Big Story

Shame on your fine newspaper for ignoring one of the important topics of the day. Not nuclear arms, not abortion, but the fact that Ted Turner is making color movies out of old black-and-white ones he owns. Big Hollywood stars and directors have been on television to denounce Mr. Turner's "crassness. " There is even a court case pending! (What a surprise!) And here you are writing about world hunger. So if worrying about Jimmy Cagney's suit being tinted blue (Yankee Doodle Dandy)

Biting, goading gallows humor sometimes is the only way to cope with a situation that is otherwise oppressive and overwhelming. Lord knows the 76ers had to feel as if their collective necks had been in a noose. That is why, when the Sixers' Manute Bol was told the Washington Bullets had two players from foreign countries (Gheorge Muresan, from Romania, and Andrew Gaze, from Australia), he immediately said the Sixers would win yesterday's game. "A European team," said Bol, himself from the Sudan, "cannot beat an American team.

"Resurrecting the Champ" is the latest in a line of movies about fathers struggling to meet obligations to family, and to sons in particular. The movies have ranged from good ("The Pursuit of Happyness") to very good ("The Namesake"), and succeed in large measure on the relative merits of the actor assigned to play dad. In "Champ" it's Josh Hartnett, the Gen-X hunk who recently showed a talent for comic banter in "Lucky Number Slevin. " Here, he's cast as a sportswriter named Erik Kerner tracking a big story that he hopes will impress his 6-year-old son and also justify the famous last name he acquired from his legendary sportscaster father.

There isn't any doubt that the media - newspapers, including this one, magazines and TV - view the presumed death of John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife and sister-in-law as a big - make that HUGE - story, a matter of all-consuming interest. Some people wonder aloud if the public is as hungry for repeated pictures of little John-John at age 3, for nonstop interviews with people who knew JFK Jr. and for every other possible angle of the story as the news industry believes the public to be. "I feel bad for the guy, although it was his own fault," harrumphed WWDB-FM talk-show host Ken Voss on the air yesterday.

All the news that's fit to print somehow didn't fit in American newspapers before the mid-1950s. For example, the ugly consequences of Jim Crow culture in the South. Those repressive, segregationist Southern attitudes toward blacks in education, voting, access to public facilities, and almost everything else you could think of. Not in the New York Times. Not in mainstream white newspapers like The Inquirer. And certainly not in Southern newspapers run by whites. You might wonder why a journalist with one of the most storied careers in the American newspaper business - chief civil-rights and Vietnam correspondent for the New York Times, executive editor of The Inquirer during an 18-year stretch that garnered 17 Pulitzer Prizes, managing editor of the New York Times during his last active years as an editor - would devote close to 15 years telling the tale of an American press that started out behaving so badly when it came to civil rights.

The only thing Chris Wagner was embedded with last week was bronchitis. In her time, Wagner would have been urgently reporting all the latest developments in the "Big Story" as an anchorwoman on Action News. But it's been 13 years since she left WPVI-TV (Channel 6) in the proverbial huff, and she isn't feeling the impulse to dash to the studio or to Iraq. She's quite happy with her life nowadays and would have been perfectly content being a spectator to the "Big Story" except for one thing: a nasty upper respiratory infection.

Another high school vixen movie, this one with a potty mouth (the vixen) and pretensions of social commentary (the movie), Pretty Persuasion brings to mind a number of other titles, all better. Poison Ivy, Clueless, Election, To Die For, even David Mamet's Oleanna get thrown in the blender, churning out a plot about a ruthless teen (Evan Rachel Wood), her two friends (Elisabeth Harnois, Adi Schnall), and accusations of sexual harassment on the part of their teacher (Ron Livingston).

Eastern Conference Northeast Division   Buffalo Sabres Last season: 45-27-10, 100 points, lost in the first round to Boston. Coach: Lindy Ruff The big story: Ryan Miller emerged into the class of NHL goalies after winning MVP honors in the Olympic tournament plus the Vezina Trophy. The Sabres also had last year's Calder Trophy winner in defenseman Tyler Myers and added a pair of veteran blue-liners in Jordan Leopold and Shaone Morrisonn. Derek Roy and Tim Connolly are a pair of solid centers.

An icy sucker punch from dear old Mom Nature knocked even those folks who bring us news of such news for a slip-sliding loop. Ice doesn't know from names and faces and TV studios. On the air? It knows only cold air. So as most of the TV people we rely on to give us the early-morning weather and traffic news were themselves like us yesterday - sliding, stuck or about to be stuck in traffic - televison stations freely improvised and delivered - tah-dah! - the news anyway: At WPVI-TV (Channel 6)

THERE WERE a lot of newsworthy things that happened in the city and the country over the past few weeks, including protests in memory of (and anger about) Trayvon Martin, the start of the trial against Monsignor Lynn (who, let's be honest, is standing in as proxy for the Catholic Church), the health-care debates before the U.S. Supreme Court, the pope's visit to Communist (but increasingly religious) Cuba and Rick Santorum's win (in Louisiana, not at the bowling alley in Wisconsin).

IT WAS the kind of rainy morning on campus one day last week when even the 10:50 a.m. class might have seemed too early for a floppy-haired sophomore. Looking at pictures of Donnie Farrell, it's easy to imagine the 19-year-old shuffling around the Rowan University campus in the rain, hands buried in the pockets of his hoodie with a battered but beloved baseball cap atop his head. But Farrell has been dead nearly four years, murdered by thugs on Homecoming Night. Many Rowan students might not know who Donnie Farrell was, how he died or what's been done to catch the men who punched and kicked him outside a convenience store near the Glassboro campus.

Color is still the big story for spring 2012, a direct extension of the bold color trends we're seeing in fall 2011. However, for spring, viscose fabrics in heavily saturated pastels were the main stars of the 75-plus designers' ready-to-wear collections at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week 2012. Carolina Herrera gave us a sophisticated grouping of tulip skirts, tiered maxi dresses, and evening gowns in pigment-strong minty greens, chalky blues, and sunshine yellows. Nicole Miller gave her color-blocked leggings an athletic rocker vibe by pairing them with leather tunics, stripes, and leather.

Two simple words at the end of a June 7 tweet said it all: "Serena's back!" And Venus is, too. Yes, as Serena Williams announced to the world less than two weeks ago, the most successful tennis-playing siblings in history are returning from lengthy layoffs right on time for Wimbledon, where they just so happen to have won nine of the past 11 singles championships. For Serena, it will be her first Grand Slam tournament - and only second event - since she took home a second consecutive title from the All England Club in July 2010.

I am a huge fan of The Inquirer, especially the investigative reporting of the last few years, but I have to say that you blew it on Tuesday. The big news that day was that a homegrown, cutting-edge success story, Endo Pharmaceuticals Inc., announced that it had reached a megadeal to acquire a Minnesota-based company, American Medical Systems, for $2.9 billion. This is one of several major acquisitions by Endo in the last two years. So, does The Inquirer lead its front page with this growth story?

THOUGH DWELLING behind the shadows of big-time Division I basketball and the hoopla that surrounds it, there are schools in the Philadelphia region that have staked their own claim to fame. And while they may not receive all the accoutrements of say a Villanova or a Temple for winning big, the Daily News eliminated divisions, conferences and size and found the area's five best programs that also can lay claim to keeping the Delaware Valley a mainstay as a college basketball mecca.

Political insiders and journalists who have followed Ed Rendell's career from district attorney to mayor to governor may not have been surprised that he and his wife are separating after almost 40 years of marriage - and just weeks after his term as governor ended. But the news probably shocked many taxpayers and voters who were not as privy to the rumors of infidelity that have followed Rendell for years. In the wake of the news, some have criticized the media for not doing more to pursue the story while Rendell was in office.

Western Conference   Vancouver Canucks Last season: 49-28-5, 103 points, lost in second round to Chicago. Coach: Alain Vigneault The big story: The Canucks can score. Ryan Kesler is a top two-way player, and forwards Alexander Burrows, Mason Raymond, and Mikael Samuelsson have developed into a dependable group. Defensemen Keith Ballard and Dan Hamhuis are solid in their zone and on the jump, and Roberto Luongo remains one of the league's top goalies.

Do you know that ex-Eagle Donovan McNabb squares off against his old team and former protege Michael Vick at 4:15 Sunday? Of course you do. That's because this has been the dominant story of the off-season, the preseason, the nascent season, basically the only story, drowning out all else. The Phillies clinched their fourth consecutive NL East title? Fantastic. But that team doesn't provide the theatrics, the agita, the unmitigated dysfunction, the six months of unbridled Barcalounger speculation that launched a thousand sports columns, call-in shows, and fantasy scenarios since Easter, when McNabb was traded to the hapless Redskins of D.C. (One way the 'Skins do excel: Owner Dan Snyder is far more detested than Jeff Lurie.