I try to look on the bright side of life, but as anyone with a taste bud knows, you're lucky to find something you truly love at a restaurant. But that's apparently not the case for The Denver Post's food writers.

In their 2007 restaurant guide, they explain why they "love" 331 Colorado restaurants.

It's difficult to contrast the things you love, so it's not surprising that the Post's "guide" barely bothers to compare restaurants at all. It's a restaurant orgy that reminds me of an advertising insert.

Maybe the Suzy-Sunshine food writers at the Post would say I'm a buzz kill. But a restaurant guide needs to pick the best places and grade them.

The Post highlights its favorite 24 restaurants in the state. But it's difficult to select among the remaining eateries that the Post also loves. Even though Post restaurant reviewer Tucker Shaw rates restaurants in his weekly reviews, his ratings weren't even included.

The Post's guide lists restaurants by geographical area. The guide should have addressed non-metro eateries in a separate section.

You find 16 under "North Denver," for example. But picking among the 16 is difficult.

And besides, most people I know crave a cuisine (like Mexican) when eating out, and they'll go the extra mile for it, rather than settling for whatever restaurant is closest.

A Post index lists restaurants by category, like Mexican. But eateries in the categories aren't compared to one another.

So how to choose among the Post's 25 beloved Mexican restaurants?

Don't even try. Pick up the Rocky Mountain News' new restaurant guide instead.

It lists the top 20 restaurants in metro Denver, and the top five eateries in 35 categories (Vietnamese, vegetarian, barbecue, etc.).

So, if you're craving the best Vietnamese food in town, it's easy to find the best places to get it.

The Rocky gives uninflated letter grades (A, B, C) to most establishments.

Unfortunately, the Rocky didn't index its restaurants by neighborhood. So check the Post's guide for this.

For the dailies, producing the best restaurant guides is more important than ever. One of the things that distinguishes newspapers from other information sources is their criticism, not just of restaurants but movies, plays, music, and so on.

Offering tough, current, and useful criticism is a big part of the survival mix for the dailies, especially if they expect to attract online readers.

And I hate to say it, but the best critics are, you know, critical. The Post can do better and be meaner.

Whose news? Clear Channel radio owns KHOW-AM (630) and KOA-AM (850), which air mostly conservative talk shows, and KKZN-AM (760), which mostly broadcasts liberal Air America.

Even though they have the same owner, each radio station offers different news: ABC on KHOW, Fox on KOA and CBS on KKZN.

Why the different news offerings on each station?

I thought Clear Channel was matching the perceived political ideology of the radio networks to the perceived political ideology of the stations' audiences.

This could explain why Fox News, with its widely perceived conservative bias, isn't heard on liberal KKZN.

Clear Channel's Kris Olinger told me that the reason for selecting one news network over another is much more complicated but that perceived political ideology is a "factor."

Others are the demographic appeal, the cost, the strength of the non-news offerings, like sports, and more.

I was glad to hear this, but perceived political ideology shouldn't be a consideration at all.

Some think the future of journalism will be dominated by biased news outlets battling for audiences that are drawn to news conforming to their own bias.

What a nightmare that would be.

So, Clear Channel executives, surprise us and don't even consider perceived political bias next time you're selecting news networks for your radio stations.

Letters bias? Reader J. D. Moyers challenged me to join him in categorizing "To the Point" letters in the Post's Perspective section over two four-week spans (September and February).

We found 20 of the letters expressed liberal views, 12 were neutral and nine conservative.

I asked the Post's letters editor, Cohen Peart, about this.

"Like the rest of the letters in the Post, To the Point's bias is based on the bias of our letter-writers," he emailed me. "We print a representative sample of what we get."

Here's what Moyers thinks: "Even if there are twice as many liberal letters-to-the-editor writers as conservative writers, based on the Post's results, the newspapers are the kingdom of the liberals."

I respect Moyers for actually investigating bias, instead of making baseless accusations.

Our results were close the first month, but they tipped way liberal the next month, probably because liberals got irritated.

Moral? The Rocky reported (March 21) Archbishop Charles Chaput's view that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was "correct" and "courageous" in declaring that homosexual sex is immoral.

Next time, include a mix of local perspectives, not only Chaput's.

Jason Salzman, president of Cause Communications and board chairman of Rocky Mountain Media Watch, is the author of Making the News: A Guide for Activists and Nonprofits. Reach him at salzmanj@RockyMountainNews.com.

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