The top three items, loaded with links, for Romenesko today — here and here and here — are about defense of NYTimes as not traitorous even though loose of lips that sink ships.  It is circle-the-wagons time for the mediacrats.

Cal Skinner takes Carol Marin down several pegs in his McHenry County Blog.  He zeroes in on her Sun-Times column yesterday, in which she “explain[ed] why she wanted Mayor Richard Daley’s patronage chief Robert Sorich and his fellow defendants to be found not guilty,” namely “that they weren’t close enough to Daley.” 

Skinner has Marin demonstrating a tin ear for (a) prosecutorial strategy, for which see Kass here and previously, and, explicitly, (b) recent history of N. Ill. prosecuting — zilch under Clinton, gangbusters under Bush-Sen. Peter Fitzgerald-U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald:

Nine years ago, President Bill Clinton’s then-U.S. Attorney and the Daley administration completely ignored the blatant violations of the anti-patronage Shakman Decree, not to mention the accompanying fraud that can’t have been very different from what was proved in the Sorich trial.

The man U.S. Senator Peter Fitzgerald’s picked for U.S. Attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald, has not had blinders on.

That, Carol Marin, is the story.

Marin may not be as, ah, insensitive, as Skinner implies, but we may wonder about her self-absorption in recounting her mad dash to the court house to hear the Sorich trial results:

[F]our of us ran out of the newsroom, piled into a cab and flew to the Dirksen Federal Building.

This “Carol goes to work” stuff wears thin. 

And in her wondering if more “steely stares” await her from prosecutors.  If possible, she should discount such stuff as easily as Ozzie Guillen discounts questions from a sensitivity counselor.

She had questioned prosecutorial “conduct and proportionality” in the case.  No wonder they stared.  The last time my conduct and proportionality were questioned, I not only stared but grimaced — as threateningly as I could, unfortunately eliciting only grins from the questioners.  No matter.  The verdict was in, but Marin couldn’t let go her earlier arguments.

As for prosecutors, they got a “mixed verdict” and issued a “Mission Accomplished” statement at a p.c.  Oh, Carol knows how to hurt a prosecutor.  That M.A. stuff, we know where that comes from, a bumper sticker sold by moveon.org.  She couldn’t resist it.  Nor could she resist a closing tribute to herself:

I’ve spent a lot of years as a reporter doing my own small part to expose the corruption and cronyism that have had a chokehold on this city. I think it’s shameful and have said so.  [Go girl!]

If Sorich and the others had been acquitted, I would not have been in a bar in Bridgeport toasting their victory.  [Go again!]

But when the government goes after corruption by squeezing the middle while affirming, even praising people closer to the top of the patronage pyramid, then I protest.

She would not pursue these prosecutors’ strategy, that is.  Oh.

Most in the mainstream media would rather tout the faults of American capitalism than sing its praises

says Lawrence Kudlow in his story “The big-bang story of U.S. private business,” which he says is not reported in the newspapers.  No, it isn’t, as far as I can see.  Take Chi Trib, with its recent account of POVERTY IN THE SUBURBS and other horrendous things that happen under capitalism.

Kudlow asks:

Did you know that just over the past 11 quarters, dating back to the June 2003 Bush tax cuts, America has increased the size of its entire economy by 20 percent? In less than three years, the U.S. economic pie has expanded by $2.2 trillion, an output add-on that is roughly the same size as the total Chinese economy, and much larger than the total economic size of nations like India, Mexico, Ireland and Belgium.

Funny, I did not know that.  Maybe this morning’s Trib, which was not delivered as usual, has it in hard copy, but I doubt it.

Michael Miner this week on the Trib-LATimes deal veering now towards dissolution and even a sort of catastrophe is the sort of thing Miner has been doing in Chicago Reader for a long time.  It’s about time he was crowned king of Chicago media critics.  Consider it done by this come-lately, who would say this, he swears, even if Miner had not given him an excellent write-up some time back for his (my) pre-blog Blithe Spirit.

That write-up, by the way, made its way to the Midwest Jesuit archives in St. Louis, the later Brother Mike Grace, SJ, who was at Loyola U. library for many years, told me.  It had covered my Jesuit experience as encouraging, even demanding, writing down one’s great and near-great thoughts.  Mike Grace sent it on to St. Louis. 

The New York Times undertook to blow what it called, in its headline, the “secret” international terrorist financing tracking program, for reasons that it never has been able to explain. Initially, there was no doubt about the fact that the Times was exposing a secret; reporter Eric Lichtblau used that word to describe the SWIFT program something like twelve times in the body of the Times’ article. But when the Times unexpectedly found itself under heavy criticism for damaging national security, it took the nearest port in a storm, and claimed that the SWIFT program wasn’t a secret after all. Everyone knew about it! Which, of course, left people scratching their heads over the story’s page one, above the fold placement.

And there’s more on this matter here, but you don’t find it at Romenesko: Your daily fix of media industry news, commentary, and memos, where the perspective — Mainstream gossip and industry developments — does not allow it.

Part of what you will find is this from Eric Lichtblau, written last November to give an idea of just how secret it was — impenetrable until NYT told about it:

[The administration] is now developing a program to gain access to and track potentially hundreds of millions of international bank transfers into the United States.

But experts in the field say the results have been spotty, with few clear dents in Al Qaeda’s ability to move money and finance terrorist attacks.

Few clear dents, eh?  

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While you’re considering this matter, see what happened in similar circumstances long ago, thanks again to NY Times!