Journalism is not dead.

At least not at the Chicago Reader.

Journalistic pugilists, Mick Dumke and Ben Joravsky, are the 1-2 punch that lays out Chicago’s parking meter lease deal for the whole world to see–warts, warts, warts and all.

The two’s cover story, entitled FAIL-How Daley and his crew hid their process from the public, ignored their own rules, railroaded the City Council, and screwed the taxpayers on the parking meter lease deal, is a time line showing step,  by painful step, how the lease deal went down.

It’s definitely not a pretty picture AND stinks to high heaven.

Here are some of the highlights.

*Although there were 10 original applicants hoping to bid on the parking meters, somehow the pool got winnowed down to only two, Morgan Stanley and the Macquarie partnership–and the city has no explanation of how and why this happened.

What’s the big deal? Well, think of it this way.

Let’s say you have a Van Gogh painting up for auction. What are the chances you’re going to get top dollar if you have a room full of people bidding on the painting versus just two people? Less competition means less of a chance you’re going to get maximum value for your asset.

In addition, there seemed to be a qualitative difference between a few of the other initial bidders and the Morgan Stanley proposal according to Dumke.

“It’s fair to say that it (Morgan Stanley’s proposal) was less detailed than a few of the other packages that were submitted,” says Dumke.

With only two final bidders out of ten, it seems like Morgan Stanley had just been made bride in an arranged marriage. In other words, the fix was in.

*Even though by law, the city must respond to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request within seven days, the city takes six weeks to turnover the requested information, and still not all the information requested had been turned over to the Reader.

*CPM LLC did not submit an economic disclosure statement that was required to be a bidder until AFTER the bids were opened. Tehnically, CPM should not have been allowed to submit a bid.

*Morgan Stanley seems to have misrepresented itself in it’s bid documents, claiming to be the sole vendor in it’s bid proposal, but ends up creating a separate entity called Chicago Parking Meters, LLC that is actually a consortium of investors, led by Morgan Stanley.

In fact, by the Reader’s time line, and searching the Illinois Secretary of State’s Corporate database, Chicago Parking Meters, LLC did not even exist as an entity when they submitted their bid or when they were announced as the winning bidder.

CPM, LLC did not come into existence until December 3, 2008 according to the State of Illinois, even though the bid’s were opened on December 1st and they were announced as the winning bidder on December 2nd.

*The Reader posts much, if not all of the supporting documentation from the city on their website, including bidder proposals and bids from the two final bidders.

What Dumke and Joravsky show, is that this deal seems to have gone down in an even more underhanded, backroom way than anyone originally thought.

This is a deal that seems to get worse and worse as time goes by.

And with 74 years and 8 months to go on the lease–it’s going to be a long and painful ride for Chicagoans.

Read it and weep.