“Cocaine intensifies your personality. But what if you’re an asshole?”–Bill Cosby

The CIA, Contras, and Drugs
September 16, 1998

Editors:
Just a short note of appreciation for your continued coverage. As a Californian, I am appalled at the skewering of Gary Webb and the general media’s refusal to cover the issue. More evidence of the moral bankruptcy of much of the government and the media. Meanwhile our (mostly minority) young adults caught in the web of all this continue to rot in prison… Keep up the good investigative work.

Bob O’Brien

September 9, 1998

Just to congratulate you on continuing to dig into the CIA-drug story. The “secret agreement” was a whopper. At least Reno did one good thing during her misbegotten tenure–rescinding it.

S. Meric

September 4, 1998

Sir: This story should be sent to every person in office today. Every Congressman, every Senator, and every Cabinet member. They are going out of their minds over a sex case but let real criminals walk!!

Thank you,
John Dichard

Redesign: Similarities to Hotbot and Wired? Say it ain’t so!

Redesign
September 16, 1998

In terms of the important stuff–content, navigation, and usability–nice job. In terms of design, geez, who’s colorblind at your shop? It’s as if someone threw darts at a color chart and went with the random results. One of the larger reasons Hotbot never became my search engine of choice, although results are decent, is that bilious green background. It is just so unpleasant to be around, but at least there seems to have been a stab at coordination of color. I don’t see any here.

Ronni Bennett

September 16, 1998

Hey there…

I know you guys are really proud of your new site design, and I love you dearly, but I have to tell you what it has done to my eyes.

I can hardly stand to look at the front page, there’s so much going on and the print is so tiny. It’s depressing. I miss the old site. This one is terribly hard to navigate visually. The old site was so clean, so simple…readable. Can we have it back? No…probably not, but I had to ask. The new design is actually a deterrent to me visiting the site and poking around at length as I am accustomed to doing.

Well, sorry to drop that on you, but I’m a long-time MoJo fan (well before it was wired!) and the new design is mostly an obstacle, from my experience. (I design sites myself so I understand what it takes…I just think this one is far more visually complex than is good for it, or for visitors.)

Cheers,
Kirsten O.

At your service

Pinto Madness
September 14, 1998

A student of mine found your “Pinto Madness” (Mother Jones Sept./Oct. 1977) article on the Web. I have been having my students read this article for years and my original copy was getting pretty bad. Thanks for putting the article on the Web and please leave it on because I will have my students reading it for years to come.

Thanks,
James D. Unnever