The El Paso Times is patting itself on the back for winning an award tied to their defamatory and complete bag of shit reporting around the EPISD bond management contract.
I think the real story - which would be about the story itself - would be more interesting.
What if they were to give the entire truth? What if they laid out their plan? It would go like this.
Susie Byrd goes to ask Gafcon to support Vero's run for congress. Gafcon guy tells Susie that not only can he not give money to Byrd, but one of her opponents, Dori, has actually retained his services for advice on how to run a campaign. Susie gets uber pissed about this because you do not cross Vero.
Susie has her guy at the EP Times - Bob Moore - get ready to write a completely misleading piece about the Gafcon contract in order to put all the blame on a single member of the school board who happened to be running against Vero. But Bob Moore needs something more than just Susie's angry words. Susie provides all the documentation under the table. But Bob Moore realizes he has to get it under an open records request because what Susie did was wrong... very very wrong.
When the story is written it is made out to sound like Dori (a Jew, Bob Moore liked to point out) singlehandedly forced the bond issue on the voters who had no choice but to vote for it and then she hired Gafcon to murder innocent babies for thousands of dollars a day from that bond issue money. All of this was wrong - obviously.
The El Paso Times and Susie Byrd were more than happy to support the bond when the election was held. Byrd was also an enthusiastic supporter of the Gafcon contract. There was no problem in the world (and no secret about what was going on) until Gafcon refused to give money to Vero. The El Paso Times failed to investigate the entire board's vote on the matter. They simply pointed the finger at the evil Jewish woman who dared to run against Vero.
In the end there was no "investigation" and there were no sanctions and life went on as normal. Think about that for a second - the El Paso Times once again reported on something that was not a crime and didn't turn out to be bad at all. How do you win awards for that? Quite literally nothing happened when the whining stopped.
Makes me wonder why the Times never brought up the time Vero tried to award a $150,000,000 downtown arena contract to a couple of dudes who showed up to county commissioners meeting - with no prior conversations with anyone about any of it. Not a single eyebrow raised when she tried to strip all the recipients of the hotel/motel tax of their share without so much as a presentation. Sadly the item failed only because the other members of the court felt they needed more time to "consider the deal," which is their language for "secure bribes from the guys who want build the arena." (Note: this was the first iteration of the downtown arena that eventually died. The current one was put into a city bond issue.)
The concept of "award winning" isn't what it once was. Throwing your journalistic ethics out the window so your buddy can win an election is how things get done these days.
Didn’t Susie want GAFCON cos’ it was GAFCON or Forma?
Love,
Max
Posted by: Max Powers | April 17, 2018 at 10:30 AM
What is also bs is even characterizing this as an "award".
The El Paso Times PAID AN ENTRY FEE to submit a story to a members only CONTEST in order to win a cash prize.
This is a members only contest held by a state "professional" association for industry marketing, self-promotion (i.e. resume stuffing), fundraising purposes, and to get people to attend their yearly conference.
The El Paso Times story was in a VERY LIMITED "COMPETITION" with other member papers that only have a Sunday circulation between 30,000 and 125,000, (e.g. Waco), who also chose to pay the contest entry fee and submit an entry.
The 3 contributors who spun the story got to split a $500 prize, which speaks volume to the "value of journalistic integrity" of the contest submissions.
If it were not for all the coupons in the Sunday paper the El Paso Times doubtfully would have the circulation to even participate.
Posted by: Mary | April 17, 2018 at 09:22 PM
Mary,
Don’t forget the obituaries and the horoscopes.
Posted by: Baytoe Moore | April 18, 2018 at 05:29 AM
Last Friday's entertainment supplement didn't even have the one page movie section. Plus the ad supplements from advertisers are getting less and less as each week passes. Add to that the opinion page guest column feature seems to give preference to one elected official. Makes one wonder if that paper is now the office journal for that office?
Posted by: Old Fart | April 18, 2018 at 09:13 AM