Not goin’ downtown
To the editor:
It’s frightening for us [old folks] to venture downtown [“Baton Rouge’s melting pot,” Oct. 6]. It seems there is a fight or murder every night. There’s nothing wrong with bars or restaurants, but what happened to all the shopping stores—Sears or W&L or Penney’s or drugstores?
Lewis and Mary Bagot, Baton Rouge
To the editor:
The reason downtown isn’t well visited is that it is inconvenient to those of us who don’t live there—and you have to pay for parking. Were there a trolley from the suburbs to downtown, that might increase the traffic a bit. Plus, there isn’t much there other than some pricey bars and restaurants. For example, my husband purchased a beer and gave the bartender a $5 and told him to keep the change. The bartender replies, “Man, the beer is $5.50,” and we’re talking a cheap domestic beer. Get the picture? We live in south Baton Rouge and have many wonderful restaurants, including those in Perkins Rowe. Why should we drive all the way downtown?
Marcia Bergeron, Baton Rouge
In search of the truth
To the publisher:
My concern is not the speed with which the reporters have to gather their stories and the resulting mistakes. Instead, it is that the reporters choose questions crafted to support only their preconceived perception of the truth [“Publisher’s View,” Oct. 6]. And even more important, the editors’ choice of what stories to send reporters to cover and the space allotted to those stories only supports their concept of truth.
I was privileged to hear Walter Cronkite speak on that subject during the early 1960s concerning the coverage of race riots in Mississippi. He said that they struggled with the question of whether they were covering a real riot, or was the presence of the cameras contributing to producing a riot that would have otherwise not happened. Then [nightly news was only 15 minutes then] how much of the allotted time for the news was to be taken up by that story. With everything happening that day, did what they covered in Jackson that day rank up high enough in importance to allot three minutes? Five minutes? No minutes?
My objection is not with mistakes due to the fast-paced events. Rather, it is with whether reporters are covering the correct stories, covering them with questions that reflect the real search for the truth, and editors doing a sufficient job of weighing that story against everything else that should be covered and placing it in its proper allocation of space or time.
Phil Yeates, Baton Rouge
Shrimp scamping
To the editor:
I have been in the restaurant business for more than 30 years. Until recently, we used almost exclusively Louisiana shrimp. I operated a restaurant in Florida for 14 years, and we sent a truck weekly to Louisiana to purchase shrimp and other Louisiana seafood products [Daily Report, Oct. 8].
About 10 years ago, the majority of the shrimp industry changed their business philosophy. They began to say, “You will buy what I pack, how I pack it and you will get it when I say you get it.” Short weight, poor counts, poor quality and excessive use of Tripoly to create greater weight of shrimp by absorbing more water led me to stop purchasing locally.
I have been purchasing from a packer in Bayou La Batre, Ala., for the past nine years. His quality is equal to or better than what I used to get locally.
Rather than promoting Louisiana shrimp for what they were—“the best in the world”—many, but not all, processors chose to try and compete with the imports on price rather than quality.
Another problem is with the size of the shrimp. Every year, the state biologists advises pushing back the opening of the season so the shrimp can grow. Pressure comes from the shrimpers, and the season opens at the “normal time.” Three days after the opening of the season, the TV cameras are at the dock with the shrimpers complaining about the size of the shrimp.
I would like to see the shrimp industry thrive in Louisiana again, but they are not blameless victims in this.
Kevin Ortego, Baton Rouge
