Winners

1. It looks like telephone rate payers will get what they want: fewer gizmos and lower rates. US West, which is preparing for a case before the Public Utilities Commission, had hoped to offer free services like three-way calling rather than cut revenues by $97 million, but the results of a consumer survey on rate savings vs. free services has squelched that idea. Consumers, it seems, want lower rates.

2. The Trail Blazers' 23-year-old forward Rasheed Wallace can afford to buy his own island nation after signing a 6-year contract Monday worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $80 million. That's equivalent to 1,600 people each earning $50,000.

 3. In other cities, if you build it, they will come. In Portland, they were already here--11,000 organized soccer players, that is--so we built it: a new championship-caliber, $300,000 soccer field at Delta Park, which opens Oct. 5. The new field was made possible by a grant from the Rob Strasser Foundation.

 C.W. Jensen

Losers

1. Medical marijuana
 advocates suffered a public-relations disaster last week when the Alternative Health Center downtown was raided for selling bud to undercover cops complaining of sore backs and other less-than-deadly disorders.

2.Time magazine's glowing feature story about The New York Times this week included a sidebar on other daily newspapers around the country that are winning solid reputations. A paragraph on the rising stars of the Newhouse chain (The Oregonian's owner) failed to mention the Big O--a harsh toke for the Oregon daily, which hosted the annual board of directors meeting of the American Society of Newspaper Editors last weekend.

3. Portland cops and reporters will have to find something else to speculate about. Former Portland Police Bureau public information officer C.W. Jensen and KGW-TV reporter Shannon Brinias made it official, tying the knot in a small ceremony last week. The pair had been the subject of gossip ever since Jensen intervened on Brinias' behalf last year after a cop arrested the reporter for entering a restricted area damaged by mudslides.