Hoop dreams

Mark

Sports methadone

As a home subscriber to the S.F. Chronicle, I want to thank the Free Press for creating an alternative to the strike edition of the Chron. Before I heard about your Web site's "Sporting Gray," I moped through the morning "Green," cursing for yet another strike affecting the sporting world. It's great to see Nevius, Jenkins, Shirk, and although we agree on rare occassions, Dickey. Any chance of seeing other Chronicle and/or Examiner sports writers with the Free Press?

By the way, I placed my delivery on "vacation" status rather than canceling my subscription. This way I can reinstate my subscription to support your insights instead of paying for bunch of news wire rehash. Hopefully, I can return from vacation early.

John Askins

So why not get a laptop and cellular link?

Question: if you drop the newspaper production and delivery costs, what would it take to run this thing full time as the nation's online paper?

With the talent already involved, drawing advertisers should be no problem, and the whole production job gets much easier. Just imagine, you can issue corrections after "going to press"! While the current online market may not measure up to the paper-consuming readership (which is going newsless), it's already sizeable and is going to build. Other papers are held back by fear of cannibalizing their existing products. Don't miss the opportunity that you all have to lead the way.

Please keep up the good work.

Scott T. Boyd
Editor, MacTech Magazine (on paper and somewhat online)

Glad to be here

Don Coco

We're not the only excited ones

Adele Framer

Always start the day with a nutritious meal

I have not been able to find the hard copy Free Press here in Marin. The Web page one is a lifeline.

Keep up the good work. Make sure those underpaid librarians get more dough.

Elliot Fabric

Look for the union label

As a one-time labor organizer and picket captain I know what it is like to be walking the line. I also know how scary it is to be without a paycheck. Don't give in.

Geoff Miller

Shafting crafts workers

Trouble is, you should really refrain from using terms like "solidarity" and the falsification of being "in this together" with your colleagues from the crafts. You see, in the world you are demonstrating and promoting here in cyberspace, who needs Teamsters or mailers or pressmen or printers or machinists or janitors or librarians or paper handlers, or for that matter papermakers or ink manufacturers or production equipment manufacturers or news dealers or circulation folks or ad agencys, or all others who have relied on the printing/publishing industry for employment?

So be a little more honest in your self-serving effort here. You have sold out your brothers and sisters in the crafts. Wave good-bye to the craft workers as you leave them behind, and please turn off the lights on your way out.

Curious strategy on your part. Teach the public that they don't need the product of your industry. Workers don't need this brand of "help." You are committing industrial suicide (or is it murder?). What will you do for an encore?

I suggest working with your (former?) employer to save as many jobs as the present day real world economics will allow. And then be thankful that you and your craft colleagues have those good (and surely impossible to replace) jobs. Make peace while peace is still possible.

Yesterday is gone forever. Things will never again be the way they were.

I am hopeful you will do the right things.

Will Horner

Youth carriers still do a better job

In a mere half-hour perusal of your World Wide Web page, I gleaned more information and entertainment than I have received from my home-delivered Chronicle in nearly a week. Caen! Carroll! Yoachum and Burdman! Robins! Morse! Shirk! This is The City's journalism, not that flimsy mockery tossed on my driveway the past few mornings, replete with ill-chosen wire copy and full-page scab beckonings.

I must admit, though, the San Francisco Newspaper Agency's ability to deliver its product out here in the 'burbs has its attractions. Pretty funny to see what those high-priced Chronicle management folks produce when forced to do a little work for a change. Not a reporter among 'em, and those editing skills look a bit atrophied, as well. Suddenly, it's The Whimper of the West.

Glad to have the Free Press filling the void. Best of wishes for a speedy triumph.

Rob Knies

Now you need a Newton and a cellular phone

Calton Bolick

Room service doesn't have?

Editor's note: We have no gopher server yet. We have added FTP for DOS, Windows and OS/2 computers (ccnet.ccnet.com in the directory /pub/SF_Free_Press) and are working on FTP for Macs.

Even the Macy's ad next to Herb Caen?

Lily Pond

You were out to get Feinstein

The release of this confusing and unsubstantiated story is nothing less than irresponsible. I would not be surprised to learn that you are paid by the Huffington campaign on the side.

Feinstein hired this person before hiring illegals was against the law. There is no proof that this person was an illegal, as Feinstein says after she saw the papers. This was in the early '80's when she was mayor of San Francisco. It's not relevant in terms of the issue of illegal immigration and Proposition 187 and the Senate campaign. This is a nonstory, but it is being used by Huffington to cloud the issue of his own hypocrisy. The fact that he hired an illegal immigrant to take care of his children after there was a law against it while he holding federal office and sponsoring legislation that purported to crack down on illegal immigrants.

You had to know how this false accusation would damage Feinstein's campaign before release the story. Apparently you didn't check it out very well before going to the press and TV stations. But, more importantly, what motivated you to go this far back in what had to be a deliberate search for dirt?

I have to conclude your reporter is just another irreponsible, jughead, ambitious reporter who will write anything to get ahead or you have her own political agenda which includes electing conservatives like Huffington.

Timothy Dean Perkins

Musings on KQED, modem-less masses

One of the best effects of the last strike was organization of Newsroom on KQED, channel 9, a marvelous news show staffed by striking reporters that survived and prospered after the strike was settled. It did not survive Tony "I'll downsize those lefties off my air" Tiano, however. What a loss. From the new spots on channel 9, it does not seem likely that the new regime of Mary G.F. Bitterman will allow a Newsroom II on her air, which is a shame.

Those of us online benefit greatly from the netnews, but what will the computerless masses do? In the postindustrial age, political power grows out of the line of the modem.

Neil Buckley

Build it and they will read

David Brogden

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