Dear FRONTLINE,

Once again this is another typical poor Management practice the Tribune is doing with the L.A. Times. And once again I have to ask the same question after watching your sho--

With the Tribune putting pressure on the LA Times to cut staff due to economic restraints, how much of the Tribune's Upper Management Salaries/Staff were cut to meet the Goal's for the L.A. Times revenue projections? It was interesting to see the Tribune pointing out that if any Non-Profit wants to control a "14 Billion Dollar" company to give the CEO a call. It was never pointed out what the Tribune did to become a "14 billion dollar company.

Fin Smith
Denver, CO

Dear FRONTLINE,

I have just moved back from France to the U.S. After 3 weeks of being held hostage by all of the news on Anna Nicole Smith, Britney Spears and what-they-wore-at-the Oscars, I, too find the present state of American "journalism" deplorable. If I wanted to hear all of this, I'd subscribe to the National Enquirer. Call it "junk food" for the mind, one only has to wonder how much longer the US can maintain its status of superpower if young people are more interested in rock stars than other young people giving their lives and limbs in Iraq.

Politicians who are not supporting Bush's sending 20,000 troops to Iraq are viewed as not supporting the troops, yet, the American news media caters to young people who are hardly interested in news on the troops.

The idea that 3 full time newspaper journalists covering the war is "enough" is not just revolting, it's very scary. Since when are we okay with three people's accounting and opinions on a war that has lasted for four years? Yet, in still, the public can't get enough opinions on Nicole Kidman's red dress worn at the Academy awards. Where is the logic in this?

What will happen to the specialists? Someone with a camera phone and a laptop may be able to record, but do they have the background knowledge and history to make a proper assessment. Does that person even know whether or not something is new or news? What happens if that person makes a mistake in their reporting? Are there fact checkers? What happens when students, researching papers relies on this news-lite?

Nonetheless, the attitude of the Tribune is not exclusive to the newspaper business. It's everywhere in every business, including in education where the "customer" is always right. Why even bother to go to school when a cellphone and laptop is a cheaper, faster way to a career? Will we become a country of blind people leading other blind because it's tastier, spicier? Junk food is everywhere. But what happens when we're all over weight and under nourished?

Carol Mongo
Detroit, Michigan

Dear FRONTLINE,

I am a high school teacher and find this series invaluable. Thank you.

Joan Davis
Oak Park, IL

Dear FRONTLINE,

Imagine if cereal was not available individually by the box, that you could only buy cereal in a 12-box combo pack that contained maybe only three or four flavors you liked. It would be wasteful for the producers of cereal, and wasteful for the consumers.

That is exactly the problem with today's newspaper. In an attempt to be everything to everybody, there is much more in there than the average reader needs. As a result, the average reader looks only at a proportion of the paper, with the rest being tossed unread. Some buy it just for the news, and toss the rest. Others buy it for the sports, and toss the rest. And so on.

Cumulatively, this means that a huge and costly portion of newsprint is being discarded unread. The answer, of course, is to figure out how to provide a customized newspaper, giving the readers exactly what they want and no more. It would very likely allow a newspaper to cut the number of pages being printed in half.

Until that becomes technically possible, an interim alternative might be to provide a newspaper in four different "flavors," each with a different price point. 1. A short, stripped down version containing only need to know news. 2. A longer, news/op-ed version, focusing on news and analysis. 3. A longer lifestyle version, light on news, heavy on all the other features and departments. 4. The traditional, "whole shebang" version for those who still want it all and are willing to pay for it.

The cost savings with such an approach would be tremendous.

Richard Babyak
Parma, Ohio

Dear FRONTLINE,

Dear Frontline,

Watching the first 3 segments of news wars was very interesting and I learned quite a bit about how a journalist talks to other journalist to learn more about journalism.

But you have a limited view of the big picture and why the LA Times and NY Times continues to loose subscribers. And yet it is very simple. These papers continue to move to the far left. Conservatives and moderates (80% of the US population) now have other sources of information and thus let their subscriptions to these outlets for news expire.

I was not at all surprised that PBS, a media outlet that resides in this liberal forest, could not see this sequoia.

Russ Holland
Fort Wayne , IN

Dear FRONTLINE,

My Dad worked as a printer at the Boston Globe for 42 years and was active in the typesetters union. Your reporting brought back many of the stories that my Dad would tell me relative to the changes facing newspapers over the years. Much like the L.A. Times, the Globe was family-run for many years before finally being sold off to a larger, publicly traded company. The challenges around being a public company along with regional vs national reporting, staff cuts, the impact of the Internet and the "blogosphere" are all illustrative of what went on at the Boston Globe and, I am guessing, many newspapers across the country. Your story represented these challenges in the equitable and clear manner that I have grown to expect from Frontline.

I never really thought of newspapers as "non-profit", much less "public trusts" but your story challenged my views. Additionally, your story broadened my views about the value of the daily newspaper and it's impact on how the public understands and sees the world. I now question whether any newspaper can ever meet those needs if it is part of a publicly owned company. Your story left me with many questions but I believe that this one is the most profound and important as the newspaper industry faces the 21st century.Thanks Frontline!

James O'Shaughnessy
Cambridge, Ma

Dear FRONTLINE,

As a professional journalist who has worked in print, radio and now independent television, I take particular issue with Jeff Jarvis' comment that "[A]nyone can do journalism."

So if we follow Mr. Jarvis' faulty logic, then, this suggests that I can go to a medical supply store, buy dental tools, put a sign outside of my house that says "dentist" and start pulling teeth and performing root canals -- and risk lives. Why not? This also implies that those unlicensed "doctors" who duped people -- and mangled or killed them -- were perfectly right in what they did.

Mr. Jarvis is patently wrong. Not anyone can be a journalist. Even though there is no licensure or certificate that journalists must obtain (unlike France, which offers the "carte de presse") we do have a broad set of accepted wisdom, practices and techniques.

For instance, we do have universal rules on sensitive issues such as libel and slander. We also have general standards on ethics, such as taking gifts, quoting sources, stories involving minors, crime pieces, authenticity of photos and correcting erroneous information. That's what separates the professional journalists from Joe American the blogger who slanders people online and puts erroneous information on the Web without bothering to check and see if its accurate.

And besides, much (if not most) of the work of journalism involves what the public doesn't see, such as filing Freedom of Information Act requests, which can be daunting and must be done according to certain rules. Plus, there are tecniques for interviewing subjects, fact-checking information, gathering sources and synthesizing data. Many pieces must also be reviewed by media attorneys so as to avoid libel. All of these, generally, involve common practices broadly accepted by professional communicators.

Waris Banks
Rochester, New

Dear FRONTLINE,

Your four part series is amazing and should be required viewing for every American over eleven years old. My father and I used to watch the nightly news each evening from the time that I was five years old and even though the news never really covered even the awful things that happened to people of colour at least it covered the important national political issues and foreign news.

I am so sick of the self-important bleached blond talking and screaming heads that I see everyday on television. Talking loud and saying nothing. Never missing an opportunity to put themselves in the middle of the story to get that lucrative book deal.

FOX News and Rupert Murdock is an abomination and should never be called a news organization it is merely a mouth-piece for the Republicans in this country.

CBS, NBC and ABC is merely "info-Mation" and self agrgrandizement.

When Ted Koppel and Dan Rather left the building, I turned the television news off.

Toni Savage
Fort Worth, Texas

Dear FRONTLINE,

Josh Marshall is a liberal blogger. Scott Johnson is a conservative blogger. Marshall told you how left-leaning media construct stories: they first say "what's the story", and then "will we be accused of liberal bias". As a result, the media is harder on the left and tends to under-scrutinize the right for fear of being called biased. Go back and look at your own interviews of Marshall and Johnson to see how correct Marshall was.

Please stop worrying about conservatives calling you bad names. No matter what you do, conservatives will always call journalists bad names unless they act as mouthpieces for the right (working the refs, just as Marshall said). The left wants journalists to be better. The right, increasingly, just wants journalists to go away.

Fairfield, CT

Dear FRONTLINE,

What intrigues me is that I have read many articles in U.S. newspapers about school level children not being well versed in geography. Does this indicate that there is very little interest in the rest of the world? Obviously not much is being done about it, as this news has appeared many times. If that is the case, then newspapers throughout the country would have to go "local" eventually as there is no interest in "the rest of the world" of the reader. That would not need real "journalists" as "gossip" is more juicy & welcome than reality and YouTube would become the norm and "what you see is what you get, will interestingly, be the "news of the day".

Just like "politically correct" has become important and tolerance has become a technicality, similarly local has become important, and the world just an appendix --- I may need to refer to it sometimes, so let's not worry about it now.

Jeevan Gupta

Dear FRONTLINE,

In Part 3, it's disturbing to witness some of the stock managers fixated on "improving return on investment" by depleting newspapers' value. They don't seem to have a very solid understanding of how one employs capital, and rationalize their obsession with short-term gain - the same approach that has resulted in long-term losses in the automobile, electronics, airline, appliance and many other national industries. It is dangerous foolishness for two reasons:1. In the not-so-long term they are clear-cutting the community resource essential to maintaining democracy. The cost is externalized - from their books, for a little while - to improve their investor's "need" for greater immediate gain. The problem is that removing this resource will very likely result in long-term social and political costs that will consume them along with everyone else. Examples of the results of strip-mining, limiting news sources, and of increasing ignorance are too abundant to list. 2. In the medium term, using their own numbers, it still is not working. What David Hiller, et. al. fail (again) to see is that a $14 billion asset, the L.A. Times, is worth less than when they started down the path of "improving efficiency" and on its way to being worth $14 million because they're consuming the value of the resource. David Hill seems a bright enough sort of fellow, and I agree with his question in response to Frontline's question: "The question is not about how you are doing today; the question is, how are you going to be doing in the future?"

I wonder what his end-game will be when there's a tiny staff, minimal asset value, and almost no circulation. Maybe he can take his bonus and move to Haiti.

Craig Parada
San José, CA

Dear FRONTLINE,

I feel like the real problem facing the American press has barely been touched. In my view the root of all the problems discussed in this series is the consumer, or in this case, the American viewer. Why fault a company for behaving like a company? If the average American cared more about issues that concerned true current affairs than they cared about gossip, we would not be in this situation.

I fear that until we the viewer accept the responsibility of being an active part of the world we live in and not continue to allow ourselves to be so easily distracted by meanigless affairs, we will lose our valuable resource of journalism. If that happens, we will lose the idea of Ameerica and a free society.

Brian Curtis
Kansas City, MO

Dear FRONTLINE,

First, I want to thank Frontline for the first-class reporting I've come to expect. Except for this program and NPR, broadcast news has fallen prey to both "ambulance chasing" and the misguided hyperlocalism mandate from Wall Street.

Having studied broadcast journalism in the mid-90s, I moved to Seattle from sparsely-populated Montana hoping to see what a big market TV news station would provide. Sadly, the answer came in two words - not much.

The true, last bastion of good reporting is in print journalism. Journalists need to understand the full picture for their stories, they know what "news" is (a topic often debated in my classes), and take very seriously their role being the watchdog for the reader. This still exists in print, but is becoming endangered by corporations who care more about maximizing profits than in being good caretakers for this important institution.

There is something else I'd like to add to this debate about the role of news in today's society. There are those who do believe that ownership and the profit-motive provide the basis for capitalism. However, in order for this society to function, which is first a democracy and is second capitalist (not the other way around), it needs a free press.

Seattle, WA

Dear FRONTLINE,

I found the comment regarding "who is going to pay for the news" most interesting. As a resident of a very small metropolitan area serving the southeastern agricultural region of Washington State, this is a very astute observation that seems to be a modern revelation to the rest to the U.S. However, as an observant resident of this small metro area I have witnessed many financial assaults against local news media. These assaults didn't come from the news consumers and their changing taste in terms of news delivery and content, but from the owners of these news delivery organizations and how they treated their "investment."

For the past 30 years these local broadcast news organizations have been owned by larger conglomerates, with no local ties, which have treated these local outlets as cash machines. They pulled as much revenue out of these studios as possible leaving only the crumbs for resources to actually cover and broadcast the news. Broadcast reporters and anchors would come and go like the winds and seasons. Our network affiliates were known as training grounds for up and coming anchors who needed to learn "non-regional diction" in a "market which was safe and simple". Our broadcast reporters were never here long enough to learn about the people, politics and business environment to be credible in their reporting. And as soon as a reporter had learned their craft and started to be credible in our market, they were gone to the next larger market. For as long as I can remember our small population base just accepted its fate.

But alternate news sources, a relatively credible local paper, and plentiful Internet connections have eroded the viewership and the meager profits at these internally beleaguered network affiliates. Now our broadcast news offerings locally are poorer than ever. Newscasts, anchors and reporters are shared between my city and another agricultural city over 70 miles from us. This creates an even poorer news offering because news and events are not shared or identical from my region to the other region and each broadcast carries news from both regions, supposedly with the effect of keeping both consumer bases happy. I have no doubt that their market share will continue to fall using this method of "cost control". In spite of the scoffing of many of the "experts" and "pundits" that were interviewed, it is this lack of local coverage local focus that will cause broadcast news in rural areas to fall into total oblivion.

In short, the issues your broadcast highlighted with regard to national news organizations has been happening in rural areas for years. It seems to me that if a news organization makes money, it is dumb luck.

Networks and local affiliates should be making their money off from the entertainment division and let the news divisions do their job and do it right.

Jerome Parmentier
Yakima, WA

Dear FRONTLINE,

The segment on the Los Angeles Times led me to write the following note to Charles Bobrinskoy (one of the shareholders pushing for the sale of the Times):

Dear Mr. Bobrinskoy:

Thank you for participating in the recent Frontline "News War" episode. Your comments about the Los Angeles Times were both illuminating and infuriating.

Your view of Los Angeles Times readers seems to be a caricature derived from "Baywatch" and "Fast Times at Ridgemont High." As a native New Englander and former D.C. resident, I am very familiar with how prevalent this view is on your side of the continental divide. The reality is, however, that the Los Angeles Times serves an educated, literate and culturally diverse population that has given us over twenty Nobel laureates (including writer Octavia Paz and diplomat Ralph Bunche), two presidents, one chief justice and many political reformers from Upton Sinclair to Howard Jarvis.

Far from being a colony of illiterate surfer dudes, the market served by the Los Angeles Times is the biggest book market in North America and includes six of the nation's top 100 school's and two of the world's top 50. This is a population that cares about what happens in Washington and in the world around them and not just the latest events in the entertainment industry and fashion.

Given your misunderstanding of the Times readership, I suggest that you either better inform yourself about the region or encourage the Tribune Company to sell the paper to someone with a better understanding of Los Angeles.

Bennet Kelley
Santa Monica, CA