Maybe a story tomorrow or the next day in Chi Trib or S-T about Ward Churchill at DePaul?  Could be, what with Freepers (Free Republic members) gearing up for a protest.  Churchill is the dude who called 9/11 victims “little Eichmans” and wants more of the same, with a view to erasing us, beginning with the effing capitalists.  He’s a pseudo-Indian from U. of Colorado, where he’s being investigated for plagiarism and other offenses.  His topic in part is “human dignity for men of color,” always a favorite.  You couldn’t make this stuff up. 

                                                                        — more more more —

Update: Nothing today, 10/21 . . .

The Kyoto Treaty has received a major, perhaps fatal, setback, though it was barely reported in the media. It occurred when British Prime Minister Tony Blair told the gathering at the Clinton Global Initiative in September, the same week that the United Nations had its annual gathering of world leaders, that the treaty was basically dead. Blair has been a major supporter of the treaty, and has unsuccessfully implored President Bush to sign on.

[A]s more and more people begin to ask, “What’s happening to our weather?” it seems that all of official Washington is holding its breath, lest the dirty little secret gets out: that Katrina and Rita are the entropy bill for increasing carbon dioxide emissions and global warming.

Responsible scientists in the 1,500-member Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change cross their fingers in hopes that we cut back our use of fossil fuels before carbon dioxide levels double from their 1937 level, which could produce cataclysms that we don’t want to ponder, that would make Hurricane Katrina seem like a petulant schoolgirl.

As reported by columnist James Pinkerton of TechCentralStation, Blair announced that he was going to speak with “brutal honesty” about Kyoto, and then proceeded to do so. “My thinking has changed in the past three or four years,” he said. “No country is going to cut its growth.” He added that countries such as the two largest in the world, China and India, who are both excluded from the terms of the treaty, “are not going to start negotiating another treaty like Kyoto.”

Meanwhile, back at Chi Trib on the day S-T ran the gripping war story in Controversy, it was business as usual, and why not, with the same-old liberals running things.  “Desperate for work, lured into danger: The journey of a dozen impoverished men from Nepal to Iraq reveals the exploitation underpinning the American war effort” dominates p-1, complete with (surprise!) color shot of bereaved people.  For these Cam Simpson and his fotog went high into the Himalayas.  But they got their shot.

The only thing missing (it’s a series, so there will be more opportunities) is the head they are really looking for, here only part of it: “Exploitation underpins American war effort!”  Then only will their hearts be glad and spirits light.  It’s coming, yes!

Exaggeration aside, isn’t it funny how Trib juices never really flow unless they find something that makes us look bad?

Run out now and buy your Sun-Times for “Night Raid in Mosul,” by Colby Buzzell, who was there, with his combat buddies skulking through alleys at night past houses where people watched TV, he carrying a battering ram which they used to break into a house where slept a family.  The man of that house was their target.  They used a smell detector and found dynamite smell on his hands and took him away, the wife and presumed mother of their kids wailing, “Don’t take him away.  I don’t want to be alone.”

But taking this guy away, maybe eventually to Guantanamo, made Mosul safer for many mothers who do not want to be left alone either, many others having wailed at night like this one because of his dynamite.

It’s a gripping tale of getting ready for the raid and completing it, from a book, My War: Killing Time in Iraq (G.P. Putnam’s Sons).  The piece is not on the Sun-Times site, which is why you have to buy hard copy.  It’s the lead story in this week’s Controversy section, edited by Tom McNamee, the sort of Ernie Pyle-style reporting you won’t find in Chi Trib, where instead the focus is on wailing mothers without context: a pacifist tilt.

This one ends with a quote from George Orwell, of Animal Farm and 1984 fame:

We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.

Yes.

=============

Correction to the above:

“Nabbing” has:

. . . . The piece is . . . the lead story in this week’s Controversy section, edited by Tom McNamee, the sort of Ernie Pyle-style reporting you won’t find in Chi Trib, where instead the focus is on wailing mothers without context: a pacifist tilt.

It should have said, in view of James Janega’s reporting to which I have called attention, “reporting you almost never find in Chi Trib,” or come to think of it, in Sun-Times either. 

Also, in addition to “pacifist tilt,” I might have said “Viet Nam syndrome tilt,” which is practically speaking the same thing these days, but it’s such a hackneyed phrase.

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.

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.

Far be it from me to tell Chi Trib reporter Lisa Anderson and her presumed editors how to do their job, but what about her lead today in her story “Court told board urged creationism: Witness says she was shocked by bigotry”?

HARRISBURG, Pa. — Nine months pregnant at the time, Dover High School alumna Christy Rehm found herself so shocked by some of the religiously bigoted statements made by members of the Dover school board in June 2004 that she feared she would go into labor, she testified in federal court here Wednesday.

It’s settled then.  The statements were bigoted.  Thanks, Lisa.  We would have had to make that judgement ourselves if you hadn’t put it that way.  On the other hand, if you had written “some of what she considered religiously bigoted statements,” we would have been inclined to read further.  As while starting a mystery novel or any good story.  You’re allowed to do that, Lisa (and presumed editors) — report it fair and balanced (copyright Fox News), letting us decide.

I made myself read on, however, just to check, and found this as Exhibit A:

“This country wasn’t founded on Muslim beliefs or evolution. This country was founded on Christianity, and our children should be taught as such.”

And this as Exhibit B:

the comment came from Bill Buckingham, a vocal critic of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, which states that life evolved through random mutation and natural selection. The theory is widely accepted by scientists,

witnesses said.  (Buckingham denies it.)

Lower in the story, we read of subpoenaed reporters, a Mich. State U. prof who says the intelligent-design argument (at issue here) takes us “beyond the boundaries of the natural world” and so does not belong in a biology classroom, same prof saying Intel Design takes us back to pre-Enlightenment days, and a Baptist pastor saying its alternative is “bonehead happenstance.”

So some good reporting, but that lead ‘graph hurts, because it MAKES US SCEPTICAL ABOUT EVEN THE REPORTING.  Don’t Lisa and her (presumed) editors get it?  Their credibility is at stake.

By way of ex-Jesuit commentary on story substance — in addition to the above ex-newsman analysis of the story as such — the courtroom argument apparently was between science and religion.  What, no philosophy?  Some very sophisticated scientific, nay mathematical minds plump for Intel Design, arguing in philosophical mode to their conclusions.  And who’s Enlightenment-oriented more, the firm believer in an accidental universe (the pastor’s “bonehead happenstance”) or the arguer from data, in this case incredible amazing complexity that works? 

Finally, it seems less a matter of answers than of questions.  Some are verboten, it seems.  There are no mysteries.  Which is scientism, not science, it seems to me.

========================

Lisa Anderson said thanks for my “thoughtful comments,” adding that it would have been clearer if she had written “said she found herself so shocked….”  Good.

That said, you have me thinking.  The paraphrasing route seems familiar.  Accepted practice, that is.  So I may be questioning accepted practice.  The problem may antedate the Bush 2 administration, plus Clinton, plus . . .  Our heroes of Front Page were rascals, we now think.  Things changed?  May change again?

From Romenesko-Poynter this gem:

Designer: “What newsrooms value isn’t what readers value”

Hartford Courant
One of JoAnn Klimkiewicz‘s sources for her “Newspapers in Crisis” piece is newspaper design consultant Alan Jacobson. He says: “No reader is clamoring for longer stories. They want to get in and out quick. But what newsrooms value is not what readers value. A hundred-column-inch story about the white rhino is not what sells the paper on Sunday. … Newspapers don’t want to hear that, but it’s true.”