The Mail THE PHOENIX RISES

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

In an extraordinarily sloppy piece of reporting on Steve Nelson's campaign for Cambridge City Council (Friday, Oct. 10), Thomas P. Southwick claimed that Nelson "gets a lot of help from the underground press and The Cambridge Phoenix, the new Cambridge weekly newspaper." In context, the "help" mentioned is pretty clearly the green folding kind: the statement falls between two explanations of how the campaign has been financed.

Just for the record, therefore, I have to point out that the Phoenix does not support Nelson, financially, editorially or politically. The only money he has received from us is the price of a few admission tickets to his rock benefit (his campaign managers somehow never managed to generate the press passes they promised us). We have, ?n addition, run a somewhat sympathetic profile of him by Mark Lieberman, a senior editor of the Phoenix. But this no more constitutes an endorsement of Nelson than Lieberman's profile this week constitutes an endorsement of Al Vellucci. The Phoenix does not endorse candidates. Period.

It is perhaps worth mentioning also that Southwick's careless reporting led him to mention a certain "Arni Rossi" as "Nelson's campaign manager." Could he mean Arnie Reisman, Nelson's press secretary? I suspect he does.

Jeffrey Tarter

Publisher

The Cambridge Phoenix