The Journal published a letter today from a reader who made an excellent point about a recent story involving a former Albuquerque Public Schools official.

The official, former chief financial officer Dupuy Bateman, had been placed on paid administrative leave May 24 after APS Superintendent Winston Brooks announced he had “lost faith” in Bateman’s ability to do his job. Less than two weeks earlier, Brooks had hired a new chief finance officer at an annual salary of $165,000. Up until May 24, Brooks had said he intended to keep Bateman on for “special finance projects,” while paying him his annual salary of $125,000. Bateman’s contract had been automatically renewed on April 1, meaning the only way the district could have gotten out of paying his salary would be to fire him with cause.

The unorthodox and unfortunate personnel situation, coupled with recurring and serious money management problems at APS, had prompted the Journal to publish a series of front-page stories and editorials over the past few weeks that were highly critical of APS.

The paper singled out Bateman for particularly harsh criticism in its coverage of the issue. (I had noted it as part of the tried and true Journal editorial technique of picking one public employee and holding him or her responsible for a complicated, long-ranging and systemic series of problems.)

On July 24, the Journal wrote a story saying Bateman had reached a $68,900 settlement with the school district to end his employment there.

The story recapped a list of serious financial errors that occurred at APS over the last few years and included this passage:

“No one from the district has publicly blamed Bateman for these errors.”

I saw that sentence and wondered why it was there. According to past Journal stories, didn’t Bateman – a former UNM finance official – join the school district in the spring of 2009, after those errors were committed or set in place? In fact, wasn’t he even credited with discovering and rectifying some of them?

Reader David E. Stuart, an associate provost emeritus at UNM, picked up on it too. In his letter to the editor, “APS Budget Woes Predate CFO,” he wrote:

The sentence…leads the average reader to believe Bateman could have some how been responsible for the seriously off-base bookkeeping, and that is utterly irresponsible per the Journal’s earlier reporting which made it clear these basic havoc-causing financial errors occurred before Bateman went to work for APS.

The Journal argued loud and clear in a series of pushy editorials that Bateman be cut loose on financial grounds. You got your way, so why pile on and imply that he might have been part of the problem. Not fair. Not clear and not true. A clarification is in order.

I have to say, I agree. Intimating that Bateman had anything to do with the colossal errors that predated him is not only unfair – it’s just plain wrong.

So what about it, Journal?

With Arizona’s immigration law scheduled to take effect this week, and the first of 1,200 National Guard troops scheduled to arrive on the Mexican border three days after that, the Albuquerque Journal appears to be trying to give the issue the coverage it deserves.

I share the resigned dismay my colleague Tracy Dingmann expressed in her most recent column about the half-story the Journal ran Monday advancing the new law’s implementation, a story which, when read in its entirety, attempted to analyze the law as a “Symbol of Immigration Anger,” as the headline writer put it.

And I’ve already complained about the snide tone of the Journal’s immigration editorial from the previous Sunday.

On the other hand, the Journal on Friday ran a piece about a British couple, in the United States since 1993, who own a business in Albuquerque and would like to stay, but who run the risk of losing their visa if they decide to sell. Even more distressing for the couple, the story by Juan Carlos Rodriguez says, is that their son might have to leave the country when he turns 21. Their story illustrates a key point: that the dysfunction of U.S. immigration policy isn’t limited to Mexican immigrants.

Then, today’s Journal carries an Associated Press story that confirms what those familiar with  Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s hard-line sentiments most feared would result from Arizona’s law. The AP says Arpaio is “making room in a vast outdoor jail … determined to round up illegal immigrants to fill it.” Importantly, it reports Arpaio’s boast that he will hold his 17^th crime and immigration sweep regardless of any ruling a federal judge might conceivably issue that would hold up implementation of the law. (Online, the AP carries a story saying Arpaio also vows to jail anyone who tries to block him through protests.)

Also, the most recent Sunday Journal carried a solid piece by Journal Las Cruces reporter Rene Romo about Mexican immigrant numbers in terms of Border Patrol apprehensions. “Securing the Border” reports those numbers have dropped by more than half over the past five years: On average, 35 illegal immigrants are caught each day trying to cross somewhere along the 268-mile line that separates Mexico from all of New Mexico and part of West Texas, which is far fewer than the record 1,400 immigrants one agent said were apprehended one day in 1993. “And that was just at El Paso International Airport,” Romo writes.

The numbers Romo presents are staggering: Apprehension numbers are down to the lowest level in more than two decades – from 1,171,428 in 2005 to 540,865 in fiscal year 2009. These numbers cover the entire Southwest U.S. border with Mexico, from California to Texas.

But in my view, the most disturbing numbers to be found in recent readings of the Journal were those that tallied the number of bodies of Mexican immigrants found in the Arizona desert the first two weeks in July. Because of record heat waves, these numbers have increased despite the apparent drop in numbers of those attempting to cross into the U.S.

The death tally appeared in a Washington Post Writers Group column the Journal ran on its editorial page Saturday, which the Journal headlined with “People Dying While Nation Dithers.” The story says this:

Last year, 317 Americans died fighting in Afghanistan.  Guess how many migrants, mostly Mexicans searching for work, died crossing illegally into America? The Border Patrol collected 422 in the last fiscal year, part of a rising trend.

So many bodies of migrants were found in the Arizona desert in July, Edward Schumacher-Matos wrote, that that the Pima County Medical Examiner was “stacking them like boxes of fish in a refrigerated truck.”

Forty bodies were found in just the first half of the month.

Forty bodies. In just the first half of the month. Just next door to us in Arizona.

Schumacher-Matos got his information from an Associated Press story that was released July 16, but which he said “was largely buried in most newspapers, if run at all.” If the Journal ran the AP story, I missed it. But at least the Journal ran Schumacher-Matos’ column, which not only brought attention to the AP story, but added salient detail about what it’s like to die of dehydration.

His point is to urge adoption of a comprehensive immigration package, one that would include a robust temporary worker program, improved job-place enforcement, recruitment of highly skilled immigrants and a pathway to legalization.  Importantly, this Washington-based writer says the fact that lawmakers generally agree on these points “is no secret among Washington insiders in the debate.”

That there is consensus on these principles is heartening, although one wonders if any agreement is possible when certain factions put more stock in seeing rivals fail than constructing policy.

What seems beyond a doubt is the agreement that comprehensive immigration reform is needed on the federal level – STAT.

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox, in an interview with The New York Times this week, urged adoption of a comprehensive immigration package, saying he was promised reform by President Bush and in six years, saw nothing. “I don’t want to be negative, but I’m seeing the same story repeating again. It’s been two years now, and nothing has happened in relation to migration,” he told the Times.

The Journal’s editorial urged adoption of immigration reform, recognizing that “a workable immigration policy will require adequate guest worker programs and rules weighted to allow more immigration for needed talent in fields such as engineering.”

I would add nursing to that list of fields, considering the U.S.’s aging population.

Ten years ago, the Albuquerque Journal personalized in a powerful way the desperation that drives Mexicans from their families, towns and villages to risk death in search of work in the United States. “The Price of Hope,” a two-day series by former Journal reporter Guillermo Contreras and former Journal photographer Rose Palmisano, profiled several Chiapas, Mexico, families who lost loved ones when, in 1999, a van crash on I-40 in New Mexico killed 13 undocumented immigrants. Their work took readers behind the immediate tragedy of the crash to the poverty and personal reasons that compelled the victims to make the journey north.

It was an important series, which, like this month’s story on migrant deaths, provides the most compelling reason for comprehensive immigration reform: The United States needs an orderly immigration process – assessing the need for workers on this side of the border and realistically accommodating that need with worker documentation – in order to try to ensure no more of our fellow human beings suffer the crossing dangers of exploitation, imprisonment and for far too many, death.

The Associated Press story on immigrant deaths, by the way, recounts the peak number of migrant deaths (492 in 2005) and how that number declined every year until the most recent fiscal year (422). As of mid-July, Pima County was storing about 250 bodies, according to the AP, and Tucson, where most of the bodies were recovered, had just experienced 15 of its hottest nights on record, giving dehydrated crossers no respite from the record daytime heat.

The story also notes that 1,200 crossers were rescued by Border Patrol agents in the past fiscal year, most of whom, it is assumed, were rescued in desert situations. Today’s online Journal reports that Border Patrol agents in El Paso just this week rescued three immigrants, who in this case were crossers caught up in the fast current of the American Canal near that border city.

I couldn’t help but notice some shockingly selective editing in two nationally-generated stories the Journal ran recently on immigration.

The first example came on Monday, in the Associated Press story the Journal headlined “Symbol of Immigration Anger.” The version I’m referring to here is the heavily-edited one that ran in the Journal’s print edition. (The paper ran a full version of the original AP story on its website.)

The story, by Associated Press writers Jacques Billeaud and Amanda Lee Myers, wasn’t called a commentary, but it read like one. The premise of the story was that the new immigration law that will take effect Thursday in Arizona is a “monument to the anger over illegal immigration that is present in so many places.”

The story went on for many paragraphs, summarizing incidents and events that the writers used to make unchallenged statements about the supposed rising crimes and costs associated with illegal immigration. It was light on quotes – the only guy quoted was Russell Pearce, the Arizona state senator who wrote the law and is, of course, in favor of it.

The Journal’s chopped up print version of the AP story ends right after it serves up cost estimates taken directly from Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and the Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne. Brewer signed the law and has made some wildly inaccurate statements about illegal immigration in Arizona since; Horne is the guy behind the state’s new ban of ethnic studies classes in schools.

What You Didn’t Read in the Journal

Turns out the original version of that Associated Press story goes on for much, much longer.

Here’s some of what the Journal edited out:

Opponents of the law say illegal immigrants are being scapegoated and wrongly characterized as freeloaders, pointing out that they pay sales taxes and put money into Social Security that they will never be able to take out.

They say the state’s rapid growth over the last decade couldn’t have happened without immigrant labor, that housing prices have been kept reasonable by those who did work that U.S. citizens wouldn’t – like roofing a new subdivision in Arizona’s 110-degree summer heat.

As Joy Williams of Tucson sees it, immigrants add to the melting pot that is Arizona and are doing jobs Americans don’t want.

Williams, who works as a research clerk in the Pima County Legal Defender’s Office, is also angry – but about what she says is the open racism she’s seen and heard in recent months.

“What is so shocking is people can be so openly verbal about it now and not even flinch,” she says.

Since Arizona passed its new immigration law, immigrant rights groups say Hispanics are seeing more open hostility.

Lydia Guzman, president of the Phoenix-based Hispanic civil rights group Somos America, says community members are reporting racial slurs like never before. She says she experienced it herself in May while waiting in line at a grocery store, when one woman looked at Guzman’s cart and whispered to another, “I wonder how much this is going to cost us?’”

Another group, Puente, said its calls complaining of racial incidents have jumped from about two calls a week to five to six a week.

Just One Side

In other words – in a news story about the coming immigration law and how it supposedly symbolizes nationwide anger against illegal immigration – the Journal eliminated all the parts of the story that tell the other side.

Part of the problem comes with the highly unorthodox way the story was written. A check of the original story shows it was top-loaded with negativity about immigration.

In contrast to everything I’ve ever heard about writing a good news story, it was completely one-sided until about three-fourths of the way through.

Whatever happened to writing a balanced news lead? Most editors worth their salt would hand a supposed news story like that right back to the writer and tell them to balance it out – to at least give a HINT up near the top that there is another side to the story.

A Story Chopped in Half

Compounding the problems is the fact that, when the Journal edited the story to fit its news hole, it essentially just lopped it in half.

That’s not the way most copyeditors are encouraged to edit stories for publication. They are supposed to read the whole thing and make sure, if they don’t have room to run the whole story, at least the whole story is represented in some way.

Shame on the Associated Press for writing the story that way, and shame on the Journal for chopping it in half!

Sanctuary Cities?

The second example of highly-selective editing comes in a story the Journal ran on July 27 called “Critics Focus on Sanctuary Cities.” It was written by David G. Savage of the Tribune Washington Bureau and ran on the Journal’s front page, as well as in many other newspapers across the nation.

However, in the Journal’s version, editors chose to remove two sections of the original story that give the flip side of the “critics” argument against sanctuary cities.

Journal readers didn’t see this:

The Justice Department lawyers say the government wants to catch and deport criminal immigrants, but it does not wish to take custody of hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who are otherwise abiding by the law.
Cities with sanctuary policies deny they shield known criminals from immigration agents.

Or this:

The Los Angeles Police Department has had a policy for more than 30 years that prohibits officers from initiating contact with someone just to determine whether they are in the U.S. legally. LAPD officials have said the policy encourages illegal immigrants who witness crimes to assist police without fear of being deported.

Why Is This Wrong?

It’s hot…and I’m tired.

Do I really have to explain why its wrong for newspapers to just whack out the parts of news stories they don’t like?

So many times we at ABQ Journal Watch have written about the particularly good work done by various individual reporters at the Journal.

It’s time to do it again today.

Given the topic, the July 23 UpFront column “Thieves Hit Kid’s Graves,” by Joline Gutierrez Krueger could have been rendered in overwrought and sensationalistic tones.

I mean, people stealing flowers, vases and toys from babies’ graves? A story about this could have really gone over the top.

But Gutierrez Krueger, a writer with a real gift for writing about children and about victims of crime, dealt with the topic sensitively and informatively.

In telling the sad tale, she avoided the obvious tactics of tear-jerking or outrage and instead mixed parent’s poignant quotes with some pretty hard facts.

This included the craziest fact of all.

From the story:

But if the thieves thought their graveyard bounty would bring in a nice profit, oh how wrong they would be.

The vases are made of a low-grade material commonly known as pot metal that goes for about 10 cents a pound.  Aluminum such as those found in soda cans, by contrast, goes for 45 cents a pound.

What great use of a simple detail to so deftly illustrate the ultimate cruelty and futility of a heartbreaking string of crimes.

I try to be fairly circumspect when I’m writing posts about the noteworthy things I see in the Albuquerque Journal. I try to tie my criticism – or praise – to some kind of constructive journalistic principle I’ve picked up over my 20 years of writing for newspapers. That’s really the whole purpose of this blog.

But today, I’m gonna just have to throw a tantrum.

What the hell was with that cartoon on the editorial page Sunday???

It managed to stand out as especially bad, even outshining the guest column printed above it in which a reader rather unimaginatively bashed President Obama and Gov. Bill Richardson for their opposition to a controversial Arizona law on immigration and, in a FOX News–type rant, vowed to vote against “Richardson clone” Lt. Gov. Diane Denish and “Nancy Pelosi’s waterboy” Rep. Martin Heinrich. Classy.

Anyway – back to the cartoon. It accompanied a guest editorial by yet ANOTHER “adjunct fellow” of the right-wing, free-market Rio Grande Foundation (the Journal seems to have an endless stream of “scholars” from this group churning out guest opinion pieces for the paper). Check out what we’ve written about that here.

The column, “Success for N.M. Minority Students Lies With Adults,” caught my eye because, well, I am a “minority” and my children are “minority students.” (Such a quaint word, minorities – and apparently still sanctioned for un-ironic use by the Associated Press Stylebook! What does the term really mean in New Mexico and the four other states where non-whites are in the majority? I don’t know).

So apparently the author, Dr. Matthew Ladner, of the Goldwater Institute in Arizona, knows what is best for all “minority” students. (I’ll keep it short: His solution has something to do with Florida, which is also, apparently, another state that is tasked with educating large numbers of “minorities.”)

Ladner’s column actually included this heart-stopping bit of information: “The kids, even the poor and minority kids can learn (sic).”

As a parent of little brown kids, I can’t believe how great that makes me feel! And what an inspiration it is for all of the other “minorities” reading his column in the Journal!

Seriously – does it even occur to the Journal that this kind of writing could be considered offensive?

I guess not, because the Journal chose to pair this guest column with a truly odious syndicated cartoon that managed to slam “minority” students, teachers and…I guess, just for fun, those crazy environmentalists, too.

The cartoon showed little black kid babbling to his parents about how his teachers told him that his parents could save the polar bears by riding their bikes to work. Then the parents ask the kid a question and he reveals himself to be incapable of adding 10 plus 10.

Har har har! Oh, those Journal editors must have been slapping their knees over that trifecta. These are same folks who think Argus Hamilton is hilarious. (Note to the Journal – it is possible to be “politically incorrect” and still funny. Argus isn’t. Funny, I mean. At all. )

What the hell is going on over there? Do Journal editors really think this crap is funny?

I’m tired of trying to analyze it.

Tantrum over.

Thanks for listening, everybody!

In its sole editorial for the day, the Albuquerque Sunday Journal made some good points about the need for immigration reform at the federal level.

But the piece, entitled “Thank Arizona for Immigration Debate,” strained credibility (and no doubt, lost some readers) with the snide attitude of its opening sentence, which said:

President Obama is right to call on Congress to take up the issue of comprehensive immigration reform, even if his hand was forced by Arizona’s passage of a law that’s more popular with voters nationwide than he is.

OK, technically, the editorial’s popularity contest assertion could be considered correct, based on two recent polls.

A CBS News Poll released July 13 put nationwide support for Arizona’s immigration law at 57 percent.

And I’m guessing the Journal is squaring this figure against a Bloomberg News poll, the topic of a Bloomberg News story the Journal ran July 15, which showed nearly two-thirds of Americans think the nation in headed in the wrong direction, but which also reported 52 percent of Americans give Obama a positive job approval rating.

Here’s what the Bloomberg story said:

The public’s disenchantment with the president’s policies doesn’t extend to voter feelings about Obama himself, as he gets a job approval rating of 52 percent and personally is viewed favorably by 55 percent. Obama, 48, remains more popular than any of the Republican figures tested in the poll and is topped only by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and General David Petraeus, the new commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, among a list of 15 people and political parties reviewed.

So, the Journal is saying Arizona’s immigration law is more popular than Obama based on a 2 percent poll difference – at most, a difference of 5 percent? And we all know there’s a margin of error disclaimer in most poll results, which says accuracy can go up or down a couple of points either way.

What’s also catty about this “more popular than” editorial position is that it also discounts the views of Latino voters. Certainly, the Arizona immigration law has Hispanic supporters. (New Mexico gubernatorial candidate Susana Martinez is an obvious example.) But another story in the July 15 Albuquerque Journal headlined “Concern Over Immigration Reform Rises,” quotes Rosa Rosales, president of the League of Latin American Citizens, as saying 82 percent of Latinos responding to LULAC’s poll (done in conjunction with the Hispanic Federation) disapprove of the Arizona law.

These are the citizens likely most affected by Arizona’s law, which allows police to question anyone about their immigration status if there is reason to suspect they are in the country illegally, and which makes it a state crime if they are. And this group makes up nearly half of New Mexico’s citizenry – and a good portion of the Journal’s own readership.

So, 82 percent of Latinos oppose the law, 57 of Americans overall support it and 55 percent of Americans like Obama – according to three different polls.

And the Journal waters down its editorial advocating immigration reform by injecting it with popularity contest trivia designed solely to make the president look bad.

In the world of journalism, one of the worst things a newspaper can do is to “bury the lead.”

The expression refers to the unfortunate – and usually inadvertent – practice of burying the most important information far down in the story.

Besides going against common sense, burying the lead defies newspapers’ traditional and time-honored “inverted triangle” way of reporting a news story – in which the most important stuff comes first, with the details decreasing in significance as the story goes along.

Features and sports stories can meander a bit – but news stories are supposed to get right to the point.

That said, I don’t believe I have ever seen a newspaper bury a lead as spectacularly as the Journal did on July 16, in its front-page, banner story “Union Protest Turns Rowdy: Police Called When Protestor’s Noise and Profanity Disrupt Church Service.”

I do understand that some folks at St. Michael & All Angels Episcopal Church were upset by some of the things that went on during a union demonstration at a business next to the church and its on-site day school.

Church officials asked the demonstrators to be quiet during Mass and to refrain from using dirty language. Apparently, noise from the demonstration continued and the church called police.

Fair enough.

But you had to read all the way to the last paragraph of the story to find out the disposition of the church’s complaint against the “rowdy” protesters.

“No report was filed by APD.”

Huh? The Journal published a banner story about a “rowdy” protest that resulted in a church complaint -  and no police report?

I don’t get it. Or maybe I do. Because the Journal buried some more really important information in that story – one that might help explain why it put it on Page 1.

Check out this paragraph about the Southwest Regional Council of Carpenters, the Los Angeles-based union that was behind this and other local Carpenters union protests at businesses around Albuquerque. (Typically, the protests feature a sign that says “Shame On…” followed by the name of a business the union is targeting for allegedly not meeting unspecified labor standards.)

“The council, which has almost completed building a $20 million training center at I-25 and Comanche NE, has yet to provide details to the Journal about the protests and how sites are chosen despite multiple requests for comment going back to at least April 2009.”

Hmm. Also, there’s this: “Shame on You, Union,” a March 10, 2010 Journal editorial slamming the Los Angeles union for its “thuggish behavior” and refusal to tell the paper why it is organizing the various protests.

Local business people say the protests are giving the construction industry, in particular, a black eye and driving away customers who may think the business is a bad employer. Some say the union is targeting good businesses just to pick up more dues-paying members.

Several local businesses have had enough and are counterprotesting. One has turned “Shame On Carpenter’s Union” banners against the pickets.

The union’s pathetic strong-arm tactic is itself shameless. Customers should cross this ersatz picket line and patronize the besieged businesses that are being targeted by this thuggish behavior. (Emphasis mine.)

Sounds like Journal editors might be just a little bit annoyed with this particular union.

But that’s a horrible reason for burying the lead in a news story.

There was some interesting pushback in the paper today. It came from Albuquerque Public Schools superintendent Winston Brooks, who is lucky enough to have a regular column in the paper.

I say lucky because in his July 13 column, Brooks got the opportunity to directly address some pretty pointed criticism that came his way last week – in a news story, no less.

The provocatively-titled July 6 story was called, “Sorry, Not For You, Kids,” and here was the lead:

For much of the past year, Albuquerque Public Schools officials have touted the benefits of getting Promethean white boards into classrooms.

But nine of the boards, which cost about $5,000 each, are either installed or soon will be in the district’s administrative buildings, where they will be used to train teachers.

The story went on to examine the benefits of white boards, which have been shown to increase student achievement when used by a well-trained teacher.

The story noted that APS is in the process of installing 500 boards this summer as part of a three-year plan to install a total of 3,000 boards. About $17 million in capital funds, which will include training and installation expenses, has been budgeted to pay for the boards.

But here’s the apparent genesis of Journal’s snippy headline:

Of the nine boards that won’t be in classrooms, five are or will be at APS’s Uptown headquarters and another four are at the Montgomery Complex teacher training facility.

The boards were installed in training rooms instead of classrooms because teachers and others who will use the boards have to be trained on how to use them, the district’s director of technology told the Journal.

That seems to make perfect sense. And remember, it’s a total of NINE boards that won’t be in classrooms – nine out of 500.

So I guess I thought the headline was a little harsh. And misleading.

Perhaps Brooks thought so, too.

Six days later, Brook’s regular column in the paper’s “Schools” section was called, “White Boards: The Future is Now.” It began with him telling us how excited he is that training for the first wave of 620 APS teachers who will use the boards in the classroom has begun. The rest of the column was an advertisement for the white boards and what they will be able to do for APS students.

And so, in that way, Brooks was able to use his column as a direct way to address the criticism raised in the news story.

Interesting. All the more power to him, I guess. Most people who get slammed in the Journal have to be content with writing a letter to the editor.

Former city councilor and county commissioner Steve Gallegos made the Journal this week for a bizarre protest on Civic Plaza in which he burned copies of the paper.

Gallegos said he was angry about the Journal’s news stories and editorials over the past month that he felt did not properly represent the character of his friend and colleague, former deputy county manager John Dantis. The paper had run several stories and editorials that hit Dantis hard over allegations of nepotism and favoritism toward his son, who had worked for the county before resigning under threat of termination last month. In the face of the widely-publicized allegations and a related investigation, Dantis announced he would retire effective July 30.

On July 6, Gallegos led a demonstration of about 20 people who shredded and burned copies of the Journal to protest what they called the paper’s harsh treatment of the longtime jail chief. (Read “Ex-County Official Decries Journal Coverage” here.)

Why Did Gallegos Burn The Paper?
Gallegos said he was protesting the Journal’s stories and editorials, including a story on July 1 that raised alarm about the prospect of Dantis claiming his unused annual vacation leave and sick time (read “John Dantis Could Walk With $160,000” here). The paper followed the story with a strident editorial on July 5 (read “It’s Time to Make Over the Extreme Payouts” here) decrying city and county policies that allow deputy department heads and others to accumulate unlimited amounts of leave.

From a Journal story about the protest:

Gallegos said Dantis is a caring man who’s worked hard to help people, especially those struggling with addiction.

“If someone makes a mistake, are we going to knock ‘em to the ground” over and over? Gallegos asked. “That’s not who I am.”

Front Page Scandals

It is undeniable that the Journal has a relentless focus on pouncing on the misdeeds of certain public employees – whether the “perps” are stopping an empty and out-of-service Rail Runner to grab a quick lunch at LotaBurger or embezzling millions of dollars from an impoverished rural school district.

Many longtime readers of the Journal have noted that there seems to be nothing the paper loves more than parlaying these scandals (of widely ranging actual importance) into front-page news stories and fodder for stern editorials. Oftentimes the focus of the criticism ends up leaving his or her post in the face of the publicity storm.

I have heard from many Journal readers who strongly dislike that kind of coverage from the Journal and think that, in some cases, the deluge of stories and editorials aimed at one person or agency can be unfair.

I am not sure, however, that Dantis is the best example for those who complain about the Journal’s apparent vendettas against certain people or groups. There are a number of troubling aspects about the Dantis case that seem to have warranted the close scrutiny he has received.

Taking Gallegos To Task

As for the bizarre paper-burning in the public square – it is clear that, in his protest, Gallegos was reacting emotionally to what he perceived as unfair criticism of the character of his friend…and not so much about the county’s leave policies or the specifics of the allegations against Dantis.

In an UpFront story on July 8, Journal writer Leslie Linthicum strikes the right tone in talking Gallegos to task for the rather silly method he chose for his protest (Read “Putting the Torch to the Town Crier” here).

But what I found the oddest about this whole saga wasn’t anything Leslie noted in her excellent piece.

It was the quote from Journal Editor Kent Walz in the original story about the paper-burning.

From the story:

Journal editor Kent Walz noted the county’s own investigation findings and that a key supervisor recently was charged with bribery in the house arrest program.

“Given these developments, it is interesting that Steve Gallegos seems more interested in the Journal’s reporting than the problems,” Walz said. “His statement sounds like a longtime county political insider trying to change the subject and blame the messenger.”

Never, Never Quote an Editor

Ok, so here’s the real problem.

Editors are, simply put, supposed to stay out of news stories.

Here’s why.

Newspapers have a news gathering side and an editorial side. Traditionally, newspapers observe a healthy separation between the two, in order to increase the credibility of their claim to present unbiased news.

It’s an old fashioned idea, but it’s one the Journal talks about – A LOT.

Certainly the Journal pays huge lip service to this principle, by calling itself the state’s “Paper of Record” and positioning itself as an objective reporter of fact.

But here’s where that principle breaks down. At the Journal, one guy – Walz – runs the news operation and the editorial page. To put a finer point on it, he both dictates the news coverage and opines every day on the editorial page.

Speaking as a newspaper purist – that’s bad enough. I don’t need to see him popping up as a source for news stories, too.

If the Journal wants to cover a news event and present comment on that event, shouldn’t it find actual people to quote, instead of spoon-feeding readers canned quotes from the editor of the paper?

Lacing a “news” story with a quote from the editor – literally, giving him the last word – violates the Journal’s own internal policies of keeping Journal employees out of the news.

In this case, allowing Walz to inject his point of view into a news story was apparently more important than maintaining the paper’s journalistic principles.

The man known as the “Cookie Bandit” was undoubtedly a bad guy.

Joseph Henry Burgess earned his nickname because he survived for years by stealing food and supplies from cabins in the Jemez Mountains where he lived.

When he died in a police shootout a year ago, Burgess was the chief suspect in the murder of Sandoval County Sheriff Deputy Sgt. Joe Harris. Burgess was also suspected in the 1972 killings of a Canadian couple and the 2006 death of a man last seen camping in the Jemez Mountains.

But the July 9 Journal story about the disposal of Burgess’ body in the Journal was a bit over the top.  (Read “Taxpayers Foot the Bill for Killer’s Cremation” here.)

As we learn from the story, Burgess’ body was cremated by Sandoval County after his family failed to claim his body from the state Office of the Medical Investigator.  His cremation cost $600 and was done at taxpayer expense.

The story included angry quotes from Sandoval County Sheriff John Paul Trujillo.

“I don’t think the taxpayers should pay,” Trujillo said. “The fact is he had family to take his body. I don’t think county residents should have to pay for someone who killed one of our deputies.”

I respect Trujillo’ opinion, but I wonder what he thinks would have been a suitable alternative. Because what happened to Burgess was exactly what was called for by state law.

When Burgess’s family failed to claim him after two weeks, the state declared him indigent.  As required, Sandoval County disposed of his body and paid for it through the county’s indigent fund, which caps the cost of disposals at $600.

Would Trujillo have preferred that the state dump Burgess’s body at his family’s doorstep instead?

From the story:

“State law requires the county to take care of any bodies that are unclaimed or declared indigent, even if they have family,” said County Manager Juan Vigil. “It doesn’t matter where the person is from, if the person dies or is discovered in your county, it is that county’s responsibility.”

“It might be offensive, but we have to follow the law,” he said.

The Journal gave Trujillo a prominent platform for his criticism.  But again, what is the alternative?

In my opinion, the Journal story certainly didn’t do much to calm down the rhetoric. The impression I got after reading this supposedly objective news story was thinly-veiled outrage at the notion of taxpayers paying for the burials of poor people – not to mention a suspected murderer.

I predict we’ll see a Journal editorial soon about the outrage of taxpayer dollars being used to pay for burials of the indigent.

I’ll be interested to see what they come up with as an alternative.