Rich Wright over at elchuqueno.com published this post the other day.
One newspaper seemingly has increased both its circulation and advertising revenue.
How?
By reporting instead of being a publishing arm of the various governments.
I suppose it is too much to hope that the folks over at the Times try to do the same thing.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
In a city the size El Paso, it’s amazing that we don’t have a couple of English language newspapers here. When I came here, we had the Herald Post and the El Paso Times. Thought the Post was a better paper, but then it “Folded”. Took the Times everyday for years and then it also kind of went “Out of bizness”. Management, Finances? Then they lost the WRITERS, Charlie Edgren, Joe Muench. Guess people that were there just did “Re-writes” or copied stuff from USA Today, Washington Post, El Diario, etc. Not much actual “Reporting”. We have no way of knowing what the local politicians are doing to US, what corruption, “Deals” they are involved with. The Times is simply complacent in it all. Their “Job, position” is to simply put the best spin on whatever the arrogant, incapable, corrupt politicians, public officials do to US. “More taxes, outrageous salaries for THEMSELVES”, all the BEST thing for US peons. Having to call, talk to a recording several times a month to get papers even delivered, simply is not worth the hassle to go through the 5-6 pages of the Times to read the “Re-writes, copied” articles.
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FWIW, ownership of the Times and the Herald Post was one and the same for the last I don’t know how many years of the Herald Post’s existence. It was, at one time, a better rag. Seems to me that I recently saw that ownership of today’s Times is the same as USAToday, and that explains the dearth (or the death) of local news. Meanwhile, our local TV stations are no better at reporting local news, preferring to stick to the old adage of “if it bleeds; it leads.”
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USAToday’s model is to buy failing local newspapers and deliver news developed in a centralized location plus a few local stories. They lay-off the bulk of those newspaper staffs and milk the cash cow of subscribers and advertisers as long as they can. In recent years they’ve also been laying off their central newsrooms so the “quality” of their central news is going down. The city did the Times a huge favor by buying the building they are in, because one of the negatives the Times had in terms of being attractive to buyers was the millstone of a special use building that would be difficult to lease or sell. With that off the table, the Times was easy for its last newspaper chain owner to unload. I don’t see any scenario where news quality at the Times will improve. I just see them continuing to raise subscription rates until the last few subscribers cancel.
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Media in general and newspapers in particular are suckers for pre-packaged content. This applies equally to government docs/spin and corporate press releases.
Copy/pasting prefab content is easy; journalism is hard.
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I used to read EP Times but quit several years ago. They keep asking me to subscribe to the paper by mail flyer, at Walmart, by phone etc. I always just say “if I wanted USA Today I’d Just get that”.
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I’ll add that if it really has improved I’d reconsider.
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