By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief
HARLINGEN, Texas - Smalltown newspaper people like to tell you that all news is local, that they don't give a damn about national or international events, that the money to be made is local money. That is why you are more likely to see an advertisement from the local used-car dealership in your hometown paper than you will, say, an Ad for fancy watches sold only in New York.
And that's fine.
But when the country is falling apart, or, more correctly, being torn to shreds from coast to coast, well, one would think that, yes, what happens in Vegas doesn't have to stay in Vegas. There are a dozen or so wild political contests being waged from Delaware to California, contests that pit witches against tired and old white men and contests in which one woman seeking the governorship of La-La Land is blowing $150 million of her own cash.
You'd never know it reading the
Valley Morning Star here. This newspaper seems to be the darling of the Winter Texans and the venue for lightweight neighborhood news. But it's no different in Brownsville downrange, where
The Herald is known more for what it ignores than for what it covers. Same for
The McAllen Monitor on the western end of the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, where you'll find more national news than in any page of its two aforementioned sister newspapers, but it'll be cut and buried in the inside pages.
So, what is it with the region's news media?
Why won't these three dailies enter the fray at a time when every American citizen ought to be engaged in this burning national debate about the horrible economy, the terrible wars across the Atlantic, the indefatigable immigration mess, the insanity of the extremists Far-Right politicians arriving as members of the Tea Party, the unresolved flirtation that is the Gay issue? Can a community such as this one move across the universe as if alone in its provincial miasma? Should we worry about it?
The Valley Morning Star here is a shell of a daily newspaper. These days, it sails or hangs on the legs of a small number of novice reporters, most of whom, says one city commisioner, do not have the smarts to tackle to the doings at City Hall. But, we ask, did they ever? Much of the blame falls on the citizenry's inability to demand better news coverage. Harlingen does not. It merely putters alongside the Morning Star's unambitious tune, obliviously waltzing to nothingness.
In Brownsville, The Herald is no better. Indeed, the starving community's three citizen Blogs exist primarily to launch biting salvos at it, to note deficiencies, to shine the light on its mistakes, to wonder why it continues to publish, to damn the damned thing. In response, The Herald says & does nothing. Its flight pattern is that of a cropduster, swooping up and down, mostly down. At the top of the list of stories it has ignored is the bloody war across the Rio Grande in Matamoros, a Mexican bordertown whose geography literally laps up to Brownsville's downtown underbelly. For a more-ambitious outfit, this neighboring war would mean covering the hell out of it and earning a national reputation as a border newspaper-of-record. The Herald is not so inclined. Instead, it makes its daily bread off stories about outlaw massage parlors and a local government effort to rid the town of plastic bags at the grocery store. By all rights, it should be the company's flagship newspaper, but it isn't - and that seems to be okay with the management and the reporting staff.
In McAllen, The Monitor sashays along on a better-paved road. It will undertake investigative reporting, only that does not come along as often as the local state-of-affairs demands. The western fringe of the Valley it serves is a motherlode of stories to do with crime, from the one fueled by the ever-threatening drug cartels in ungovernable northern Mexico, to stupid cops in Starr County, to political corruption rivaling the one found in rotting Mexico across the nearby river. It, too, has largely ignored the national noise. You'll find a write-up every now and then, but more often than not it'll be an editorial or a guest column previously published by a major newspaper. It would seem that The Monitor also is of the opinion that, well, local opinions have no place in Big Time politics.
And to that, we say:
"Que lastima..."
- 30 -
3 comments:
So what would it take to change things? The reporters don't really have a choice as to assignments, do they? If the editors are only allowing them to print pablum what can they do? And is the average reader really ready and anxious for the real news? So many people don't want to hear about the crime, maybe because so many are involved in it, supporting it, not wanting to rock their own personal investment. But still there are blogs out of Mexico that tell the whole ugly truth and they are getting a lot of information coming in, from people who want the truth known, and a lot of people are looking to them to tell the truth. Sometimes it seems like the only truth that catches the attention of the local blogs is who threw the latest hissy fit at the commissioners meeting and how many insults can the bloggers throw. Our country is rotting under our feet and we just want to put up a fence around our own little piece of dirt and throw rocks at each other. Come on people now..... M.
It's low lifing local crap, that the newspapers report. People down here don't care about national politics. Most of them, have 7th grade education. Indeed, que triste,pero aqui en el pinche valle, "asi es."
ANONYMOUSES:..It's funny, isn't it, how consumers can affect a product's very existence? Newspapers are a product. If it sucks, don't buy it. As for people of the Rio Grande Valley not caring a whit about things elsewhere in the world, well, I'll but that premise. Tacos are the problem, I tell you! Every taco you eat kills a hundred-thousand brain cells. How many have you eaten this year? ha ha... - Editor
Post a Comment