THE BROWNSVILLE HERALD

Associated Press has named The Brownsville Herald the worst newspaper in the nation. The prestigious organization also named its publisher and editor as the worst in the country as well. Only internationally acclaimed photographer Brad Doherty managed to save the daily's dignity with a fourth place in the category of newspapers with less than a 25,000 circulation. His series focusing on monkey testicles at Gladys Porter Zoo earned him yet another honor.

"Most readers don't comprehend the depths to which the Herald has descended because they can only compare their toilet paper to the Harlingen Valley Morning Star and The McAllen Monitor, pathetic publications that can best be described as the Herald's two ugly sisters," said Tom Curley, AP's president and CEO.

"The newspaper has emasculated itself by printing each edition in McAllen, thus imposing absurdly early deadlines on its reporters, late scores both locally and nationally suffering the same fates as the ocelot and the jaguarundi. For all intents and purposes, the Herald should eliminate the news and call itself a paper. But don't wipe yourself with it. The publisher insists on utilizing a cheap ink that causes colon cancer."

Nobody is surprised by the publisher and editor's disgraceful designations, but neither is dismayed by their denigrated reputations. AIM Newspapers, which considers Bargain Book a radical weekly with cryptic instructions for drug mafiosos, coyotes and terrorists in their ads for gardeners and plumbers, rewarded the pair's incompetency with significant raises while refusing Doherty an extra quarter an hour.

The publisher and editor are not inspirations to their underlings who survive on wages in the range between a slave and an indentured servant's earnings. Herald employees subsist on beans and tortillas. They purchase their wardrobes at casas segundas. At the next governmental meeting the skinny male or female standing shyly at the edge of the crowd in wrinkled clothes will be the Herald beat reporter.

"The two are bereft of fresh ideas," snarled Don Pedro who is threatening to quit the Herald and join The McHale Report unless he observes a significant improvement in the newspaper's product.

""While these two have been twiddling their thumbs, our crooked political leaders have been raiding the taxpayers' coffers for millions," asserted Justo Leyes, The McHale Report's legal expert.

"They live in a parallel universe in which the Herald's advertisers determine reality. Truth is relative. Breaking news doesn't interest the newspaper. Breaking even financially is their sole priority."