My wife, who is a dentist, has begun getting a free copy of U.S. News and World Report in the mail. It seems to have become a consumer magazine--not an authoritative, trustworthy survey like Consumer Reports, but more like one of those city magazines that gives five stars to restaurants that advertise in it. The latest issue features "FINDING THE BEST CAR FOR YOU: WE DO THE RESEARCH. YOU ENJOY THE RIDE." It displays a picture of a red sports car on the cover. That should be a tip-off that what U.S. News means by "best" has little to do with cost, utility, safety, and gas mileage. The fancy spread contains ten charts ranking the best of kinds of cars, including small and mid-sized cars. But four of the ten rate different kinds of sports utility vehicles (SUVs). As Gregg Easterbrook once argued in The New Republic, these kinds of vehicles are menaces on the road and gas guzzlers. Any sensible conservation or road safety policy would discourage Americans from buying them. I thought that, perhaps, the magazine's focus on SUVs simply reflected Americans' buying patterns. But it doesn't. SUVs comprise about 25 rather than 40 percent of the vehicle buying market. And it's a share that has gone down and then slightly up and then down over the last years. Last summer, for example, the Auto Channel reported that American are switching from SUVs to midsize conventional cars. Yet U.S. News devotes just two charts to rating "midsize cars"--one for "upscale midsize cars" and another for "affordable midsize cars." What is U.S. News up to? Is it trying to cater to certain advertisers? I don't know. Suffice it to say that this latest feature of theirs is the antithesis of "news you can use." --John B. Judis