Helen B. Gordon

By: Letters To the editor | Winston-Salem Journal
Published: October 11, 2009

Oh, how I miss Helen B. Gordon's refreshing letters to the Journal.

BETTY K. BAILEY

Winston-Salem

Gordon, a long-time Journal letter writer, died on Dec. 26, 2008, at age 90. -- The editor

Taking responsibility

For more than 50 years, it has been the policy of the Journal not to publish anonymous letters. Indeed, the Journal has gone to considerable lengths to ensure that authorship is firmly established. Reasons for the policy include issues of fairness and libel and the belief that writers should stand up for their convictions and take responsibility for their thoughts.

Unfortunately, the same standards do not apply to the Journal's Web site or those of virtually every other media outlet in the country. Editors, including this one, were asleep at the switch when the Internet crept up on us.

Online users are allowed to hide behind sometimes-inventive but mostly pedestrian pseudonyms, or "handles," or whatever they're called in the digital world. This anonymity gives them free rein, often on their employers' time, to engage in ad hominem attacks, rumor, innuendo and occasional vulgarities.

A number of the posts are well-reasoned and add depth to the debate. Their authors should be proud to take ownership of them. However, an overwhelming number show little thought, little intelligence and/or little typing ability.

It is as if the citizens-band radio world had been transferred to the Internet. "Iron Man, this is the Big Cat. Let's mosey down to Channel 16 and talk about the neighbors."

"10-4, good buddy."

I am realist enough to know that there's probably no way to change the situation. It would be like trying to unring the bell. Chalk another one up to the weakening of individual responsibility.

JIM LAUGHRUN

FORMER JOURNAL MANAGING EDITOR

Winston-Salem

Like

I kinda like The Journal for Dummies.

LUCILLE CARTER

Winston-Salem

Dewey's expansion

This scenario with the expansion of Dewey's Bakery ("Now Open: New Dewey's bakery café," Sept. 29) is starting to sound familiar. The article stated that Brooke Smith, the chief marketing officer for Dewey's, considers the new Dewey's a testing ground for ideas that the company may use in other locations.

I sincerely hope that Scott Livengood, the CEO of Dewey's, does not get grandiose intentions for the 79-year-old company. I hope he does not run Dewey's into the ground like he did Krispy Kreme, bringing another home-grown company to its knees.

Livengood seems never to be satisfied.

SUSAN A. WARREN

Winston-Salem

Release the documents

I certainly hope the Journal will challenge Winston-Salem City Manager Lee Garrity's refusal to release documents that might show taxpayers how this downtown baseball stadium we've bought will perform ("City releases some stadium documents," Oct. 7).

Garrity needs to keep in mind that we own this stadium now. Our right to know how healthy this asset is should be higher on his priority list than Billy Prim's need to keep his trade secrets under wraps. The stadium vendors' rights to confidentiality should have been waived as part of the negotiations that led to the loan agreement. That's not a foreign concept in the world of public-private partnerships.

The risk that the city taxpayers have taken on by putting so much public money into this project is far greater than the risk that many other high-profile public-private incentives deals entail. And yet, Garrity tells us that the only information we can hope for that would help us judge the wisdom of this investment is to wait and see whether Prim's companies can make their lease payments.

Prim and his anonymous investors must be held to a higher standard of public accountability. Ideally, we would have all seen this information before the city council voted to put more money into this project.

Now that we own this mess, we own that information.

ED BATTLE

Winston-Salem