I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Three staffers at the Las Cruces Sun-News — two in the editorial department and one in the advertising department — have been laid off in the last week as the newspaper and its parent company deal with economic woes that are hampering the newspaper industry.
The editor of Pulse, the newspaper’s weekly entertainment insert, in addition to the typist who transcribes calls to Sound Off! and the paper’s only advertising writer, were all laid off in the last several days, sources confirmed.
The layoffs come as all employees of the paper’s parent company, Denver-based MediaNews Group, are taking weeklong, unpaid furloughs before the end of this month to help the company make ends meet for the quarter.
When the furloughs were announced last month, MediaNews said they were an attempt to avoid layoffs.
The Sun-News is Las Cruces’ only daily newspaper.
In New Mexico, MediaNews owns the Ruidoso News and White Sands Missile Ranger. In addition to the Sun-News, it is the majority stakeholder in the Alamogordo Daily News, Carlsbad Current-Argus, Deming Headlight, Farmington Daily Times, the Four Corners Business Journal in Farmington and the Silver City Sun-News. Most of those newspapers are part of a partnership that also includes the El Paso Times in Texas.
The sources said there have been at least a couple of other positions eliminated at other MediaNews papers in New Mexico in recent weeks. The most recent layoffs come after a MediaNews executive traveled to El Paso to help the partnership cut costs.
New Mexico has been no stranger to newspaper cuts in recent years. It has lost the Albuquerque Tribune entirely, while several other papers, including the Albuquerque Journal and Santa Fe New Mexican, have cut positions. MediaNews also eliminated its capitol bureau a few years ago.
Around the nation, several major newspaper companies have declared bankruptcy in recent months. The Rocky Mountain News has shut down. The San Francisco Chronicle is in danger of closing, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer announced on Monday that it would become an online-only publication.
By way of disclosure, I used to write for the Las Cruces Sun-News, the Albuquerque Tribune and the Santa Fe New Mexican.
