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.
The latest bad news for the state’s newspapers comes in the form of mandatory furloughs at three east-side papers.
The Clovis News Journal, Portales News-Tribune and Quay County Sun in Tucumcari are the New Mexico newspapers owned by Freedom Communications Inc., which announced Friday that all company employees have to take five days off without pay between April 1 and June 30.
“We need to continue to reduce expenses while delivering our valuable products and services to our customers and advertisers. Of the many options we considered, a furlough provides the savings we’re seeking while still allowing us to maximize operations,” Freedom CEO Scott Flanders said in an article published in the Sun.
Earlier this month, the Las Cruces Sun-News laid off three staffers. The layoffs came 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. In addition to the Sun-News, MediaNews owns or is the majority stakeholder in eight other New Mexico papers.
New Mexico has been no stranger to newspaper cuts in recent years. It has lost the Albuquerque Tribune and the Lordsburg Liberal, and 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, and some newspapers, including the Rocky Mountain News and Seattle Post-Intelligencer, have shut down or are in the process of becoming online-only publications.
