FRIDAY'S LETTERS: 'Most' Alt-Weeklies Not Exclusively Online in Richmond, Readers Weigh in on ABC 9/11 Series

By: E&P Staff In today's letters, the editor of a Richmond, Va., alternative weekly disputes the claim that "most" alt-weeklies in Richmond have gone exclusively online, and readers weigh in on the controversy surrounding ABC's 9/11 mini-series.

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'Most' Richmond Alt-Weeklies Not Exclusively Online

In your story about the Richmond Times-Dispatch's faux alt weekly, Brick, I'm scratching my head over a notion attributed to Tom Silvestri, publisher of the T-D, that "most of the alternative weeklies in Richmond have gone to the Web."

Maybe by "most" he means "one," because I can only point to the Richmond Music Journal as an example of a local alt that publishes an online magazine with no print counterpart.

The other local alt weeklies and/or targeted publications that have ceased publishing are just out of business here. Those include The Richmond State, Chew On This, Inside Business and Punchline (which Brick Editor Pete Humes used to edit), along with a number of other former pubs. They have not "moved to the Web." They're just gone.

As for print publications in Richmond, I serve as the editor of Style Weekly, a member of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. We continue to publish a print publication, and have done so for nearly 25 years. Also on local stands: Wadi, Richmond Parents Magazine, V for women and a long list of community newspapers and magazines. And then there's RVA Magazine: Not only has it not "moved to the Web," but it's also publishing a high-quality, glossy, full-color free magazine that hasn't been seen in this market before.

Jason Roop
Editor, Style Weekly
Richmond, Va.


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On the ABC 9/11 Miniseries

Saw your story on the ABC docudrama. The fact of the matter is the Washington Post was responsible for the loss of the bin Laden satellite phone link, as I reported in my 2003 book "Breakdown" on the intelligence failures related to 9/11.

I wrote on p.131 of the paperback edition: "One official told me that the link went silent after a report in the Washington Post quoted a former U.S. intelligence official as saying that the NSA had been monitoring bin Laden's telephones. 'We lost the link after that,' the official said."

The 9/11 Commission was wrong in its report on that and never corrected the record.

Bill Gertz
Defense and National Security Reporter
The Washington Times
Washington, DC



We at The Washington Times tried last year to correct the record, and the 9-11 commission report, on us and Osama's satellite phone, in an article last year ... other publications reported that fact at least two years before we did. The idea that The Washington Times foiled attempts to catch bin Laden has been promoted by two former national security aides in the Clinton administration. When I emailed to one of them the previous reporting on bin Laden's phone, the former officials said he had never seen them before.

Rowan Scarborough
The Washington Times
Washington, DC



"The Houston Chronicle felt the subject important enough for an editorial on Friday, which closed with a description of the screenwriter's past credits, then declared: "It's unfortunate that ABC would trust the depiction of a still painful and politically volatile subject such as 9/11 to a writer best known for fantastical storytelling. The least ABC officials can do is remove segments found to be fictitious before distributing the movie to impressionable schoolchildren and a national audience."

And THAT in defense of a bunch led by a wretch who told the world and nation that "oral sex wasn't 'sex', and . . . wrestled and wiggled with the notion of "it all depends upon what the meaning of 'is' is".

Ed Esse



The Clinton crowd are a bunch of cry-babies who dare not let the light of truth on their tracks. We have been accustomed to their lying cover-ups for years. It is the politically correct and uninformed who fall for such trash. They can not stand to think their emporor has no clothes! Have you heard any such crying from Mr. Bush when a film is created of his assassination hoping to stir up some crazy to do it for the Dems?

I wonder what threats are being made to ABC to cause them to be such cowards.

Kathryn Jones



Where were all these people who feel we cannot fictionalize events when Michael Moore created a self-billed "documentary" that is filled with lies about Bush? Why is the anger so one sided? No one in Hollywood cared about the lies in Moore's 9/11 film at the time.

Ron Vyskocil



I find it ironic that the very folks who are complaining about the distortion of the truth in a "drama" series were utterly silent and even perhaps supportive of the so-called "documentary," Farenheit 911.

Sandy Berger should know what lying is about. Can a former NSA really be that "sloppy" as to take classified information for the Archives? I think it's rather funny that these folks are getting a taste of their own medicine.

Tim Behlmer