Facilitating a lie?

December 7, 2014

Could the Times have helped their readers if they had handled their January story about Helen of Troy differently?

In January of this year we learned of the sudden departure of Helen of Troy’s founder and CEO.  The Times wrote an article (you can retrieve it from the Times web site but it will cost you $2.95) about the situation and told us that it was part of a management succession plan.

The CEO left his position in the middle of a month.  That did not sound like an orderly plan so we posted The rest of the story.

Now the Times tells us that the former CEO is suing the company.  The lawsuit claims that he was forced out in order to protect the board of directors and their “lucrative” compensation.

The company is now having trouble growing under the new management.

Helen of Troy is a publicly owned company.  The shareholders have a right to the truth about what happens at the company.  The company’s public statements at the time of the departure were misleading and probably caused some shareholders to take decisions about keeping their stock that they might not have made if the truth had been made known.

I suspect that someone may get in trouble now with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

We deserve better

Brutus

1 Comment | El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Empty throne

December 3, 2014

I thank the Times for letting us know that the county is busy remodeling parts of the county building to make way for the county administrator that they plan to hire next year.

The Times told us that $700,000 is being spent on the projects.

Maybe with the way many government officials consider themselves to be more important than the citizens it is improbable that the new county administrator might have chosen to just occupy an empty office somewhere in the building and save us this money.

Then again we could have waited to see what the new administrator wants.

Many of us think that the fix is in and that the new county administrator has already been chosen.

We deserve better

Brutus

4 Comments | County Government, El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Times still out of touch

November 16, 2014

The November 6, 2014 editorial in the Times spoke of the fact that our former EPISD superintendent is now out of jail.

The Times wrote “Garcia’s criminal enterprise — steering a $450,000 no-bid, little-work contract to his mistress, implementing one of the nation’s worst school cheating schemes — was facilitated by a complacent school board.”

Later they wrote “But EPISD’S failures, and other recent El Paso corruption cases, must be a constant reminder of the need for an informed, engaged citizenry.”

I agree.  Part of the process of having an informed citizenry is having a newspaper that provides such information to it.

Our post EPISD purchasing pointed out that our current appointed board of managers has approved allowing our current superintendent to may buy board purchases of up to $250,000 each year for each vendor he chooses to do business with.

The Times says the prior board was complacent.  Is this board now to be called complacent?

And what about the Times?  Complacent?

We deserve better

Brutus

1 Comment | El Paso Independent School District, El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Frustrating web page

October 26, 2014

Is it just my computers or are we all having horrible experiences when we try to access http://www.elpasotimes.com ?

The pages take forever to load, the screens jump around in the middle of my trying to navigate, and ultimately my entire machine is slowed to a crawl.

I seem to have fewer problems when I use the Chrome browser on this site instead of Internet Explorer.

If enough of you agree I think I will forward this post to the Times.

We deserve better

Brutus

13 Comments | El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Bilingual Times

October 8, 2014

The day after I wrote the article expressing hope that things at the Times would improve, I saw this image on my ipad El Paso Times app.

 

hp

Click on the image to make it larger.

The article was written by the Associated Press.  The image was evidently inserted by a Times employee.

We deserve better

Brutus

2 Comments | El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

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