Sure, New Mexico is facing a half-a-billion dollar shortfall in this year’s state budget, and a lot — I mean a lot — of debate, work and a willingness to compromise lies ahead for state lawmakers and Gov. Bill Richardson when the Legislature goes into special session Oct. 17 to address the shortfall.

Let’s look at Pennsylvania to see what happens when a budget process goes wacky and regular people get all wiggins when everything from health care clinics to educational programs aren’t funded. Pennsylvania hit the amazing benchmark today of going 100 days without a state budget for this year, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. For that dubious honor, that state’s governor and legislative leaders earned this description: “It reminds me of a class of fourth graders,” one Pennsylvania lawmaker told the Inquirer. “Actually, they are more like kindergartners fighting over their toys. . . . I have lost my sense of trust here, and I don’t trust what anybody is saying.”

I don’t think we’re headed to that place in New Mexico, but let’s let Pennsylvania stand as a cautionary tale.

Meanwhile, in the media world, the BBC Trust issued a new set of editorial guidelines that place limits on what editorial staff can say online, covering everything from bad language to impartiality, the Guardian reports. The guidelines state that,”Nothing should be written by [BBC] journalists and presenters that would not be said on-air.” The BBC’s move continues a trend as media outlets try to get a handle on how the media interacts with the public online. It’s an ongoing process, and look for more and more media outlets addressing similar issues in the near future.

Russia’s crusading reporter Anna Politkovskaya is still remembered for her assassination three years ago, which some believe was backed by the Kremlin. Her murder now has become a symbol of the challenges journalists face in Russia when they try to do their job, The Christian Science Monitor reports today. The paper writes, “The still unsolved murder of Russia’s best-known investigative journalist raised suspicions of Kremlin involvement — which have yet to be laid to rest — and highlighted the plight of Russian media workers, who often face intimidation and violence when they attempt to do their jobs.”

A developer on Wednesday moved a step closer to taking over the Chicago Sun-Times after the paper’s largest union agreed to changes in work and health care rules, the Chicago Tribune reports. Jim Tyree’s bid to own the Sun-Times has been this week’s drama in the world of newspaper journalism. No other bidder materialized Monday to take over Chicago’s second-largest paper, but Tyree had said his bid of $26.5 million was conditioned on the paper’s unions agreeing to certain changes. Tyree appears to have gotten at least most of what he wanted with when four four bargaining groups ratified a Wednesday afternoon agreement between leaders of the Chicago Newspaper Guild and Sun-Times management, the Trib reported. Among other things, the contract locks in for three years the 15 percent benefit cuts that workers accepted earlier this year and freezes the company’s pension plans, which will be replaced by 401(k)-like plans; management agreed to provide eight weeks of severance for workers who lose their jobs in the first six months after Tyree gains control of the company; and the company will void seniority rules, as Tyree had demanded, and it gains the ability to transfer unionized editorial workers between its publications, the Tribune reported.

On the scandal-monger front, colleagues at CBS are dumbfounded by the extortion effort authorities say Robert Joel Halderman thought up and tried to execute against late night talk show host David Letterman. Halderman appears to be a well-liked and respected CBS producer who, on the face of it, seemed to like the reporter/producer’s life. One co-worker described Halderman as having “a big personality with a penchant for running to the hottest news spots — the Falkland Islands, Bosnia and Somalia. Another colleague told the New York Times: “Joe went to every nasty place there was.” But he also had a checkered love life, another colleague tells the Times.

“He lived on the edge,” said the colleague, who asked not to be identified because of the limit CBS has imposed on comments about the case. “He had a bit of a checkered love life.”

Meanwhile, making a jump to high culture,Herta Müller has won the Nobel prize for literature, the New York Times reports. I haven’t read this writer, but as nearly always the Nobel introduces the broader world to a writer who has written powerfully and compellingly about the human condition. In this case, Müller “has written widely about the oppression of dictatorship in her native country and the unmoored life of the political exile,” as the Times described it. She is an ethnic German and the first German to win the Nobel since Günter  Grass won in 1999. Grass is another writer worth picking up. His most famous work, The Tin Drum, became a international best seller and was made into a movie.  But my personal favorite is Dog Years, which is the third book in Grass’s Danzig Trilogy.