Regarding the Miley Cyrus photo mini-scandal, John Olthoff writes to chide us for participating in the sort of publicity spectacle that keeps the cash registers ringing in what he calls “Hollyweird.” “How is some media-created 15-year-old twit’s problems news,” he asks, “for those of us worried about gas prices, an upcoming presidential election and its affect on economy and many other things of importance?”

We have two questions here: One, do we do a sufficiently good job day in and day out of reporting on the major economic news affecting local pocketbooks? And, two, is there room in the paper for a bit of celebrity news? Let’s take gas prices as an example. Over the past week, we’ve run a bunch of letters to the editor; several stories exploring the various candidates’ positions on a temporary suspension of the 18-cents-per-gallon federal gas tax; a report on how Congress and the White House are dealing with the question; various reports on gasoline price trends in D/FW; a report from Jim Landers, who covers global business for us, on Peru’s ethanol economy; a look at Exxon’s quarterly profits; and a story on how higher gas prices are affecting local small businesses and the auto industry. We’ve also run a graphic explaining what goes into the price we pay for every gallon of gas. And you can still check out a video report for our Web site on how locals are coping. So I think we’ve done reasonably well on substantive coverage. As for the celebrity stuff, well, it’s not my cup of tea, either. But a newspaper contains all kinds of material, from sports to opera reviews. Few people will want to read every word of it. In survey after survey, our readers have said they value getting at least a dose of celebrity news. Maybe that’s because, in the words of John Prine’s “Jesus was a Capricorn,” everybody’s got to have somebody to look down on. Maybe it’s because we draw our morality parables today from the lives of celebrities. Perhaps it just gives us something to talk about in the elevator. Maybe this is all just a reminder that many topics are in every morning’s paper, and that one of the great things about a paper is we can scan quickly scan the stuff we care about and ignore the stuff we don’t.

Immigration remains a hot-button issue for some readers, particularly those with a hint of camouflage in their e-mail addresses. “Camooptics” writes to say we haven’t done enough to cover the cost of illegal immigration to local taxpayers. “The city of FB [Farmers Branch] may spend $500k on legal bills, OK, granted, the city will pay 50 million dollars just this year for educating illegals which is a fact,” he says.

I disagree with both of Camo’s claims. We’ve had a great deal of coverage regarding the cost of immigration to local taxpayers. Most came during the 2006 and 2007 debates over Farmers Branch’s ordinance against illegal immigration. Back on May 10, 2007, we noted that various studies showed that immigration was a net benefit to the national and state economies, but that it cost local governments money, particularly for education and for medical care. We haven’t delved much into the cost issues since then, largely because one of the conventions of journalism is that old news is no news. As for the $50 million figure:

* Schools in Farmers Branch are run by the Carrollton-Farmers Branch Independent School District, not the city.

* Immigrant children (legal and illegal) may cost more to educate, but the state provides extra funds for bilingual students, too.

* On average, the Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD says it spends $6,479 in local dollars per student.

* Simply dividing $50 million by that number, one can theorize that the $50 million cost would be correct if the district were educating 7,728 illegal immigrants from Farmers Branch annually.

* But only 3,853 students of all varieties attend CFBISD from Farmers Branch, according to figures the district released in the fall. So if every single one of those children were an illegal immigrant, the $50 million figure would be almost two times larger than life.

How many of the kids are, in fact, illegal? Nobody can say. The district includes kids from Irving, Dallas and Addison, as well as Carrollton and Farmers Branch. Back on Nov. 16, 2006, school officials told us that they knew that 12,815 of their 26,219 students have Hispanic backgrounds, but they couldn’t say how many were illegal immigrants, or the children of illegal immigrants. One clue might be the number of Farmers Branch kids who dropped out of school after the city passed its ordinance against illegal immigrants. According to the school district, the total drop in enrollment was eight children. If all of them were illegal, total savings to local taxpayers would have been about $52,000.

Dena Wood sent along a charming photo of Air Force Chief Master Sgt. John Gebhardt comforting a young Iraqi girl at the hospital in Balad. The caption says that insurgents executed her family, and then shot her in the head. She’s recuperating, but “Gebhardt is the only one who can calm down the girl, so he has spent the last several nights holding her while they both sleep in a chair.” Ms. Wood forwarded a note reading, “Why isn’t this all over the news? If he had done something wrong, it surely would be!”

There’s one little irony here: The photo in question, which seems to come from an e-mail chain letter, was clipped from a newspaper. So, it was in the news. I don’t think we ran it (I’m not even sure we saw it, until now), but we have had a number of stories about American troops’ positive contributions in Iraq and Afghanistan. On March 6, we ran a story about how one group of American reservists was rebuilding a crumbling hospital in Haditha, Iraq. On April 3, we ran a Viewpoints article about the American advisers who live and fight alongside their Iraqi comrades. In late February, Jim Landers reported from Afghanistan on the U.S. troops who are striving to create a national army there. So we have tried to maintain a balance of perspectives on the war. We haven’t captured every good thing, of course, but we haven’t captured every bad thing, either. We’ve tried to capture an array of the best wire-service reporting on the war, and we’ve focused our own reporting on the Texas-based troops who are making heroic sacrifices in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Randy Lawhon of Forney asks, “Why, in this day of increased environmental awareness, has The News decided to go in the opposite direction by packaging the ads on Sunday in plastic?”

We aimed to be environmentally friendly when we launched the plastic packaging. It keeps all the sales notices and savings coupons secure, until readers open them. This reduces waste in our insertion operation. For home subscribers, we hope that it will make it easier to find both the savings offers and the special Sunday products, like Parade magazine. We hope the plastic will help keep the entire bundle dry and readable. And we hope the neater bundling will contribute to tidier houses and higher rates of recycling. Bill May, our printing and production supervisor, says we’re also exploring the possibility of using biodegradable materials in the future.

Isidro Ledesma writes to ask if we’re biased against the Dallas Stars. He noted that we had a front-page photo of the Mavericks after they went down 3-1 in their series against New Orleans, while we played the Stars’ victory, which put them up 2-0 against San Jose, in Sports. “My opinion may be greatly biased, but I think the Stars’ accomplishments thus far warrant, no, demand, a little more respect than what The Dallas Morning News has showed them,” he wrote on April 28.

Mr. Ledesma, I never met a sports fan who wasn’t biased. And that’s as it should be. We ran the Mavs photo on the cover partly because the Mavs have had a much larger following in the region and partly because the Mavs’ series was much farther along. They’d played four games, to the Stars’ two, and the Mavs were one game away from elimination. On April 29, we featured the Stars and their devoted fans as a lead story on Page One. On April 30, we featured the Stars’ third victory in the Page One “banner” at the very top of the page. On May 5, we held our press run so that 180,000 readers could wake up and find the Stars’ victory on the front of the paper, and the front of the Sports section. And, of course, our SportsDay crew has been covering the Stars closely, in print, in blog form and in video, since the start of the season.