And do you have to use black ink?

* To forget the Pulitzers. The Times has been putting energy into prize-winning features that run once a year. Readers care more about the quality of day-in, day-out coverage. (Mickey Kaus)

* To print a piece about Los Angeles public schools that isn’t either so boring or so terrifying that educated, middle-class parents might actually dare to send their kids there. (Sandra Tsing Loh)

* To publish a center-right political analyst with as many column inches per week as Ronald Brownstein is allocated. (Hugh Hewitt)

* To make the Windy City [home of The Times’ corporate owner, the Tribune Co.] come to its senses, rename The Times’ California section “Metro Colossus In a Nutshell” and forever more expect experienced reporters to escape their desks and ubiquitously cover this metropolis such that never again will the newspaper be scooped in its own backyard. (Jamie Court)

* To tell the Tribune Co. to be satisfied in 2006 with a reasonable rate of profit and not be tempted to seek higher returns at the cost of lesser journalism. (Marc Cooper)

* To begin covering Orange County like the 21st century Ellis Island it is and not like Cudahy. (Gustavo Arellano)

* To encourage more columnists -- and even reporters -- to start blogs. (Patrick Frey)

* To send Bill Plaschke and Tommy Lasorda to divorce court. (Matt Welch)

* To promise to realize that newspaper feature sections are how young readers get into the daily newspaper- reading habit, and therefore quit contributing to declining circulation by tolerating such weak writing in Calendar. (Catherine Seipp)

* To expand its Rolodex to include more than the predictable roster of Najee Ali, Ramona Ripston and Earl Ofari Hutchinson when seeking “community reaction” to controversial police incidents. (Jack Dunphy [pseudonym for an LAPD cop] )

* To rediscover California’s Capitol and redefine coverage to include how and why more than $100 billion a year in state taxes are expended. (David Abel)

* To review or profile a single restaurant or hotel in the Sunday magazine that people earning less than $100,000 a year could theoretically afford. (Welch)

* To fill a top editorial position with a staunch Republican -- that is, if we can find one. Anybody know a staunch Republican? (Frey)

* To offer more crime coverage and stop behaving as if The Times is protecting property values. It’s a big city, I know. But New York is a big city too, and the New York Post manages to cover crime. (Kaus)

* To include tildes and accents in Spanish words. Or would that cost Tribune Co. too much, forcing Spring Street to lay off another business reporter? (Arellano)

* To remember the readers by restoring the number of letters to the editor and shrinking the number of editorial writers’ letters. (Court)

* To debunk the top 10 myths it has spread about the L.A. Unified School District -- for instance, instead of having no arts, few know that the district’s core-curriculum budget includes $33 million a year just for its excellent theater programs in elementary schools, proving that shootings don’t provide the only drama. (Tsing Loh)

* To make it clear in stories about judicial nominations that opposition to Roe vs. Wade is not the same as opposition to legalized abortion. (Frey)

* To have at least a quarter of its columnists live in California to keep the wind bags from the Windy City from drowning out the Western voice of The Times. (Court)

* To write about proposed eminent domain seizures of residential property before L.A. Unified makes them faits accomplis. (Welch)

* To come up with a decent local gossip column by the time American troops come home from Iraq. I suggest a fixed timetable, with a firm deadline of the end of 2006! (Kaus)

* To introduce a new section focusing on Southern California’s foreign-language newspapers in review. It will open now-closed windows and permit old Los Angeles to learn what new Los Angeles is all about. (Abel)

* To find a couple of full-time religion columnists who are mainstream within their faiths and already widely respected for their expertise. (Hewitt)

* To do a first-person series called “Johannesburg,” in which a white journalist in Brentwood sensitively probes the angst of being a shrinking minority in a vast, brown but ever more complex and intriguing city. (Tsing Loh)

* To continue running “Outside the Tent.” (Frey)