I -- Cosigners
II -- How Y2K will impact the New York Times
III -- What the New York Times can do

Attachment 1

Cosigners

Cynthia Beal
Grocer and Moderator,
Year 2000 Regional Preparedness Forum
Pacific Northwest
Eugene, OR

Pastor Daniel Cormier
Montreal Downtown Church
Y2K Water Discussion Moderator
Montreal, Qc, Canada

Peter de Jager
Speaker/Consultant
de Jager & Company Limited
Brampton, ON, Canada

David Eddy
President
Software Sales Group, Inc.
Babson Park, MA

Reynolds Griffith
Professor of Finance
Stephen F. Austin State University
Nacogdoches, TX

Gary Allan Halonen
Y2K Policy Analyst
Toronto, ON,  Canada

Roleigh Martin
Software Engineer Consultant
Edina, MN

Dick Mills
Technology Consultant
Albany, NY

Victor Porlier
Executive Director
Center for Civic Renewal
New York, NY

Alan H. Russell, Ph.D., CCP
Lead I.T. Specialist
Air Products and Chemicals, Inc.
Allentown, PA

Don "Doc" Taylor
President
Hampton Roads 2000
Newport News, VA

Robert Theobald
Author, speaker and consultant in
transformational change.
Spokane, WA

Marsha Woodbury, Ph.D.
Chair, CPSR (Computer Professionals
     for Social Responsibility)
Urbana, IL
 

Attachment 2

How Y2K Will Impact the New York Times

The electric power companies, including those serving New York City, have embedded controls throughout their production and distribution systems that have not yet all passed Y2k readiness tests.  Moreover, 40% of power in the northeast comes from nuclear generation and the NRC has said it will not let plants operate if they cannot guarantee security. Electrical power.  What will it mean for your operations if there are extended disruptions of electrical power?

The telecommunications industry has not yet given assurances that their highly computer-dependent systems will all function after the rollover to 00.  The recent Galaxy 4 failure was a reminder of how dependent on telecommunications we have become.  While the quick recovery was welcome, the situation will be very different if many systems go out simultaneously.  As a company now heavily dependent on reliable telecommunications, questions about the safety of the telecommunications infrastructure must concern you.

Railroads and other transportation systems are at risk because routing and switching is now almost fully automated.  Consider just the availability of paper supplies if the transportation system is disrupted.

Most large corporations are working to solve their problems and spending hundreds of millions of dollars on the work.  As just one example, General Motors reports that it will spend over $360 million.  While the major corporations are now aware of the problem and working diligently on it, thousands of smaller firms, which together are critical to the economic health of the nation, are either only in the early stages of remediation or are not even aware of how much they will be affected.  Many of them are your advertisers or will affect your advertiser¹s economic viability in 2000.

 We are not claiming that any or all of these situations will occur.  As Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan said, ³We do not know or cannot really realistically make an evaluation of what the economic impact is as a consequence of the breakdowns that may occur.²

 What we do know is that the impacts will be serious and, most important, we know that every day that massive action to address the problem is delayed the probability increases that breakdowns in key sectors of the economy will occur.  Given the interconnectedness of modern systems, such disruptions will rapidly spread throughout the economy.

Attachment 3

What the New York Times Can Do

Urge President Clinton to join you in this recognition.  Propose that he appoint someone with appropriate credibility and credentials to head a massive national effort to prepare the nation for the transition to the new millennium.

Urge the business, academic and political leadership of the country to  enlist in a national effort to use the time remaining to correct what can be corrected and to make provision for mitigating the impact of failures and disruptions that cannot be prevented.

Call on the other media to follow your lead and help prepare the nation to understand and cope with the problem.  You in the media will play a critical role in avoiding the panic and civil unrest that will be inevitable if the public only discovers what Y2k will mean to them when it is too late to avert major disasters.

Finally, urge the leadership of the rest of the world to follow our lead and join with us in addressing this on the global scale that the problem requires.