there was a lot of discussion in comments, over email and over coffee of chris's excellent post.  pete weighed in with something similar to the new mabra-google commons.  i'd like to weigh in with a tangential thought  i think people misunderstand the post.  it's just like a television.  it's not interactive.  you can yell at your television or write letters to the editor and you, on a practical level, will get the same result.  it's a business that's based on a one-way flow of information.  they may take feedback.  they may even solicit it.  but don't confuse their reception of a message with the decisions that run the paper.

the post just hasn't kept up.  email, newsgroups, blogs: these exceedingly democratic methods of information sharing.  they rely on comments to drive the discussion.  the exchange is what makes it dynamic.  a community.  the electronic forums are richer for the interaction as are the participants.  the closest the post gets is it's chats, where you ask a question, and like an oracle, an answer comes back.  how is that a chat?  it's hardly interactive.  electronic forums allow people to provide any degree of feedback they want to provide.  cold and logical, passionate, venemous or no response at all.  the post feels sterile.

community and cooperative is not the way papers work.  your feelings about an article don't enter their calculus.  every week the ombudsman catalogs an endless string of complaints about everything.  nothing changes.  there was a huge broughaha a while ago about how entirely dependent the post had become on citing leaks to anonymous sources.  the paper's general manager and news director all wrote articles saying they would change the style manual and do better.  and nothing has changed.  pick up any post and check it out. 

what i'm describing here is different than the occasional idiotic columnist who writes some screed about how he hopes the next cyclist to slide under his super large sport utility vehicle will inspect the condition of the ziebart and perform a useful service for once.  that person is just being provocative, stirring the pot to get a response.  the journalistic equivalent of an email troll.

but what the post does is different.  it's just like a modern politician in that it feigns interest in the details of the life of the average person, pretends to help and represent the little guy.  but in reality, it's no closer, and maybe even further detached.  it's not bad or evil.  and it's not good or benign.  it's more like that classic line from an old godzilla movie: "it can't feel pain, it can't be reasoned with".

my bottom line here is that change doesn't start with talkign to the post.  change starts with talking to each other.  and change starts with lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of people riding their bikes to work tomorrow.  i've got bad news.  if it's less than lots and lots and lots and lots and lots, well, we'll likely continue to be ignored or misunderstood or run over, both figuratively and literally.  change starts with people deciding that they want change, and acting accordingly.  telling their neighbors, telling their friends, telling their office. 

i really hope people don't see this as a bike-to-work-day pep talk.  it's not.  it's easy to lose perspective when you're dealing with large issues.  but i would suggest the old chestnut that every big change starts with a small change is still so relevant.  the next time you see an idiotic article or letter to the editor or provocative column, just run an extra errand on your bike that you would not have done before.  take a friend out for a spin.  force a neighbor to commute by bike.  there are certain battles we will simply never win, but i refuse to concede the war. 

-sg