Chicago Sun-Times

By: Mark Fitzgerald That's right, the Chicago Sun-Times: The Audit-Bureau-censured, old-offices-razed-for-a-Trump-vanity-project, allegedly-looted-by-its-ex- publisher, Hollinger-can't-seem-to-give-it-away Chicago Sun-Times.

During two hellish years that would have driven other newsrooms into a permanent funk, the Sun-Times has proven itself the Little Tabloid That Could. More than 14 months after Publisher John Cruickshank discovered his paper had been inflating its circ numbers ? and did his best to rectify the situation with angry advertisers ? the Sun-Times demonstrates that a newspaper stripped of its marketing budget (among countless other things) can nevertheless prevail by relying on editorial content: aggressive reporting, colorful personalities, and a mischievious sense of fun.

Of course, for the hard-luck Sun-Times, no good deed goes unpunished. It deserved a Pulitzer Prize this year: No winner actually accomplished as much for its hometown as the continuing "Clout on Wheels" series reported by Tim Novak and Steve Warmbir. So far, 27 people (among them 14 city workers) have been charged in the Hired Truck scandal, which paid "insider" dump trucks to sit idle at job sites. And when Time magazine was crowning Richard M. Daley as one of the nation's best mayors, the Sun-Times corruption reporting was eroding the Son of Boss' once-unassailable political fortress. "The investigation continues full throttle," promises Editor in Chief John Barron.

But the Sun-Times is no one-trick pony. It delivers an editorial package seasoned with the kind of personality that's been drained away at too many papers. Everyone in America knows two of its writers, Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper. Even more remarkable is the paper's deep bench of columnists, from celebrity disher Bill Zwecker to the bubbly Paige Wiser, to graceful sportswriter Rick Telander and the increasingly deserving occupant of Mike Royko's old page 2 space, Mark Brown.

Then there's the love-'em-or-loathe-'em trio of pugnacious sports commentator Jay Marriotti, who, in Spinal Tap fashion, has an 11 on his volume knob; Neil Steinberg, undoubtedly the only columnnist to describe himself in print as a "mouthy Jew"; and columnist Mary Mitchell, who's brilliantly insightful, except when she's blood-pressure-raisingly wrong, wrong, wrong.

Newsrooms across America should honor the Sun-Times' touching faith in deliverance by journalism by erecting little shrines to the tabloid, where reporters could pray like devotees of St. Jude, the patron of lost causes. -- Mark Fitzgerald