LETTER TO BRILL'S CONTENT, posted February 2001.

Michael Gartner's column in your November issue reminds me how thoroughly tired I am of the endless moralizing among journalistic reformers over the use of anonymous quotes. Sure, I'm skeptical of quotes attributed to "a Clinton administration official" or "a Bush campaign insider," and properly so -- but what about the corporate whistleblower who can't afford to be fired, or the black cop who fears for his safety if he exposes racism on the force? The knee-jerk avoidance of anonymous quotes, without considering the source's personal or professional situation or the value of the information, would cripple investigative journalism and leave us at the mercy of government and corporate PR.

And while we're on the subject of Gartner's Ten Commandments, I've never understood the point of reporters pretending that they don't have opinions about the subjects they cover. Any reporter who can cover a subject for a while and not have opinions is either uncaring or intellectually uncurious, neither of which is a desirable quality in a journalist or a human being.

And I dare say many Americans don't really want objective reporting; they want reporting that looks objective but actually confirms their own biases. Gartner, in putting so much stress on the appearance of objectivity, would have reporters commit the same type of fraud on their readers.

So by all means, let reporters go on talk shows and write columns. If we know that any good journalist must have opinions, aren't readers better served by knowing what those opinions are?

-- Marc Desmond, Brooklyn, NY 11215

LETTER TO THE EDITORS OF BUSINESS WEEK, 11/99.

Spirituality may be sweeping the business world, but aside from those efforts directly aimed at accommodating (or imposing) religious beliefs, it doesn't seem to have affected business practices much. What would Jesus--who said it would be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven--have thought of a system in which solid, profitable companies lay off thousands of workers because the notion of what constitutes an acceptable return on capital is constantly being ratcheted upward?

What would the Buddha, who was content to live as a wandering beggar, have thought of corporations that mine his wisdom for tips on how to improve productivity? What would pre-Columbian Indians--some of whom followed the custom of potlatch, by which a man was honored according to how much he gave away--have thought of executives with seven- to nine-figure stock options crowding into ersatz ''sweat lodges'' to achieve an insight that never seems to disturb their materialistic values? Save your preaching, boss. Corporate spirituality is bunk; show me the money instead.

Marc Desmond
Brooklyn, N.Y.

LETTER TO THE NEW YORK OBSERVER, 5/5/97.

MY CONDOLENCES TO YOU ON YOUR decision to hire William Tucker. With the exception of Alexander Cockburn, every new columnist you publish seems drearier and more ignorant than the last. In Tucker's debut column proof of the latter, especially, was simple to find. Tucker begins by making the stereotypical Manhattanite's assumption that the borough and the city are one and the same. Anyone moving to New York can find perfectly fine quarters for half his cited figures of $1000 for a studio and $1500 for a one- bedroom, in any number of pleasant outer-borough neighborhoods. But so many of them try to squeeze themselves into Manhattan -- or rather, certain parts of Manhattan -- thus creating a local scarcity that has nothing to do with rent control. Also, the relatively low construction rate for new apartments (assuming his figures are correct) has little, if anything, to do with the low vacancy rate. This city's population has declined from a high of nearly eight million to a figure much closer to seven. The vacancy rate in our rental market has much more to do with the siphoning off of existing housing units. While some no doubt have crumbled, more have fallen into the inept hands of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development for nonpayment of taxes. The "sweat equity" program that would have allowed people of moderate means to buy these HPD apartments and do their own renovation was starved of funds and people who try that on their own are reviled and arrested as squatters. Meanwhile, HPD can't even seem to funnel these potential riches into the hands of politically connected slumlords, which is the least (and in many cases, the most) one can expect of municipal government these days. Many other units have been turned into coops, or are being held off the market in anticipation of coop conversion. Tucker doesn't mention changes in the supply of owner-occupied housing (a common omission in coverage of the rent-control wars), so it's impossible to tell how many of these apartments are still housing New Yorkers. As for his figures on the median rents of various classes of tenants, it's questionable that the median is a more useful figure than the average, which show the incomes of rent- stabilized tenants to be lower than those in uncontrolled apartments. At any rate, those figures are skewed downward by the fact that most slum apartments were decontrolled under the Rockefeller vacancy decontrol laws because the poor tend to move more often than the middle class. The "market rate" for such apartments is set by the state, which determines the housing allowances for welfare recipients. In the totally free market, rents are insanely high. It's interesting that Tucker gets his figures from landlords" groups, (which, of course, are completely objective and reliable), yet ignores other studies proffered by the same organizations claiming that landlords in controlled apartments need substantially higher rents to cover their costs. The repeal of rent control would have no effect on those costs; in fact, if they did bring about an increase in the housing stock, that in turn would increase the demand for goods and services used by landlords, which would drive those costs up further. I write, by the way, as a decidedly nonwealthy, heavily indebted copy editor who would be forced to leave the city if rent controls were repealed, and there are many thousands more just like me. Am I a worse citizen than the person who would rent my current digs at twice what I'm paying? Or, to put it another way, is a person's worth measured by income? To ask the question is to insult and demean our common humanity. But that's what you libertarians are all about. 

-- Marc Desmond, Brooklyn