* DART to Best of Business Quarterly, for superselective editing. Billed as "A Collection of Outstanding Business Articles" culled from some 450 periodicals and books, edited and published by Whittle Communications, and mailed free of charge to 350,000 senior corporate executives, BBQ's Winter 1990-91 issued featured, among other noteworthy pieces, one by Sandy Tolan on the Grapes-of-Wrath-like chaos visited upon Mexico by the influx of U.S. companies in search of dirt-cheap labor. The companies, as identified in the article as it originally appeared in the July 1 ,1990, edition of The New York Times Magazine, include RCA, Xerox, Chrysler, United Technologies, ITT, General Instrument, Eastman Kodak, IBM, and General Electric; in the BBQ reprint, however, the name of one of those companies -- Xerox -- is not to be found. It is readily visible elsewhere in the issue, though, in some twenty-two pages of Xerox ads: Xerox -- "The Document Company" -- is BBQ's corporate sponsor, and its one and only advertiser.

* LAUREL to The Miami Herald and staff writer Tom Dubocq, for getting through to the phone company's unlisted numbers. Since his ringing revelation in November 1989 that Southern Bell had underpaid, by hundreds of thousands of dollars, the commissions that the utility is required to pay to government agencies on calls made from pay phones on public property, such as airports, courthouses, and jails, Dubocq has stayed on the story line, reporting on the utility's denials of wrongdoing, claims of technical error, refusal to produce records, and termination of a whistleblower; he has also covered the state's fifteen-month investigation which, according to the attorney general's office, was prompted by his articles. In February 1991, Dubocq was able to report that Southern Bell had agreed to repay $ 5 million in back commissions and interest. By March, he was covering four other investigations of Southern Bell for allegedly withholding millions of dollars due customers for out-of-order phone lines.

* DART to the New Mexico Broadcasters Association and its president, John Dunn, for deserting the troops in the face of enemy flak. When member station KOAT-TV in Albuquerque aired its five-part series "Power, Politics, and Persuasion" -- alleging, among other things, that at least one state senator had taken $ 1,000 in bribes for favorable action on a bill; that lobbyist-sponsored fun-filled weekends in Las Vegas may have a legislative price; and that senate staff salaries had gone up some 96 percent while teachers and other state employees had been forced to hold the line -- legislators retaliated with proposals to license and impose new taxes on the news media. Dunn was quick to take cover. In a March 1 letter to the senate president pro tem, who had led the charge against KOAT-TV and called reporter Larry Barker a "sleazebag," Dunn carefully distanced himself and the NMBA from the KOAT report. "I personally, senator, am very distressed about this whole situation," Dunn wrote. "As a small-city broadcaster from Tucumcari, I can totally appreciate how much disruption it is having on the orderly process we've asked our citizen-legislators to pursue. Please . . . be assured that the overwhelming majority of the broadcast industry are most appreciative of the tremendous time commitment made by all of the body in the service of New Mexicans." KOAT-TV and its general manager, Wayne Godsey, have since resigned from the broadcasters association.

* DART to the Pasadena, California, Star-News, for turning a silk purse into a sow's ear. When the rival Los Angeles Times recently announced that the cost of home-delivery subscriptions was going up by twenty-eight cents a week, the Star-News deemed the increase worthy of mention on its own front page. The boxed ten-paragraph "Note to Readers" was tackily laced with quotes from publisher Al Totter detailing his paper's lower weekly, monthly, and yearly rates as compared with those of the Times.

* LAUREL to the Columbus, Ohio, Dispatch and reporter Michael Berens, for seeing the forest and the trees. Using the computerized databases of local newspapers. Berens studied reports on the deaths of nine women whose bodies had been found along interstate highways in Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New York between 1985 and 1990. The comparative analysis -- which for bureaucratic reasons no law enforcement agency at any level had managed to do -- revealed such unmistakable similarities that, within days of his page one March 10 piece, an investigative task force was at work in Ohio, the FBI was on the scene, and other links to other murders in other states began to emerge. By May 4, evidence was pointing to a single suspect in Florida in at least three of the serial killings.

* LAUREL to the Syracuse, New York, Post-Standard and reporters Todd Lighty and Tom Foster, for giving a full-court press to possible violations of NCAA rules by the Syracuse University Orangemen, the basketball team that, as one player put it, the people of Syracuse "live for." Based on a seven-month investigation, the 30,000-word series documented allegations that the university's basketball program had, among other out-of-bounds practices, allowed past and present members of the team to accept cash, merchandise, services, and discounts from prominent boosters and local businessmen; had pressured a professor to change a player's grade so that he would be eligible to play in an important game; and had wooed away a player from a rival team by arranging a job for his father. The series, which led to a university inquiry (currently under way) inspired few cheers from readers, who in published letters to the editor berated the "rag" for its "snide and superficial sniffing," its "disservice" to the community, its "scurrilous defamation of a fine institution," and its "real bad taste." Others canceled their subscriptions to the "sorry excuse for a newspaper" and urged that the reporters and editors responsible be "let go."

* DART to KNBC-TV, Los Angeles, and its commentator Mike Gage, for amphibious journalism. In the wake of the area's water crisis, Gage, who also happens to be a commissioner for the city's Water and Power Department, recently voted against a request from KTTV-TV and KCBS-TV, two of his station's major competitors, for the release of the names of the 100 largest residential users of water in L.A. (According to the Los Angeles Times, which reported on the apparent conflict of interest, similar lists have been made public in San Diego and Beverly Hills.)

* LAUREL to The Albuquerque Tribune and the New Mexico Press Association, for an imaginative project designed to instruct future journalists -- and present officials -- in the theory and practice of open government. Participating in the project were seventy-five high school journalism students, each of whom was given a packet containing the exact wording of the Open Meetings Act and the Inspection of Public Records Act, along with an assignment to put the law to the test. Results were revealing: while some students readily obtained most of what they asked for, others found officialdom far from open. A clerk in Santa Fe refused to give information on the school's operating budget; a magistrate in Farmington refused to let students see the driving and criminal records of school officials; the head of security for Albuquerque public schools refused to release statistics on weapons and drugs on campus. (Although this last, as Albuquerque Tribune editor Tim Gallagher noted in a February 9 column, did eventually find its way to the student journalist -- in an anonymously delivered plain brown envelope -- such a route is not normally available to members of the general public.) The project's sponsors aim to use the results to persuade New Mexican legislators of the need to broaden access laws.

* LAUREL to the Sunbury, Pennsylvania, Daily Item, for walking a straight journalistic line. Among the more sobering items summarized daily from district police and court reports was an unwatered-down account of charges filed against a Sunbury resident for driving under the influence of alcohol and driving at an unsafe speed. The May 6 item included the man's name, age, address, and the circumstances of the accident that led to his arrest. It also noted his occupation: editor of The Daily Item.

* DART to the Arkansas Democrat and racing columnist Terry Wallace, for off-track journalism. In its April 3 edition the paper ran Wallace's twenty-nine-column-inch piece touting the "magic" of Oaklawn Park -- the quality of its horses, the largeness of its purses, the "positive attitude" of the crowd "toward life." But it failed to take even passing note of the writer's paid position as track announcer and p.r. man for Oaklawn Park. In contrast, another writer who recently came to the Democrat stable moved far outfront. In a March 28 Counterpoint piece describing the terms of his new contract for a three-times-a-week column, John Brummett, formerly of the rival Arkansas Gazette, revealed the "one rule" at the Democrat that "was made perfectly clear to me at the outset: A columnist is not to criticize an advertiser in regard to that advertiser's business." Although he expected that "99 times out of 100" the rule would pose no problem, Brumett told his readers, "there might come a time when an advertiser took an action that I deemed to be worthy of commentary in the public domain. . . . If and when that happens, I will remain silent, and now you know why."

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