A sad lesson

Mark Benjamin, in "Reporting a Scandal When No One Bothers to Listen,' describes his experience reporting for Salon.com the failure of Walter Reed Hospital to deal adequately with the returning soldiers and having no one listen. It was not until several years after he documented the story that articles in the Washington Post, which garnered a Pulitzer Prize, gained broad interest and lead to corrective action.

His story reminds me of one of my own. I worked with a friend to develop a system for scheduling traffic lights in Santiago, Chile. It involved the collection of data and the use of a computer program. We tested the system, and for one glorious day the "green wave" worked on the main street of the nation's capital, and traffic flowed smoothly. We trained the people in government to use the system, then nothing more happened. The synchronization deteriorated, and traffic slowed eventually to its original snail's pace. Turns out that it is not enough simply to make things possible, it is necessary to motivate people to take action.

Unfortunately for the soldiers who suffered, some to the point of committing suicide, it took more than articles in Salon.com to motivate the military, the Bush administration, and the Congress to act! Of course the question is why was the Washington Post successful when Salon.com was not, and why did the print media not pick up on the story when it was broken in the online media.