TUESDAY'S LETTERS: A Defense of George Tanber, An Open Letter to Robert Rosenthal, Loving a Small Paper

By: E&P Staff In today's letters, a defense of George Tanber, a lament for the rightward-looking Washington Post, and an open letter to Robert Rosenthal.


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In Defense of Tanber

I worked with George Tanber at the Anniston (Ala.) Star for three years, prior to his returning home to Ohio to work for The Blade. I was a cub reporter right out of college and was grateful to find in George a mentor and a friend. George brought terrific energy to any story he covered, whether a plane crash or a pet show. When he left Anniston, the young reporters in the newsroom lost a terrific teacher. The Blade's staff has no doubt suffered a similar loss. Anyone who knows George knows he is a man of integrity. If I owned a newspaper, I'd sure want him working for me. I can only imagine why Mr. Royhab would not want him part of his.

Eric Larson
President, Stellar Media
Maggie Valley, N.C.


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A Correction

Meg Gorecki was the Kane County state's attorney, not the attorney general. The attorney general is a statewide position in Illinois.

Dan Vock


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'Wash Post' Leaning Right?

Excellent story -- I think you hit the nail on the head. What's the deal with the Wash Post over the past 8 years or so? Is it Hiatt? Graham? Both is my guess. Very discouraging to witness the paper that Dems used to trust the most become a mouthpiece for Mr. Rove and his minions. After the death of Ms. Graham, the once great paper really seemed to change political sympathies, and to stop digging for the facts to present to us. We need that version of the Post back -- badly. These days, most dems hold the Post in contempt -- while secretly hoping that they somehow regain their former trustworthiness. Do the Corporations determine all now? When I examine the NY Times, I fear that I have my answer.

Admire your insight. Keep up the good work. I find myself trusting your site more and more -- and, with the exception of a Froomkin, Herbert, Krugman, Dowd, etc. -- not trusting the NYTimes and Wash Post as I used to. It is a shame, as these two papers used to be the papers that authentic Dems read and trusted the most.

What is surprising to me is that no one has filled that void for dems: a paper/cable news outlet that we can go to, can trust -- like CNN used to be trusted.

Gary Van Ess
Green Bay, Wis.


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An Open Letter to Robert Rosenthal

Dear Rosey,

I want to offer a counter point to your comments in E&P and on the radio over the sale of the Inquirer. As journalists, we have all complained that public ownership has caused our newsrooms to suffer cost-cutting because our companies were at the mercy of quarterly swings in profit. It was not like this in the old days, many former leaders of The Inquirer have written in article after article, all ironically linked through the online medium of Romenesko that, like so much now, was not even imagined back in that time.

Well, no, it wasn't. But today, this IS how it is, even at a paper such as the Chronicle that is not publicly held. To be productive, the point of the conversation must be: What is to be done now and in the future?

You know first-hand as well as I do how The Inquirer has suffered from cost cuts at the hands of a corporate owner responding to Wall Street's demands. That has made us the subject of endless coverage and speculation and criticism. Now The Inquirer is at the forefront of a new grand experiment, private community ownership. Yes, these owners are prominent people in Philadelphia. Yes, they have ties to all sorts of businesses and politicians. But they have declared that they care about this paper and its role in the community in a way that the corporate owners were no longer able nor inclined to profess.

Some of the men and women who are the new owners have backgrounds and past fights and issues with us that they bring to the table. We know who they are and what they have done. But they stepped up and paid a fair price for one of the best papers in the country, and they said they did it because they believe in journalism and its role in civic debate. That is a stronger statement of our role than I have heard from a corporate board chairman in years. And they bought it from a company considered to be one of the best in the industry, but one that told its investors that it would not retain the "all-star" Inquirer because it did not make enough money.

The members of this new ownership group say they believe in the power, and the honorable work, of the press. They said that on the first day. I intend to hold them to that vow each and every day I hold this job. I know that every journalist in the newsroom will do the same. That is the check in the system, the counterweight, to having well-connected business men and women owning the newspaper. The power to make this work is right here and always has been, with the people who make up the staff of The Inquirer, many of whom you know so well. Our integrity and unrelenting sense of our journalistic purpose will guide us as we daily publish in print and electronically. Of that I am confident.

Will issues arise from private community ownership? Yes. Will we work together to ensure that our journalism does not weaken at these moments? I have been assured that we will. And I am confident that the men and women who work here and who honor our past AND our future will make it so each day as they write, edit, photograph and design our news pages and online sites."

Anne Gordon


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Loving Small Papers

I am once again enjoying a small-town paper after years of being without one. The local "big" newspaper does not have much local news of interest, except for sports, and most of the news is slanted right so I discontinued it months ago and have not missed it. This is a time when the world would benefit if our citizens had papers with news they could trust and would feel compelled to read them to stay informed as was done in this country years ago.
Sally Strope


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'No One Killed at Abu Ghraib'?

Retired Brig. Gen. David M. Brahms is quoted in the Washington Post (and then E&P) about the Haditha massacre: "When these investigations come out, there's going to be a firestorm. It will be worse than Abu Ghraib -- nobody was killed at Abu Ghraib." I heard this exact same line -- "nobody was killed at Abu Ghraib"--several times yesterday from various pundits and news anchors. This is absolutely untrue.

It seems that Brig. Gen. Brahms, as well as the media, have forgotten all about Manadel al-Jamadi, who was not only tortured to death during interrogation at Abu Ghraib, but even features in a well-known picture of Charles Graner, one of those infamous Abu Ghraib "bad apples."

Nor was al-Jamadi the only Iraqi to die at Abu Ghraib. There are many others, including a number listed as "shot during riot," but many others listed as "natural causes or accident" or "unknown or still under investigation," many of which are quite likely to have actually been murders which were either covered up or simply never investigated.

Then there are those who never made it into a prison at all. There was Nazem Baji, executed by U.S. troops while in custody, shot in the head while his hands were tied with plastic handcuffs. There was Salem Hassan, beaten to death by U.S. soldiers at a checkpoint for refusing to remove a picture of Moqtada al Sadr from his car. And so many, many others.

"Nobody was killed at Abu Ghraib"? Bullshit.

Eli Stephens


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...with friends like Frank Rich, Al Gore doesn't need enemies.

David Siff