arthur-alpert-picThe Albuquerque Journal’s excellent reporting on the federal investigation into New Mexico’s “pay-to-play” culture deserves more than the tangential praise I have offered earlier. For if newspapers don’t do original reporting, who will?

True, there’s outstanding reporting here at NMI and its fellow online publication Politico. com and some other Web sites, but they are exceptional; mostly, the Internet is punditry.
Newspapers, those nifty hand-held gadgets, still carry a lot of useful information. And they focus the public’s attention on how institutions serve us for good or ill.

In that context, it’s encouraging that the Journal seems to have preserved its core in the process of cutting budget.

But that makes it still tougher to understand Journal management’s continuing failure to keep its editorial convictions out of the news.

Consider its use of material from the Washington bureau of the Associated Press, specifically the Friday, Feb. 13 front-page “Analysis” by Jeannine Aversa headlined “Stimulus Plan ‘Not The Magic Bullet.’”

First paragraph: “No, the big stimulus plan won’t ’save or create 3.5 million jobs,’ as the president and congressional Democrats claim — at least not this year.”

There’s no attribution, so — pending substantiation further down — this is opinion.

In the second paragraph, she writes the economy will be feeble throughout 2009, “analysts warn,” and businesses will keep “shedding jobs, though fewer than if the $787 billion boost wasn’t implemented. “Analysts warn” is good.

The third graph says the stimulus will influence how Americans view the president. “What it won’t do,” she adds, “ is quickly snap the country out of the painful recession, now in its second year.”

I couldn’t wait to learn who said it would.

She writes, “tax cuts will spur at least some spending by consumers and business, and that should help save or create jobs.”

Ah, tax cuts are the way to make jobs. A soupçon of GOP gospel?

Thus far, Ms. Aversa’s “analysis” is unsupported opinion, but she eventually presents three Establishment economists.

The first — we’re on page 4 now, three paragraphs down — is William Gale, director of economic studies at the Brookings Institution and a former Bush I staff economist.

On tax cuts, he says “chances are” people will save them. But no, the stimulus package “is not going to turn the economy around right now.”

Again, who said it would?

The second, Brian Bethune, economist at IHS Global Insight (an economic forecasting firm), backs Ms. Aversa — he likes tax reductions.

Finally, at story’s end, Ms. Aversa interviews Mark Zandi, founder of Moody’s Economy.com but he doesn’t say — or she doesn’t relay — his views on taxes.

Hmm. Might that be because Zandi, once adviser to John McCain, advocates spending over tax cuts to create jobs?

Summary: She’s debunked a “magic bullet” theory nobody espoused. She prefers tax cuts but two of her three Establishment economists don’t. And she’s interviewed no liberal economist.

This AP “analysis” is amateurism, masked opinion — an Op Ed piece, if anything.

(For comparison’s sake, read Leslie Linthicum’s professional, fair-minded, Feb. 19 UpFront column on paving the road to Chaco Canyon.)

Mustn’t forget the headline the Journal (presumably) put atop the AP story, “Stimulus Is ‘Not the Magic Bullet.” This refutes whom? What stimulus promoter said it was?

It’s a straw man. And the Journal headline is as tendentious as the AP “analysis.”

I wish the newspaper well, but this subtle advocacy insults its own staff as well as readers. and may undermine the Journal’s struggle to survive.

P.S. Last August 29 and Sept. 5, I wrote here about biased electoral reporting from the Associated Press, Washington. The sins of that bureau, then and now, should not be visited on AP staffers in New Mexico.