* More bad news from the media world: National Public Radio is eliminating 85 positions. No media outlet is exempt from the hard times, even NPR, which has enjoyed increased popularity in recent years.

* You're Major League Baseball. More than anything else, your institutional integrity has been marked by a harsh anti-betting platform. The Black Sox Scandal. Pete Rose. Zero tolerance on betting on baseball. Post-career suspensions for Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays for being greeters at Atlantic City casinos. Tough stuff. So where does Major League Baseball conduct its annual winter meetings this week? Las Vegas. Go figure.

* Speaking of baseball, Tony Kubek will be inducted into the broadcasters' wing of the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Kubek, a former Yankees shortstop, was a superb analyst for years with the Yankees, Blue Jays and NBC. Good choice. Kubek was incisive and took no prisoners. He walked away from the money and the game in 1994, saying the greedy players turned him off. Right on! But can we really believe, as Bill Madden reports in today's Daily News, that Kubek hasn't watched a single pitch of a baseball game on TV since his retirement? Can't be. Tony, please, come back to us.

* Next time we write about our state's dysfunctional government, I promise to think about the governor of Illinois.