The advent of the electronic version of the El Paso Times has validated the old maxim “don’t believe everything that you read”.
In the past when paper was the only way to read their stories if a mistake was made the Times would sometimes print a clarification or retraction in a subsequent edition.
With the electronic versions they seem to feel free to change their stories at will with no notification to their readers that an earlier version has been changed.
The story of the boy scout land lease the other day is an example. The original version of the story looked like this on the electronic version:
The article went on with this quote “It will be used as one of the largest urban Boy Scout camps in the United States, transportation commission Chairman Ted Houghton said earlier this week.”
Talk about an understatement
With the land bordered by Paisano drive and Interstate 35 this will be one large campground.
Later in the day a visit to the same web site provided this snapshot:
The mistake in the earlier version is not what bothers me. It is that the Times feels no need to let it’s readers know that they published something that was wrong and then provide the correct information.
How can we trust what they print?
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
The Times did acknowledge .the mistake in the following days paper. but that certainly was a big mistake do the people print the articles actually live in El Paso or are they farmed out from India?
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I’ve had interviews with El Paso Times “reporters” at least a dozen times.
They are just . . . . barely. . . out of high school it seems.
You could tell them that the World was REALLY flat and they would just stare straight ahead or just keep writing in their little notebooks without questioning anything. And without followup questions.
The “reporters” from the TV stations. . . . about the same.
However, they do ask more followup questions to “find out what you mean.” But still, pretty green.
So, when the El Paso Times publishes. . . “50,000 this or that. . . .” they are so green they don’t have anything to compare anything to so to THEM “50,000 might as well be 5,000 or 500,000”.
They do not KNOW stuff, they do not KNOW History, they do not KNOW any facts about real life. So, they write down whatever they THINK they hear.
So, I’m guessing that there are a LOT of mistakes in stories to begin with. Some get fixed before publication, and some after it goes online and some after the Editor calls them to his office after many emails from folks like us.
IF. . . . they get a smart “reporter” that is going to UTEP and after they graduate they move right on to Dallas news or San Diego news jobs. A couple times I have given interviews to those people ( young women ) and within a couple-3 months. . . or so, I never see their stories in the El Paso Times again. They are . . . . . . gone.
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The sad element here is that the Times apparently is unaware that there is a small lake on this property which should be conserved for bird and other wildlife, but the Scouts have a very bad record in conservation. El Paso Naturally blog discussed this the other day. So not only do we have a very large piece of land handed off to a group that is discriminatory, but likely to damage that land as well. Way to go, TxDot!
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