Set the record straight on Andrea Romero
In the interest of responsible journalism, which I thought you stood for, The New Mexican should apologize to the people of Santa Fe for stories about Andrea Romero (“Drinking on the public dime,” Our View, March 1).
Three front-page articles with her picture in each and a page-long editorial about what appears to be a series of multi-institutional problems — in which I believe she figures peripherally — is over-the-top, yellow journalism. It’s way below the standards for credibility and perspective for which I had come to rely on The New Mexican.
I have had the privilege to serve with Andrea on the board of the Santa Fe Green Chamber of Commerce over several years and think I know her pretty well. If you were to ask me to describe her character, the first words that come to my mind are: integrity, caring, hardworking and dedicated to bettering our community.
Her entrepreneurial spirit led her to start an innovative business, Tall Foods. Her initiative has the potential of growing Santa Fe’s economy with new, local jobs that produce nutritious and delicious ostriches. They honor our local ecology by consuming far less water and grasses than cattle. Yet, your reporter, Daniel Chacón, writes a story that I believe falsely impugns her character because she received a startup loan from the Venture Acceleration Fund, an investment group set up to do exactly that — finance promising ventures in the interests of local economic development (“Funds for ostrich farm fuel coalition criticism,” March 3). It is no wonder that enterprising young people don’t want to stick around, if this is what they get for their contributory efforts.
If The New Mexican had printed one short article on an interior page questioning her for passing on meal expenses for reimbursement that included alcohol, when alcohol expenses shouldn’t be reimbursed, that would be a minor, but passable, news article. Her board approved the expenditure for baseball tickets, that’s a board accountability issue, not an executive director issue. Day after day, to write hundreds and hundreds of words, featuring her picture each time, making her the singular object of false derision while ignoring her accomplishments and good work for the benefit of the community, is just plainly irresponsible.
I know it’s hard not to make mistakes when you have to put out a newspaper every day. But to blow up an error about the reimbursement of meal expenses into a major unfounded scandal, is an egregious mistake of such significance that it should not be allowed to go uncorrected.
The New Mexican should redeem its reputation by investigating what Andrea Romero is really doing for our community in a number of different ways and then by investing the same number of words that have been spent sullying her reputation in a series of articles just as prominently placed. That would set the record straight.
Robert A. Mang is a 27-year resident of Santa Fe.