Welcome to the new El Paso News, a culmination of two decades of reporting on El Paso politics and border issues. El Paso News started out as El Paso Politics on March 4, 2000. We began by covering the mayoral race between Larry Francis and Ray Caballero. Caballero was elected in May 2001 and served as El Paso’s mayor from 2001 through 2003. Little did we know how our first version of El Paso Politics was to evolve. Over the years we became the El Paso Metro, the El Paso Tribune, the El Paso Forum, Border Politics and the El Paso News. Each outlet delivering the information important to El Pasoans. Today we combine 22 years of archives and we begin our new phase of actively engaging with an entrenched El Paso plutarchy by informing El Paso voters on what drives the public policy agenda that empties their wallets each day. But informing is not enough. We will become engaged in the process itself.

Over the last 22 years many individuals have stepped in to inform El Paso voters on what really happens behind closed doors that forces them to pay exorbitant property taxes. Names like the late Jaime O. Perez analyzed how the oligarchy was taking control of the community’s public policy agenda. Theresa Caballero exposed entrenched and systematic police misconduct and courthouse shenanigans over the years. Many activists have graced our pages along the way, too many to name individually. Many more worked and continue to work behind the scenes to bring us actionable information on government activities that make El Paso the most taxed city in the community. We also have insiders who risk their livelihoods to expose malfeasance that the perpetrators spend hundreds of thousands of tax dollars on lawyers to cover up. We are the only outlet reporting on the problems at the El Paso Children’s Hospital that has resulted in the death of El Paso children. Over the last few years Miguel Juárez grew our cultural footprint bringing important reporting seldom seen in other outlets.

Over most of that time we have stood on the sidelines reporting on what we discovered. Most of the time. Several of us have been involved in tax activism through petition drives and others in forcing the city council into action through initiative petitions. When the corruption was too entrenched to stomach, we stepped forward through the recall of then councilman Larry Medina. We were unsuccessful in recalling him but what many of us exposed put him in jail on public corruption charges.

But, for now, we want to welcome you to the re-envisioned El Paso News, now the longest continuously running online publication in El Paso. Our 22 years of archives are unrivaled and our reporting and informing remains uniquely on the side of the taxpayers, exposing malfeasance wherever we find it because our publication is not beholden to a revenue stream dictating what topics we are not allowed to cover.

But that is just the beginning. We are now taking a page from the disruptive business models of the Internet and are going to disrupt the tired old news status quo where reporters pretend to be neutral and simply observers of the events that impact your lives while their paychecks drive what is acceptable to report and what is not. Our publication in 2001 was the first to bring online reporting in El Paso. We are now going to evolve how the community is informed by how we engage. Stay tuned.