Will it bloom this year?

Chess coverage in the British mainstream media is a half-butchered corpse, and last week it had yet more flesh hacked from it last week: The Times cut Ray Keene's chess columns from its online edition, whilst Leonard Barden's column for The Evening Standard was sliced to just one appearance per week in their print edition. Stewart Reuben is busy encouraging us to do something about it.

Personally, I like both columns a lot. Keene's has a truly unique quality, in that it is the only chess column in the world that can usually be solved blindfolded, simply by guessing 1.Qxh7+. Barden, meanwhile, is master of the instant intrigue, writing with genuine skill and impressive economy to make the reader really feel like they are playing the position set in the puzzle.

On the subject of chess in the media, two American newspaper articles recently caught my eye. In San Francisco, a judge has ruled that chess players shouldn't be drug tested in order to compete, since it constitutes an invasion of privacy. This wholly sane and commonsensical decision could pose an interesting problem for any FIDE competitions held in the States, since FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov's Quixotic quest to make chess an Olympic sport requires doping controls on players.

Meanwhile, further south the Los Angeles Chronicle reports that

Aloha Mischeaux, a finalist in the fourth season of the popular American Idol TV show, kicked off the 2009 U.S. Chess Championship in rousing fashion with a stirring rendition of the national anthem at the opening ceremonies for the tournament at the Saint Louis University Museum of Art on Thursday, May 7.

Who, what, why? Surely not newsworthy, you might be thinking? Exactly my point: yet there it is. Perhaps tie-ins with TV programmes and pop music is precisely what the mainstream media want from big chess occasions. Just what do we chess players know! Incidentally, today is a rest day at the M-Tel Masters, and the chess players will play a football match. Perhaps next year they should instead compete at Karaoke?

What do you suggest our top players should sing?