I am no fan of what passes for journalism on the internet, but I’ve got to admit, I have been taken aback by the sheer amount of bullshit that’s been proliferating all over the web about our Stagecoach Foundation initiative… some of it posted on what I would have previously regarded as reputable news outlets with familiar names, but almost all of it off-base and, well… wrong.
There seems to be some sort of grotesque echo chamber effect going on here. These stories are not only full of errors, but they are the same errors. Rather than checking facts with the primary sources, the writers here (I will not call them ‘reporters’) are just copying from one another.
When I was in journalism school at Northwestern, we were drilled in the head every day with Joseph Pulitzer’s famous maxim, “Accuracy, accuracy, accuracy.” That seems to have gone out of favor, at least on the internet.
Instead I am put in mind of Jonathan Swift, who said, “Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it.”
So please allow me to come limping up long enough to say:
— the Stagecoach building is not 30,000 square feet. Someone pulled that number out of their ass, and dozens of other reports have repeated it. That’s a rough approximate figure for MEOW WOLF, an entirely different place on the other side of Santa Fe. The Stagecoach building is perhaps a third that size,
— I did not “build” Stagecoach. David Weininger did that in 1999, as the headquarters for his compnay, Daylight Chemical Information Systems,
— I am not “opening a film studio.” Stagecoach is a non-profit foundation dedicated to bringing more film and television production to Santa Fe, it is not a film studio,
— there are no sound stages at Stagecoach (though there are several here in town, at the Santa Fe Studios and the Greer Garson Studios). It’s an office building, and will be used primarily for pre- and post-production purposes,
— I am not going to be “running” a foundation, much less a studio. That task I’ve given to a dynamic young lady named Marisa X. Jimenez, who helped open Santa Fe Studios here in town, and who will have total charge of the day-to-day operations of Stagecoach, under a board of directors.
If there are any real journalists out there who would like to do an accurate story about the Stagecoach Foundation and our plans for it, Marisa is the person to contact, at Marisa@stagecoachfdn.org. She’ll be glad to send you our press release and answer your questions. In the meantime, hey, can people please stop making shit up?
