According to an anonymous rant at lostremote.com, sending an e-mail is pretty powerful too, especially at local stations.

Such a great point. It's just ... you can't help but suspect that many webloggers would almost prefer to gain acknowledgement from their readers (and from other webloggers especially) for a well crafted letter than for it to quietly influence the media. Bloggers themselves are all too much like the media Brushstroke describes, hoping for response to their efforts -- even to the point where that hope threatens to overwhelm the wish to achieve something more valuable.

I feel like this was a bait and switch link. It ended up being another preachy anti-war sentiment snuck into the guise of an informative article about the media.

Aren't these anti-anti-war whinges getting a little tired? It's like those people who get all uptight and defensive when they happen to find out that somebody's vegetarian, even if the vegetarian is politely minding their own business and not trying to push it on anyone else.

I mean, if you want to ignore the first two-thirds of the article which contains useful information in favour of a quoted letter at the bottom with which you disagree, then go ahead, but it doesn't seem a particularly productive way to spend your time. If I recall rightly, Jason was more or less pro-war anyway, so if he's linking it, you can assume that anti-war sentiments are not the reason.

Anyway, I think the article has a good point: people are far, far more willing to moan about things on online forums (where you can guarantee that nobody who can do anything about it is listening) than they are to write a simple email. In that particular industry, it sounds like writing might be worthwhile, whatever the opinions you want to get across.

I'm not sure, though, that this is always true. I wrote to my telephone company about their online billing system (mentioning a couple of things I didn't like about it and suggesting changes) and got what I'd call a customer-service response: 'We're very sorry that you're disappointed with the service.' I don't give a shit how sorry they are and I'm not even spectacularly disappointed with it - I just wanted to get some impression that just maybe my opinions would be passed onto a developer (whether individually or in some kind of 'ok, here are the top 10 features people were asking for' list).

I've had a similar experience from numerous computer-based companies: it's very easy to access 'support' or 'customer service' and very hard to report a problem or bug, never mind offer a suggestion. Sure, support should be taking those bug reports and filtering them first, but I get the impression support often have no connection with developers whatsoever. [That's not the case everywhere; I'm thinking of specific incidents.]

It's like those people who get all uptight and defensive when they happen to find out that somebody's vegetarian, even if the vegetarian is politely minding their own business and not trying to push it on anyone else.

To me it's more like when you go to pick up your free vacation tickets and you get suckered into watching a three hour presentation on why you should buy timeshare. Anyway, I was simply expressing my feelings. I have just as much of a right to support the war as anyone else would have to protest it. By telling me how I should spend my time you are borderlining on a personal attack anyway. I would also argue that Jason is clearly anti-war, but that's another conversation all together.

Can somebody post some links about one