rip Vatican's 'vile' language that condemns gays," about "a group of Catholic pastors" saying the Vatican uses "vile and toxic" language about gays and lesbians and Cardinal George's letter response to their so-called open letter. So-called because it may be open to some of those guys but it ain't open to us Sun-Times readers. How so? Because no pastor is named of the "two dozen" who complained. Hence gaping hole in otherwise good story.

Either the writer, Shamus Toomey, got the story only by promising not to use any names -- Chi Trib does not have it -- in which case he should say so, or . . . what? I don't know. Million stories in the naked city, yes, but don't they usually have names?

HAND RAISED, QUESTION . . . Put to Chi Trib ombudsman Don Wycliff 1:16 PM, 11/4/03:

It's an old problem, but why "analysts" in head and text of Michael Killian's story on fallout from loss of copter in Iraq and not "two analysts," which is all that appear in the story as published? And only one of them on the issue of waning public support for our Iraq venture (the story's lead and head), the Ohio State professor? (The other, quoted on military tactics, was a military historian at National Defense U.)

Afterword: Really, why can't newspapers just say "two analysts" when all the story has is two? Why "analysts" with the sneaky implication of consensus?

WUXTRY, WUXTRY . . . Let us now read Chicago's two highest-circulation newspapers, headlines first. Headlines because they are the ultimate shorthand, blunt instruments but not so blunt in the hands of skilled practitioners such as create them at Chi Trib and Sun-Times.

First grabber is "War funding bill passes" in Chi Trib. Gives one pause, in that rebuilding Iraq is what we have been hearing. War funding? "Fund the military and rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan" is in the lead paragraph by Jill Zuckman. That's war funding?

2nd is "Jailed Russian oil chief resigns: Company's stock soars after CEO announces exit," heading very interesting story by Alex Rodriguez in Moscow, with "fueled speculation" in 2nd 'graf that the man, a billionaire, is going to challenge Putin politically.

Funny, for readers of the internet and watchers of TV news, the 1st story, "war funding," is not new. That's your hard-copy daily newspaper problem: how to tell readers what they don't already know.

Big picture on p. 1 of returnees from bloody 'copter downing in Iraq, "For families, sad news hits home: Copter victims." But has Chi Trib been also telling us about progress reported in Iraq? As vividly? I will have to read it more closely, because I seem to have missed news of this aspect of our success.

"Rockford [airport] tries to lure fliers from O'Hare: Northwest Chicagoland Regional Airport uses its new name, free parking and budget fares in effort to woo fliers from northwest and west suburbs" certainly has flare, with photo of spanking-clean passenger waiting area. And news to this reader. Nice going, Trib, two news stories so far on p. 1.

"U.S. rates home health firms: Survey compares 7,000 providers"? Really? Our govt. is rating health firms? What do you know about that? And what are these home health firms? Families?

"Poll says many on campus marching to GOP's beat: Campaign 2004"? Now you are talking. Republicanism on campus may not be brand new, but it's new enough to capture attention. "Students leaning right" heads a mini-graph of poll results: 61% undergrads approve of GW, vs. 53% of general population, per Harvard's Institute of Politics. Jeff Zeleny reporting out of Columbus, OH, where he went to talk to students. (And he really went there, we presume, vs. Jayson Blair of NY Times and his infamous hotel-room creations of sights seen and people interviewed.)

Three news stories today on Chi Trib page one!

==============================
Sun-Times has big pic of "two brothers in mourning" over their brother killed in the 'copter crash. Neither am I full of recollection of this paper's stories about progress in Iraq. Must read more carefully.

"SADDAM SURE U.S. ATTACK WAS HOAX [upper case in original]: [Ex-foreign minister] Tariq Aziz tells interrogators that deposed leader did little to prepare for invasion" is for p. 3 story from sister-paper London Telegraph with AP help, citing a Wash Post story that ran yesterday. So we have here the work of enterprising editors who assume (safely) that most of us do not read Wash Post regularly.

Nothing like that in "Burke [feisty alderman] wants 'car for sale' signs banned from Chicago streets: Claims Indiana car dealers use roads here for sales," by the excellent Fran Spielman, extremely enterprising City Hall reporter. It's about "Let's Have an Ordinance" Eddie, recently heard complaining about smokers on THE SIDEWALK, FOR GOSH SAKES, whom he had to pass on his way from the Hall to his law office for this or that highly lucrative meeting.

This, of course, is Sun-Times's forte. (Say "fort" not "fortay," by the way, although being not the first by whom the new are tried nor yet the last to lay the old aside is a rule increasingly hard-pressed to justify it.) What aldermen do is grist for S-T mill. Burke of course favors a draconian measure; he thinks draconian.

P. 1 has other reefers (not marijuana but blotches of type & pix that refer the reader to story elsewhere in paper): New Sox mgr, new movie, and a Richard Roeper column, "Why this girl's parents are despicable," next to head shot of Utah girl abducted by Mormon lunatic. Ah. Roeper has found something he truly, truly objects to and is very, very angry. No, thanks.