News Editor

Hi. I'm hoping you will approve my August 15 post for the group regarding Knight Foundation's Community Information Challenge which supports local news and information projects, including citizen journalists. This is an incredible opportunity to resource projects that typically struggle to find adequate support.

Thanks,

Alex Hofmann

I was wondering whether you would post my recent article, brief though it may be, "John McCain Should Choose Rudy Giuliani for Vice President"? It is related to an impending news event.

Thanks.

David Mirsky

Will you be covering the recent death of comedian Bernie Mac?

Hello News Editors,

Re: Pam Johnston's controversy of re-distributing a violent set of stereotypical images by the New Yorker

I've been in dialog with Gather Inc.

I want to thank everyone here for your comments above, even the less enlightened ones.

So everyone can get a better understanding of the real issue, since it seems many don't understand what it is, let me share this letter to Gather Inc...

Hi [name deleted],

Please thank [name deleted] for her gracious letter.

I understand of course what you express below, [name deleted]. However, the underlying issue is the degree to which corporate interests drive the agenda now on the Gather pages, perhaps beneath the radar of most people's awareness even. That's the reality of the world, I know. Still, a side-effect of that is that the community - originally attracted to Gather for its creative and democratic virtual space - who reads and engages the articles on the "front page" essentials have an expectation due to how its editors are supposedly derived from the Gather membership community, that that page reflects a democratic expression of Gather's overall membership. But I've seen a pattern grow in the past year, where the articles that arrive on Gather's front page "essentials" seem more of a marketing effort to attract advertising capital from within the demographics of specifically targeted niche consumer-groups.

Allied to this, my attempts to remove the flag from my article on the Fogh-Bush Danish-American war politics failed to even elicit a response from anyone at Gather support for 2 weeks, when I asked that the flag be removed. Flagging an article stops its access on google search in a browser not logged on to Gather as a member. But when Pam's article was flagged several times, the flags were all removed without comment within several minutes, attracting 3000 hits within 10 hours, disseminating an ethnically hurtful image to all corners of the globe where the unfathomable satire of the New Yorker is even murkier, which if it were flagged, would have only been a "Gather community"-accessible article, which then would have been a perfectly appropriate forum within which to discuss that image . And as Pam is an employee of Gather Inc., here is the appearances of something or another not very appropriate. Both our articles had a similarly racy political image, though the New Yorker front page was the truly pornographic and racist one. I can deal with such issues via the dialog and article creation at Gather, but only if we all play by the same rules, which obviously is not the case when a member debates or challenges an article written by a Gather Inc. employee, or one written by an organ that buys advertising space at Gather, like Harvard Medical. Help me to understand that, [name deleted]. Not because I personally feel slighted, but because this is a fundamental issue on many levels, including journalistic and also the democratic principles of the "Gather community."

There is also the issue, that I more or less have ignored for a while, of the often pharmaceuticals-driven articles published by Harvard Medical on that Essentials front page.

And there is also the still-unanswered issue of the Home Depot coupons that I donated to someone so her family home that was ravaged by Katrina can get a little repair help.

Help me to understand all these issues, [name deleted].

But my heart's been ripped by all the emails I've gotten from people asking me stay, either nicely or a bit harsh. So let me chew on all this, and perhaps in the meantime the issues above can be answered/resolved by you or others at Gather Inc... and I need to get back to the mountains to finish my book anyways. So thanks for getting back to me, and please have a wonderful day at Gather...

Best wishes,

Bent Lorentzen

Thank you for featuring the article on Rudy's hospital stay. My first on Gather.com. A genuine thrill!

Merry Holidays... :)