HERALD GETS SNUBBED AT AIM AWARDS COMPETITION

By Juan Montoya
Hard as the publisher and editors of the Brownsville Herald tried to put a spin on their newspaper's performance at the Texas Associate Press Managing Editors Convention held at South Padre Island and hosted by AIM Media, the Herald's parent company, a glaring fact emerged toward the bottom graphs: their daily failed to garner one first place in all categories.
In fact, it was the Spanish Language El Nuevo Heraldo which walked away with the bulk of the4 awards and recognition.
This is a humble come-down from the halcyon days when the AP used to heap prizes on the likes of Bob Pinkerton, Bob Rivard, Becky Thatcher, Dave Crowder, Jerry Urban, Mike Hess, and lately, Emma Perez-Treviño for their dauntless reporting on both sides of the border.

Crowder kept the county crowd honest. Pinkerton sniffed out corruption. Thatcher was a one-woman crusader for immigrant rights on either side of the Rio Grande. Hess, the dean of valley sports, provided a keen insight into local sports culture. Rivard used his reporting (starting in sports, mind you) to become Newsweek's Central American chief, and later, Managing Editor of the San Antonio Express-News.
What to say about our Emma? She has been the epitome of indefatigable digging into judicial corruption. Unfortunately, the "downsizing" (read profiteering) before Freedom newspapers sold out to AIM left but a carcass of what the newspapers used to be and little support for good reporting.
Nonetheless, even with the lack of corporate support, the likes of Perez-Treviño and others continued to slog away at the overwhelming mounds of dishonesty, injustice and corruption afflicting our local communities.
That the convention chose to have disgraced UT Brownsville President Julieta Garcia as its keynote speaker bespeaks to the decline of the dialogue between media and its readers.
Garcia – ever ready to recur to a trite cliche – told the listeners that we lived in an "interface zone" where  its' often been "easier to cross the border for lunch than to cross town."
We'd like to see some photographs of our precocious Ms. Garcia having lunch in Matamoros (not Garcia's) in defiance of the U.S. Dept. of State travel warnings for citizens crossing the Rio Grande because of the constant violence between the Mexican military and the rival cartel gunmen.
In fact, we'd like to see the same photographs of Mayor Tony Martinez interacting with his counterparts on the Mexican side of the river.
And just last week, the mayor of Matamoros Leticia Salazar was warning city residents against venturing outside their homes because of generalizes gun battles across the city. About teh only media outlet on this side of the river that carried any mention of that violence was a television station from McAllen. If you read the Herald or its online edition, that never happened.
But we can hardly blame our colleagues for the dismal support that the corporate bean counters give their reportorial staffs, or what's left of one in Brownsville.
Of the "combined 39 journalism awards" handed out Saturday, Steve Clark did get a third place for Star Reporter of the Year in the Class AA category, and the staff of the local daily garnered a second place for Star Breaking News Report of the Year.
The only first places awarded to either Spanish or local dailies were two handed to Juan Carlos Sanchez of El Nuevo Heraldo for "Infographics" and Star Designer of the Year and to Carlos Vela, also in the Spanish category, for Feature Page design.
The owners and publishers of newspapers often insist that their staffs produce award-winning works. even though most reporters poo-hoo awards as nothing more than hoity-doity resume builders, the plaques and framed awards look good in the newsroom walls.

But when you consider that one of the owners of the AIM daily in Brownsville is none other than community predator IBC Bank president Fred Rusteberg, you can understand why reporters cannot write critical stories about UTB's Garcia, Rusteberg, United Brownsville, Carlos Marin, Tony Martinez or any of the parasites who want the status quo to remain just the way it is, thank you very much.
As long as the calabazas keep coming, as Abel Limas, used to say, it is best to say nothing and keep the newspaper a cash cow for its investors.
Until they are given the resource and the free rein to probe into every niche and cranny where wrong can be found, expect reading the Herald to be like eating a lean chicken, much noise and little meat.