Editors

MOSCOW - Russia remains among the most dangerous countries for journalists because of the government's failure to thoroughly investigate the killings of a dozen reporters and editors over the past five years, the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists said here yesterday. There have been few arrests and no convictions in the killings of the 12 journalists, Ann Cooper, the executive director, said at a news conference, held a day before the first anniversary of the slaying of American journalist Paul Klebnikov.

Recalling the encouragement she received from mentors throughout her career, Margie Freaney, editor of the Baltimore Business Journal, challenges women to embolden one another.Freaney, speaking at a women's network luncheon Thursday at Martin's in Westminster, said that one reason more women do not start their own businesses or move into powerful positions is because they lack a mentor, someone who will take time out of their schedules to help, explain, encourage."What you learn in business can't be learned in a classroom," she told about 65 women who attended the luncheon, sponsored by the Carroll County Chamber of Commerce.

For British rockers Editors, platinum status in their home country came at a creeping pace. Debut album The Back Room dropped in July of last year in the U.K. but took six months to peak at No. 2. To get it there, the band inked a licensing deal with Sony BMG, toured perpetually and pounded British radio with single after single. Though The Back Room came out stateside in March of this year and generated plenty of buzz, it might need even more muscle to crack the Top 10 here. Guitarist Chris Urbanowicz doesn't know whether he and his other three band mates have it in them.

They may not be as big in America as they are in their native England, but the guys in Editors aren't really preoccupied with dominating the pop charts on both sides of the pond -- at least for now. So far, though, the neo-punk quartet -- whose members include lead singer-guitarist Tom Smith, guitarist Chris Urbanowicz, bassist Russell Leetch and drummer Ed Lay -- has generated a fair amount of international buzz with its two albums: last year's acclaimed...

Breach of Faith: A Crisis of Coverage in the Age of Corporate Journalism, University of Arkansas Press. 288 pages. $29.95. The year was 1979 and Jim Hale, the publisher of The Kansas City Star, was explaining to me -- his managing editor -- the necessity of a public company such as ours showing higher earnings each year to meet its obligations to its shareholders. "But," I protested, "at some point in the future won't that be impossible? Surely we can't keep this growth up year after year and retain quality.

IF ALBERT Einstein is the "Person of the 20th Century," as the editors of Time magazine believe, it might take all of the 21st century to grasp that the sum of his thinking went well beyond the intellectual parts of relativity, photons, subatomic particles and quarks. Science was Einstein's livelihood; pacifism was his life. Odd, then, even bizarre, that despite the ardency of Einstein's political and spiritual commitment to pacifism, the editors of Time in their December cover story on the person of the century devote 1,425 lines to his scientific ideas but only three to his views on nonviolence.

In the unfolding drama that is the sniper story, what role is the media playing - villain, supporting actor, messenger? All of the above, depending on the day and the mood of Montgomery County Police Chief Charles A. Moose, who by turns has castigated, thanked and used the media over the three-week span in which the still at-large sniper has stalked random victims in Maryland, Washington and Virginia. As 300 newspaper editors gather in Baltimore today for an industry conference, a fascinating case study of their business continues to play out nearby, illustrating some of the issues they will be discussing during a four-day meeting: access to information, excellence in reporting, dealing with graphic photographs and credibility.

NEW YORK - It's Fashion Week, a time when couture oracles Donna, Calvin, Ralph and more than 100 other designers gather in this city to unveil their collections for the coming spring. Yesterday morning, however, during a show in a stark white tent in Bryant Park, something seemed amiss. The models all looked about 15 instead of the customary late teens/early 20s. Not all of them appeared to be impossibly thin size 2s like many of their counterparts in other shows. And some actually smiled as they bopped down the runway to the beat of an up-tempo dance track.

Bonnie Lane stands in front of Baltimore's City Hall, arms crossed, lips pursed, on a mission. Her stance is memorialized in a photo and article on the pages of Word on the Street, the fledgling newspaper she helped launch nearly a year ago. The "street paper" — one of 23 in the United States — is produced by homeless people, their advocates, and those who were once homeless, such as Lane. "You need to give people hope," Lane, 39, said. "Once they lose hope, they're not motivated to make things better for themselves.

Eight days after salvaging his career at the Boston Globe, columnist Mike Barnicle resigned yesterday, at the newspaper's request, after editors could find no evidence that two young cancer victims described in a 1995 column ever existed.Barnicle told his editors Tuesday that he had been given the story by a nurse whose name he could not recall. He also said he had never tried to contact the boys' families.Globe Editor Matthew Storin said in a statement yesterday: "In light of his failure to follow the most basic reporting requirements as well as the duplicitous way in which the story was written, it is clear that Mike Barnicle can no longer write for the Boston Globe."