[IMC-Boston-Editorial] For Ed and Jon

[visnusdream at juno.com]

I just want to say that I am really glad we are discussing this stuff. I want everyone to know that I have well formed opinions but I am also trying to have an open mind. Overall, I think things are going well and hope this discussion merely makes them better. Sometimes, in an e-mail, I can seem really harsh in my criticisms of certain actions. Please, understand that rhetorical technique in written form can sometimes be mis-leading. If I sound like a total Jerk, I definitely don't mean it that way. I'm just trying to relay my thought processes.
OK, I didn't understand this paragraph:
for our resident lurker(s) why don't you engage in the decision making
process here rather than posting dumb stuff on the site? And BTW john
brown writes better than me and thinks much more highly of the public
school system than I do...you have my email address and google will
give you my office address and probably my work phone number, so I'm
far from hiding if you wish to take personal exception.  That's my
last direct answer to inderect kvetching, and is likely too much.

I know your busy; but could you please clarify?
I am thankful to the person who posted the "This is getting ridiculous argument." I have another comment about Veteran, which I will also post there as a comment:.
Another way to look at a person like Veteran is that he provides an outlet for the articulation of ideas. Without a person like that showing up, with a definite opinion, who actually cares about it and is ready to argue for it, BIMC is just more left wing, radical, progressive, independent, amateur, or (choose your adjective) news. That has been done. In fact its one of the big problems in the world. The people with differing views don't talk. The right wingers, or those with a so-called mainstream mindset, go to THEIR sources for news and radicals, leftists, and transcendentalists go to theirs. No one is in conversation. A person who has not yet developed a personal ideology must read and listen to the differing views in a sterile environment. Veteran shows up, argues the same point over and over, and a bunch of people totally dismantle and expose his views for what they are. Even if he never concedes defeat, he may still be defeated, and an intelligent reader, who is just trying to sort things out will realize this. Dissent is good. 
Sofia, I think that you make a great point about the Democratic party post. We don't want to become  just an on-line push-pin board for every political action item. But I don't think we can go so far as to say the Democratic party can't post to our site. If they become a problem then we can do something about it. This was just one post and in my opinion it was highly relevant. There is a general mood brewing in this country against the war. A major Democratic Senator was calling George Bush a liar, who had misled the country and took it to war. I have no vested interest in the Democratic party, and have no love for their ideology but the fact is they are a major political party and this shift among their leadership is newsworthy. Furthermore, it is not getting as much mainstream press as perhaps it should, from what I can tell. (I don't read much mainstream press.) We had Murtha a week or two ago and now we have Ted Kennedy . . . I see this post as part of a larger story about the growing anti-war sentiment at home, and I think our readership is smart enough to see it that way. We are trying to inform not indoctrinate.
I just want to add a final statement that the newswire is electronic and highly disposable. The feature section is different, but for the most part we can just let stuff run through that news wire, especially the elsewhere section. We are not print media. Most of our articles in the elsewhere section were not even written specifically for BIMC. Most of our readers have no vested interest in letting that thing stagnate. If we want to keep our readership interested we need to have diversity and a lot of updates. Every time we hide an article it means that some item that has been sitting there for 2 or 3 days is going to sit there a little longer. I think we should throw out the trash and keep it clean but also we should have a nice solid flow of fresh ideas and stories running through it.   
I'd like to see a Razorwire directing people to the Elsewhere section. I think it is one of our most undervalued resources. 
I have had people tell me that they see the BIMC site as a place to cruise through sometimes but that they think its kind of irrelevant. Especially for everyday use. A reader like that is basically lost to us. They're not going to really hear much of what we have to say. They may go months without checking in. I would like to draw some of these people in, and make them regular readers.  
Sincerely,
Jamie    
 
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