Years ago, a journalist colleague of mine while I was working for United Press International in Santa Fe once described a particularly bland news release issued by some state agency as being “as exciting as the third tallest building in Zurich, Switzerland.”
That was my reaction a couple of weeks ago when I picked up our local Las Cruces Sun News to find the following as its major story for the day.
I defend local journalism, but this is clearly not local news. It’s a story picked up from the El Paso Times, owned by the same company that owns the Las Cruces Sun-News that is part of the USA Today network. Why the local editor (if there is one) thought this would be a story of interest to local readers is far beyond me. I mean, it wasn’t even THE FIRST CarMax store in El Paso. I could imagine that our local car dealers would be upset by this, but as of my latest count, only one of the major automobile franchises is still locally owned and the rest are mostly owned by dealerships in El Paso.
Year ago, when the Sun-News was locally owned, Las Cruces retailers became angered when the Sun-New published a story saying that shoppers should consider going to Juarez for a unique shopping experience during the Christmas holidays. I saw it as a story focusing on something interesting for our residents to do because of our proximity to Mexico. Since many things sold in Juarez stores are not available locally. I did not see it as taking away dollars from our local retailers. Still, some local retailers were incensed and for a while stopped all advertising in the Sun-News.
I doubt enough people read the recent “Car Max second store opening” story to have made a blip in local vehicle sales.
Perhaps the Sun News could have featured a story on our new city manager, updates on the water allocations in the Mesilla Valley, exciting research happening at New Mexico State University or maybe an update on the homeless situation in our community. Nope. we got the “Car Max second store opening” as our daily newspaper’s penetrating journalistic endeavor.
By contrast, the true local paper, the Las Cruces Bulletin, had as its front page story that same week as “Beer Fest returns to plaza.” I suspect that got a lot more locals excited than the used car news release puffery.
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Speaking of newspapers, I make it a point to glance at the patent applications in the Albuquerque Journal’s weekly Business Outlook section. I continue to find interest things for which patents have been applied, but most of them I can’t understand.
An example from last week: “Ammonium based ionic liquids useful for lignocellulosic processing.” Your guess is as good as mine.
However, I did understand this one from an inventor in Truth or Consequences: “Cargo hook.”
aero-cordero.com 