You know, for every dateless misogynist on here there's an "all sex is rape" doctrinairix, so I'd lighten up on casting the gender-based aspersions.

While I think it's valuable to step-back and assess "where we are now" in the journalism "revolution," technologically, we are just at the beginning. For better or worse, this will shake out. Whether readers, letter-writers, and journalists like it or not, "communities," for lack of a better term, will form around media outlets. Why? Because that's what people do. This doesn't mean, btw, that one needs to lose anonymity. But the guy in the back of the room hurling insults will make less noise than the articulate person front and center.

Reader comments are very useful for the particular topics of error-checking, and for disabusing writers of common myths about things that never happened.

For example, Al Gore never claimed to have "invented the Internet". And yet Gary Kamiya passes on a comment in this article that yet again scores a humor point based on a talking point created by anti-Gore forces. Sadly, many, many journalists exist in a culture of shared myths that makes few requirements of fact verification.

From my standpoint, what bothers writers the most is when they are called on their factual errors. It's true that being caught in a mistake entails a loss of face for the writer. OTOH, if "professional journalists" were doing their job properly, this wouldn't be a problem.

"...the percentage of letter writers who are fools, knaves, blowhards and nuts has exponentially increased."

A child, however, who had no important job and could only see things as his eyes showed them to him, went up to the carriage.

"The Emperor is naked," he said.

"Fool!" his father reprimanded, running after him. "Don't talk nonsense!" He grabbed his child and took him away. But the boy's remark, which had been heard by the bystanders, was repeated over and over again until everyone cried:

"The boy is right! The Emperor is naked! It's true!"

The Emperor realized that the people were right but could not admit to that. He though it better to continue the procession under the illusion that anyone who couldn't see his clothes was either stupid or incompetent. And he stood stiffly on his carriage, while behind him a page held his imaginary mantle.

Mr. Kamiya has written a moving and beautiful article.It appears from the amount of letters that have already responded that this beautiful piece will not go unrecognized or appreciated. So, from the heart as a reader, Thank You Mr. Kamiya.

But of course I have to digress for just a minute or two...The process of being able to communicate with people who write articles in newspapers and magazines should in fact improve what we read. Many journalists who work for mainstream publications have become arm-chair journalists and have very little contact with the outside world because of embedded research departments and access to anointed experts. To offer a brief example: during the famous O.J. trial, an LA Times writer clearly believed that Officer Fermin couln't be a racist because his long held racist beliefs about minorities had occurred over ten years ago. At the time I had access to the LA Times and I called this jouurnalist to ask him directly about his obvious ignorance. The response: "I can't talk to you now...I'm learning about these isssues." I found it interesting that he was learning by watching Fermin's testimony during the trial - learning what I had lived all of my life knowing - that racism, liker any other "ism" doesn't go away after the passage of time. The LA Times, a publication still incased in an ivory tower, hamstrung by the ownership of the Tribune is still so very out of contact with most of us who reside in Souther California.

Our society is submerged in people who have very little regard or respect for other people. The type of negative vitriol that flows from letter respondents can be traced back to the risde in popularity of the Rush Lumbaugh and the Anne Coulter's who collect their salaries based on their inability to be anything other than vile to those they they judged to be undesirable. Our lives have been segmented by hatred and disrepect because the media decided that it was more important to starcase heinous crimes rather than meaningful content. As the line for what is acceptable declined, public discussion also became less humane. The powerless have always migrated towrds the edges of society, its just that today the fringe class seems to have found acceptance in the media.

Mr. Kamiya, I hope that you and your staff continue to strive for excellence in the articles that appear on Salon's pages? I hope that your articles creates a dialogue that helps to re-center the content of a society that is spiralling into a void filled with far too much meanness and vitriol. Carpe diem!

I don't read others to see my own opinions mirrored. I read to learn (Steven Pizzo's recent column at Smirking Chimp just bowled me over), to find out how others think and to get in touch with the world around me (however misguided ;)). Those writers who attended conventions before the days of the internet discovered first hand the effect of their words, but it has been easier for journalists to live in a bubble with editorial staff screening all but the goofiest or most sycophantic letters.

How many of us have written intelligent and well reasoned letters to the editor to have not seen one in print or, in that unlikely event, to have one's words deliberately edited to take the meat out? The only time I ever had a response in pre-internet days was a columnist who failed to print my letter but who did use his next column to malign everything I had written.

With the Beltway and the political parties so remote from how the rest of the country is thinking, it is a shame that more don't take advantage to the blogs to find the larger world outside their offices. That one can have instantaneous communication with people of all walks of life around the world is a wonderment. Yeah, sure, there's the possibility of getting one's feelings hurt or to find better stylists and clearer thinkers than among the professional class, but instead of hiding behind press credentials, why not take advantage of this incredible resource? If you intend to throw a few punches you need to be able to take them too.