It’s our last new program in 2011, and we invited three accomplished bloggers to help us wrap up an eventful year.

Don Washington (Mayoral Tutorial) argues passionately that the state’s bailout of CME and Sears was a mistake, both in a policy sense and in the way that it will harm most Illinoisans financially.

Matt Farmer (HuffPo Chicago) condemns much of the “downtown media” for its blind acceptance of CPS’s press releases about turnaround schools. He cites one stark example from last June, when Mayor Emanuel touted Collins High School as a dramatic example of a school that had been “turned around” by private contractor AUSL. But Farmer said he spent 20 minutes with The Googles and found plenty of data to shoot down the assertion – on the CPS Web site.

Justin Kaufmann, who knows a thing or two about how the on-line world works as the guy who runs wbez.org (and blogs there too) had a some observations about today’s news media. Since every editor and manager is keeping an eye on the “analytics”, management knows exactly who’s clicking where and when. And detailed follow-up stories, often the ones that add detail to the dog-and-pony press events, don’t get much clickage.

It’s a pretty raucous, and highly informative show. Except that Justin was dismayed, because he thought he’d been invited to a show moderated by Joel Weisman. Life can be disappointing sometimes.