Live Thought

Local Professional Journalism Matters Especially When Reporting Controversial Events

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By Yantis Green Yantis Green, Mar 23, 2019
 

OPINION — San Angelo LIVE! reporting comes under criticism occasionally for being callous, unattached and sometimes even untrue.  Professional journalists will always be criticized by people involved in controversial stories and in the age of social media, it’s simple and easy to condemn and criticize our reporters and our stories anonymously or behind a keyboard.

I am the Editor-in-Chief of San Angelo LIVE! and I couldn’t be more proud of the job my team of professional journalists do everyday.  Do we get everything right every time every day?  Perhaps not.  But then again no news outlet does.  We correct any errors of fact immediately and explain how those mistakes happen.  We are not perfect; but we spend every minute of every day trying to be.  Every real professional journalist does.

There are several unique attributes which separate San Angelo LIVE! from the rest of the media in San Angelo and West Texas.  First of all, we are locally owned and operated.  San Angelo LIVE! publisher and owner Joe Hyde lives in Tom Green County, owns property in Tom Green County and raised his children here.  He is committed to this city, this county and west Texas.  Second, San Angelo LIVE! has the largest audience of any media outlet in the Concho Valley.

With 255,000 unique visitors per month, and 65,700 of those visitors are located inside the San Angelo Designated Market Area, or DMA, our numbers speak for themselves. 

Every local TV station has a smaller viewership than us. The corporately owned, non-local Gannett newspaper’s circulation has diminished to almost nothing.  While the ‘San Angelo Standard Times’ continues to solicit subscriptions on Facebook under the guise of ‘supporting local journalism,’ the newspaper is owned by a big corporation headquartered in McLean, Virginia, the ‘paper’ is printed in Abilene, and the money collected from you and local businesses doesn’t stay here; it supports big corporations outside of San Angelo.

Do you think local journalism is supported by advertising at a local TV station or radio station?  Think again.  There is not a locally-owned radio station which covers local news.  Not even Foster Communications.  Foster Communications has one full-time news reporter and he doesn’t actually go out and cover local news.  I haven’t seen the Foster Communications reporter at a crime scene or in a court room or at a newsworthy local event in years.

As a professional journalist since 1988 in San Angelo, I’ve seen how reporting has changed with the advent of the Internet and social media.  The Internet has made local radio and TV news mostly irrelevant.

San Angelo TV stations employ reporters/photo journalists straight out of college and more power to them.  The problem is those recent graduates only want one thing; to get enough experience to move away from here into a larger media market.

So where does that leave you looking for local news everyday, 24 hours a day?

Here.

San Angelo LIVE! Is locally owned and operated.  We employ the best of the best of local journalists.  We work hard 24 hours a day to cover everything that is news in San Angelo and West Texas.

We are human and we make mistakes.  But as soon as we find we have error, we do everything we can to correct the facts.

In every case where someone is murdered we understand that our coverage is going to be painful to someone. Instead of restricting our reporting with subjective bias, we work every minute of every day to present the facts and only the facts of any given case.

All of us live here and dream here and do everything we can do to make our hometown a better place for everyone.

Thanks for Reading!

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The LIVE! Daily is the "newspaper to your email" for San Angelo. Each content-packed edition has weather, the popular Top of the Email opinion and rumor mill column, news around the state of Texas, news around west Texas, the latest news stories from San Angelo LIVE!, events, and the most recent obituaries. The bottom of the email contains the most recent rants and comments. The LIVE! daily is emailed 5 days per week. On Sundays, subscribers receive the West Texas Real Estate LIVE! email.

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You are so right about lack of local news. If it wasn't for weather and sports there would be nothing to watch besides the same tired homemade ads. Jeezz!
And Closed Captioning???forget it! KLST doesn't even try anymanymore. And ABC 38, on Sunday morning service from First United Methodist Church??? It's not even funny.
The saddest thing of all is no one cares and they lay the blame on someone else.
Guess only those who rant get heard...would you consider forwarding our rants?
Thanks.

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You got that right. After local paper sold its soul to USA Today, where can ya go to get unvarnished truth? When SA Live makes an error, they are just as forthcoming to acknowledge their mistake and also report the correction.

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Agreed. Yantis and Joe should spend a little quality time mentoring the sports reporters, but this forum beats the heck outta the Substandard Times. Keep up the good work!!

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..like to be referred to as "meteorologists", you know, with all those meteors they deal with.

I agree though, Rita. Get a very...healthy looking, 20'ish South American girl in here, to prance around in front of a green screen.

I'm kind of tired of our local weather looking like this..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaTeCqp28z4

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It's no secret that Latin American culture and traditions have, and have always had, a significant influence on San Angelo, West Texas, and the American Southwest in general. Latin American journalism has long taken a progressive stance on allowing interested young women the opportunity to take center stage in a crucial aspect of their reporting, and despite the recent backlash against the excesses of progressivism—such as where identity issues attempt to obviate assimilation—perhaps there *are* some practices that mainstream America should be taking it's cue from Latin America on. Progress or tradition?

https://youtu.be/AarOkLW-bk8?t=19s

Why not both!

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cadred, Sun, 03/24/2019 - 08:38

SA LIVE does an excellent job of mostly unbiased news. Reporters are human, so there will sometimes a bit of slant in a single article or an oops. Overall, it gets balanced with other writing so I am happy with it.

I see folks complain about news from towns not San Angelo. I welcome the out of town articles because even though the towns are a distance away, they are a part of our unique West Texas community. Many of us have friends and relatives in those other towns. Distances are Texas close, so attending events or just shopping in their different shops is not uncommon.

SA LIVE is doing a good and valued job. Thank you!

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Network TV news is severely limited by time on what they air, the printed news is usually skewed to one or the other political party. Overall I give Joe and Yantis a B+. Having the comment, or rant option is a nice touch as well, even if it is often abused by a few discombobulated yahoos.
Ding bat will certainly disagree......

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Mr. Green, San Angelo lacks many things, such as a competent judicial system, and 'professional' journalism is right at the top. Too say that you are proud of your reporters is quite troubling, and yet, explains so much. The ignorant people that spew off 'opinions' on your so called reporting are no different than you or your staff. The San Angelo courts continue to allow trashy criminals back on the street. You don't report those facts. You attempt to degrade their victims in order to draw attention from the facts, and real news. San Angelo's district attorneys, judges, attorneys, police officers, bonds people, reporters, city officials and citizens lack morals and a conscience; but most importantly, they lack intelligence. The sad truth of it all is that until they are accountable to the victims, themselves and the citizens they represent, nothing will change. Until you all become victims yourselves, and I am living proof that it will, then you will continue your smear campaigns instead of reporting the real and true news. Attacking people's character is the societal norm today. When you have that mentality in small town America, such as San Angelo, there is little hope for the future. Perhaps if you spoke to the mothers, sisters, cousins, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, grandparents, friends-the ones who knew and loved these victims-instead of smearing there characters in an attempt to hide the lack of your own characters, San Angelo would return to the family town of old where people came to raise their children proudly. I would like to see you report on the reasons for San Angelo's lack of morality and justice, increased drug and crime rate, and only report the facts. There is a reason your youth are using drugs and alcohol; you see Mr. Green, that is their 'professional jouralsism'. San Angelo Live labeled my daughter's murder as a 'gangland execution', when, in fact, it had absolutely nothing to do with gangs. It happened because a lack of judicial competency and poor policing. Did you report any of those facts? No. And that Mr. Green is a factual piece of news reporting.

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