I’ll bet that when our revised Code of Editorial Principles is promulgated in a few weeks, it will include a flat ban on political donations by editorial staffers. . . . [T]he notion that any topic a reporter writes on nowadays can remain sequestered from politics and partisanship is simply an illusion.

That’s “public editor” Don Wycliff in today’s Chi Trib, in “Citizenship vs. the Tribune’s Code of Editorial Principles”.  Good.  I’m a flat-ban man myself, holding that for newsies credibility trumps all.  It’s how they serve the world, even to the point of detachment, if that’s not too ascetical a word.  The reporter has to not care (horrors!).  Leave passion to the soap opera performers.  The editorialist has to make arguments, not just emote.  It’s a hard route to go, but the payoff is money in the credibility bank.

Sun-Times columnist Mary Mitchell calls William Bennett everything but a wife-beater and child-molester in the black-crime-abortion controversy — his is an  “ill-chosen hypothesis,” his comments were “disgusting,” “racist,” and “ignorant,” though more the last than the second.

Ditto Freakonomics author Stephen Levitt, who predicts crime based on socio-economic profile — his is “an unseemly theory,” he’s got “arrogance” that “frightens . . . and offends” her.

She reduces black crime to selling dope to whites, who “drive” crime, saying nothing about who commits it.  (Put dope on the free market, I say, but that’s another story.)

In any case, she rejects Levitt’s contention that you can predict high incidence of crime using as your measure “income, the likelihood of growing up in a female-headed household, having a teenage mother, and how urban the environment is,” as he said.  It frightens and offends her (as above).

But isn’t that beside the point, which is whether Levitt’s right or not?  Does Mitchell present her feelings in the matter as more important than Levitt’s argument?

If Mitchell wants to get to the heart of the matter, she should calm down, forget her feelings, and THIMK!

Chi Trib scored well ahead of “Play ball” today at Sox park with a p-1 profile of 1st-baseman cleanup hitter Paul Konerko that moves along and tells a lot, is excellently organized, and starts the day right for a Sox fan, such as this one who at least from age 10 got the Trib off the front porch and went first to see how they did (and was doubly pleased if the other team had lost). 

“Heart of the order: Paul Konerko’s gritty, workman approach makes him a clubhouse leader and a South Side hero” is by David Haugh, who puts meat on the bones of frequent throwaway references by sports writers to Konerko as a blue-collar, hard-working type, which is required in view of his big salary.  Beside the point in Haugh’s account, who quotes a brother:

“My grandpa [DiPiro] always told us that just having a job is honorable, so treat it with respect no matter what it is,” said Peter Konerko, Paul’s older brother who is a photographer in New York. “Paul’s attitude came from learning at a young age that whether it’s hitting a 90-m.p.h. fastball or digging a hole, your job requires integrity. I think Paul works harder now than he did when he was in [Class] A ball.”

This is a hard kind of story to do right, because of the danger of overkill, also known as b.s. about local hero.  If there’s b.s. in this story, if it’s a con job, I’m conned.  It happens, even to citizens of an age that says they should know better.

Of note today in Sun-Times are:

* Typically articulate and well-researched short letter by Dick Frisbie in defense of accused priests, in part wondering why no church trial or statue of limitations [in partial rebuttal, because present danger is the issue rather than penalties], which did not make the e-version cut. 

* Mary Laney column in praise of heiress-benefactor Abra Rockefeller Prentice, formerly Abra Anderson as reporter and later columnist — Jon and Abra — with Jon Anderson, “Among heiresses, we’ll take a Prentice over a Paris anytime”:

Thanks to her giving, Chicago has Prentice Pavilion — the largest birthing center in the seven-state Midwest region and among the top 25 birth centers in the United States. Close to 10,000 babies have been delivered at Prentice and received important neonatal care afterward.

And more more more.

* Typically sharp, enterprising, bread-and-butter muckraking story by city hall reporter Fran Spielman, “Ex-Daley aides cash in as they depart City Hall”:

Chicago taxpayers have coughed up $164,974 for the accrued vacation times of the newly departed mayoral aides, according to figures supplied to the Chicago Sun-Times in response to a Freedom of Information request.