Today's Chi Trib has excellent editorial about the UN's "trademark fecklessness" as demonstrated in its standing by while 50,000 and more are slaughtered in Sudan. "The bugles of global impotence again sound retreat from a battle never joined," etc. It's the same "world body" that would have let Saddam continue in office but for alleged "unilateralism" by us and the coalition.

Do not count the Trib out while such editorials run.

Chi Trib had hot news the other day (Tues 9/21): "Kerry: Bush failed in Iraq." This is newspaper as morning shower or breakfast, as Marshall McLuhan termed it many years ago. Or is it news to Trib's news editors that Kerry says Bush is failing in Iraq? And they wonder why circulation is falling.

On the other hand, look at what Instapundit.com had at that very moment, sans links, which in some cases are needed to explain various short statements that nonetheless beat "Kerry: Bush failed," presented by Chi Trib as if it's news:

September 21, 2004
IRAQI BLOGGER ALI RESPONDS TO ROBERT NOVAK:
What does Mr. Novak know about Iraq and the decision makers in the USA? If his information about how decision makers in America are thinking, is similar to his information about Iraq, then I guess we are safe and there�s no need to worry.
Read the whole thing. I'm with Ali on this one.
posted at 08:14 AM by Glenn Reynolds
AND WE WANT THESE GUYS IN IRAQ?
Twelve French soldiers on peacekeeping duties in Ivory Coast have been arrested in connection with a bank theft there last week.
The troops had been assigned to protect a branch of the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO) and were charged with stealing $120,000 (100,000 euros).
French military spokesman Colonel Henry Aussavy said the accused soldiers were being sent home to face French justice.
More than 4,000 French troops are serving alongside UN peacekeepers.
Sigh.
posted at 08:09 AM by Glenn Reynolds
WHERE NEXT FOR THE BLOGOSPHERE? Pejman Yousefzadeh has some thoughts.
posted at 08:07 AM by Glenn Reynolds
ANOTHER SUCCESS FOR DIPLOMACY?
Syria's ambassador to Washington said yesterday his country's forces in Lebanon will begin a major redeployment toward their own border this morning.
The diplomat also said Syrian and U.S. troops will partake in joint security operations along the Syrian-Iraqi border, although State Department officials contradicted that claim.
"This is official," said Imad Mustapha, Syria's ambassador to Washington, speaking by telephone from the Syrian capital. "Tuesday morning there will be a major redeployment of Syrian forces in Lebanon toward the border." . . .
A senior State Department official disputed the ambassador's statement last night.
"We are looking for Syria to take certain action to protect the border. That action has not been taken yet. We'll be working to improve Syria's performance," the official said. "At this point, that does not include joint actions with American troops."
Hmm. Stay tuned.
posted at 08:06 AM by Glenn Reynolds
TOM MAGUIRE is checking Joe Wilson's travel schedule.
posted at 07:32 AM by Glenn Reynolds
MICKEY KAUS IS ON FIRE, with posts on everything from RatherGate to polling.
posted at 07:29 AM by Glenn Reynolds
(more, more more)

Rush Limbaugh picked up the CBS-2 story (by Mike Flannery). Watch for it in tomorrow's papers; that's the usual cycle.

Wild, wild story from CBS Channel 2 last night: Bush, Kerry neck and neck in Illinois!

Picked up by no one so far. Chi Trib's O'Shea is waiting for NY Times to run it?

WE HAPPY FEW READ IT . . . It was a historic day, 8/20/04, when Chi Trib finally reported on Vets v. Kerry � after Kerry brought it up. Claims by its public editor et al. that it�s a Republican paper ring hollow. In editorials, yes, and these are for the most part well thought and argued. But in news coverage, it�s a paper whose editors seem to wait for cues from Big Mama in NY (NY Times). I would call it a national wannabe newspaper.

So it was See Trib, see Trib run, See Trib run with Bush-National Guard story 9/9/04, complete with above-fold page-one pic and story.

As it ran with "Kerry lied" stories about medals and his �71 atrocity testimony in which he betrayed his band of brothers? (It didn't.)

Next day, while blogosphere picked away at the Natl Guard story, a CBS-Dan Rather original, Trib ran a back-paper NYT story that half way down addressed the spurious-document question. It�s how a Republican paper plays stories, right? (Not.)

Meanwhile, a Chi Trib desk editor, Wm. B. Rood, jumped into the fray with his account of his and J. Kerry�s Viet Nam war exploits, defending K. from Republican critics. Big Sunday page one treatment. This after agonizing by him a newsie for whom neutrality on the day�s issues is the bedrock principle. It isn�t?
Chi Trib managing editor Jim O�Shea ran Rood�s account after his own agonizing. It�s not easy to come out of the closet.

Coming up in Chi Trib: a full account with comparable play � "beyond words," as Trib ads promise � of the anti-Kerry side of the story! Bet?

GOING ON HALF EMPTY . . . On 8/20 Sun Times had this head about Republican senatorial candidate Alan Keyes at the state fair: "GOP Conservatives rally behind Keyes," while Chi Trib for same story had "GOP Lukewarm toward Keyes."

THE BEAUTY OF PRO-LIFE . . . Mary-Louise Kurey in Chi Trib letter to editor Saturday 9/4, responding to columnist Eric Zorn, says an Illinois law Z. had spoken of as protecting accidentally born abortion babies has been disallowed in courts.

She also suggests placing the accidental infant in the arms of a waiting adoptive parent. Her letter could have been an op-ed. She is the archdiocese�s point person for pro-life issues, a former beauty contest winner and looks it, and articulate. She or someone like her would make a good op-ed regular.

Wouldn't that be something?

WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE . . . Alan Keyes is a "convicted" person, says former Gov. Jim Edgar, meaning he has (presumably strong) convictions. Convinced is the word. But somewhere in the haze of my memory is "convicted" used this way by preachers. Maybe Edgar heard it used that way in a Baptist church.

Its sole use in the King James version, in John 8.9, does not support its use for "convinced": "And they which heard it, being convicted [usual sense] by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman [caught in adultery] standing in the midst."

MORE LANGUAGE . . . Do grand juries hand up or hand down indictments? 9/9/04 Sun-Times story said "handed down." What the heck is it?

MORE LANGUAGE, NATIONAL SCENE . . . From the nation at large comes the "foaming jerk" sobriquet devised by author-commentator Michelle Malkin for TV man Chris Matthews, hound of the Baskervilles revisited, who has something of a saliva, even spittle, problem. He got excited talking to her, and she narrowly missed catching some of the flying stuff in her face, she reports. The MSNBC worthy who followed Matthews, Keith Olbermann, commended him: "Never prouder of you, Chris." She had alluded to what the "Unfit" book says of Kerry�s self-inflicted wound (allegedly incurred by aiming his launcher short in his first action and catching some shrapnel as it bounced back, for which he was chewed out by the boat�s senior officer).

This reverberated in the misty flats of Matthews�s mind as "he shot himself." With this he pummeled Malkin, refusing to pay heed to her repeating "self-inflicted wound," which to most is not the same things. "The unfair, unbalanced, and unhinged purveyors of journalism, or whatever it is they call what they do at MSNBC, should be ashamed," fumed Malkin later.

"Democrat Party water boys in the media are in full desperation mode," she continued. "I have now witnessed firsthand and up close (Matthews' spittle nearly hit me in the face) how the pressure from alternative media sources � the blogosphere, conservative Internet forums, talk radio, Regnery Publishing, FOX News, etc. � is driving these people absolutely batty."

WHAT WAS SHE UP TO? . . . Olbermann suggested she was following orders from the Swift Boat Vets to "steer the Kerry-Shot-Himself flotsam into the mainstream media," but she had been booked for the show to push a book of her own about internment of Japanese in WW2 and racial profiling in general. But Matthews�s producer, Dominic Bellone, had told her they wanted first to talk about Swift Vets� accusations. (She never did get to talk about her book.) Olbermann, meet Bellone. You two work in the same shop, you should get to know each other.

It was later that the irrepressible Matthews, caught up in his street-theater shtick in Herald Square, asked Zell Miller if he really meant spitballs, as Miller had just said in his stirring, provocative speech, in which he accused Kerry of voting against a string of weapons. Miller tried to explain metaphorical language to the hopped-up Matthews, but Matthews was having too much fun with fellow Democrats outside the Garden. Shortly after that, Miller raised the duel-in-the-sun idea, wishing they were both back in Georgia, where men fought it out.

IDEA ALERT . . . Well it is fun, when you get down to it, though not for the likes of Malkin and Miller. It�s not as much fun, however, as if Matthews and the irrepressible Bill O'Reilly were to do a show together, flipping for home field, and not in Herald Square. Matthews, who has about one-fifth the viewers if that many as O'Reilly, would be wise for rating�s sake to appear in O'Reilly�s home court.

Wherever it was held, it would be quite something � a series of interruptions interrupted by interruptions. You don�t have to be Irish � a Jewish friend told me his family specialized in fingers waved in each other�s faces � but I do know some commented on the noise my three brothers and I used to make while conversing with each other, and each of us pleads or pleaded guilty to being Irish. Be that as it may, a O'Reilly vs. Matthews card would be a sellout.

DOWD SPEAKS . . . Also from elsewhere, call-in radio host Brian Lehrer on WNYC in NYC on 9/2/04 [had a tip from the producer] told Maureen Dowd she had looked into Bush's soul � what Z. Miller said he had done � in her NYT columns. She denied it but right off began to tell what Bush was thinking.

All in all, Dowd made a good on-air interview, being an entertaining speaker, though a prisoner of metaphor and utterly liberal. She is also apparently unaware of her biases, rather her contradictions, as what I mentioned earlier, about not looking into souls. She does that all the time, and extrapolates wildly, sees White House as Addams mansion, etc., which is entertaining, I admit.

On the open-minded side, she sees Bushies as more credible in their threat to destroy terrorists than Edwards, for instance, but finds them "scary." Lehrer did not ask if there's a connection between making credible threats and being scary.

She finds Bushies vicious � Kerry knew Bush would try to "rip his throat out" � but mentions Clinton aide Carville without reference to his well-known tactics. She endorses all suspicions of homophobia, as in Arnold�s conceivably self-mocking convention-speech girlie-boy references. Listening to her gives a very good look at what's said at parties I'm not invited to. Not to say I'm invited to any.

She�s full of "subtext" readings, stuff she just knows, that�s all. She refers to "don't put me on couch" complaints by Bush pere but claims her analysis of the younger Bush � starting the whole damn Iraq war in part to one-up his father, for instance � is what anyone would conclude.

Anyone at one of those parties anyhow � like those of an earlier generation that film critic Pauline Kael attended (and Roger Ebert surely attends today), where nobody voted for Nixon the year he took all but Massachusetts. It�s fun being a liberal.

YET MORE OUTSIDE CHI . . . Barely noticed by main streamers was the AP story out of West Allis WI reporting boos from Bush-supporters at hearing Bush tell of Clinton�s heart trouble. When the boos evaporated in the wake of numerous witnesses� outraged complaints, AP pulled the story. But it had gone out to clients and ran in a number of places. The blogosphere doused the story and along the way took aim at a Knight-Ridder story out of Washington by science writer Seth Borenstein, whose head was sought on the platter following that of a reporter named Hays of AP, the West Allis perp.

I twitted Borenstein, whom I do not know, in an email, and he explained credibly how he had slipped the AP report into a story about Clinton, on deadline. He goofed, and knew it, "a rushed reporter stupidly � and in error � using an AP story in half a sentence and not crediting AP."

NEWSIES IN GENERAL . . . Tony Blair compared dealing with the media to living with "a demented tenant." You don�t know "whether to charm them or knock them over the head," as noted by Steve Richards, chief political commentator of UK�s Independent, reviewing a new Blair biography in Times Literary Supplement.
Or as Jacques Barzun observed in From Dawn to Decadence, "to public figures [the media resembles] a dog of uncertain temper, pacified by fresh news."

BACK ON THE HOME FRONT . . . Sun-Times Labor Day page one had big pic of beautiful beach-volleyballer's Speedo-covered butt, which was also very interesting. In same edition, sports columnist Mariotti refers to Cubs� "fragile team psyche," which is maybe a sports version of Maureen Dowd analyzing Bush?

INOCULATED . . . Terrorists had "impunity" in the �90s, said Richard S. Williamson in 7/26 Sun-Times op-ed, meaning they got away with terrorism. Try "immunity." Having it, they acted with impunity.

FROM ATLANTA WITH LOVE . . . Chi Trib 7/6/04 had page-one story about a Dallas-based minister who gave a 90-minute sermon in Atlanta as part of his crusade. This is T.D. Jakes, who is a bishop though apparently not of any denomination. Trib's Dahleen Glanton does not say who consecrated him. Apostolic succession, anyone?
Contributing to the confusion is his name, Jakes, which is also the name of a prominent Chicago South Side minister, in the news a lot as a Reverend Protestor and even once-mayoral candidate. Glanton, Chi Trib's gal in Atlanta, makes no mention of the Chicago Jakes, nor did a Trib copy editor supply such a mention.
This Jakes of Atlanta and Dallas is "one of the most powerful religious figures in America," Glanton, attributing the judgment to no one and in effect calling on us to recognize her as one of the most astute observers of the religious scene in America.

In any case, Bishop Jakes on the road draws audiences of "sometimes triple the size" of his 28,000-member Dallas church. In Atlanta, for instance, he pulled more than 130,000, says Glanton � Charlotte Observer said more than 100,000 � to his four-day Mega Fest last month. The city was expected to pick up $100 million in business from it, said Glanton.

These thousands are boomers without ties, not afraid of mass meetings as the WW2 generation was, according to Emory U. sociologist Nancy Eiesland, whom Glanton quoted without mention of crowds who turned up to see the Pope in the last 25 years. Has Glanton heard about them?

The ties in question would be those that bind to a local church. This mega event, a gathering of people of various or no affiliation, was a religiously mixed crowd, Eiesland pointed out. They came for "lively worship [in a] more evangelical setting" -- more than what they find in their churches, apparently, but Glanton does not probe.

She says Jakes is called "in the media" a new Billy Graham. Can't she think of one such reference with which to regale us?

Jakes also "stretches the line too far between the secular and the spiritual," she tells us ("some say so"), but we are not told what it means to stretch a line too far between two things. What does Glanton have in mind? Does she realize a metaphor is supposed to make sense? Or is she just mouthing stuff she has heard that looks as if it belongs here?

She speaks of "those who have studied" Jakes who "say he fully understands his influence" on listeners. Who are they, and how do they know this? And so what? You'd think she was protecting a source.

Jakes "carefully crafts his words" -- "chooses them" would do -- "as well as his positions." That is, he watches what he says and is careful about positions he takes.

He's not the only one. Glanton does not report Jakes's anti-gay views mentioned in the 7/7 Southern Voice, a gay-oriented publication, which criticizes Atlanta�s Journal Constitution for, booster-like, failing to report on his hostility to homosexuality.

Neither does Glanton, representing not a local newspaper emphasizing the positive, but one with national-coverage pretensions. If she could think harder-headed and in a more detached manner about her subject, readers of her paper would hear more of the story.

STARS IN REVIEW . . . "Fahrenheit 9/11" is more "dramatization" than "expose," says Roger Ebert in 6/24/04 Sun-Times. Accurate or not, he doesn�t say. Ebert makes much of the look on Bush's face when he heard of the attacks on 9-11, calling it "odd indeed." Which is devastating indeed, coming from America's Movie Critic.
Ebert credits Moore with bringing "fresh impact to familiar material by the way he marshals his images." I'm sure he does. He's been compared to Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler�s world-class movie propagandist.

F-9/11 is "compelling, persuasive," says Ebert. That is, Ebert was compelled and persuaded. Bush "comes across [to E.] as shallow, inarticulate . . . simplistic. . . inauthentic," confirming Ebert�s deepest suspicions.

Moore had been "sobered by attacks on the factual accuracy of elements" of "Bowling for Columbine." Sobered, eh? E. reported this? "Moore sobered by attacks," read all about it? Ebert credits this new-found sobriety with Moore's "maybe" being "more cautious" in this film, producing "an op-ed . . . not stand-up comedy." A good op-ed? Accurate and well argued?

"But," and here the real Roger Ebert stands up, "he remains one of the most valuable figures on the political landscape, a populist rabble-rouser, humorous and effective." The film is "exhilarating," thanks to its "determined repetition of . . . sound bites."

Doesn�t that depend on what you mean by exhilarating?

SCHOOL DAZE . . . In Chicago we have "failing schools," never failing teachers, parents, and students. One expedient, an experiment in parental control and parent-school cooperation known as Local School Councils, has flopped. Nine years of Daley-era reform went down the drain. Reformist (call them reformers if things get reformed) Julie Woestehoff says the schools scene is a "shambles."

Sun-Times tells of charter schools where kids toe the line and have longer school days and tight discipline � apparently a real character-molding program. Daley, thrashing about as usual, says he wants more like these. But they make heavy demands on students and parents, and one wonders how many would put up with that.

A NAME�S A NAME, FOR ALL THAT . . . When is a liberal not a liberal? When he's a Republican, in which case he's a moderate. Ask Dave McKinney of Sun-Times, who 6/27/04 has the GOP Ryan-replacement story � Jack Ryan the nominee had to pull out when Chi Trib got hold of sex-club allegations in his divorce proceedings, Repubs had to scramble for a replacement.

Idea: provide standard check list: voting record, campaign statements, the usual items � and compare a well-known moderate with a well-known liberal. Or five mods with five libs, to allow for varieties of records, and see what the difference is.

GUESS WHAT? . . . Mary Mitchell in Sun-Times had this just in during the convention: Hillary full of praise for Obama�s talk. How does she get those scoops?

UNLOCKING KEYES . . . Sun-Times man Mark Brown dismissed Alan Keyes, Republicans� great black hope for the coming senate race, as a "conservative talk-show host," saying nothing of his Harvard Ph.D. and UNESCO appointment (ambassador) and even more contemptuously comparing him to Mike Ditka: "He�s no Ditka, but he could get there from here." From Harvard, no less!

Mary Mitchell told us Republicans had played the race card in slating Keyes, amateurishly citing "political observers," as if to remove it from the realm of what she thinks. She decried the dearth of "white lambs" for sacrifice in this election. Keyes�s role is "to limit votes" for Obama. Really?
Keyes was picked for "his national presence, his talk show, and his wit." How dare they?

She worries that blacks may see in him a black candidate of whom they can be proud � and he will be a right-winger!

Dem consultant Don Rose told her Keyes is "fanatical" and has no "relationship ideology to the black community." Relationship ideology? Moreover, Keyes has gotten votes in his presidential campaigns from the Bible Belt. Saints preserve us.

ADVICE . . . They are upset. Alarms have gone off. This guy will drag out horses libs think they have beaten to death: Is abortion murder? Do we belong in the UN? Should immigration laws be enforced? Keyes will try to force issues, but getting himself fully reported may not be easy.

Reporters who can�t stomach him should lay out his most egregious arguments, fairly and squarely, assuming he will hang himself. His supporters will love it, even as his opposition feels vindicated. I did that once for Jehovah�s Witnesses in Sox Park 35 years ago, when 40,000 of them gathered there for a week. Our first editions were hawked outside the park as they arrived.

I hesitated at first to report fully what they were saying � their elaborate cosmogony, for instance, sounded so silly. Why make these nice people look bad? But the killer instinct took hold, and I decided to feature their wildest asseverations, punching up the story with what they gave me.

Next day, I showed up at the press box, the day�s paper already in thousands of hands, unsure of my reception. Lo and behold, they greeted me effusively, delighted at the coverage. I had accurately represented their thinking. Most readers clucked and shook their heads, but not they.

One thing newsies should not do is worry about Keyes being "divisive." That�s for the Dem senator, Durbin, and others to stew about. K is "of the right wing of the right wing," says Durbin. His approach is "divisive." Hang on to your wallets, by the way, when an odds-on favorite inveighs against division.
#

Now is the time . . . Eric Zorn's column of yesterday was a brave effort to fill space. Too much space, I think. But I'll be darned, I count them and find it's only 725 words. Then today Neil Steinberg got it done in -- say wha'? -- 1165 words! Then why should Zorn's seem longer? One reason is he was trying too hard to convert sow's ear to silk purse. His was a brave attempt, I say. He remained effervescent in the face of a scripted largely news-free convention. Wait. Not so. If there are a million stories in the naked city, there have to be a hundred in a political convention, no matter how scripted.

Whether the earnest, hard-working Zorn found them is another question. On this day at least, it seems he did not. (I can hear him expostulating: "It seems"? What do you mean "it seems"? You're not going to go on how things "seem," are you?) He made one point very clear: The word "great" gets overused by enthusiastic public figures. This is something a few of us may not have noticed, and maybe we haven't seen the Joan Cusack commercial for DIRECTV, she weighing and balancing "great" and other adjectival possibilities.

Never mind. We read on and find there's something Zorn wants to say. There's another word. Barack Obama used "serious" when Z. asked him if the Ditka candidacy ever had him worried (it didn't) and so did Hillary C. , about Kerry -- "a serious man for a serious job at a serious time." Yess! Slam-dunk time! That's the word for Z. That "serious" (not "great," for God's sake!) sums it up in this "fraught and perilous" time.

But here the literacy alarm goes off. Eric has to hit the old dictionary. He has to see "fraught" as going "with" something, as in "fraught with peril." Fraught and perilous, on the other hand, veers close to Michael Sneed malaprop land. Eric does not want to go there.

He makes his point, however. Throw enough words up there in the more or less right direction, and we get it, somehow. We can even picture that "security [tea] cozy" he sees covering Boston, because we saw one once in a roadside antiques store and another in an old movie (the best kind). It's quite an image, the sort that comes to mind in the middle of the night -- the city of Boston, 700,000 people, under a tea cozy -- causing dismay or maybe a chuckle if nothing you ate disagrees with you. It stays with the reader when the column, serious though it may be, is long forgotten.

And Zorn gets serious, yea sober, at the end. He even waxes enthusiastic, proclaiming that it was "great, truly great" to be at this convention, "despite all the surface frivolity, phoniness, pointless ritual and sandbox fighting." (Oh that sandox fighting. Don't you just hate it?) It's a moral, by gum, with maybe a slight catch in the throat. Go, Eric. You've lumbered along and got through it, and you have your 725 words, and a happy ending to boot.

Buy Chi Trib this morning even if Eric Zorn isn't in it, for the guest cartoons, specifically two out of Atlanta, one by Luckovich of the Journal-Constitution showing Edwards being commended at the recent political meeting: "Great speech! A jury just awarded Kerry $25 million." Edwards being a first-rate ambulance-chaser. (And I understand Kerry served in Viet Nam. Is that right?)

The other, by Robert Ariall of the Columbia SC The State, has Kerry at podium in front of big sign, "Tell Bush to SHOVE IT," and one donkey telling another, "I feel better now that we have a unifying message that clearly states our vision."

Meanwhile, it's Saturday at Sun-Times, where circulation is up or down, whatever, and Thomas Roeser expatiates knowledgeably about this week's resolution of the state budget impasse, telling how House Republican leader Tom Cross of Oswego led horses to the drink and got them to swallow, with House Speaker Mike (Big Daddy) Madigan ending "wiser but sadder." Typical informed analysis by one of the city's best.

THE ZORN-TRICE REPLY
Chi Trib's Eric Zorn comes to the rescue in his blog of his colleague Dawn Turner Trice, who says it wasn't she who tried to kill a Royko column for using "monkey" as applied by bad-guy LA cops to blacks, as I posted here 5/19. The word she objected to was the N-word, she says.

I still can't bring myself to say the word, because as Trice argued in her 5/3 column, it's unbearably hurtful even when the writer distances himself from it, as she admits Royko did -- which was mighty wide of her, to use an expression from my youth. (I thought that's what it was, at any rate, never seeing it in writing and thinking it was wide as in wide- or broad-minded. Actually it was white! As soon as I realized that, I stopped saying it. I swear!) Trice, however, uses it with abandon, defiantly, in Zorn's blog (twice!), accusing me and Steinberg of lacking the courage to do so.

Never mind. The key point made by Trice is that she's not the one former Chi Trib managing editor Dick Ciccone wrote about in his Royko: a Life in Print. It was someone else, says Trice. So Ciccone missed the time she tried to get a column killed! It's all clear now. Dawn T. Trice has been wronged and has my deepest apologies!

And Ciccone will be stunned to hear it. He did a book in which he recalled in detail, down to his stopping presses and making the paper come out late so as to restore the column killed by an editor whom he names, demonstrating attention to detail. He was there. He restored it. But he misses the one about Dawn T. Trice. There were two such cases, and he got only one! Maybe there were three or four others, and he missed them! There goes Ciccone, hanging his head in shame.

In any case, Trice admits, yea, boasts, that she tried to get a Royko column killed to protect readers' imagined sensibilities -- but no reader complained, Ciccone noted. The pigmy went for the giant and almost pulled it off.

[Zorn replied, quoting my above "deepest apologies," said my apology is "grudging," which seems a willful misreading of an ironical comment. It's not an apology at all, of course; and the need to point it out is not something one expects to encounter in urbane intercourse. In a debate with sophomore, yes. Or a sophist. Or a brat.]

STORY DEMANDS CONFLICT: Chi Trib today has p-1 story, left column, by Neikirk about a runaway special-interest-oriented tax package on its way to passing, condemned by t-tanks of left and right.

Sun-Times has Wolinsky story about Motorola losing a top exec, apparently because of bad performance under relatively new CEO.

Trib's is very long, S-T's pithy, which right off makes the latter more a newspaper story. Still, that's also broadsheet vs. tabloid style, and Neikirk's story gives play to notion that taxation can hurt business, and you can't blame a guy for trying, with his quoting of Brookings and American Enterprise institutes in same story.

But apart from the Trib story's length, something nagged me about it. As a reader I could not get excited, because of the what-else-is-new element. Lobbyists get what they want, and picnics get rained on, so?

But reading Wolinsky, on the business page, I got analysts' comment on the departure of the exec. They saw it as man leaving because he did poorly and the new CEO said get out of here. Then I got a claim of being "floored" by the very idea from Motorola's #2 man, and in length readable over coffee. Now there I was with at least a bit of conflict.

But there was none in Neikirk's story of 1100 words, just everybody saying what a bad thing this is, unless you count the downstate Illinois Republican seeking small-business tax relief. But no contact with the bad guys, legislative leaders approving the padding or lobbyists. No attempt to reach them is mentioned.

So no conflict, and the reader has an essay before him, or even a column, not a news story. And Neikirk sounds committed to the side he reports, whereas Wolinsky, following the rules, does not tip his hand. This is very important to the reader, who finds 1100 words of no-conflict boring compared to 550 of clear conflict and would rather not be preached to.

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.