Yesterday, David Crowder at the El Paso Inc. reported that his former publication was shutting down once again. Anyone that has followed El Paso politics for a while now knows that the Newspaper Tree came about as a result of my online publication that expedited Ray Caballero’s expulsing from the city’s politics. Both Crowder and Sito Negorn, now with Jose Rodriguez, worked at the online publication. With much fanfare, the new and improved publication was to remerge as the go-to investigative journalism outlet for El Paso in March of last year, although they spent two years waiting for IRA approval to act as a nonprofit.
The problem for publications such as the Newspaper Tree and to some extent my blog is that in order to investigate wrong doing in El Paso the investigators must focus on the moneyed people of the city. In so doing, the publication alienates the very people it needs to pay the bills.
That is exactly what happened to the Newspaper Tree, it had a choice between publishing in depth investigative reports or it could just regurgitate the press releases issued by the government entities, much like the local news media does already. The problem for the Newspaper Tree is that it was impossible for it to reach the necessary traction in readership by just publishing the government releases and thus the moneymen decided it was not worth their money.
The few times that the Newspaper Tree attempted to investigate public policy it ended stepping on the very toes that was funding it and invariably the reporters were told to stop investigating the issue. You might remember that on June 13, 2013 I published “Newspaper Tree: The propaganda machine for the cabal” where I shared with you Debbie Nathan’s experience with researching those funding the Newspaper Tree – she was fired for daring to ask important questions about public policy.
With no way to attract a readership base, the Newspaper Tree basically ran out of money. However, it is important to note that the Newspaper Tree spent about $400,000 in its latest incarnation before finally giving up. Think about that for a moment. How many of you would still be able to walk around in El Paso holding your head up high knowing that you just wasted $400,000 of someone else’s money? I would venture to say not many, if any at all.
Even with $400,000 at hand, the Newspaper Tree was not able to get one major investigative report published. Why is that? Could it possibly be because it never was about quality investigative reporting but rather it was about keeping certain people in office to keep the taxpayers under their control?
For now, it seems that the Newspaper Tree is not needed for propaganda purposes and therefore it is being put on hold. However, make no mistake, if and when the cabal is in need of a propaganda machine don’t be surprised to see it resurrected. Right now, there are plenty of useful idiots at the disposal of the cabal.
In closing, I admit that I am very jealous that certain individuals were able to spend $400,000 in an online publication. As a blogger, I can only dream about what I could do with $400,000 to bring quality investigative reporting to the border community. Alas, it is only but a fleeting dream but as you chuckle at that thought why not send a little of your hard-earned money my way so that I can get a cup of coffee and stop dreaming about $400k in wasted money. The donation link is on the left side in bright red and it takes only a minute to fill in your credit card information.
To Peppers, NPT was the official voice of the official people in its 2nd incarnation. Dull as shit and no wonder it folded. A non-profit is not the way to investigate the power elite and their schemes. I think, too, that the blogs have stepped in to occupy the space left by the original NPT. Not wholly, but 75% of the space.
I remember how much I enjoyed NPT before it went under the first time.
I stated to follow it this time and quickly realized it was a shell of it’s former self.
It did not go unnoticed by me who foundation was on the top banner as shown in your pic. When I saw that, I realized that they would be beholden to certain groups and not free to report what we all want and need to read.
Shame.
The old NPT was an unabashed cheerleader for the downtown plan. Keep that in mind when remembering what it really was.
After all these years, I still need to say the biggest reason Newspaper Tree didn’t get to stand up and was the protracted delay by the IRS in approving the 501c3 status. It took more than two years and I’m not sure what finally happened. It was during the Obama administration and they were holding up all nonprofit applications for fear the Repubs were going set theirs up and use them for political purposes. Other nonprofit news organizations were waiting with us and others folded before theirs were approved.
The Community Foundation helped El Paso Inc. keep Sito and I working for a very long time while we all waited for the IRS to get off their sorry asses and do their job. Yes, NPT probably could have and maybe should have gone into operation anyway. But contributions wouldl not have been tax deductible and that would have limited donations significantly.
Hopefully, El Paso Matters will become what we all hoped for Newspaper Tree.