. . . your own opinion doesn't count for much. A couple of weeks ago Barack Obama whomped Hillary Clinton in North Carolina and lost to her narrowly in Indiana, outcomes that were generally expected. Overnight, the media (and apparently the Democratic Party) decided that was that -- Obama had wrapped up the nomination. The tone of the coverage underwent a sea change. Clinton was now an object of affection and indulgence:

My column on Wednesday argued for Clinton to gracefully exit the stage now that it looks like there are no more rabbits to pull out of her electoral hat. But readers -- not all of them women -- pushed back. Let her quit when she's good and ready, many argued. She's earned that right. Carol Marin, Sun-Times.

She wasn't denied the nomination. She wasn't cheated. She simply competed fiercely and did not win. That doesn't mean her candidacy was not a triumph. Michael Tackett, Tribune.

revisionist gratitude:

Does Senator Barack Obama come out a bloody mess, or a battle-tested warrior? . . . Could competing against Mrs. Clinton have improved Mr. Obama as a candidate in the same way that competing against Larry Bird and Magic Johnson in the 1980s made Isiah Thomas and Michael Jordan champions in the 1990s? Mark Leibovich, New York Times.

and avuncular wisdom:

Yes, Hillary, America is worth fighting for. But the best way to fight for America now is to give up the fight. Sun-Times editorial.

But then there's today's primary in West Virginia, where polls show Clinton leading Obama better than two-to-one. Which means that the media's next assignment will be to sound less than absurd dismissing Obama's crushing defeat. It's not easy being a pundit. This will test the best of them.

It's a time to worry.

As if it didn't have enough problems already, the American press is facing an election-year crisis. Long kept afloat  by peddling shock, distortion, and outright calumny about our finest public servants, it now must ask itself: who's going to buy newspapers that suck up to both candidates?

Just today I find John Kass of the Tribune labeling Barack Obama "the gentle faun of American politics, supported for years by a compliant, yearning media eager to portray him as a reformer." And Arianna Huffington at huffingtonpost.com fretting about "the mainstream media's ongoing membership in the John McCain Protection Society." Says Huffington, "Every time McCain screws up, the media jump all over themselves to make it better, as if grandpa had said something embarrassing at the dinner table and it needed to be smoothed over as quickly as possible."

Mind you, a presidential showdown between Bambi and Grandpa Walton figures to be a classic, especially if Bambi's running mate is Scarlett O'Hara (Maureen Dowd in the Tuesday NYT), and Zeb Walton's is Mary Poppins (Dowd again.) But, face it, both Kass and Huffington have a point. What if it's more than a point -- what if they're basically right? Well, rest assured that Kass is no acolyte of Obama's, or Huffington of McCain's. They've put us on notice --  not that this fall's coverage will be long on rainbows and bluebirds and short on grit, but that the campaign itself conceivably could be lost in the cut and slash of media waging a civil war.

If you're a fan of the corrections columns in which newspapers daily confess their sins, the more trivial the better, you might conclude they gladly stand naked to their enemies. But not so much.

Editor-at-large Mark Fitzgerald of Editor & Publisher observes that troubled companies such as the Journal Register Company and MediaNews Group have decided to stop filing those arcane but revealing financial reports such as the SC 13D and the 10-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It's a trend Fitzgerald doesn't like much, but he expects it to continue.

Fitzgerald, who's based in Chicago, discusses the matter on "Fitz & Jen Give You the Business," a podcast he produces about once a week with Jennifer Saba, an E&P associate editor in New York. Saba assumed what I did: that public corporations are legally bound to file with the SEC. But Fitzgerald explains that companies willing to surrender the opportunity to raise capital via markets such as the New York Stock Exchange don't have to. And woebegone media companies that recognize they don't have a prayer of raising public capital are concluding that the elaborate financial statements the SEC asks for are too expensive, too much of a hassle, and too embarrassing to submit. They'll file whatever the banks they owe money to tell them to file, and Fitzgerald thinks these banks want them to keep under their hats the concessions the banks have been willing to make to keep the companies from going under. 

He observes that the Tribune Company, now that it's gone private, doesn't have to tell the SEC anything the banks that financed Sam Zell's takeover don't order it to tell. And as for the Sun-Times Media Group, whose stock is now worth about 70 cents a share -- it's a prime candidate to tell the SEC to shove it. Fitzgerald savors the irony. He tells Saba it was the brokerage firm of Tweedy, Browne that began studying the documents Hollinger International turned over to the SEC when Conrad Black ran the company and wondering, "Who are all these guys getting all these financial fees? And why are you selling everything to yourselves and getting fees back on top of that?" Fitzgerald continues, "That kind of exposed the accounting house of cards going on -- according to the federal authorities the larceny going on.”

UPDATE: The Sun-Times Media Group announced Wednesday that it has no steps in mind to bring its greatly depreciated common stock into keeping with NYSE standards, and therefore expects the exchange to stop listing the stock. In the future STMG stock will be traded on the OTC Bulletin Board. 

I’m not that shocked by the news that Roger Clemens and Barbara Walters had a secret affair. The way they never showed up together at nightclubs was the tipoff. Neither is it any big surprise that Hannah Montana is the love child of a former black U.S. senator – whose name I forget but I'm guessing Carol Moseley Braun. The news comes so hot and heavy you can’t catch it all, but I know there’s someone Northwestern U. disinvited to graduation, and nobody messed up that badly lately but Paula Abdul.

But what gets me is that everyone is so totally unrepentant. Nobody repents. Nobody even pents in the first place. Why are Americans so unpentable? Why build penthouses if nobody uses them? Is it because they’re so hard to get to? Is the trouble with this country that before you can pent you have to take an elevator? Sometimes the doorman won’t even let you on it.  Back in the 50s so much was written about pent-up Americans that everyone figured the problem was high priority and by now we’d all be penting our hearts away down at street level. Wasn’t there a huge government building just outside Washington dedicated to the problem? What a waste of tax dollars!

I want a president who says that if we’re going to have all this grab-ass at least people need to say they’re sorry. No more excuses unless they’re sorry excuses. My wife says that if I want a sorry excuse for a president it’s no wonder I bounce out of bed each morning whistling a happy tune. But that’s not it. I can’t wait to read the papers. Sure, the news is all online, but nobody confesses like a good old fashioned newspaper. Newspapers pent and repent and then they pent some more. Especially on Sundays.

The New York Times sets the standard for coming clean. This Sunday they had so much to admit to that at the end of the their usual list of corrections on page four the Times went on: "Corrections in other sections: Arts & Leisure, Page 4; Week in Review, Page 2; Travel, Page 3; Book Review, Page 5; Sunday Styles, Page 23." By the time I’d tracked down all the corrections I’d read the entire paper! 

The ruling halting construction of the soccer field the Latin School is underwriting at the south end of Lincoln Park might keep a similar project at the north end of the park from getting under way. Soccer fields #1 and #2, two sloped dirt fields laid out side by side just east of Lake Shore Drive and south of Foster Avenue, have been used for about a quarter century by Region 418 of the American Youth Soccer Organization (AYSO). They're the two biggest fields 418 plays on, and "the conditions are unsafe, terrible," says 418 commissioner Rich Costello. Region 418 decided its kids deserve better. So 418 approached the Park District and struck a deal: It would pay $500,000 up front -- which would cover the next four years of annual permits  -- and the Park District would grade the fields and install artificial turf.

That work was supposed to begin in June, as soon as the spring AYSO season is over. But now that the $2 million Latin project has stalled, Costello doubts the Park District will run the risk of starting another."Quite frankly, I don't know if we'll get the fields built anymore," he told me. "Everything's on hold. We have to wait to let the dust settle."

It's easy to dislike the Latin-Park District alliance -- a small, rich private school teaming up with a public body to commit taxpayers' dollars and public land to build a field that the school will have exclusive access to during prime time. AYSO isn't public either, but some 3,200 boys and girls play soccer in the Region 418 program, which is open to any family that wants to join it. And while the Latin-Park District deal seems to have proceeded in the furtive manner that seems to be second nature to Chicago's movers and shakers, the AYSO project has been much more up-front: Costello says, "The Park District said to go talk to the alderman [Mary Ann Smith of the 48th Ward] and to Friends of Lincoln Park. They wouldn't talk to us until we went through the rounds." 

But the Latin School and AYSO have this in common: both saw their kids playing soccer on third-rate fields and decided to do something about it. Both worked out roughly the same arrangement with the Park District -- private money to make new fields, public money to maintain them. Both -- and this seems to get lost in coverage of the Latin deal -- already had longstanding relationships with the Park District. Latin's been pulling permits for decades so its students can do sports in Lincoln Park, and someone speaking for the school says that once the new soccer field's built, if it ever is, Latin will end up reserving just about as much park space as it reserves now.

During the spring and fall seasons AYSO permits tie up pretty much all of Lincoln Park between Lawrence and Foster, both east and west of Lake Shore Drive, all day Saturday, most of Sunday, and weekday evenings (for practices). The public lands Latin and AYSO could be accused of cornering -- and Latin is catching it hot and heavy -- they cornered a long time ago. 

Latin's been playing its varsity soccer games on Lincoln Park's sod field at Montrose. "It's still the best field they have but it's old technology," says Costello. "It's in heavy demand but it's not a very good field any more. It's used day and night. They put lights up so it gets even more use." When rain has turned AYSO fields to mud, Costello has asked to shift games to the Montrose field, but it's never available. If Latin shifted its games to the new artificial turf field down by the zoo, the Montrose field would become more available to other schools and leagues.

Last August, WBEZ's Gabriel Spitzer put the Latin deal in a context that tends to get overlooked. Public-private partnerships are becoming the way government bodies get things done. The Park District wants to build soccer fields around Chicago and it can't afford to do it by itself. "Latin's paying for that one," parks superintendent Tim Mitchell told Spitzer, "therefore I then can pay for one in a community that could not afford to do that." Spitzer didn't ask Mitchell about other soccer fields, but in addition to the Latin and AYSO fields, these are planned:

A field in Calumet Park, 9801 S. Avenue G, funded by the district. A field in Riis Park, 6100 W. Fullerton, funded by TIF revenues;  a field in McKinley Park, 2210 W. Pershing, funded by the Parkways Foundation and Lollapalooza (part of its deal to use Grant Park for a music festival in August).

It's possible for a writer to provide not merely useful but distinguished commentary on Barack Obama and the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and here is my evidence. But very few daily journalists have either the time or talent to emulate Garry Wills, and for their sakes I guess we should be glad they don't; hearing editors snap, "Don't give me Lincoln and John Brown! I want to read about blue collar racism and superdelegates," would break their lofty hearts.

Though Wills's essay ran in the May 1 issue of the New York Review of Books he wrote it several days before Wright made his notorious appearance at the National Press Club. Yet it's not diminished in the least by subsequent events -- by which I mean not merely what Wright said about Obama and Obama said about Wright but also what the press then said about both of them. Which came in a deluge. In addition to the editorial in Wednesday's Tribune there were columns by John Kass, Clarence Page, and Kathleen Parker. In the Sun-Times, which had published its editorial Tuesday, columnists Mark Brown, Mary Mitchell, Lynn Sweet, Richard Roeper, Neil Steinberg, and Carol Marin weighed in. It was a little like 9/11 -- if you couldn't think of anything to write about Wright and Obama you didn't belong in the game.

What would we be reading if Wright had kept his mouth shut? My guess is a little more about Mike Easley, the governor of North Carolina, who made a campaign appearance with Hillary Clinton Tuesday and said, "This lady right here makes Rocky Balboa look like a pansy." Since Wright didn't keep his mouth shut, you might soon be reading (if you're not already) about Barbara Reynolds, a former Tribune reporter who runs the National Press Club speakers committee and is being accused of giving Wright a platform in order to help Clinton. 

Intrigue makes good reading and might sway some votes. At this stage health plans and energy plans probably won't. Yes, I know, pundits like to argue otherwise, but the media have been kicking those tires for months now and they've gone flat. The most damned event of this endless campaign season was the debate in Philadelphia April 16, which hit bottom when the audience started jeering one of the moderators, ABC's Charles Gibson. The Times's Frank Rich commented afterward, "Viewers of all political persuasions were affronted by the moderators' failure to ask about the mortgage crisis, health care, the environment, torture, education, China policy, the pending G.I. bill to aid veterans, or the war we're losing in Afghanistan," instead, dishing up Wright, fantasy gunfire in Bosnia, commercials, and network promos. Rich argued that ABC had "tapped into a larger national discontent with news media fatuousness," offering as evidence the fact that despite the "orgy of press hysteria" over Obama's hypothesis about "bitter" small-towners who "cling to guns or religion," the public did not care -- "the polls hardly budged." (Now a poll has, though it doesn't so much measure Obama's strength as it does how the public perceives his strength.)

To show what a disaster the debate was, Rich offered comment from other major newspapers -- "Shoddy, despicable!" "A tawdry affair!" "A televised train wreck!" But wasn't this simply more of the same media fatuousness, the papers' rote decrying of what they know they must decry? I'll play devil's advocate and suggest that Gibson and the other moderator, George Stephanopoulos, were at their wit's end trying to deliver something besides the same old same old, and what they tried didn't work either. The public's had it with debates.

David Brooks wrote an interesting column for the Tuesday New York Times observing that "the most interesting feature of the Democratic race is how unimportant political events are. The candidates . . . can make horrific gaffes, deliver brilliant speeches, turn in good or bad debate performances, but these things do not alter the race. . . . People in different niches have developed different unconscious maps of reality."

Consider some of the online comment you can read in response to Governor Easley's pansy remark. I thought I knew what pansy meant, but in other realities it's just a flower. "I've never associated Pansy with gays personally," someone posted. "I also find that term a lot less offensive that much of the vile language that Reverend Wright has been spewing." A self-identified Clinton supporter said, "This is a non-issue, and even Obama would call this a silly distraction from bigger, more meaningful issues. I have to agree with him." Here's a reality so sure of itself it even makes the opposition agree with it.

The Sun-Times, the Tribune, and the Associated Press filed an emergency motion Monday asking the Illlinois Supreme Court for access to "sealed filings, transcripts and hearings" in the R. Kelly case. The R & B singer's trial on child pornography charges is scheduled to begin on May 9. "Records and proceedings in the Kelly Case have not only been sealed but also sealed without any judicial findings with respect to the reasons for secrecy."

Presiding judge Vincent Gaughan would hardly disagree. Gaughan's made information about the case almost impossible for reporters to come by, and when the media plaintiffs made an emergency motion to him on April 24, the judge replied, "I can understand your position. . . . If these things were held without any type of record, then you'd lose all chance of access [to] what has been taking place. [But] if I articulated and made a factual basis out of why the hearings were sealed, then I would be telling you everything." Gaughan then took all the emergency out of the motion by scheduling a hearing on it for May 8, the day before jury selection starts.

Here's the emergency motion, and here's a document submitted at the same time expanding on the plaintiffs' argument. 

Sun-Times columnist Mark Brown, discussing differences Sunday between Illinois and Indiana, remarked parenthetically:

"Not me, of course, I love Northwest Indiana, where the Sun-Times still has many loyal readers, if I don't manage to run them off with this column."

Still? 

Someone out at 26th and California tells me it'll be "a media circus like this building has never seen" if and when R. Kelly’s trial finally begins there. A  page-one story in Friday's Tribune examines the measures Criminal Courts judge Vincent Gaughan has been taking to keep the circus under his control. These include turning his courtroom into a kind of dumb show, with everything important hashed out with the lawyers in his chambers. He’s put the lawyers under a gag order and the court documents under seal. How many documents? The number’s secret too.

On April 22 the Sun-Times and Tribune jointly filed an emergency motion asking Gaughan to let them in on what’s going on. “The public has a nearly absolute right of access to Court records and proceedings,” the papers argued, and “absent specific factual findings that demonstrate in each instance how secrecy serves a compelling interest overriding the essential right to access and that no other less restrictive alternative is available, public access cannot be denied.” All in due time, Gaughan replied. At a hearing Thursday he refused to treat the motion as an emergency and set arguments on it for May 8. Jury selection in the Kelly trial is scheduled to begin the next day.

Kelly was charged with child pornography back in 2002 after someone sent a video to Sun-Times music critic Jim DeRogatis and he turned it over to the police. The story was dormant so long some journalists seem to think Kelly’s already put his troubles behind him. A New York Times story last November mentioned that Kelly faces child-pornography charges here "stemming from a widely circulated video that reportedly shows him with an under-age girl” but went on to say that although the scandal “once threatened to end Mr. Kelly’s career," the entertainer "survived it in spectacular form, mainly by refusing to be cowed. If anything, his raunchiest songs got even more outlandish in the years after the report broke; what else could fans do but shrug and grin and sing along?”

Maybe there’s something in the water at the Times. Last August its enraptured account of Kelly’s video series Trapped in the Closet called him "the funniest pop star on the planet" and noted his legal troubles only parenthetically to explain why he didn’t sit for an interview.

The video DeRogatis received does more than show Kelly with an underage girl; it reportedly shows him urinating into her mouth. And she isn't the only person whose privacy Judge Gaughan seems determined to protect. The Sun-Times reported on April 14 that prosecutors “want to introduce evidence of other crimes allegedly committed by the R&B singer.” 

What would these be? Blogger Bill Wyman, a former Reader staffer, recently posted this comprehensive report. "This is a compelling tale, but a little bit barfy as well," Wyman writes.