FRIDAY'S LETTERS: Taking Aim at FAS-FAX Gainers, Judy Miller's Security Clearance and More

By: E&P Staff Sometimes readers ask good questions, and often they even offer good answers. Today we have a couple of both. If you have any questions, or answers, don't keep it to yourself. Send us a letter.

What Constitutes a 'Handful'?

Re: Newspapers with Circ Increases Share Strategy

My review of the recent ABC FAS-FAX Report shows 125 daily newspapers and 103 Sunday newspapers growing circulation during the most recent reporting period. That's 17.2% of the 727 daily and 16.8% of the 613 Sunday newspapers covered. Hardly a handful in my opinion (your words: "For the handful of newspapers showing circulation increases...")

While your story certainly focuses on newspapers showing growth, many people don't and won't get past the first paragraph due to e-mail alerts, blog links and RSS feeds that only show the lede. Perhaps a more inviting sentence reflecting the positive would have read, "For the more than 100 newspapers showing circulation increases... ."

Given the circulation growth challenges our industry faces, lauding those growing and stating the number growing as opposed to marginalizing them would be more beneficial to our cause.

Christian A. Hendricks
Vice President, Interactive Media
The McClatchy Company
Sacramento, Calif.

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A Bunch o' Praise

Re: Will Bunch's opinion column, The Editor Who Cried 'Wolfowitz'

I thought your column regarding Bill Keller's blind spot, vis-?-vis Paul Wolfowitz, was right on the mark. Let me tell you when I decided that Mr. Keller and the Times had moved too far right for me. Several months ago there was an editorial denouncing the state of Connecticut for suing the federal government over the No Child Left Behind Act. Connecticut joined several states in pointing out both the economic and pedagogic flaws in this act. That the Times would support such a flawed Bush policy demonstrated to me that the Sulzberger/Keller duo was a pale imitation of New York Times publishers and editors who came before them.

Richard Taylor
Shorewood, WI

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Contemplating Judith Miller's Security Clearance

Re: William E. Jackson Jr.'s opinion column, The Mystery of Judy Miller's "Security Clearance" Deepens

When I heard that Judy Miller claimed to have witnessed a prisoner interrogation, I said that's impossible. She'd need more than a Secret clearance, she'd need an Intel clearance, and those take even longer to get than a Secret rating.

Now, reading your article -- although you seem to come to the opposite conclusion -- her stating that she had clearance to discuss "intelligence sources and methods" leads me to believe that maybe she had the required Secret rating, and did witness an interrogation. This of course means, since the community takes time to grant such clearances, the process to obtain the clearance would have had to commence about, or even before, the time the White House Iraq Group was formed.

As far as I'm concerned, she may have gotten her first clearance when she was doing the disinfo job on Khadafi nearly 20 years ago. We may never learn for whom she really worked all these years, although her product indicates it wasn't in service to the readership of the New York Times.

Carl Lee
Minnetonka, Minn.

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What Constitutes a 'Dead Heat'?

Re: At Newspapers That Backed Bush in 2004, New Worries, But Few Regrets

Perhaps there were shortcomings in my education, but could you please explain to me how a win by 3,000,000 votes is a "dead heat"? Are you that ill-informed, or is this just a blatant attempt at a little revisionist history?

Lisa Montague

Ed's Note: Lisa's above letter got us thinking about what should qualify as a "statistical dead heat," the term often bandied about in the media. Google has 54,900 entries on the term, and people smarter than us on the subject of statistics have written academic papers on the media's use of the term. According to CNN, Bush received 62,040,606 votes in the 2004 presidential election to Kerry's 59,028,109. Ralph Nader received 411,304. Add all those up and Bush's margin of victory in the popular vote was 2.48%. So "dead heat" or not? You tell us.