Letters

SHOW THEM THE MONEY If the latest crop of reporters is indeed worse than ever before ("Rating the Recruits," CJR, March/April), I point the finger at the current state of the business of journalism. As one editor in the survey astutely noticed, industry-wide layoffs and financial doomsaying have chased away all but the most passionate (or foolhardy) members of the best and brightest class. Who can blame a would-be reporter who rejects the cookie-cutter journalism and corporate cutbacks infecting so many newsrooms today? And what happens to the ones with promise when the rent becomes too much for a salary that stays flat, or the latest round of downsizing makes the uncertainty of free-lance work look stable?

Rob Dean, managing editor at the Santa Fe New Mexican, responded to your survey with a radical thought: "[Newspapers] need to be places where young people can accomplish their goals, make a living, serve their communities - and have a voice in their paper." Call it the "Field of Dreams" approach. Build it and they will come.

KATIE RYAN, age 27

Staff writer, The Times Herald-Record

Middletown, New York

I am a 1998 journalism graduate who just left newspaper work - hopefully forever - for a job in another field. The thing I could never understand about journalism is that I, as a journalist, was supposed to love the profession so much that I would forgo family, friends, and personal needs to slave for the paper - and to do it for less money than the average fast-food store manager makes. Money wasn't supposed to matter - I wasn't in journalism for the money, right? But papers are owned by big companies watching the bottom line, cutting salaries, withholding raises, raking in profits of up to 25 percent. I'm not supposed to be in it for the money, but the ownership groups are sure as hell in it for the money.

AMY ELROD

Albuquerque, New Mexico

TERMS OF ENGAGEMENT

The ambivalence toward Steve Wasserman's high ambitions for the LA. Times Book Review (CJR, March/ April) illustrates a conundrum of contemporary newspapering. So often journalists are suspicious of efforts to satisfy the intellectual appetites of our brightest and most engaged readers. Yet we are baffled when so many of those same readers allow subscriptions to lapse because they can find nothing to engage them in their daily newspaper.

ROBERr LEE HoTz

Science writer, Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles, California

ALTERNATIVE VIEWS

As one who has spent more than half of the last thirty years editing alternative papers, I would challenge Kevin McAuliffe's assertion that "So far, the growth of the chains - and the shootout between them - have done no harm to alternative journalism" (cJR, March/ April). The current crop of alternative papers may be serviceable and relevant, but few could be described as idiosyncratic, experimental, passionate, or rambunctious - the hallmarks of the past papers I've known and loved.

DAN ROTTENBERG

Former editor, Philadelphia Forum

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania In the alternative San Antonio Current investigative reporter Debbie Nathan took the first real look at a multimillionaire who not only has bankrolled the campaigns of a very conservative, procorporate state Supreme Court, but also has bought himself several statewide office holders as well as a large number of legislators. This article has, in effect, the Express-News, to finally write about this manipulator of public process.

With most major cities being onedaily-newspaper towns, a good, aggressive weekly alternative is the only hope the public has.

CORINNE SABO

San Antonio, Texas

Kevin McAuliffe's "Alternative Story: The Battle in New York" contains a number of errors concerning the union at The Village Voice.

McAuliffe writes: "There is even labor peace on the horizon after recent settlements with [the Voice's] unions." First, there is only one union at the Voice UAW Local 2110, Technical, Office, and Professional -- which represents virtually all non-managerial employees. Second, our last three-year contract with the Voice was signed in July of 1996 - not "recent" by the time frame in which these things are measured - and there is no more likelihood of "labor peace" when negotiations for a new contract begin in June than there ever was. Third, writers at the Voice are hardly "locked in by the union." Our current contract affords scant protection to writers, who can (and have) been peremptorily dismissed by management. We may want to address this issue in upcoming negotiations.

JAMES CREEGAN

Shop steward, Village Voice Classified

New York, New York

NO UNDUE INFLUENCE

I was an assistant city editor of The Daily Progress in Charlotteville, Virginia, during the baby-swap coverage, at which you recently lobbed a Dart (CJR, March/April).

I acknowledge that USA Today and The Washington Post scooped the Progress (circulation 31,000, starting reporter's salary about $18,000) on some stories from the University of Virginia Medical Center. I wasn't happy about that and staffers perhaps recall my tirades on the subject. But it is a mere conspiracy theory to suggest that we buried or downplayed news because of the awkward fact that editor Wayne Mogielnicki is married to Medical Center spokeswoman Marguerite Beck.