The week of April 28, 2013

April 29, 2013

Brutus started off the week with Fireworks and then also that Monday M. T. Cicero wrote Serendipity call the hand of the Times once again.

Approved but not read by Brutus came out on Tuesday.  City council is getting in the habit of approving a concept and then letting the city manager negotiate and sign documents without council seeing what was done.  I wrote   Are you kidding? about how certain elements of the power cabal want El Pasoans to feel better about the city.  The floggings will continue until morale improves.

Brutus posted Forgetting your place, about how a city representative took the citizens to task in a column written for the Times.  Muckraker followed up with 2b but not really and how the Times wrote another article that covered the part of a topic that their editorial policy wanted us to know about.  M. T.  Cicero had fun with the editorial page writer at the Times.  Dear John was the result.  These were posted Wednesday.

Thursday  saw Losing our shine from Brutus and Propositions explained, but not how they were published from me.  I wondered why if the city needs to publish legal notices in Spanish they don’t use El Diario El Paso.  Desdemona sent a piece about how proposition 2 would make the mayor even weaker to Cicero.  Another “You’re not voting for the Baseball stadium” Ploy reminded us about how the city says one thing and does another.

Brutus started a series of summaries about the proposed city charter amendments.  The posts are cumulative with the most recent one as of this piece being Proposition summaries (4,5,6,7,8,9).  He also posted Bad habit that same Friday.  He wondered why the city chooses to hide things even when they are inevitable.

The posts from Brutus about the propositions continued on Saturday.  If you read the one above you are all caught up with him.  In Sorry wrong number he pointed out the the city attorney, The El Paso Times, and The El Paso, Inc. all have used different numbers when talking about what proposition 4 would do to the salaries of the city representatives and the mayor.  He suggested that their pay increases should be voted on each time and should not be automatic.

Sunday had another addition to the post from Brutus about the propositions and then I wrote Reporting happened.  Somehow a reporter at the Times got a good article published.  It just showed again how blatantly the Times applies it’s editorial policy to news articles.

Muckraker

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Reporting happened

April 28, 2013

I was taken by articles on the front page of The El Paso Times today.

One,  “EP icon, educator Strelzin is dead at 75” was insightful, informative, thorough, balanced — well written.  I enjoyed reading the article and appreciate the information that it provided.

The other “Some question wording of propositions” was shallow and slanted.  It seemed to me that much of the article came directly from the people who want the propositions to pass.  Points that might make the propositions unattractive to voters were not covered.  You can read the articles from Brutus on this blog  if you are interested in the “hidden consequences” of these propositions.

Could it be that the skills of the two reporters are vastly different?  More probably it was the editorial policy of the Times that restricted the content of the article about the propositions.

The Times is like most other daily newspapers in that it is struggling to remain economically viable.

I hope that the editors and publishers come to the realization that the average age of their paper edition subscribers is older than that of their electronic readers.  Many that I know have cancelled their subscriptions in the past years,  not so much because they are angry but because they feel that they know what the Times will print and don’t want to waste time.

Realizing that the older readers will be dying sooner than the younger ones, I still think that the Times would be well served to recognize that many of the older readers have more experience and hard earned wisdom than some of the younger.  In short it is harder to sell a point of view to them simply by saying something is so.

I for one would be happy to read articles that address both sides of the issues.  Leave the editorials on the editorial page.  Become a source of knowledge.

The electronic version is an opportunity to develop a new constituency.  The Times might even find that younger readers would appreciate the value of balanced reporting.

Muckraker

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Sorry wrong number

April 27, 2013

Proposition number four on the ballot deals with the pay of our city representatives and mayor.

In Proposition 4, the blank check I wrote about the issue and how El Paso Inc.  had written that the city attorney was wrong.

Now after the El Paso Times headline article today (here is the link from the Times  but please be aware that as of the moment that I am writing this it does not work–so much for being careful about what you print):

City representatives would get paid “about $42,000” according to the city attorney.  The Times today puts it at “about $47,000”.  The Inc. said the number is $50,500.

The mayor would get “about $63,000” according to the Times.  Thankfully the city attorney was not quoted in the Inc. article.  The Inc. wrote that the mayor’s salary would rise to $75,250.

For crying out loud

How can a voter make an informed decision on this issue?  Try depositing about $1,000 dollars in your bank.  They expect an exact number and so do we.

Based on the way the city has misled us on many other issues I don’t feel comfortable with this.

To me the real issue with this proposition is that the pay adjustments would become automatic every year.

No muss, no fuss.  Voters need not do anything.

We deserve better

Brutus

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Propositions explained, but not how they were published

April 25, 2013

Great news!  The El Paso Times in their Wednesday, April 24, 2013 edition published six  full pages of “Legal Notice” to the citizens of El Paso.  Three were in English and three in Spanish.  I thank the Times.

Brutus has been writing about the proposed city charter amendments and has commented that he would like to see the actual text of the proposed change in addition to the ballot language that the city has been publishing.  Now he has it.  We will wait to see what he thinks.

Wait.  Those six pages do not appear to be available in the on-line edition of the Times.  Advertising is handled differently between the two editions.  Could it be that the city had to pay for the publication and the Times was the beneficiary?

The city is required by state law to publish this information.  There is nothing wrong with them paying the Times and the Times making a profit.

What I do question is whether the city also published the notices in El Diario de El Paso.  If they did then I applaud everyone involved.

If they only paid one paper, wouldn’t it make sense to put the English portion in our English language newspaper and the Spanish portion in the Spanish one?  Maybe there is some legal issue here and both sets of notices needed to be in the same newspaper.  I doubt it.  In fact I wonder if the city is even required to publish them in Spanish, not that I have a problem with them doing it.

Is it possible that the city just wanted to give more money to the Times to keep them happy?

Muckraker

1 Comment | City government, El Paso Times, State Government | Permalink
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2B but not really

April 24, 2013

Special thanks to The El Paso Times.  They chose to partially cover the contentious discussion at city council yesterday about the closing of seven rail road crossings on page 2B today (you can read the article here).  The closings are part of the deal that the city had to make to get the land to build the ball park.  See Train wreck by Brutus.

I have not seen the video yet but the article once again tells us a lot by what it does not say.

Three representatives from the Ysleta Independent School District were concerned about the unintended consequences of the closures and the fact that the school district was not notified.  Two city representatives “stood up” to them and pointed out that they had been holding community meetings for years.  Evidently the representatives feel that the city government can operate without regard for other governments and their agencies in El Paso.  The attitude seems to be “we hold meetings, you need to come bow before us, we have no obligation to reach out to you”.

The closing vote passed by six to two.  Most interesting to me is that the article did not mention the city representative who is running for mayor.  Did he sit back and let other council members carry the ball in this issue where parts of El Paso got sold down the river for the sake of the city hall destruction/ball park deal?  Or did he speak up for the progress that he and his cabal are inflicting on us?

Either way the Times should have told us.  The man is running for the office of mayor.  We have the right to know about his actions on council.  Maybe the reporter got tied up in traffic going to the candidate’s campaign office.

Muckraker

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