Local newspaper abandons journalism's real mission

 Well, I just can’t help myself. The new editorial leadership at the Victoria Advocate is pathetic. I’ve noticed the new crew of green reporters hardly know what they’re doing. The news stories are especially poorly done and for some strange reason the copy is using magazine style instead of AP style. For example, for attributions the new word is “says” instead of “said.”

The Sept. 24 edition’s story about the water board issues in Bloomington (https://www.victoriaadvocate.com/news/local/bloomington-residents-continue-opposition-to-water-board-and-nonprofit-over-denied-records-requests/article_96186484-75e8-11ef-84f1-8f458bd3b26a.html) brought up the board’s resistance to transparency. I emailed reporter Christopher Green, (yep, I know.) and the new editor the following, “Several years ago, the Texas AG ruled nonprofits carrying out a government function are subject to the Texas sunshine laws. You can go to the AG pages to look it up. The VA and people from Bloomington need to pursue it further but going to the Texas bar association isn't the way to do it. The VA can also ask for the public records.”

The result? Crickets. Now, given the recent social media and email interactions I’ve had with various Victoria Advocate staff, I get that I’m not one of their favorite people. I also get that one technique to deal with gadflies like me is to ignore them — even if the communication is constructive and potentially helpful. As one of my Facebook friends noted the other day based on that old cliché, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him think.”

Whether my self-labeling as a gadfly is on point or not, my reality tells me that spayed and/or neutered media outlets pose one of the greatest threats to protecting us from governmental and institutional abuse. When I lived in Amarillo and saw the Amarillo Globe-News propagandize for certain interests, I resigned and founded The Amarillo Independent. While not a business success, I spent seven years leading an incredible group of journalists who wrestled with and dragged information from “under the rugs.” After folding the Indy, I consulted with ABC7-KVII for two years and helped the investigative team expose financial shenanigans at the Amarillo Economic Development Corporation. While I am proud of those years and see that work as evidence of strong investigate journalism chops, more to the point is that Amarillo’s residents got increased governmental and institutional transparency.

Our founders made a free press sacred with the First Amendment. And they placed its tenets about religion and journalism part of our Nation’s soul for good reasons. It’s a shame we must continually remind Americans of that; it’s more shameful that I have to remind Texas’ oldest newspaper of that.