The Indy Responds

To The Editors of The Crimson:

On behalf of the staff of the Harvard Independent, I wish to express my strongest displeasure with the gratuitous and obnoxious Reporter's Notebook entry which ran in your publication last Saturday. Not only do such digs read as the product of a self-important but grossly insecure Crimson editorial staff, they also do great damage to the ostensibly communal society of campus publications.

I submit, perhaps naively, that the Crimson editors would not claim to be running a perfect newspaper. It is puzzling, therefore, that the Crimson has taken unto itself the liberty to play ombudsman for the Indy; there is daily evidence that their work at Plympton Street is far from complete. "Factual" or not, sarcastic criticism is arrogant and pompous. When such an accusation is left unsigned--as it was on Saturday--it is also an act of cowardice. The comic irony, of course, is that the issue addressed by the anonymous writer in this case relied upon the fact that Indy staffers Cornwell and Lattmann identified themselves as authors--a minimal journalistic standard with which your writer did not even comply. We wonder why.

The Crimson editorial staff would do well to focus their considerable talents upon their own publication. As any regular Crimson reader would know, your work is cut out for you. Just do it. Jack Moynihan '91   President, Harvard Independent