My answer -- a story without quotes -- would be ''colorless.''  American media are consolidating shops, slashing staff and shipping off advertising, billing and even news-gathering services to places like India (streaming audio means your city council can be ''reported'' by keyboardists in Calcutta). As we watch media evolve, here are a few ...

Had a high school biology teacher, Brother DeSalles Lawless, what a name! This member of the religious order of Xaverian Brothers could spit out quotables like nobody -- a Kentuckian who could out-jive his street-kid students in Brooklyn with lines like: ''Man, I could trade you in for a broken stickball bat and lose on the deal!'' Anyway, here ...

Here are some words I've never used before -- or seen before in combination. I gotta give credit to the politicians/media manipulators as their writers always scour the thesaurus for ways to paste, pillory or Helicobacter pylori their opponents. Here's how the Sacramento Bee Capitol Alert sized up Assembly/Senate hearings on the ...

In case you missed it, legislation is moving ahead that would ban trans fats in bakeries and restaurants in the state of California by 2010. No state has taken that step, though some cities have. If nothing else, AB 97 by Artesia Democratic Assemblyman Tony Mendoza provides a wonderful taste-test of the mood of the electorate. Here are some ...

Respect and ridicule are never dispensed equally. Just ask ''The Big Five'' who are trying to hash out an already-overdue California budget that has a $15.2 billion hole, and growing. The Sacramento Bee threw some pretty sharp elbows in its July 1 coverage of the budget huddlers and the potentially disastrous impact they might wreak on state ...

Instead of a countdown to the start of baseball spring training, I should have launched a countdown to the day Bob Sillen would get fired from his nearly two year job of overseeing the health care overhaul of the California prison system. Sillen was ousted Jan. 23 by a district court judge who said it was time to move the redo into a ...