It didn't take long before I realized the true horror of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision freeing corporations to spend freely to support political campaigns. It wasn't the new potential for corruption or wealth drowning out other voices. It's the promise of more campaign ads on local TV.  

Believe what you want, there is a difference between news and advocacy. Forget that and it's editorializing, a corrosive mixture of news and opinion in the guise of news. Exhibit A: the recent Enquirer story reporting as fact a local woman's ability to foretell the future. If that weren't enough, the paper provided contact information for anyone wanting a private "reading."  

Local journalists aren't exempt from the love/hate generated by the command to compile lists of top stories at the end of each year or decade. More than anything, it's a chance to remind everyone how smart they were when they wrote the first draft of what's become history. But rather than remind you of my failings in the past year or decade, let me suggest what 2010 might hold for the news media.  

Last fall ACORN's alleged promotion of voter registration fraud and voter fraud got lots of media attention during the 2008 election campaign. The right wing's assault on ACORN and news media complicity are the subjects of an independent media study by Peter Dreier and Christopher Martin: "Manipulating the Public Agenda: Why ACORN was in the news and what the news got wrong."  

Let's make this column local local or, as the new conventional wisdom sometimes puts it, hyperlocal: How much would you pay to read The Enquirer online if it quit being free? Or, if the main news section remains free online, which features would you pay for: Op-ed columnists? Tweets? Blogs? Moms? Are you willing to give The Enquirer your credit card and let them nick you for every article you pull from behind the pay-to-read wall? Lots of other dailies are gingerly sticking their toes in the roiled water of paid online content.  

Today the newspaper with the funniest arrest stories in town took another step forward by posting a series of poll questions asking what fast-food places offer the best value for a poor person’s $5. Among The Enquirer's choices were the Subway $5 Footlong, the KFC $5 Fill up Box, assorted value menus and whatever amount of chili you can get for $5. Enquirer editors said they would have included spending $5 at a grocery store but that shit takes too long.  

Jim Adams set a high standard for religion reporting in Cincinnati. The Cincinnati Post was strong in those days, and Jim was one of those strengths. He died recently. At important press conferences and events, Jim would be there, writing with a pencil stub on folded sheets of newsprint. If he ever had a notebook like mine with REPORTER printed on its cover, I never saw it. A pencil stub (useful for editing as well) and the paper on which his words would be printed sufficed.   

However you get your news online, you have an interest in moves by the Associated Press and others to prevent other online sites from using their content without paying. Fittingly, AP plans to use the technology that promotes wide freeloading to a general crackdown. It will tag and track its online content. That should discomfit aggregators and others who use AP stories, summaries or links to draw eyeballs and advertisers without paying or sharing ad revenue.  

The New York Mets rarely make news here, but a recent stink reveals a conflict of interest that affects all mainstream news media: reporters looking for work with the people we cover. Cincinnati is sprinkled with former reporters doing public relations for people they covered: teams, companies, public bodies, etc. Other reporters, inclined to see evil in every human enterprise, often wonder if these former colleagues pulled their punches rather than piss off people for whom they might someday work.  

NBC's show 'The Wanted,' unites a reporter with a former U.S. Navy Seal and a former Army Green Beret in a hunt for fugitive war criminals and terrorists. Dumb. Too many people already see journalists as the enemy to be kidnapped, taken hostage or killed.