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Show Just The Facts, Mama! A friend of mine has stated several times that he has read articles arti-cles in the Garfield County News about meetings he attended. However, How-ever, after reading the article, he wondered if he had attended the same meeting that the newspaper was reporting on. I found this to be true as I read the article, in total frustration, in last week's paper about tourism in Garfield County. I immediately picked up the phone and called the editor of the paper to find out what happened to justify so many errors in the article after one of the paper staff had personally attended the meeting. As we might expect in a small Mom & Pop type of business, the paper office has its own set of problems. What happened in the article about tourism is that the Big Mama wrote the article from the notes taken by the Little Mama, with minimal or no communication between the two. This information made me feel better because I had concluded that the paper was waging wag-ing some kind of a personal attack against me. Now, to correct a few of the mistakes in the article. (1) The headline indicated that the inquiries for information mm about. Garfield County are breaking all records. This is true, however, the first paragraph gives credit to Color Country for the work that is being done, when in fact, 30 percent of all inquiries as shown on a combined report are being handled by the Garfield County staff. During 1991, we averaged about 100 inquiries per month, compared to more than 1,000 per month in 1992 and starting at about 1,300 to 1,500 per month in 1993. (2) The Travel Council has never considered closing the information centers in Escalante or Tropic. Both of those centers are owned and operated by the respective communities. The Travel Council has provided assistance by paying for some of the people who staff the centers. I personally view the Tropic and Escalante centers as beneficial to the county as a whole. If these centers can help keep our visitors in the area for another day or two, we all benefit from them spending money during their stay. After all, this is what the Travel Council is attempting to do. (3) The Panguitch location for the next Color Country meeting was selected by the committee because it seems to be the best-suited best-suited facility in the county that can handle a luncheon meeting with the size of crowd we are hoping to have. I would encourage anyone involved in the tourist industry to attend this meeting. If you have any questions about the value of the Color Country organization, this will be a good opportunity to get first hand information and not have to rely on reading about it in the County News. (4) Last, but not least, the Travel Council appreciates the efforts of the County News for the recreation guides they put together. It may have been proper to indicate that the Travel Council is buying the 8,000 needed guides, the number used in 1992, instead of reporting that the number purchased is less than we bought in 1991. I would like to challenge the County News to be a little more conscientious about quality control in their reporting, because often times it does affect many of us personally per-sonally if they report items that are not fact K. Bruce Fullmer Director Garfield County Travel Council (Editor's Note: We stand by our reporting and our proven record of accuracy. Our job is not to be the public relations representative represen-tative for the Travel Council. Our responsibility is to report accurately accurate-ly what takes place at their meetings. meet-ings. Big Mama and Little Mama |