THURSDAY'S LETTERS: Downie's 'Wash Post' Reorganization

By: E&P Staff In today's letters, readers react to editor Len Downie's announcement that the Washington Post is planning major changes.

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Changes at 'Wash Post'


As a Washington Post subscriber, and reader of very few of their articles, I would suggest these additional changes:

1. Human interest articles about people be cut to a paragraph rather than two or three pages

2. Editorials and columnist's articles side-by-side with opposing views.

3. Any report about national or international current events that smacks of bias, partisianship, ideology or just plain stupidity be thrown into the wastepaper basket and the reporter assigned to the toilet detail.

This, I feel, will increase circulation by showing that the Washington Post is a responsible organization

Matt Borg



Real change out of Downie would have been an announcement that the paper will no longer engage in partisan crusades presented as "news" articles, as it has been doing now for some six years and was especially noticable during the senate campaign in Virginia most recently. Lennie could save many column inches right there.

Perhaps his real intent is to reorganize so that the paper can do more of this! Such is the direction that "journalism" has been taking among the "mainstreams."

Duane Lamers
Troy, Mich.



The Washington Post is cutting staff because [fewer and fewer] Americans are reading their newspaper. And why is that? Aren't they the hotshot journalists they have always been? Don't they get the scoop like they always did?

Americans are sick and tired of the press and their disdain for our country. For example, almost every news story on Iraq is a bad news story. Yet Iraqis are every day going about their business: going to work, to school, to worship. And Iraqis are every day freer than they were under their old boss, Saddam. But does the press tell us this? No, of course not.

So Americans are tuning you press guys out. We are getting our news from other sources because you people in the press are no longer trustworthy sources of information. Maybe when you people start to see yourselves as the problem, then you can start to correct the problem and maybe save your jobs in the process.

Patrick Curry
Irvine, Calif.