What’s going on over at the U-T San Diego today? Re-cycled news and Caucasian-only photos?

Really? What is going on over at the U-T San Diego today? Some weird stuff, I’m telling you.

First, Doug Porter over at San Diego Free Press (and our sister online publication) discovered that the U-T was recycling old news on the front page of today’s edition, July 5th.  Right there, in the lower left hand corner of the paper’s front page was an article entitled “Jamul Writers Discover They’re on the Same Page” by U-T writer Steve Schmidt.

So what? It’s an interesting little human-interest story.

The trouble is, as Porter figured out, the story is a re-run – its being touted as “news” but it originally was published on June 19th by Schmidt.  It’s downright re-cycled news. Geez! It’s almost two and a half weeks old!

Doug’s story was posted a little late today at SDFP at 9:44 a.m. Someone at the U-T noticed his story at 10:07 a.m.

And sometime after that, the U-T staff pulled today’s online version of the article. Busted! The link to the online article will not open.

The other thing that was weird today over at the City’s daily was their page A-3 “Declarations of Independents” – a sort of “man on the street” interview type article about what meaning does July 4th have – nearly a full page spread with quotes and photos of all those interviewed.

Okay, sweet – another human interest thing.

But, yikes – the article by Peter Rowe calls those interviewed, quoted and pictured “your fellow citizens” – but check this out: of the ten people interviewed four are Anglo women (3 are blond), three are Caucasian guys, there’s two kids – one white and one from a mixed family of white and Asian, … okay, that’s nine so far. And the tenth? Drum roll please … a male who could be Latino or Asian – or both.  (See this version.)

My point: the U-T’s sampling of San Diegans is supposed to represent San Diego – but with the nearly total lack of diversity shown it really does not. It fails to represent the breadth of our area’s diverse communities.  There are many more Mexican-Americans and Latinos here, there are many more African-Americans here, and there are more Asian-Americans here then this absurd piece of piety to our national holiday portrays. And in fact, this piece actually does a dis-service to the ideals of our nation’s birth. We’re better than that.

Just what kind of City does Papa Doug Manchester live in, or perhaps, what kind of city does he think he lives in? It certainly isn’t the one portrayed so obviously, so plainly and so garrulously.  (Did Peter actually interview a much larger and more diverse crowd but somewhere along the line to the printed page, they were edited out?)

So, what is going on over there, over at the U-T? Re-cycled news as a cost-saver as Doug Porter suggests? Portraying our diverse city as primarily Caucasian, a fall-back to the old regime’s newspaper?

C’mon, U-T! Can’t you do better than that?