The El Paso Times has introduced a new format that in addition to being pleasant to look at has larger print. I am really enjoying the larger print.
It is a shame that the content on the page is shrinking, thereby conveying less information to the readers.
The front page of the July 26, 2013 edition is an example. Allowing for margins on the top and bottom and on the sides, my calculations show that there are about 210 square inches available for printing.
This front page had three news articles on it. The rest of the space was occupied by advertising, headlines, pictures, and indexing information. The actual written articles occupied about 41 square inches of the page.
20 percent
In other words only 20 percent of the front page contained reporting. If they can get it up to 26 percent then they will achieve the same percentage as the loser in the last mayoral election.
Times are changing in the newspaper business. Newspapers are struggling to find ways to preserve their existing circulation numbers and would certainly like to increase them. They claim not to have enough money to spend on reporting. The Times is not the only newspaper that has resorted to this technique.
I don’t envy the people who are struggling with this problem. I can however tell them that this reader would like to see more unbiased, in-depth reporting instead of what we have been seeing lately.
I hope that the Times can find it’s way.
Muckraker
elpasospeak 
The poor TIMES, like many newspapers, has fallen on hard times. It is simply using the same tactics employed by companies that sell candy, chips, etc. They put less product in the same size package while maintaining or increasing their prices, thus increasing profitability. Reading the TIMES these days is a little like opening a puffy bag of Frito-Lay chips. There’s a lot of air, but not much to nourish or satisfy your hunger for good reporting. Unlike Frito-Lay, however, the TIMES to has also lowered the quality of the ingredients and the expertise of the people who produce it. Too bad.
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I think that the El Paso Times has improved under the present editor, but I also had noticed the diminished content. Of the remaining content, much of it is filler with stories about gardening in places where the rainfall is several times that of El Paso and man bites dog type of stories. In short, the Times has joined the ranks of aggregators of news reported from other sources. The El Paso Times is unlikely to be successful in aggregating news compared to online sources such as the New York Times, Huffington Post, etc in terms of readership. If the issue is attracting readers while maintain controlling production costs, it seems to me one avenue is to do more hard hitting local investigative reporting. The good efforts of the Federal authorities cannot have totally eliminated corruption. Let the Times find more. There is a tremendous amount of news out there and I look forward to reading about it in the El Paso Times. As I walk down my street, I see larger numbers of El Paso, Inc. and El Diario lying in the driveways of my neighbors than El Paso Times. I am not extolling the virtues of those publications so much as lamenting what is happening in journalism today.
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The people of El Paso demand transparency. I want unbiased news and more investigative reporting. I do not buy the El Paso Times or watch KVIA news anymore because of their political agendas.
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Just think in how bad of shape the Times would be in had they City not purchased their building. That’s why they pushed the Ball Park and the demolition so hard. They call us the crazies, but I would rather be called that than the kneelers.
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If the El Paso Times were not the propaganda arm of the progressives in the city (can you say Steve Ortega for Mayor?) AND could find something else to report on other than EPISD (can you go one week without seeing the phrase “Lorenzo Garcia who is serving a 3 1/2 year sentence…”) , AND had some idea of journalistic integrity (can you say supporting the ballpark because they knew that it meant selling their building to the city), then perhaps I would pity them. As it is, they are not much better than the local TV news. If your theory of newspapers was correct, then it would apply to El Diario as well. El Diario is flourishing. Perhaps it is because they actually know what journalism is all about.
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How long do you think it will be before there are no more newspapers? The Boston Globe was just sold for less than one tenth of it’s 1993 value. It’s over. Don’t expect to see any heros.
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They reap what they sow.
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