Q: Who’s writing the paper’s Arizona Living section?

A: Not Republic reporters. Two days into the week, a total of nine feature stories. One was written by a Republic staffer. The rest were all wire stories, and lame ones at that. (“Facebook buds make workouts a bit easier.”)

On Sunday, there was a big page of things to do this week. Top item: John Mayer doing a VH1 Storytellers show. (I can’t link to it because it doesn’t sem to appear on the web.) It’s hard to be optimistic about the future of the paper when it seems like virtually no one working at the place cares about the substance of what they are publishing. A city the size of Phoenix and the best thing they can suggest doing over the course of the week is sitting on your butt and watching a routine basic cable show?

Our favorite story this week, however, was a strong Richard Ruelas feature Saturday about the frontier-day newspaper wars between the Republic and the Phoenix Gazette.

In a history of the Republic Ruelas noticed a funny story, dating from 1912, about how the Gazette was caught stealing news from the Republic, then called the Republican, which planted a fake story that the Gazette duly lifted. Wrote the Republic:

Lacking the enterprise which it boastfully claims and being utterly devoid of the commonest ethics belonging to the newspaper business, [the Gazette] has been brazenly and methodically stealing the news which The Republican has paid to have gathered and to publish.

Ruelas is one of the few people at the paper who does actual reported features. A week or so ago he did a long and fairly interesting reconstruction of an ineresting bit of rock ‘n’ roll arcana: Was Bono targeted for a shooting at a Tempe show back in 1987?

The year Arizona was consumed with controversy over Gov. Evan Mecham’s decision to cancel a state holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr. was also the year that the Irish band U2 played four concerts here.
And dealt with death threats, according to the band. According to the oft-told tale, lead singer Bono would be shot while performing the group’s ode to King, “Pride (In the Name of Love).”
The band’s memory of this 1987 incident has appeared in various books, in magazines and in Bono’s induction speech when the band entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Ruelas skeptically pieces together various recollections to figure out how much of the story was true.