Of course, the assumption is that the newspaper editors knew about the derailment and decided to ignore it. Editors get their information from a variety of sources. In this case, the police may not even have been called to the scene and thus would probably not have reported it to the paper. Likewise, UP would have no motivation to 'fess up. Likely the LaGrande paper got it because some railroader in town knew about it and called up the paper. Once alerted, the editors could assign a reporter to work the phones and develop the story.

Incidentally, if you are ever in France, the conducteur is, in fact, the person who drives the train. The person who punches your ticket is the controlleur. I made this mistake once and got a funny look from the railroad employee I was talking to.