“60 Minutes” parted with its tradition of reading the comments on the previous week’s segments at the beginning or end of the following week’s show. But there were a good many comments posted on the CBS site — after the video and after the transcript. We were going to ask supporters to write in, but decided against it. There were about a hundred comments between the two locations. This one stands out:

My future wife just suggested that the best thing to do would be to rebuild the New York City skyline just the way it was. With regard to the expense and planning, it would have been done by now, but more importantly it would be our path to victory as a nation. The terrorists would blink their eyes and see their plans, ideology and actions count for nothing on our soil.

We will be sending “60 Minutes” a copy of the letter that went to the Senate Committee on Finance and the White House on March 2nd. We believe that this story is in the classic “60 Minutes” custom of speaking truth to power and that when they look into it they will see it is in the prize-winning, dragon-slaying “60 Minutes” tradition.

We have not received a reply to the letter we sent to the gentleman who conducted the interviews, but will continue to reach out and encourage the program’s producers to look more closely at the material presented and remember their mission. People cannot react to information they do not receive. It is the media’s duty to look into a plan that could STILL save billions of dollars and years of time. What justification could there be for not looking to see? We hope that what we build will stand for centuries. Diminished expectations are not worthy of us or the price our country paid on September 11, 2001:

Dear Mr. Pelley,

What was left out of last night’s segment on the World Trade Center is that most Americans have always wanted to see new Twin Towers rise at Ground Zero. In January, 2009, over 90% of those who answered an MSNBC poll chose 21st-century Twin Towers over the current plan. A year later, the site is a spreading sinkhole for not only public money, but public confidence. But we still have a choice.

We appeal to you to just imagine what the public’s response would have been if the segment had lasted a few minutes longer and the details of “Twin Towers II,” a meticulously crafted alternative had been included. The highly regarded, finely-tuned plan was designed to be built rapidly, could be under construction within months, and would save billions of dollars and years of time over the current project. Would the public be likely to accept anything less? On what grounds would officials fail to consider it? Because they have something better to offer? More…

The Elements of Journalism

How did we get locked into spending billions of public dollars on something that almost nobody wants, when it would take a lot less money to restore the skyline and elevate the national spirit as nothing else could?

As surely as Al Qaeda brought the Towers down, the media’s treatment of the issue, more than anything else, is what has kept them down. But the media can fix what the media broke. We believe that a case can be made that will galvanize the analytical nature and public spirit of some intrepid professionals before it really is too late.