Letters
Dreamcatchers
Let's see. The young journalists you tapped to imagine their Dream Newspaper (CJR, January/February) say it would be "tabloid format," with "more questioning of authority," more "magazine-style, narrative pieces," less objectivity, and would "up the flippancy factor" and "throw in the f-word every once in a while." It would have "more examination of pop culture," tell readers "how to spend their leisure time" and cover "subcultures and alternative life-styles." Best of all, it would be free.
As a twenty-six-year-old, I couldn't agree more. But someone should tell your young journalists that their dream papers already exist. They're called alternative weeklies.
Kevin Hoffman
Staff writer, Scene
Cleveland, Ohio
While admiring the enthusiasm of young reporters to create a newspaper of their dreams, I found the lack of a call for a vigorous agenda for local coverage disappointing. The absence of any mention of dealing with major issues that face local communities — poverty, racism, poor education, homelessness, and inadequate low-income housing — suggests to me that the dream newspaper isn't much better than what we now have in most communities. The agenda set by those who participated struck me as a desire for a more cosmetic makeover rather than a radical change for newspapers to make them more relevant to all ages. My experience tells me that people thirst for interpretive information about who and what influence major public decision-making. I also did not get any flavor of a passion to represent those who most need help.
Roldo Bartimole
Cleveland Heights, Ohio
The editors reply:
Bartimole has every right to be disappointed that the young journalists did not emphasize local coverage, but to characterize their ideas as primarily "cosmetic" is inaccurate. These are not cosmetic changes: "more pounding the pavement, more questioning of authority, and more diversity in sources and staffing"; more international coverage, and coverage that is less jingoistic and includes a human face; stories that help citizens understand a state budget crisis, for example, or hold a politician accountable for broken campaign promises.
Rising Chorus
I can't praise you enough for your editorial, "The Silence of the Lambs" (CJR, January/February), on the danger to diversity posed by the FCC's stance on deregulation. Contrary to your belief, however, that journalists aren't covering this story, it is getting plenty of play, albeit not in the mainstream press on which CJR mostly focuses its gaze. The issue has been brought up repeatedly by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, and by the radio show, "Democracy Now," which is carried on the Pacifica Network and its many local affiliates. It is discussed at numerous media watchdog sites that are part of the "media democracy" movement.
Jeff Fox
Paramus, New Jersey
We at The Newspaper Guild don't take exception to the overall
thrust of your comments regarding the FCC push for media deregulation.
But we do want to point out that CJR — like many other media
observers — tends to overlook the efforts of labor unions
to put the brakes on the very trends you deplore.
So to answer your question of who will raise the alarm over the FCC's actions: We're doing our damnedest. Our December issue, for example, led with an article headlined: AS WE NEAR MEDIA OLIGOPOLY, THE MEDIA HAVE CLAMMED UP.
Andy Zipser
Editor, The Guild Reporter
Washington, D.C.
Whose Priorities?
On Brent Cunningham's laundry list of questions to ask the Pentagon about its new press policy (CJR, January/February), I'd like to address number four. "Will reporters be allowed to identify soldiers by name, rank, and hometown?"
Why should they? Our force in Afghanistan was initially less than a thousand "Special Operations" troops, each one a highly trained career soldier engaged in highly stressful and dangerous duty against an enemy who has declared that the old boundaries against attacks on civilians no longer apply. To identify those soldiers so specifically simply makes their loved ones a potential target and distracts them from their duties. That brings a new perspective to the phrase "need to know."
It is part of the shameful disconnect between American society and its military forces that so few people in the media truly understand what they are reporting on.
Cunningham's list demonstrates a basic media misperception about the military, which is not obligated to compromise its operations simply to make sure that reporters can file interesting copy on deadline. The military's job is to win wars. All else is secondary.
Francis Hamit
Frazier Park, California
Laurelizing Darts
I agree that many news organizations deserved criticism for their coverage of recent anti-war protests (CJR, Darts & Laurels, January/February). But you could easily have awarded a Laurel to three of the six publications Darted — The Washington Post, The San Diego Union-Tribune, and the Minneapolis Star Tribune, whose editors and publishers gave their ombudsmen the freedom and space to criticize their newspapers in print. Firing off Darts primarily at papers that do publish such criticism, and ignoring most of the others, might mistakenly encourage more guilty editors to hide behind their technological doorkeepers or claims of hard economic times. If your goal is to encourage press criticism, there are plenty of unrepentant targets available. There are more than a thousand daily newspapers out there, and I think we should all encourage the forty or so in the U.S. that have reader representatives answering the calls.
Sanders LaMont
President, Organization of News Ombudsmen
Sacramento, California
Clarification
An article in the January/February issue put the circulation of the Paris daily Le Monde Diplomatique at 400,000. In fact, its total circulation internationally and in all languages is more than one million.
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