Last week Armando Rodriguez, who covered crime and the Juarez cartels for El Diario de Juarez, was killed in his car in front of his home as he prepared to take his daughter to school. This was the first killing of a journalist in 2008. 1,200 citizens have died in drug trafficking-related deaths in Juarez in 2008.
This story resonated close to my heart for several reasons: Like Rodriguez I am a journalist by trade; El Paso Media Group works in the same building as the corporate offices as El Diario; Newspaper Tree has a content sharing partnership with El Diario de Juarez, in that they print our news in translated into Spanish in their daily El Paso paper.
The day of the slaying, the Newspaper Tree team hustled to get at the story and publish comprehensive coverage of the incident, requesting quotes from our contacts at El Diario, pushing them to talk on record about their recently-murdered co-worker. We asked El Pasoans for perspective on this story to help our readers make sense of what could be interpreted as just another senseless killing among many in Juarez.
By noon we had several stories ready to go out in our newsletter and by the following morning, we had a special edition of stories that went out to our subscribers around 9 a.m. It was around that time that I finished going over the exhaustive El Diario de El Paso coverage of the killing in their morning edition and turned to the El Paso Times. Much to my disgust, Rodriguez's story was buried below the fold on the lower right-hand corner of the front page.
Instead, the El Paso Times placed a story about a health insurance plan that might get changed in the school districts and an elephant trainer from El Paso that would be in town for the Maida Shriner's Circus, with a sexy photo of the trainer, above the fold. Someone or a group of people decided to place Rodriguez's story in the worst possible locale of the front page. Anyone picking up their morning paper and scanning the above the fold stories would believe that for one more day, we do live in Mayberry and everything is just fine.
In fact, leading political and civic figures on both sides of the border issued statements acknowledging the importance of this event. The El Paso Press Club and National Association of Hispanic Journalists also released statements. The Times editorial page, probably still sulking from the Obama victory, hasn't peeped on the issue.
A daily newspaper that caters to those readers who need their morning paper light and down to a five-minute read that is overwhelmingly positive and hopeful about El Paso is not fulfilling its responsibility as a newspaper.
Fence or no fence, over 25,000 El Pasoans everyday drive into Juarez to work in maquilas and several hundred thousand people from Juarez come into El Paso everyday to work, attend our schools and keep our economy afloat. Surely those people deserve the news of the day that matters. Too bad they don't get it from the El Paso Times.
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Lisa Degliantoni is the Editor in Chief of El Paso Media Group. She manages the editorial and design teams that produce El Paso Magazine, Newspaper Tree, The El Pasoan and www.inthe915.com. Most recently, Lisa has become the host of "Charlando con la Gringa," a weekday talk radio show that airs on KAMA 750 AM, 4-6 p.m. To contact Lisa directly, send your email to lisad@epmediagroup.com.
