Stepping outside the echo chamber

One of the most difficult things about running a community newspaper is accepting the stories we can’t cover. With a limited staff and a weekly publication schedule, we make choices every day between being a mile wide and an inch deep or taking deeper dives into fewer stories. Because of our size, our skill sets and, most importantly, our desire to tell stories from across the community, the Bulletin simply isn’t equipped to do the kind of investigative journalism larger news organizations can.

I’m occasionally asked why I’m not exposing some major scandal involving Project Jupiter. That’s the answer. It doesn’t mean I’m not working on stories about what may be the biggest issue facing our community. It means I have to be deliberate and careful about how I do it.

The Sun-News published a story last week about the New Mexico State University softball program. Its reporting began after the softball coach was terminated last fall, and even after nine months of digging, the story exposed a lot of messy details, but did not establish a definitive reason for the termination.

That’s the nature of investigative journalism. It takes time and resources, and the Sun-News has the backing of the USA Today network.

I believe this community deserves answers about Project Jupiter. I’ve met with people on many sides of the issue, trying to understand what happened, what is happening now and what comes next. My hope is eventually to write a balanced enterprise story about the controversy.

Getting there has been difficult because people on both sides seem more interested in controlling the narrative than having an open conversation.

I could speculate, as many others have, about what happened, who did what and when. That’s not the story I want to write.

I recently asked Oracle representatives for comment about one specific incident, and it took several days to get a response. I understand the sensitivity surrounding the project, but when every answer has to make its way through a public relations filter, finding clarity becomes difficult. I’ll keep asking.

In the meantime, I’ll offer some unsolicited, and probably unwanted, advice to people on all sides of this debate: It’s time to stop talking around each other.

Answers are more likely to come when people start talking to each other.

One of the responsibilities of journalism is to try to give readers the 1,000-foot view. We all have biases and beliefs, but in news reporting, our job is to recognize them, set them aside as much as possible and produce a story in which readers can’t easily determine what we personally believe.

With Project Jupiter, that really isn’t difficult for me.

I moved to Las Cruces about the time the Doña Ana County Commission voted to move the project forward. I didn’t live through the months and years that preceded it, and I don’t have a stake in defending the decisions that were made or condemning them.

From where I sit, Project Jupiter offers potential economic benefits while carrying legitimate concerns about water, the environment, noise and other impacts. Ultimately, where someone lands on the project depends largely on how they weigh those benefits against those externalities.

That’s why I attended the listening session hosted last week by Sens. Carrie Hamblen, Joseph Cervantes, Bill Soules and Jeff Steinborn.

The discourse was civil, something the senators noted several times. But civility is easier when almost everyone in the room is on the same side.

I thought the evening presented an opportunity for four public servants to lower the temperature of this debate, even slightly. Instead, I came away believing all four are focused primarily on stopping Project Jupiter.

I was particularly interested in what they believe should happen if opponents are unable to stop a massive undertaking that is already underway. What can be done to reduce its environmental and community impacts? Where is there room for compromise? What protections could still be put in place?

I didn’t hear many answers to those questions.

I also came away with the impression that some opponents see stopping Project Jupiter as part of a larger fight against the development of artificial intelligence.

But AI isn’t going away. If these data centers aren’t built here, they will be built somewhere else. The question for southern New Mexico is whether the economic benefits of having them here outweigh the environmental and community costs. And, if the project proceeds, what can be done to mitigate those costs.

One exchange during the Q&A captured the larger problem for me.

Cervantes was asked about a supposedly secret meeting he had attended with Project Jupiter representatives. He explained that it wasn’t his meeting at all, but a regular gathering to which Project Jupiter representatives had been invited to speak.

That answer was important. But I found what followed more revealing: the apparent need to distance himself from the very idea of having been in the room with them. Maybe that’s what I’m waiting to hear from an elected official — or, as I prefer to call them, a public servant:

“Yes, I talk to people who disagree with me. I want to hear what they have to say. That’s how representative government is supposed to work.”

Right now, we don’t have enough of that. People are talking about each other. They’re talking around each other. And when they do talk to each other, too often the volume is high and the listening is nonexistent.

Whatever ultimately happens with Project Jupiter, we’re all still going to live here. It might be time to step outside our echo chambers and start talking like it.