KVIA and Jackson Polk Lead the Way with Conservation and History Coverage

This is a follow-up to my post yesterday about the lack of coverage of conservation and heritage stories by the El Paso Times. I was specifically talking about the non-coverage by the Times of the recent commemoration of the B-36 crash of December 11, 1953. I reprinted Terry Sunday's excellent letter to the editor. To be fair to the Times, they apparently weren't even told about the event. Elpasonaturally is offering to do publicity for conservation, outdoors recreation and heritage organizations and events in El Paso. As Marshall Carter-Tripp said in an email to me: "You are right, we don't do PR very well…did you see anything in the Times about the 3M award to Keystone?" (The Times did run the story online. I don't recall seeing it in print.)

One of El Paso's TV news stations leads the way in coverage about environmental, outdoors recreation and heritage stories. KVIA-TV News seemingly produces more stories about these events than any other news media. This may be largely due to the fact that General Manager Kevin Lovell is an avid hiker who cares about our environment. After he read my post yesterday, he emailed me the following:

"KVIA devoted extraordinary resources to the crash site anniversary.  Reporter Matt Dougherty traveled to the site on the day before the anniversary.  He discovered a woman who visits the site every year, bringing flowers from Juarez even though she has no personal connection to the plane crash.  Later in the week we covered the dedication."

On December 12th, KVIA-TV did this story. Then again on December 15th they ran this story about the commemoration event. It is very touching. I hope both stories can be uploaded to a history site of some sort - perhaps along with other KVIA stories on YouTube.

Of course, when it comes to the history and lore of El Paso, no one tells it better than Documentary Filmmaker, Jackson Polk. You can watch the entire
B-36 Crash Site Historic Marker Dedication by going to EPHistory.com. There is a link to the video. Later, when appropriate, I may put an embedded copy on elpasonaturally as well. 

Be sure to listen to El Paso History Radio Show with Jackson and Melissa Sargent on KTSM-690 AM on Saturday mornings from 10 to Noon. Polk has begun archiving previous broadcasts. You can see a list with links HERE.

Get KVIA news alerts in your email by going HERE.