Nothing to cheer?

I thought David Shaw’s top 10 list of the worst journalism of 2004 [“When the Journalism Itself Was the Bad News,” Dec. 19] was a great roundup of what had gone wrong this year, but I have a few comments.

I wish he’d included the best journalism of 2004. I’m 21, a senior at New York University, and one of the very few students in my class passionate about becoming a serious journalist. I think people in the profession shouldn’t help proliferate the negative opinion that is out there. It’s instructive to see the good being done, and it’s also an incentive to do better work if it’s recognized, beyond industry awards like Pulitzers.

Next: If you’re calling the “Desperate Housewives” ad inappropriate because of the nudity, I think cheerleaders’ outfits are much more inappropriate. A lot of other things on TV are inappropriate too, such as certain beer commercials. If it’s inappropriate because it has such a straightforward sexual message, then I bet he could find a lot of examples -- especially in commercials -- of very straightforward, if not spoken, messages. But it just sort of sounds like Shaw threw it in there to let people know he wasn’t condoning it.

Lisa Fleisher

New York

Fleisher is the managing editor of Washington Square News, NYU’s daily student newspaper