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Monday, Nov. 14, 1994
Just wanted to thank you for having the Free Press available online. Canceled my subscription, fully supporting you all. Hang tough.
Jonathan Payne
I'd never looked for news on the Net until the Bay Guardian let me know that I could find you there. So I went to the UC-Berkeley campus computer center, and soon found myself reading a real newspaper. You guys are great!
As long as the strike lasts I know I'll be getting my news from the online Free Press. I'm printing some of the articles out to take to my house mates, who desperately need Jon Carroll and Herb Caen.
Thanks and good luck!
Sam Davis
Nice job with the online presence. Good luck, and I hope the strike clears up soon. And, always, give 'em hell. ...
Jason Gull
Beautiful online paper, folks. Much better than the paper-thin S.F. joke of a Comical they're sometimes deciding to deliver. Besides, "Sporting Gray" has major giggle value. Good luck with the strike, and please keep on HTMLizing after you're back at work.
Kevin Savetz
I just noticed the online version of the Free Press, and I wanted to thank you for putting it together. I particularly enjoyed Herb Caen's and Jon Carroll's columns and appreciated the election coverage (indeed, that's how I got to your WWW page in the first place).
I did notice a few lacks, though, in case you're interested. First, I have been unable to find a definitive list of the local election results. The winners of the supervisor race were reported, but I didn't get to find out how Josh Newman fared, and I would have liked to have seen how each of the local measures came out.
The second thing I noticed was that Joyce Millman mentioned a number of really lame TV choices for Wednesday night, but completely missed "Babylon Five," which is the best thing on on Wednesday nights (indeed, I would argue that it ties with "Northern Exposure" as the best thing on TV right now).
Ted Lemon
Just wanted to congratulate you on an excellent service. I checked out SFGate (the site where the online Chronicle and Examiner are publishing), and I just have three things to say: lame, lame, lame. It wasn't only the content, either -- it's slow, poorly designed, and the images look like they were scanned in from a cheap hand scanner. There is something I would like to see on the Free Press, however -- links to other pages. For example, in your election coverage, you never mentioned that Digital set up a WWW server to have real-time election results. Also, they had information about all the candidates and propositions. It's still up and has all of the results from the entire state. Check it out at http://www.election.ca.gov/.
Bob Hogg
Great job on the WWW site. The "publication" has been invaluable for us living outside California with this access and interest in the election results. Best of Luck with the strike.
Miguel Navrot
With your on-line version of the Free Press, it is starting to feel like the hype over the Internet is starting to turn into reality. It's great to see it. Now we just have to have the comics available on the net ("Dilbert" fans note: http://nearnet.gnn.com/gnn/news/comix/graphics/Dilbert.gif).
Steven Grady
Good luck! I canceled my subscription two years ago. The paper was inept at delivery but VERY good at billing!! ANYTHING that improves service and insures delivery is needed! In the meantime getting you ONLINE is GREAT! Management CAN'T "miss" my delivery now!
Marshall Sayegh
The Free Press is very refreshing. Keep up the good work; many of us are foursquare behind you. By the way, do you think you could get "The Fusco Brothers"?
Jym Dyer
Given the current "will of the people," can we expect Pete Wilson and Frank Jordan to join forces on solving the pending farm labor shortage? I envision a fleet of Matrix buses scooping up homeless from the streets of San Francisco and driving them off to the Central Valley to pick our arugula.
California Ueber Alles!
Ken Joye
It's interesting that Gov. Wilson's first act under the terms of Prop. 187 is to order an end to prenatal care for undocumented immigrant women (Free Press, Nov. 10). Doesn't he realize that the people to suffer most from this move will be the soon-to-be-born children, children who will be American citizens? Without any basis for denying emergency medical services to those Americans born prematurely because their mothers were denied prenatal care, this could be a very expensive move indeed. Surely, as a fiscally prudent Republican, he must see the folly in this. Or perhaps he expects these American babies to just die when their mothers are unable to go to the hospital to give birth. If so, where were the legions of pro-lifers on Election Day?
Suzanne Paley
I just wanted to wish you guys luck in the strike!
UNION YES!
Kevin Clark
Hang in there. I drive a cab and honk for you folks every time I pass, but I'm starting to fear the cops busting me for honking. Seen 'em do it? If not I'm back to full horn. >p> More power to you.
Jim Lewis
United Taxi Workers Board member
Too bad it took a strike to get an electronic newspaper of relatively traditional organization (Mercury News Center doesn't count). I would pay money to be able to read my newspaper without consuming a load of paper. Keep it in mind.
Dan L
I am the son of a 30-year Guild member and a former Teamster newspaper truck driver (Oakland Tribune, 25 years ago). I am sorry to hear that you have been forced out -- the Chronicle is one of my favorite newspapers, and it is always depressing to hear when management loses sight of the qualities and the people who have made it possible.
I send my support to all the strikers.
Robert Tighe
After seeing both the Chronicle and Examiner endorse Pete Wilson and seeing San Francisco's lopsided support of Kathleen Brown (she got 69 percent of the vote in the city to Pete's 27 percent), which paper best represents the views of San Franciscans? Of course, the Free Press! San Franciscans endorsed universal health care, opposed three strikes and rioted over the racist anti-immigration proposition. We saw through Quackenbush (with 90 percent of his campaign contributions coming from the insurance industry) and he actually lost in this city 70 percent to 20 percent, although he won handily in the rest of the state. And you folks were right on the money in representing our views. Hey, our community finally has a newspaper that actually has its finger on our pulse!
Also, by standing up for organized labor and workers' rights at a time when the rest of the country is moving to the right and when selfishness and looking out for No. 1 are all that seems to matter, your sacrifices are an example to us all.
I'm proud of your newspaper and I'm proud to be a San Franciscan. Keep up the good work!
Jim Nakamura
They may have the facilities, but you have the soul of the newspapers. Keep it up. I had the Chronicle delivered to my door three times, in spite of two calls to cancel the subscription for the duration. There was still more local news in your slim issues. I questioned their circulation claims when I saw stacks of papers dumped on a corner Wednesday and Thursday.
As a computer support person it is refreshing to see such a good example of the empowerment this technology can bring.
Jim Uomini
The Free Press beats regurgitated press releases any day. I think by concentrating on local news and having all the regular columnists, you deliver a better sense of community (the strength of online communications) than does either the Gate or that sad excuse for a newspaper that is now being published under the Chronicle banner (although, to be entirely honest, I wasn't the biggest fan of the Chronicle before). If anything, the technological merit and the demonstration of solidarity involved in putting together the Free Press will have a more enduring impact than the news itself.
Jason Douglas
I am glad to have access to the Free Press, and honored that my Internet provider is its host. I hope your daily develops into a full-fledged newspaper. I personally would be willing to spend 25 cents a day to buy it, just to have access to news that doesn't insult my intelligence (even though it's only a few pages now) and to support the strikers. Are you considering home delivery yet?
Dan Stern
Just a quick note on Bruce Jenkins article:
1) Multiple spelling and grammatical errors (you must be lacking editorial support!)
2) The web connection at the bottom of the article did not throw me back to the top ot the sporting gray, but rather produced an error. Might be worth checking.
The Free Press is truly enjoyable, keep up the great work!
C. DeLeone
Thanks for making this paper available over the Internet. Newspaper strikes obviously no fun for anyone involved, but in a weird twist of fate, people who are blind, as I am, are benefiting. This is the first time I've been able to effectively and independently read the local news from San Francisco. So at least during these troubled times I want to say thanks for your efforts.
You may not know how someone who's blind accesses the computer. Without going into detail, let me say that there's an easy way to move from link to link on a hypertext page and hear the linked word spoken after reading the entire page. On your sports page you have the word "here" used as the link for many of the services on the Satchel Sports server. I wonder if there's anyway you could make more of the text part of the link like instead of just "here" perhaps "here for NBA". Making this kind of change would make it easier for to use the page.
Kelly Ford
Your excellent daily definitely shows that the age of electronic communication is in the hands of those who write for it, not those who profit from reprinting it and selling it. I have webbed out a couple of times to the Gate, but your piece of work definitely beats the other two papers combined.
Jack Greenwood
Maybe a comment from someone who is almost totally ignorant of the issues might give you an idea of what the ignorant masses are thinking. The Teamsters have always seemed a frightening incubus to me, tough guys, some of them mobsters -- like the guys I saw chasing down a Chronicle delivery truck on Clement Street the other day. It's hard to be sympathetic with them, and they seem to be in the forefront of this strike. I understand how worrisome it is when somebody wants to take away your job, even by the "soft" glove of attrition. But I can't understand how you can "win" this battle. I've watched every p.m. paper in the country go down the tubes. Now it's the Examiner's time -- isn't it? If you save those Teamster jobs, won't you be sacrificing hundreds of Examiner jobs?
J. Heverly
Just been reading your paper on the net -- very impressed with the thing. Incidentally the best thing they could do is probably to lock you out. At least in electronic form you could outsell the bastards no problems.
Mike Cavanagh
Well, there are a lot of spelling mistakes, but for the availability of the service I can live with that. Is this going to go away after the strike? Or was it here all along and I just didn't know it?
Brian Rice
Editor's note: No, we weren't here all along; and yes, we are going
away, at least in this strike format.
Printed newspapers are in for some qualitative changes, and both the Free Press and the electronic Chronicle and Examiner are showing us what's in store.
What I would like would be to see some way to make the Free Press economically viable. If it stays together then I won't go back to the other papers. It's great to read reporters writing about things they care about. (I wasn't quite sure whether Herb Caen was still alive).
Tell you what, see if you can get "Dilbert" and "Doonesbury" and a few other cartoons, and I'll pay you money. Can you put "Farley" online? And how about a letters column?
Philip Morton
About six months ago Herb Greenberg cited a saying in the technology business: "Your most valuable assets walk out the door every day". It was a column about my then company, Ingres. Herb correctly assessed the potential for a mass exodus of Ingres employees. Ingres was in the process of being acquired by Computer Associates. Computer Associates was demonstrating how little it valued the software engineers that did Ingres product development. Herb had interviewed several of us, and his column reported that unless there was substantive improvement, we were ready to walk.
I'm reliably informed that Charles Wang, chief executive officer of Computer Associates, had a copy of that column on his desk the next day. The interesting thing is that he didn't benefit from it. There was no change in his behavior or that of his company. As a result, 90 percent of the software engineers at Ingres walked.
It now seems to me, in the context of the present strike, that there are some parallels. I hope one of them is not management's failure to understand the value of its employees. The ability to research and write a coherent, accurate news report or article or analysis or column, on schedule and on deadline, is quite as rare as the ability to craft a correct, robust computer program. And reading the Free Press, I'm struck by the quality of the writing. Herb Caen's tight prose, Jon Carroll's offbeat yet direct style, Rob Morse, Mick LaSalle, Joyce Millman, Art Hoppe, Stephanie Salter, and, to bring us full circle, Herb Greenberg, and many more; the writing they do is of a quality not easily replaced. I hope the Chron/Ex management are quite clear on this point. They can avoid Charles Wang's mistake.
Jon Krueger
I feel that one reason we, as journalism students, should support the striking workers is because we will soon be looking for jobs that pay decent wages, offer decent benefits and treat their employees with respect. My view is that the unions are fighting for benefits that we may be taking advantage of in the near future. This is what I've tried to pass along to those who don't seem to understand the "big picture" of what this strike means. If you can't support the principles and the fight, at least support it for purely selfish reasons.
I have been devouring the online edition of the Free Press, and I love it.
You guys are proving your worth and that it is independent of the management. Congratulations! I think you may be changing the way people, at least in the Bay Area for now, are thinking about receiving their information. Online newspapers are not as distant as some people think. Certainly they don't completely replace traditional newspapers (My adviser's objection is that he can't take online news into the bathroom with him. I suggested a laptop.), but I am already thinking differently about where to go to find quality information.
So that's my two cents worth, I just want you to know there are a lot of us supporting you and learning from watching and discussing this whole issue.
Pia Christensen San Francisco State University
Congratulations on settling the strike. As a WWW user, I've enjoyed http://www.ccnet.com/SF_Free_Press immensely, especially in light of the anemic work done at "the Gate." Your use of the Internet has been fresh, timely and professional. But I look forward to a full-fledged Chronicle and Examiner. There is an immediacy to reading the news on paper -- scanning headlines, flipping through sections, photos. Even ink on the fingers.
However, the net is a great tool, especially for fast-breaking news. I'll miss your web site -- it's lively, professional and well designed. please take your experience back to the Chronicle and Examiner and liven up the Gate -- it needs it.
M. Sippey
As a long-time San Franciscan marooned out here in the provinces, it has been great to read the Free Press each day. I have missed Bruce Jenkins for several years and to get the daily low-down on the Board of Supervisors brings tears to my eyes. Thanks, and keep it up after the strike.
Robert D. Canning, Ph.D.
Now that the strike is over, I'd just like to say that I hope that the excellent work you've all done in getting a paper out online won't come to an end. The Free Press has been a far better paper than the one that used to be dropped on my doorstep. I hope that the spirit and freedom to pursue an issue without the the strictures of Chron/Ex editorial control will continue to make itself felt out here in the Net. You've done a hell of a job. Thanks to everyone who's made the Free Press possible for continuing to deliver real news during what has to have been a truly hellish period for you all.
Jerry McDonough
I've been getting the Freep electronically and on paper, and even once by home delivery (a friend and neighbor is a striker and Freep worker). It's great to see all this good writing UNTRUNCATED for a change. I'm all in favor of a settlement if it can be reached, but I hope the spirit that has infused the writers during this time remains with you all well into the future. That goes especially for you, Herb!
David Gans
First, congratulations on your victory in the strike. Second, thank you for publishing the Free Press. Those of us former Bay Area residents living overseas who, even after the strike has ended, cannot buy a Chronicle or Examiner really appreciate projects like this one. I hope that the Free Press will move the newspaper industry from talking about the future of the global information infrastructure, to the realization that its here, has been here and will only get tougher to compete in as time races on.
Mark Alleman Design Division Kyoto Institute of Technology
Congratulations to all of you for your inspiring solidarity, unshakable clarity of purpose and dogged work habits. I have read the paper whenever I could find it and started to read it on the WWW a couple of days ago.
One note: the editorials have been wonderful, punchier than usual and completely reflecting my sentiments about events of the last week.
Let's secede.
Lucy Johns
I think you are making history now. Keep the good work. Journalist colleagues in Greece and I have talked about the Free Press and are excited by this experiment. You have all our support.
Paschos Mandravelis Athens, Greece
The issues of Robert Rossney's column "Trouble for Trucks and for Everyone Else" (Free Press Nov. 12-13) has raised the fundamental issue I've been thinking about since the beginning of the strike. There are certainly more efficient ways to bring news to people than have a wad of pulp be dropped on their driveway each morning. The Free Press has proven that. The people who have most at stake in the strike are those who drive the trucks and they are not involved in distributing the strike paper.
Can they be? This may be filed under the contrite heading of "re-engineering", but there are plenty of service-oriented jobs in administering systems which hold information. As manager of such a system I pay technical people $60K a year for doing so.
Are there 600 jobs to be had at ccnet.com, information provider for the Free Press? No. But, Time doesn't have 600 people to cart their rag to the post office each week. But, they do have a considerable investment in electronic media and, I dare say, more information systems administrators than they have trucks.
So, I think that globally there are and will continue to be more jobs in the administering the information field than in driving trucks for the information field. And these positions are attainable to people who take courses at Foothill College, University of California, etc.
Let the dime-a-copy delivery men take control of the lower echelons of information distribution while the 600 transform themselves. Or, surely the "recent immigrants" mentioned in the column will move directly to the high-tech industry.
Mark Haynie
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