Even major papers still slow to grasp it all....

[segwayusersgroup]

As reported in Newsday, Long Island New York's Largest newspaper. If they cannot get it tight in the media, public perception will continually be skewed as to the facts. Shows how hard we must work to maintain a great image.

Other LI Inventors

By Caryn Eve Murray
Staff Writer

As quoted:

"Dean Kamen, a Rockville Centre native, unveiled the Segway Human Transporter, a scooter for the disabled in 2001.".......

Full story here:

http://www.newsday.com/features/ny-liineventorslist0302,0,6680232.story?coll=ny%2Dfea tures%2Dheadlines

http://www.segwayusersgroup.com - aka: SUG

<h3>"Don't just Ride, Glide"</h3>

[god1138]

These knuckleheaded reporters.... I tell you, there is not a single reporter I've ever dealt with that got the story ALL right... Every single one of them skews a detail or two.

Take THIS GEM of journalistic perfection, for instance... Benny Evangelista, Chronicle Staff Writer for the S.F. Gate wrote the follwing in the article recently linked on this site about Dean's latest unveiling...

"Monterey -- Dean Kamen, creator of the high-tech scooter that was banned in San Francisco, introduced his latest creation Thursday..."

What did I find wrong with this? The fact that the Segway was NOT banned in San Francisco, just banned from the SIDEWALKS in San Fran! Now, someone tell me if that's somehow RELEVANT to the real focus of the article, and if what he wrote was even factual to begin with. Again, another reporter trying to do a half-cocked job, promoting untruths, likely propelling a personal agenda. I am very disgusted by the lack of QUALITY reporting in today's news sources... everyone wants to be a journalist, everyone has something to say, and some of these hacks even get paid to skew stories and increase public confusion regarding something as safe and reliable as Segway.

What I think EVERYONE in this forum SHOULD do is every time we see something like this pop up in the news, we should go on a letter-to-the-editor campaign and bring the full force of our fleet to their desks and tell them what we think about their complete and total inaccuracy. I'm going to send a letter to the editor of the SF Gate, just as I did to the editor of Newsday on this article. I hope that all of you are not only empowered pedestrians but also empowered writers, thinkers and advocates- and, truth be told, this is just another front we must defend if we want our HT's to be accepted and widely adopted.

Viva la Segway!

-rmo

My other car is a Segway!

[toybuilder]

Use these errors as opportunities to write a letter to the editor and to also add a small aside about your joy of seg!

http://www.pasadenasegway.com

[pt]

god1138-

you're 100% right sending thoughtful polite letters with comments and corrections -do- work, i suggest everyone who knows they're "balanced" send off a letter. the web works both ways.

cheers,
pt

http://www.bookofseg.com

[god1138]

Both The SF Gate and Newsday editors now have mail!

I encourage all of you to do the same... the record needs to be set straight and one or two of us won't be able to do it together - as I've suggested in posts to previous topics, we MUST stick together if we want this thing to work!

-rmo

My other car is a Segway!

[SegwayLongIsland]

Good old Newsday is like a blotter; they take it all in but get it backwards!!

My girlfriend is in PR with one of the top 5 in NYC. When our Segs came this week, she wrote a PR piece complete with quotes and a photo and sent it to the feature editor (I'll leave her name out) via e-mail . It was a no-brainer for the editor.

Dead silence. Go figure... Newsday!!

Wayne