Deregulator: Alive since '85!

Just for the halibut I decided to check out ticket prices for tomorrow's game at StubHub . Let's see -- Upper Level Corner, Section 222, Row Y -- as high in the rafters as you can get: $395 per. Lower level, near courtside: A cool two grand. Oh yeah, we'd have to pay for plane fare, too. Makes those tickets we could have bought for the UC-Santa Barbara game in November for $219 apiece (at UCSB) a screaming bargain. Think we'll go to LoDo's Bar and Grill (we're in that photo album, keep clicking) instead and hang out with 100 or so of our best Tar Heel friends. Go Heels!

The features departments at the Charlotte Observer and the Raleigh News & Observer are merging . I wonder why that hasn't happened more frequently. In fact, though I worked with some very talented feature writers and editors at three general-interest dailies, you have to ask what they bring to the table that's not now being replicated by their counterparts at alternative weeklies. Other than frequency of publication. Just before the Rocky closed, I had a conversation with a veteran from the paper who's been there for several decades, and he said he'd been asking himself the same thing for years. Why wouldn't the Rocky (or the Post) benefit by getting rid of their feature depaprtments (and the 15-20 employees) entirely and simply inserting a copy of the Denver alt-weekly Westword in every Thursday edition? The daily could pay for the weekly's extra copies (Westword's print run may be 80,000, or about one-third the circulation of either daily). Westword ...

Or at least from former Rocky reporters. The Web site IWantMyRocky.com , founded by a number of staffers when the paper was put up for sale, has become an outlet for those former reporters to continue breaking news until they land on their feet, launch their own specialized Web sites (as transportation reporter Kevin Flynn appears poised to do), or -- potentially -- the site drives enough traffic as an aggregator of local news that it someday stands on its own. As Flynn notes, there's still appears to be no revenue model that could make a general-interest news site like IWantMyRocky profitable. But should one arise, former Rocky employees could surely offer the software -- the expertise, sources and reporting chops -- that could generate the content to make site like that a must-read.

Alex Rodriguez will undergo surgery next week to remove a cyst from his hip . Unless you're a fantasy baseball player or a Yankees season ticket holder, the obvious question is, could his admitted use of steroids have contributed to this condition? My lovely and talented intended, who's a nurse, suggested as much when she first heard this. And it turns out that at a minimum, frequent use of anabolic steroids could make it possible for osteoarthritis to set in prematurely, as the abstract of this study from the American Journal of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation concludes. Which makes the statement Yanks GM Brian Cashman made after A-Rod's mid-February press conference even more telling: Well, we're not in a position to go backwards on this. The position we're in is to try to move forward and make sure that we can help him get through this. We've got nine years of Alex remaining . … We've invested in him as an asset. And because of that, this is an asse...

As I write, the Dow 30 is at 6,673, meaning the index has lost nearly half its value in about 10 months. President Obama offered advice to investors Wednesday, and they responded by dumping shares as fast as they could get their brokers on the line. My former colleagues at Investor's Business Daily offered a critique of his views of the market, and, as usual, their analysis is on point. But Obama's comments also affirmed another place I take issue with those who argue that the new president is, to borrow from Bugs Bunny, a wolf in cheap clothing -- a barely closeted socialist, a genuine radical, Bill Ayers without the bombs. Instead, Obama (and congressional Democrats) aren't that at all. They're power-hungry, to be sure. But that's as far as it goes. They don't want to really remake the economy because I don't think they're smart or principled enough to try to pull that off. They continue to rhetorically embrace entrepreneurship and capitalism, even t...

I knew I'd get one -- an e-mail response to the NRO piece saying the MSM couldn't be trusted because they wouldn't report on Obama's fake birth certificate. Guy laid out the case and everything. I replied the only way I knew how: And I suppose 9/11 was an inside job.

Mike Roberts at Westword publishes a lengthy, fascinating Q&A with David Milstead, the Rocky's finance editor, who produced more hard-nosed journalism about the Rocky's demise than anyone. The Rocky's business section under the leadership of Rob Reuteman was top-notch, thanks to reporters like Dave, who explains what separates solid daily business journalism from something else: Business at the Rocky Mountain News was a section where the people there wanted to be working there. They were generally career business journalists. We hired experienced business journalists from the outside. We had three people who'd been at Reuters. I had been at the Wall Street Journal. And we had another person who'd been at Bloomberg. We had people who took business journalism seriously and were making it their first priority career choice. ... If you have serious, smart, career journalists working in your business section and you treat it like a real section, then it's going ...

Infinite Monkey Ben Boychuk offers his own take on my NRO piece with typical aplomb. It's not that the media does a fabulous job all of the time. And God knows the nation's newsrooms are teeming with liberal do-gooders. The news media is suffering from a crisis of legitimacy. Deadline pressures and an often poor grasp of the nuances of particular issues and industries undermine good journalism. It was ever thus, and probably always will be. But who's going to rake the muck when the last city reporter is hanged by the entrails of the last advertising manager? Glenn Reynolds? Your next door neighbor? You? From the e-mail reactions I've received to the piece so far, some well-read, thoughtful conservatives still harbor a striking amount of ignorance about the role of newspapers. It's not to validate your worldview, whatever that might be. The news and business sections are supposed to inform readers about the workings of government and other public institutions and ho...

Retired Rocky film critic Bob Denerstein takes a whack at the Polis story, too. Never mind that it takes years to become a skilled reporter. Never mind that it takes time, tact and savvy to develop sources. Never mind that talk radio has given us a pretty good idea of what a broadened expression of opinion can be worth. Never mind that some of the best bloggers in the world ply their trade on Old Media sites. Never mind that bloggers had little or nothing to do with the demise of the Rocky Mountain News. All I can say is that if Polis' grasp of other issues is in any way comparable to his understanding of this one, his constituents should be afraid. Very afraid. So with apologies to MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, I'm naming Jared Polis today's worst person in Colorado, even if he happens to be in D.C. at the moment. I may actually start referring to the 2nd District congressman as Rep. Jared Polis, D-Not Ready for Prime Time.

My friend John Miller at National Review invited me to reflect on the Rocky's demise for the mag's online edition, and rather than lament the loss of our editorial page, I chose to talk about the loss of a valued civic institution . Newspapers pay people to sit through endless city-council and land-use-planning and legislative-committee hearings, enduring the sausage-making process that is modern government. These reporters tell readers what’s going on and — when they’re at their journalistic best — what it all means. They take the trouble to analyze court decisions and search government records and decipher regulatory filings and pore through leaks from public-spirited civil servants. They don’t get every story right, and they’re often captives of their sources. But even reporters who are lazy or incompetent or hopelessly compromised provide an irreplaceable service. They keep self-government possible, perhaps even manageable, at a time when the state is growing ever larger an...

My podcast with Ben Boychuk and Jim Lakely of Infinite Monkeys fame is here. We talked about the Rocky, the role of free-market thinktanks and Obamanomics. Enjoy!

Spinal Tap's "Unwigged and Unplugged" tour is on. So who's the unfortunate drummer?

Newly elected U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, D-Boulder, isn't likely to get many Christmas cards from former staffers at the Rocky Mountain News. The Denver Post and Examiner.com report the far-left, super-rich Internet entrepreneur crowed about the Rocky's closure at a Nutroots, er, Netroots gathering in the Denver suburbs the day after the Rocky's final edition. "We killed the Rocky Mountain News... Long live new media," said Polis. It took Polis about a second and a half to start weaseling his way out when contacted by the Post Monday: The end of the Rocky Mountain News was a blow to all of us in Colorado. We were proud to have a city that had two powerful voices, two daily venues for informing the public, and a diversity of editorial voices. Not only has Colorado lost over 200 jobs, but the voice of the RMN has been silenced. Indeed, some of the blame rests with new media. While there are many other factors that have contributed such as the recession and a decline i...

Yesterday, my friend Ben Boychuk invited me to participate in the podcast he and his RedBlueAmerica running mate, Joel Mathis, produce weekly. Joel wasn't available, so fellow Infinite Monkey Jim Lakely (aka Dr. Zaius) joined Ben and me. When Ben gets the audio edited, I'll post a link. Jim made the point that Barack Obama has done more to remake the relationship between individuals and the U.S. government in one month than has taken place by any administration in recent memory. (Can't remember if he referenced FDR, but it'll be in the podcast.) As I suggested, Obama appears to be familiar with some of the work done by the "Chicago boys" at the University of Chicago, led by Milton Friedman, F.A. von Hayek and George Stigler. Problem is, he's taken the wrong lessons. In 1984, Milton and Rose Friedman published Tyranny of the Status Quo , a book asking why it's difficult for political reformers to maintain momentum after their early days in office. Looki...

As you've probably heard, the Rocky Mountain News, where I spent three fantastic years as an editorial writer, closed Friday. Here's a 20-minute video produced by the staff about the paper's final weeks. Riveting stuff, but then again, I'm an insider. You can read the entire final edition online (of course) here.