Facebook Article Was Meritless

Concerning your recent article on the Eliot House Facebook ("After Months of Delay, Eliot Facebooks are Distributed," News, April 18, 1996), it should be noted that the facebook has been available on-line since students moved in last fall. Indeed, I did some very real soul-searching over the issue of whether or not it made sense--given the availability of important information, such as tutor telephone numbers, by way of that electronic version, as well as through other forms of dissemination--to lay waste to yet more tree's meat in printing hard copies.

If justification for such an article as you printed were to exist, it would presumably reside in the fact that it was a terribly slow news day on campus. But where, I wonder, were The Crimson reporters the very evening the facebook article was being written who might have covered--in fact, ought to have covered--the check presentation to the Jimmy Fund by An Evening With Champions? The check brought the total donation from this student-run group for this year to $90,000.

It has become the common stuff of journalists to beat their chests over the state of American culture--the world of Rikki Lake, the National Enquirer, and other media outlets we pretend we don't watch or read in Cambridge--but the editors of The Crimson might take a moment's pause in order to reflect on their own journalistic policies: why did you pass up the opportunity to cover something very positive that many students had important roles in accomplishing in order to hype a non-story? --Steve Mitchell   Eliot House Co-Master