Set fixed height, outside of this there is no option in masonry script to affect height..

I wanted to have the introtext underneath the image but it was doing this staggering thing on the rows.  I'd like the top of each row to be lined up.  what would I have to do to achieve this.

My site has masonry, the list items are all same height because I have the images the same height when uploaded and I just show the title.

Maybe your framework has an equal height option?

But really the whole point of masonry is to remove any white space, so you probably need to add own js or csso

If I just keep it images it's fine, but the Introtext for each one is different length and that is throwing it off.

Could truncate introtext:

$$cck->getValue('art_introtext')->value = substr($cck->getValue('art_introtext')->value,0,100);

You can as well set the height of introtext to a fixed value using css and add overflow: hidden so that any content that gets out of this box is hidden. In my experience this works better than limiting by php as it doesn't break any html tags that might be in the text.