TODAY'S LETTERS: Non-Combat Deaths In Iraq, Grassroots Media And Venezuela

By: E&P Staff Readers wrote in today about non-combat deaths in Iraq, grassroots mediaand Venezuela.


Far be in from me to enter into combat with Army Mom, but I would point out to her, as gently as possible, that she is dead wrong when she says that most of those in service who have committed suicide in time of war were equally likely to kill themselves in a period of stress in civilian life.

There are relatively few events in civil life that compare with the sight of comrades being torn apart under heavy, constant bombardment or on seemingly placid city streets along which bombs have been rigged with cunning finesse.

Wesley Pedersen


An Important Lesson About Grassroots Media
Steve Outing's column about the failure of his online media empire calls into question just about all of the "valuable advice" that E&P readers have endured in his past columns.

I've long felt that Outing's proprietorship of an online news organization represented a conflict of interest at E&P, particularly in that he often proselytized about the coming "death of print" and berated newspaper publishers for being too timid when it came to the brave new world of the Net.

Outing's business paradigm was perfect, right up until it got to the point that revenue was needed to sustain it. Even the shabbiest newspaper ad salesman will tell you that "if you build it, they will come" is not the sort of model one employs if actual success is the objective.

Now I suppose we'll be subjected to a year's worth of columns in which the failed mogul attempts to make lemonade out of lemons by dissecting his disappointment so that others won't repeat his bush league mistakes.

He shouldn't bother. Those who have found success in journalism as a business weren't paying any attention anyway.

Mike Hudson
Editor, Niagara Falls Reporter


I find very little difference between today's "user/grassroots" content with a reporter using sources for a story.

The only real difference is that there are far fewer reporters at work than there used to be, and so now we let the sources do the writing, even though their information probably is not vetted.

Grandma's home remedies (user content) may work sometimes, but it is usually better to go to the doctor (journalist) to get the job done professionally.

Ken Anderberg


You said better in your column "An Important Lesson in Grassroots Media" something I have thought for a long time and recently expressed to the news director of my old site, sfgate.com. That the approach of going either with all or mostly user-generated material or of keeping it separate in its own zone on the professional site is both incorrect and won't generate enough energy to sustain itself.

Exercise news judgment and mix what's best from the community in with what your own staff puts out. I would add to that doing some fact checking to make sure someone's assertion or breaking story is true. But if it is, and if the writing is decent enough, go with it and say where it came from.

This mingling of professional and community was the original vision for sfgate.com. I know that pros don't much like these ideas, but this is the tide of history and can't be stopped. Someone is going to do it right, demonstrate it and soon enough it will be the way it works.

John Coate

Exclusive: A Trip to 'Polarized' Venezuela

I read Mark Fitzgerald's article on the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) delegation to Venezuela with interest. First off, I want to congratulate E&P for taking the time to travel and gain firsthand knowledge of how the media functions in that country. This puts the magazine in a good position to produce an informed account.

The piece rightly points out the arrogance of IAPA's Executive Director, who claimed that the 63% of Venezuelan voters who support President Chavez are simply "stupid." Fitzgerald, on the other hand, approaches the topic in a more balanced way by taking stock of the buzz around freedom of expression in Venezuela, looking at graffiti, and attending political rallies on constitutional reforms that are the subject of a national referendum on December 2nd.

Missing from the article, however, is an analysis of how claims about a deterioration of press freedoms in Venezuela hold up against observed realities. During the visit, was the writer surrounded by pro-Chavez messages? Was there a noted shortage of debate regarding proposed constitutional reforms? Did people seem afraid of making statements against the government? Was there evidence of censorship in newspapers or TV?

I feel quite certain that the answer to all of those questions is a resounding no. Private ownership still dominates in Venezuela. While TV stations Venevisi?n, Televen, and Globovision toned down their political posturing in recent years, they did so in order to maintain viewers and not because of meddling by the state. The claim that Chavez is curtailing press freedoms comes consistently from opposition groups looking for ways to denounce the government. Others, including the vast majority of journalists and citizens, will affirm that freedom of the press is in fine shape. Higher-ups know it, too; OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza stated even after the non-renewal of RCTV last May that press freedoms were "in full force." I do not suggest that E&P should reject IAPA findings, but merely tell both sides of the story.

Finally, in a country as politically polarized as Venezuela, IAPA is not without its own positioning. Future articles on the delegation should take this into account. IAPA has felt targeted by the Chavez administration, but that is owed to its dogged attempts to discredit the elected government. This is a government that survived a coup attempt just five years ago. Some of the IAPA folks are seen as associated with that coup because Venezuela's privately-owned mass media supported the illegal actions. IAPA recently gave the Grand Prize for Press Freedom to Marcel Granier, the owner of RCTV, which was proven to have manipulated information during the coup. These connections make clear that IAPA is not an impartial observer of political events in Venezuela. E&P, on the other hand, can and should be.

Megan Morrissey
Media Analyst
Venezuela Information Office