FRIDAY'S LETTERS: Marine Wife on Snow's 'Number', Coulter's Syndicate Hit, Revamping TimesSelect

By: E&P Staff In today's edition, a marine wife takes issue with White House press secretary Tony Snow's reaction to the 2500 soldiers dead in the Iraq war, a reader thinks Ann Coulter will get what's coming to her, and a reader comments at length on the pitfalls of the current incarnation of TimesSelect.


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Coulter the Cruel

All Ann Coulter wants is to be seen and make money. If Americans would not watch her when she's on TV ( I switch the channel) or buy her books, she would not be able to spread her hate. I recognize she has the right to say what she thinks, but in doing so she shows what kind of person she really is and it is NOT a Christian, nor even a kind person. She's vicious, and the more "over the edge" she can be the more attention and money she thinks she'll make. My advice to Ann is this: Words can never be taken back and yours will one day haunt you.

Phyllis Gilbert
Oklahoma



Ann Coulter is so ridiculous the press ought to just ignore her. Maybe she'll go away. Thanks for the report on her latest dim-witted remark anyway.

Bob Kalsey



Why would any respectable news syndicate have anything to do with spreading this hatemonger?s idiocies? Just because she?s blond, non-ugly, and WASP, what she has to say is newsworthy? If she were short, squat, poor and homely, none of these news outlets or publishers would have let her in the door. She is a nasty, egomaniacal, personality-disordered hate pusher ? nothing more, nothing less. No holds-barred? Anyone can come up with anything and just spew them out, without truth or justice -- why is this considered good by Universal? Does anyone have any sense, morals, ethics, compassion -- SENSE -- in journalism any more?

Sylvia Dolan


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Tony Snow's 'Number' Disrespectful

I am a proud wife of an officer who served 28 years in the Navy (while serving two tours of duty in Viet Nam, one in the Gulf War, and he was a survivor in the Pentagon on 9-11). I am also a very proud Marine Mom. During my life time I have lost a very dear family friend, a beloved uncle and a nephew of a very dear friend in wars.

I am so outraged about [Snow's comment] that the deaths are "numbers." I believe that is truly a slap in the face to every person who has died honoring our beloved country and truly an unkind remark to any family member who has had to face that dreaded "knock" on the door. Snow needs to apologize about this.

Pat Atkins


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TimesSelect Needs a Rethink

I read [David Hirschman's] TimesSelect piece with great interest because just last night I was wondering if the powers that be had learned yet how this bad idea was killing the audience for their columnists. I expected them to dump the pay-to-read folly by now.

I didn't sign up, but not just because 50 bucks is 50 bucks. I didn't want to encourage this thing because I feared it could spread into other sites. If I had to pay a toll at every gateway, I'd soon find myself limited to just two or three sites.

At first, I thought I'd go through extreme withdrawal. I'd been a regular reader of some of the columnists. But it was surprisingly easy to let go. Rarely a MoDo column will be emailed to me, and even more rarely a Frank Rich shows up, but for the most part I've been going cold turkey. It came as a shock to me when life went on, and I barely noticed the loss. I just scooted over to a few more blogs to fill up those hours I routinely tossed away online.

Something I've wondered about is the personnel side of TimesSelect. What effect will it have on the columnists when it comes time to sign another contract with the paper? I'd think they would want to get out of Dodge ASAP, to set up housekeeping at a paper that would be happy to use them as a free draw for readers -- and keep their fan base growing.

I question the wisdom of what NYT did for another reason, too. I work for a Website -- one that is a money machine. My guess is that the NYT's Website also makes money; I don't see how it couldn't. So I suspect the cash cow is carrying the burden of fixing the cash flow problems on the paper side of the business. If I'm right about that, wouldn't that seem to be an odd business model? Punish the folks who are making the Website a success (readers and columnists) in order to save the money-losing operation -- now there's a project for the Harvard Business School to examine.

My approach to this, were I the top dog at NYT, would have been to have pretended the online version of the paper didn't exist. I would set out to solve the paper edition's problems by fixing whatever it is that's causing readership to drop.

Here's an idea that could either work or bankrupt them: free admission to Websites means traffic, and that traffic means ad money. So why not give the paper away? More readers, more ad money.

But at the same time, don't let it rest there. Bring the paper edition into the new century by providing information pertinent to the times we live in. Put blogs on the site, then write about the blogs in the paper (analysis of what's being written). Focus on publishing stories that aren't already stale by the time the reader sees them. That's the big problem I see with paper editions of our local newspaper (it's not NYT, but I would guess it's also a problem for NYT): they're doing things backwards. They post stories online that will be appearing in the next day's paper editions. After reading the stories online, there's not much reason to pick up the paper. So how about making the online version of the paper the place to get the breaking news, with the paper edition providing analysis of that news -- rather than just a regurgitation of the same thing readers have already seen hours earlier, or even a day earlier. By the time a paper edition hits the streets, it's irrelevant, so make what hits the streets follow up to the primary stories.

I'd like to see newspapers focus far more on investigative series (i.e. not the news of the moment, but rather news that has a shelf life, and a perspective that looks both backward and ahead), and not have the articles in such series posted online until they've been distributed in the newspaper and have already gotten some buzz.

Newspapers have to do what the online sites aren't doing, and vice versa. As long as paper editions are just a repeat of what's already been out there in cyberspace, they're going to get more and more beside the point. The crop of news consumers that's now coming of age is turning to the Internet for its news, if they're consuming news at all. Newspapers need to stop moaning over that change in the marketplace and start catering to it in innovative ways. ...

Patricia Randolph


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Rosenbaum Death Related to the Economy?

The death of David Rosenbaum is being blamed on the little people as usual, the police, the EMTs, the hospital nurses, etc.. But the real failure, and cause of his death, should be blamed on the market economy. This crooked economy, that has the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, affects every sector of our society negatively, except for, of course, the very top of the economic ladder who spend their time walled off from the rest of us. The market economy has destroyed our healthcare system by eliminating the care from the system, pushing for a rich bottom line means cutting staff, cutting supplies, cutting wages and benefits all of which in the end has affected the outcome for David Rosenbaum.

David was one who happened to be well known and so his death is in the news while tens of thousands of Americans die without mention because the system itself has been profiteered to death. We should look at David's death as a signal that the market economy is a complete and utter failure as the best way to run a safe and secure society.

Howard Switzer
Linden, Tenn.