Governor Rendell and I submitted today an approximately 600 word draft response to the NYT February 27th piece that was over 3,800 words to the February 27th article.
A gracious (not being sarcastic) editor of the letter section advised initially that the NYT would publish a 250 word response but that it should stick to "the issue." For her, the issue was not the reporting errors and omissions of the NYT at all. For us those points are very much part of the issue.
The NYT letters editor then edited our submission. Governor Rendell and I accepted her edit that was skillfully done to achieve the objectives of a much shorter submission and removal of any discussion of the deliberate reporting flaws in the original piece. The ratio of words in the orginal story to the response will be about 10:1. I, nonetheless, felt our choice at that point was to accept the edited version or not have a response of any sort printed.
I am not sure when our edited letter will run. Sunday would make sense as the original story ran on a Sunday.
As to those portions of our response concerning the wilfull reporting errors and omissions designed to create a fictional narrative of lax regulation and lax oversight of gas drilling, the NYT letters editor recommended that we take our concerns to the NYT Public Editor.
I did that on monday when I left a voice mail for and sent an email to the NYT Public Editor. As the sun goes down on wednesday, I have received no response from the Public Editor.
Very unprofessional, but not surprising, Mr. Hanger. Thank you for publishing the truth. So much for an honest dialogue in the traditional press. And soon, on-line subscribers will have to pay for edited, biased information from the Old Gray Lady.
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