LTE: Accent on Private Enterprise

(Submitted to the San Francisco Chronicle, 7 October 2002; unpublished.)

Editor:

In trying to keep up with as much news as I can, I read the Chronicle and several other newspapers on-line.

I found unexpected irony in Louis Freedberg's column today, as well as an object lesson in economics.

Freedberg writes of the state bureaucracy's inability to handle properly-accented Spanish names. But the publication process used for SF Gate had rendered the on-line version of his article completely accent-free!

I dropped a quick note to the webmaster. Within minutes, I received a friendly, personal reply from Chris Hallenbeck, Director of Operations, saying he'd fixed the article and requested a review of the conversion process.

What are the odds that Freedberg will receive a similar response from the state?