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January 2024 by Digby O.
Borrego Sun: Dead or Alive? Digger - September 18, 2023 The Borrego Sun office is closed and the building that formerly housed its offices is for sale. Repeated attempts to reach the office by phone, e-mail, and U.S. mail over the past three months have failed. Letters and e-mails get no response and the paper's two listed phone numbers have been disconnected. The Borrego Sun was once and for 60 years a sterling example of what a small-town newspaper should be, among other things, providing the citizenry with a window into the antics of local, quasi-governmental bodies such as the Borrego Springs Community Sponson Group and Borrego Water District Board that have a significant influence on the lives and fortunes of residents and property owners in the unincorporated Borrego Valley. Then, in the Spring of 2009, the Copely Press, Inc., which owned the Borrego Sun as well as the San Diego Union-Tribune, sold the Borrego Sun to Patrick Meehan, a British entertainment executive and part time resident of Borrego Springs. Two years later, in October 2011, Judy Meier, Editor and General Manager of the Borrego Sun for more than 30 years, met a tragic and untimely death. Thereupon the Borrego Sun went into decline. It immediately stopped covering Borrego Springs community Sponson Group and Borrego Water District Board meetings at exactly the point in time when the community was at last beginning to concern itself with the long ignored but increasingly serious threat to its sole source of water, the Borrego Valley aquifer, that was being dewatered by more than 60 years of uncontrolled over-pumping. Absent the kind of thorough and lucid coverage the Borrego Sun provided under Meier's auspices, negotiations to end the over-pumping went dark and were conducted without public scrutiny or comment. The paper has provided virtually no coverage of the Borrego WaterMaster, the ultimate groundwater management authority for the Borrego Basin since it was created by court order in 2020. Now, to all appearances, the newspaper is a zombie. In this context it is well to remember the motto of the Washington Post: "Democracy Dies in Darkness." A footnote to the editorial in the 31 August, 2023 issue of the paper, the first we have we received since the issue of 6 June 2023, claims that "The Borrego Sun office is closed for the month of September to allow our employees to continue their summer vacations away from the humidity and heat. Don't fret, the work continues remotely and the paper will be printed per usual. Thank you for your patience and understanding!" Curiously, however, there appears never to have been any prior reference to or notice of the of the Borrego Sun's office closure for "summer vacations."
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March 2019 by Don Rideout
This is an odd little local newspaper. I read it to keep up with what's happening in Borrego Springs, but sometimes they get things so incredibly wrong. I guess it's typical for a small circulation paper.
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February 2019 by Jose Navarro
Adjuntar archivos
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April 2018 by James Barnett
Very Quaint small town newspaper
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February 2017 by Tina Richardson
Must have been fun .. I don't renember a thing
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June 2016 by Eugene O.
I give the Borrego Sun 4**** .... It has a pleasing layout. There are some excellent reporters and photographers who work there. Either as a just graduated journalist, or a veteran who has "been there,done that," but still enjoys writing without stress deadlines to meet. The paper also provides an open forum for residents to comment on various topics and issues.
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January 2015 by Bill H.
Amazingly rude and insensitive headlines when an altimizers senior citizen died. In type larger than the nespapers banner read " DEAD BODY FOUND ", "Corpse Identified". Other stories are poorly fact checked or outright lies... example, a story on the sewage treatment plant stated that raw sewage doesn't stink? Really?
