One of the weirder retractions in the history of newspapers proves just how much Coloradans fear the potent chile from New Mexico’s Hatch Valley.
Many in Colorado, including the sizable segment lacking taste or taste buds, try to knock Hatch chile. In a show of ignorance, defensiveness or both, they claim chile grown in Pueblo, Colo., is the world’s finest.
Farmers in Hatch yawn at such nonsense. Now they can laugh about it, too, based on the Pueblo Chieftain running a laudatory story about Hatch chile but then sheepishly retracting it.
The Chieftain’s staff blamed publication of this sizzling story on its parent company, newspaper conglomerate Gannett.
The unsigned retraction carried a hilarious headline, “For the record: Chile pepper story was not intentional.”
Here are the relevant paragraphs:
“An article appearing in Wednesday’s The Pueblo Chieftain about Hatch chile peppers was part of a nationally syndicated food page, prepared by Gannett to distribute nationwide. The article was not chosen by The Pueblo Chieftain editorial staff.
“While the staff here dictates local coverage, it does not always dictate much of the wire and nationally syndicated content that goes into the paper.
“The article that ran in Wednesday’s paper was not meant to cause harm or to infer that the Hatch chile was superior.”
Sounds like the Chieftain received an earful from hometown boosters. Their interrogation must have been devastating. Who in the Chieftain’s dwindling newsroom let through the favorable piece about Hatch? Why feature New Mexico’s famous chile in Pueblo’s newspaper while Pueblo farmers are laboring to claim their crop is best?
Aside from the retraction, no other mention of Hatch chile could be found on the Chieftain’s website. I wrote the editor to ask if he had removed the story. He didn’t respond.
No doubt, the retraction was a sore point for Chieftain gatekeepers. They had to let everyone know they strive to meet the editorial standards of the chamber of commerce or the green-with-envy Pueblo Chile Growers Association.
The last paragraph of the retraction read: “The Pueblo Chieftain has long reported on the Pueblo chile, and will soon cover the Chile and Frijoles Festival that will celebrate Pueblo’s beloved pepper. A story in Friday’s paper about Blazin’ Bagels talks about a Pueblo chile cream cheese bagel sandwich.”
That sounds like quite a read.
The Chieftain handing good publicity to Hatch chile probably dismayed Colorado Gov. Jared Polis as much as it did hometown cheerleaders.
Polis went negative on Hatch chile two years ago in a posting on Facebook. He called the New Mexico chile “inferior” to Pueblo’s.
Polis’ crowing came after a grocery chain, Whole Foods Market, began selling Pueblo chile in most of its stores in the Rocky Mountain Region.
Some theorize the governor wanted to butter up Pueblo voters as he faced the prospect of a recall election. More likely, Polis saw an opening to taunt his old congressional colleague, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham.
Soon enough, the two Democratic governors were dashing off statements about which state has better chile. The coronavirus pandemic ended rumblings of a series of chile cook-offs between Polis and Lujan Grisham.
With the Pueblo Chieftain’s clumsy revival of the chile war, I have an admission. I began my career in newspapers at the Chieftain when it was a profitable family-owned daily.
Agriculture was dwarfed in those days by Pueblo’s CF&I Steel Corp., a sprawling mill that employed more than 6,000 people. Foreign imports crushed the market for U.S. steel, forcing the mill to eliminate thousands of high-paying jobs in the 1980s.
Unemployment jumped and an economic development agency sprouted. The Chieftain news staff faced heavy pressure to play up any of the agency’s successes while ignoring all its failures.
Not much has changed. Disavowing the glowing review of Hatch chile shows news can be buried if it’s tough for a handful of the locals to swallow.
Pueblo farmers, a congenial, hardworking lot, have nothing to be ashamed of. They produce excellent tomatoes, lettuce, corn, beets and melons to go with their second-tier chile.
They read all about it, a searing account of Hatch chile receiving two thumbs up. It was a story too hot to handle in Pueblo.
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August 15, 2021 at 10:00AM
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Colorado daily regrets its thumbs-up story on Hatch chile - Santa Fe New Mexican
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