Here’s a tale of two cities’ newspapers:  In Wash Times we read this head-plus-lede graf about Iraqi constitution:

Many hurdles ahead for Iraqi constitution
By David R. Sands
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published August 30, 2005

Iraq’s draft constitution faces a tricky but not impassable road to ratification in an Oct. 15 referendum that is seen as critical to the country’s political future and to the U.S. military mission.

Chi Trib did it this way:

IRAQ IN TRANSITION
Charter finished without Sunni OK
Shiites, Kurds risk rejection by voters

By Alex Rodriguez
Tribune foreign correspondent
Published August 29, 2005

BAGHDAD — Iraqi lawmakers finished drafting their country’s new constitution Sunday, ending a rancorous process that laid bare sectarian divisiveness impeding the country as it tries to forge a new democracy.

Do I detect a little pessimism here?  “Tricky but not impassable road to ratification” vs. “rancorous process that laid bare sectarian divisiveness”?  Which paper leans toward the dark side of the story?

Meanwhile, gas prices rise, but it’s Blago to the rescue:

Gov. Rod Blagojevich on Monday asked Illinois’ attorney general to investigate possible price gouging at gas stations as Hurricane Katrina battered the Gulf Coast, a crucial area for U.S. oil and natural gas operations.

More:

“While losing a significant portion of our nation’s domestic oil production will likely cause an increase in oil prices, it is critical that we ensure that no one be allowed to use this natural disaster as an excuse to exploit consumers,” Blagojevich wrote to Attorney General Lisa Madigan, also a Democrat.

But what are Blago and Lisa going to do about it?  Supply down, demand up, and prices with it.  Would they have us ignore that law?  Or don’t they believe in it.

I have a law that ought to be passed: all governors should take Economics 101 at the state campus nearest their home.

Blagojevich said that while most gas stations won’t use a natural disaster as an excuse to raise prices, “there are always a few bad apples.”

“Unfortunately, the actions of a those few bad apples could mean higher gas prices for drivers,” he said.

Well for cry-eye, it’s a few gas stations he’s worried about?  Why all the fuss?

“I think I know why” media ignore the “scandal” of lives lost in the wake of fuel efficiency on autos, writes Jay Ambrose for Scripps-Howard News Service. 

I think the fault lies with a widespread news-media mindset in which regulations are almost always the good guys riding down the hill to rescue the citizenry from that villain of villains: dastardly business practices. It’s very nearly unfathomable to some reporters that no matter how well-intentioned, sweeping governmental interventions in the world of manufacturing and commerce can do more harm _ snuff out more lives _ than any dozen corporate CEOs on the greediest, most callous or negligent day they have ever had.

What we need are more reporters, editors, and publishers who are sceptical of bureaucrats’ ability to decide what’s good for us — as opposed to ourselves acting in a free market.

This in PR Week is on the mark for other papers too, with hat tip to Poynteronline:

NYT[imes] business reporter Alex Berenson says: “I think the Times needs to be a lot more careful about what we demand from our readers, and how much time we ask that they spend with us every day. And I think we write too much and too long often, and I’ve tried increasingly to be conscious of that in my own stories, that there’s no reason to write 1,200 words when 800 will do. … You should save the length for the stories that really deserve it. I think that that is going to be a big cultural change at the Times in the next few years, and younger people hopefully will have an easier time with [it].”

Write tight.

“What difference does that make?” said Simi Valley (CA) gold star mother Melanie House when asked if she was getting financial help for her flights to Idaho and Crawford TX to protest the war.  She didn’t want to talk about it, reported ABC7, Oakland.  But another mother, Karen Meredith, from Mountain View CA, also flown to Crawford, voiced some concern: “Sometimes things don’t feel quite right to me. They don’t feel wrong but maybe that’s how they do it in the marketing business.”

For the record, bills are being footed by Ben Cohen, of Ben and Jerry’s; MoveOn.org; Dem chairman Howard Dean’s organization, Democracy for America (“involved,” says ABC7); and the radical anti-war group Code Pink, organized by San Francisco’s Medea Benjamin,  author of Don’t Be Afraid, Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaks From The Heart: The Story of Elvia Alvarado and veteran organizer who was dragged off the 2004 Democrat convention floor in handcuffs.

NE Side robberies have residents more than alarmed: they are sick of it and won’t take any more of it.  More than 230 showed at Hatch school for a meeting with police.  The ubiquitous Deputy Chief Scianna led discussion.  Janice Sanchez is resident in charge.  She was delighted at the turnout and residents’ response.  NE Side is adjacent to the high-crime thickly populated N. Austin neighborhood (of the city, Chicago), some of whose residents apparently look on Oak Parkers as easy pickings, coming at them in alleys when they put cars in garages at night.  They show guns and get money.  One woman spotted them as she backed into her garage — never back in: you can back out in the morning when the coast is clear — and changed course, heading back into alley, which she exited with horn blaring.  OP’s top cop has told residents to skip overnight parking ban and put the damn vehicle in front, which is common sense.  Neighborhood watch is in high gear.  Stay posted.

Elsewhere, recently elected Peter Barber has questions and objections at OP elem school Dist. 97 board meetings.  Board is attacking something called “accountability,” which seems to be willingness of professional educators to bring citizens into the act, as through board’s writing questions for teacher– and principal-evaluation questionaires.  This board is setting goals — it’s a school district, for gosh sakes: it doesn’t know its goals?  Another new boarder, Julie Blankemeier, is “skeptical” about said goals, which seems reasonable.

On the village board side, (also) new trustee (all from last spring’s elections) Greg Marsey alluded to a goal of village government, “to make business districts more attractive.”  This is our local mercantilism, which is clearly the path that OP has chosen.  Streets are torn up and remade, buildings are bought and managed, cul-de-sacs are installed, downtowns are sometimes redone (but not The Avenue, OP & Lake St., the true heart of the village).  What if the village let the market decide such things?

Meanwhile, Ken Trainor chronicles an episode in mercantilism in his very readable, very informative story about the bus trip to Lake Forest and points west and south to LaGrange and Elmhurst, in which a non-profit planner seeks business for his organization — oops, does the civic-responsible thing — by showing trustees and village staffers how quaintness survives business expansion.  The story has only one damning feature: Trainor uses a neologism, “kibbutzing,” when he means discussion.  Neologism because a kibbutz is a settlement in Israel, noun not verb, and anyhow he means “kibbitzing,” which means looking over the shoulder of a card player or eavesdropping but commonly, erroneously is used for discussing.  Tsk, tsk.

Getting late to yesterday’s (Sunday’s) Chi Trib Metro section, I ran across a story about Vickie Quade and Maripat Donovan in federal court about who owns “Late Nite Catechism,” the immensely successful Catholic-nostalgia monologue in which Donovan plays a histrionic nun.  Having met Quade once, I read on . . . and on and on, to the end, so well was the story done, by Josh Noel, a hard-working, prolific Metro reporter.  How many law suit stories have I tried to read and found turgid and confusing.  Not this one, which is full of detail and clear.

Then I found another story, also by Noel, about Rogers Park cops removing a street corner memorial to a dead gang member, so identified by the police commander.  How many such stories have I read that interview survivors who say he was kind to his little sister and cops who say he was an outlaw with implication he got what he deserved.  Not this one, which used its ample Sunday-paper space to pursue details of the matter and leaven it with intelligent commentary not just by the commander Bruce Rottner (I think of Loyola U. basketball star of the 40s, Mickey Rottner) but also by a U. of Chi academic of 55 years experience.  Again, detailed and clear.

Noel knows what he’s doing.

Good Wash Times story here about “faith-based whistleblowing”: speakers-up for safety motivated by religion hold a convention, for God’s sake, in DC.  E.g.,

Joe Carson, a nuclear safety engineer at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, [who] said it was his Christian worldview that impelled him to blow the whistle 19 times since 1990 on workplace and public-safety hazards at the Department of Energy, guardian of the nation’s nuclear stockpile.  “Whistleblowers are thinking of what’s good for others, not just looking out for number one,” said Mr. Carson, 51.

And there’s the Exodus-citing Jewish lawyer, the Lutheran who quotes Matthew, the Methodist pastor, the Catholic FBI agent, and a cast of dozens more due in town Sept. 23 for a meeting of Whistleblowers for an Honest, Efficient and Accountable Government at the Watergate Hotel. 

If I were still in the business, I’d want to cover that meeting, which effort would include, I presume, some wetting of one’s own whistle in off hours.