[1st-mile-nm] DRAFT NYT letter Sign on by 3 PM EST
Steve Ross
editorsteve at gmail.com
Wed Feb 4 08:18:40 PST 2009
If you want to sign on, please note your
Name, title, city, state, phone, email address
in one paragraph so I can easily paste it in.
I hope to get this out to the NYT in 4 hours.
Feel free to forward. Also note that the Times letter page
is handled mainly by interns. Tough to get in.
The letter is at the outer limit for length now. No editing
allowed except for outright factual errors.
The article was so absurd and so utterly lacking in
journalistic standards that I have already sent a detailed
response to the NYT public editor. This would not have
passed in my basic writing course (I taught full-time at
Columbia University's Graduate school of Journalism for 20
years). How could it possibly have ended up on the front page?
Steve
----
DRAFT NYT Letter to Editor
To the Editor:
David M. Herszenhorn’s Feb. 3 front-page story, “Internet
Money in Fiscal Plan: Wise or Waste,” unfairly targets $9
billion for rural broadband in the Senate bill – 1 percent
of the total package. The third paragraph describes rural
broadband as a “cyberbridge to nowhere,” although all
sources named in the article insist later in the story that
(unlike Alaska’s bridge) building broadband pays.
Timing? The article also states, with no sourcing
whatsoever, that “it will take at least until 2015 to spend
all the money... vastly limiting the stimulating punch.”
That, too, is absurd. We know about dozens of rural projects
that have been put on hold due to the credit crunch. They
could be build immediately. For example, a $93 million
22-town project in Vermont, presold to nearly half the
residents and with experienced management, can't sell muni
lease paper with a coupon rate around 8 percent and an
after-tax return of 11 percent.
Could the industry scale to absorb the $9 billion? Easily.
US spending on telecom infrastructure was over $60 billion
in 2007 – some 50 percent greater than spending on roads.
The equipment and skilled labor required for deploying the
best technology, fiber-optic cable, is sitting idle due to
the housing collapse.
Steven S. Ross
Feb. 4, 2009
Revere, MA
Mr. Ross is editor of Broadband Properties Magazine. This
letter was also signed by:
Name, title, city, state, phone, email address
--
Steven S. Ross
Editor-in-Chief
Broadband Properties
steve at broadbandproperties.com
www.bbpmag.com
SKYPE: editorsteve
+1 781-284-8810
+1 646-216-8030 fax
+1 201-456-5933 mobile
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