N Christian Anderson

Acting on directions from the Orange County Sheriff's Department, a confidential informant secretly tape recorded a 1982 telephone conversation with an Orange County Register reporter who had written articles critical of the operation of the sheriff's jail, according to court documents and investigative notes.

The food editor of the Orange County Register died Thursday night after she collapsed and had difficulty breathing during dinner at an Oxnard restaurant. Jo Ann Miner, 47, of Fullerton was pronounced dead at St. John's Hospital, where she was taken after paramedics attempted to revive her at Castagnola's restaurant, Oxnard Fire Marshal Terry McAnally said.

A stock trading scandal involving a column in Business Week magazine widened Friday as a broker in the Anaheim office of Prudential-Bache Securities was fired and brokers from two other firms were implicated. Brian J. Callahan, 28, a 3 1/2-year employee at Prudential-Bache who also wrote a personal investing summary in the Orange County Register, was fired after allegations that he received advance information of tips that would appear in the magazine's "Inside Wall Street" column.

Three years ago, as the Kansas gubernatorial campaign drew near, Davis (Buzz) Merritt Jr. decided "we weren't going to let the bastards push us around anymore." Merritt is executive editor of the Wichita Eagle and he says he had gotten fed up watching politicians set the campaign agenda and ignore the issues that voters were most interested in. To counter that, the Eagle created "Your Vote Counts."

After years of fierce competition, the Los Angeles Times had its San Fernando Valley rival, the Los Angeles Daily News, on the run by the late 1990s in terms of journalism, circulation and advertising. To stay ahead, The Times formulated a strategy to ensure potentially stronger rivals did not take ownership of the Daily News, according to sources knowledgeable about the plan.

Over the past several months, a cramped suite of rooms in the Orange County Register building in Santa Ana has been transformed into a gleaming warren of sophisticated computer and video equipment. Walls are lined with new television monitors, videotape editing machines, computer graphics generators and picture storage units. Specially equipped Macintosh computers sit atop every desk. Robotic television cameras survey the studio set.

The News & Observer of Raleigh, N.C., won the Pulitzer Prize gold medal for meritorious public service Tuesday for articles exposing the health and environmental risks of waste disposal in hog farming. The New York Times won three Pulitzers, the third time it has done so since the awards were established at Columbia University in New York in 1917. The New York newspaper has won 73 Pulitzers in that time, far more than any other newspaper.

Over the past several months, a cramped suite of rooms in the Orange County Register building here has been transformed into a gleaming warren of sophisticated computer and video equipment. Walls are lined with new television monitors, videotape editing machines, computer graphics generators and picture storage units. Specially equipped Macintosh computers sit atop every desk. Robotic television cameras survey the studio set.

Most young people in the United States--children, teen-agers, even many men and women in their early 20s--do not regularly read a daily newspaper. Until relatively recently, few newspaper editors were troubled by this seemingly natural phenomenon; after all, they knew, newspapers are not really designed for the young.

By almost any reasonable measure, the mainstream news media in this country are more responsible and more ethical today than at any time in their history.