A note to our readers

Hey --

The edition is finally up.

Along with Dallas, here's who worked on it:

Along with Dallas, the following worked on this edition:

The Third Estate Sunday Review's Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, and Ava,
Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude,
Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man,
C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review,
Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills),
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix,
Mike of Mikey Likes It!,
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz,
Ruth of Ruth's Report,
Wally of The Daily Jot,
and Marcia SICKOFITRDLZ.

We thank everyone. Let's go over what we have.

Truest statement of the week -- Sunsara Taylor's remarks are from a transcript of a speech delivered. We know this one will be the big hit with readers. She references an article she wrote and we attempted to locate a link but couldn't. If anyone has the link and wants to e-mail it (thirdestatesundayreview@yahoo.com) feel free.

Truest statement of the Week II -- This is Joseph Cannon and it's from a kick-ass post. You want to read what leads up to that statement.

Truest statement of the week III -- Sunsara Taylor again because when we called out that open letter to The Nation the e-mail response was "No one else will." Someone else did.

Editorial: Raw emotions (Ava and C.I.) -- Okay, here's where I (Jim) break down the edition. First, Ty told me I'd mispelled the headline on this and that reader Jamie had pointed that out. Thanks for catching that Jamie. I've corrected it. Elaine was with us this weekend and she pointed out that a large number of pieces we'd written weren't going online. Looking at them, we realized she was right and that they'd go in the print edition only because we had to get that out. So we decided to break up. Dona looked at the list we had of articles to write. She assigned Ava and C.I. one topic (this) and told Mike and the gang to go work on highlights while she, Ty, Jess and myself worked on another piece. Ava and C.I. weren't sure what was expected from them and brought this back with doubts. I got to paragraph seven (reading it out loud) and said, "This is the editorial." There was some discussion about breaking it up in to two pieces or having all of us rewrite it as an editorial but Elaine pointed out (a) it's late, (b) everyone's tired and (c) rewriting Ava and C.I. would result in the piece being weakened. We all agreed and decided to make it the editorial as is and to post immediately. Everything else could (and did) wait. We then crashed, woke up this evening and took Elaine out to eat and then onto the airport to catch her flight home.

TV: The Fringes -- This made it up before Fringe started airing on the West Coast. I point that out because Ava and C.I. were saying this morning it needed to go up then. It mentions Fringe. Already excited readers have grabbed on to the "midseason" remark. So Third will continue after the election? Ava and C.I. said they just agreed without thinking but since they did and since it's up (they agreed to a writer for Fringe's request to hold off on a full review until the mid-season) they'll committ to this site through the start of January. That's only for this site. No one (including C.I.) has made any decision regarding their own sites. Since Ava and C.I. are willing to go to January, we (Dona, Ty, Jess and myself) gladly agree to as well. Now, if readers, can get beyond that unplanned announcement, focus on this powerful piece.

The new age of privacy? -- This tackles a number of issues and, in terms of backstory, we contacted Joshua Frank and the publisher of Dissident Voice for this piece. We orginally contacted the publisher twice with no reply. At which point, C.I. said we should contact Joshua in case the publisher was out of pocket. We did and not only did Joshua bring it to the publisher's attention he wrote a very thoughtful e-mail. C.I. argued that Joshua did not have all the facts at that point and may not have wanted to have written at length if he had. For that reason, C.I. declared Joshua's e-mail off limits for quoting unless we heard from him that it was fine to quote from. The publisher also wrote a very thoughtful e-mail. There was nothing in it that said, "Quote me." We contacted DV stating we were seeking a quotation for publication. We did the same with 15 bloggers (some who were professional journalists before they ever went online, some of whom weren't). We followed up to their replies to be sure that they knew we were asking for quotes. We didn't recive a "sure quote me" or "well just quote me on ___" from anyone. If any of the above e-mails stating they wished to be quoted, we will quote them next week. We thank everyone who replied. We thank community members who agreed to be interviewed. We killed some of their quotes we wanted to include because they really required a response that we didn't have permission to quote from (though we had the response in the e-mails from the bloggers).

The UN's embarrassment in Iraq -- Ava and C.I. were still writing what became the editorial when we started this. Backstory my father called Saturday and asked if I'd seen C.I.'s "Naeema al-Gasseer: the United Nations' embarrassment in Iraq"? Yeah, I was reading that over C.I.'s shoulder as it was written. My father said that needed to be a topic here. I agreed and we put it on the list. He said everyone he works with is offended by what the UN allowed. That didn't surprise me because C.I. only wrote about it because three reporters called C.I. to complain about that press conference. So with Ava and C.I. working on the editorial, we all started work on this. It was a strong piece. However, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava, C.I. and I reworked it this evening before it went up due to the fact that my father called passing on the IRIN story and with more rants. (Deserved rants. I think every reporter would find what went down offensive.)

Meet Charley Johnson 'Journalist' -- We could have rewritten this. My father is younger than Charley Johnson. We make the point that for his stated age, Johnson is using some terms that a professional reporter wouldn't. I went over the list of 16 terms we'd found at Johnson's site with my father. He's much younger than Johnson and said he didn't even know anyone his age who would be writing "bro" and "BFF" if they were a trained journalist. If you doubt that, read Danny Schechter sometime. Schechter is not my father. He's probably a little younger than Johnson. He is a professional journalist with many credits to his name. So go check out Danny Schechter News Dissector and look for Schechter tossing around "BFF" and "bro" and assorted other lingo that's a little bit current. You won't find it. Then Google Charley and pull up his site. Go to the June and July archives (when his site started) and note the terminology he repeatedly uses. We do not believe there is a Lucille. We further argue that a journalist does not make such a claim without more than one source. We also argue that a backup source is not handed to you by someone who pays their salary. It's not journalism.

Sarah Sewell & Her Cult -- This is what Ty, Jess, Dona and I worked on when Ava and C.I. went off to work on what became the editorial. Due to Gutter Trash, we're not responding to e-mails from people we don't know. Last Monday, to address a point in the e-mails that morning, Ty wrote "CounterSpin's wrong, Ava and C.I. are correct" (and posted it with last week's edition). This falls into the same category. The Cult of Sarah will not go away. Have they ever missed a week inventing a new reason why we should take down a TV commentary by Ava and C.I.? We can't remember it. And they were back last week. That's your response, Cult.

Highlights -- Mike, Kat, Betty, Wally, Marcia, Cedric, Ruth, Rebecca and Elaine wrote this and we thank them for it. They worked on this while Ava and C.I. were doing the editorial and they came back to work on the Iraq piece with us.

So that's what we got.

See you next weekend.

-- Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I.