STORY OF THE YEAR:...Or, Really, "The Non-Story Of The Year"...Bad Bloggers' Dumbass Welding Recital...A Loser...

 

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

BROWNSVILLE, Texas |...It came roughly at the tail-end of our relentless hot summer, a story with so much promise and one that failed miserably. Two of this star-crossed city's bloggers - 74year-old Jerry "Fredo" McHale and Dairy Neck Jim Barton - fully believed they'd collared an award-winner.

Two students of the Texas Southmost College's welding program were angry.

The bloggers, neither with any semblance of Big Time journalism experience, would make things right for them. Or so they thought.

The ear-splitting welding recital they offered has long since died down into a last-tapped key on an out-of-tune piano, a coda befitting the massive, pathetic failure of the bloggers.

Things were rotten at TSC, they crowed and crowed for long weeks of diarrhea-like postings. Dairy Neck Barton (shown in photo at right below) typed away and Fredo McHale (shown below at left) sang his own nastiness alongside. The college had let the students down, and even a tech administrator was joining the accusations parade.

The bloggers called him "Rambo," as if to legitimize his bitching.

Rambo split there near the end of their typing. And that was perhaps expected from a disgruntled educator not quite happy with his lot in life and at the junior college. They say there's always a rotten apple or two in every academic setting. The over-matched bloggers never saw that as a possibility.

They would ignore other signs of their errors in news judgment.

But neither 75-year-old Barton nor McHale has any experience in the news business. They charted a losing sophomoric course that soon left them beached on the wrong beachhead.

Nonetheless, they typed away like crazed losers.

Neither of the two blind sleuths bothered to call or visit senior TSC administrators. School President Jesus Rodriguez was available if only they'd pick up the phone or drop in on his campus office. So were members of the TSC Board of Trustees, all of them well-known to the hopelessly errant bloggers.

Two of the boardmembers - Tony Zavaleta and Chair Adela Garza - were saying little about the blog-only controversy. But they may have answered the silly bloggers' questions had they only received them. Not one ever came.

As things happened, it was only a chance meeting at the eatery Cobbleheads that saw McHale attempt to pose his questions. It was the wrong time. Zavaleta told him to get lost in harsh Spanish lingo. The unexpected response angered the touchy McHale enough that he scooted home and posted a biting version of the meeting.

Zavaleta would later question McHale's self-serving account.

But the hard-headed boys kept typing their anti-TSC stories, never a one armed with proper sourcing of the pertinent officials in the fictional tale they unfolded like sliced feces.

Ultimately, their stab at importance died a needed death.

McHale and Barton had nothing on the college, nothing worthy of ceaseless banter that arrived as if something more serious. It wasn't.

But the lack of Journalism training/education kept the duo going in the wrong direction.

They never grabbed angles that would have tightened the story. Their nasal spray approach wasn't getting it done, only the two never saw it. A real newspaper editor would have cut them off at the knees after two or three postings. But the editor also would have sent them along with instructions on how to nail down their allegations.

This mess was just two boys throwing rocks just because they had rocks to throw.

To its credit, TSC never publicly acknowledged anything about the errant story or the dumb bloggers.

To their lesser credits, unaccomplished Bloggers McHale and Barton have not posted another word about the college's welding program or its administrators.

It is, however, still hanging like a heavy anvil around both of their slumping necks.

It's hard to forget Bad Journalism...

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