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.
What’s happening in the blogosphere today?
Well, over at SFReeper.com Dave Maass has posted the video of a new advertisement against New Mexico’s recent repeal of the death penalty. “Public politics — waged on TV and through GOTV — is significantly different than the every-other-year jockeying in the state legislature. So, let’s see the sides make their cases, 30 seconds at a time,” he writes.
On Sunday, Santa Fe County Sheriff Greg Solano wrote again about the influence of the media on the legislative session. Another of Solano’s recent posts on that subject was discussed last week on KNME’s “In Focus.” “Now I brought up the whole subject of what lobbyists do in comparison to what I observed from the media in the last session of the Legislature in particular to spark discussion. I am actually glad to see that has happened,” Solano writes, before responding to the comments made during the show. This is a great topic and we’re really enjoying it over here!
And while we’re on the topic of media talking about media, did you see Albuquerque Journal writer John Fleck’s weekend post about anonymous sources? It was his second recent post on the subject, and he mentioned a favorite local punching bag, blogger Joe Monahan. Fleck wrote:
The guy bugs me because what he does seems, to many readers, to pass for new journalism. He’s an entertaining blogger, but his obsessive use of anonymous sources falls far short of what for me serves as useful journalism… Monahan’s alligators, though, are just people who occupy some pocket of New Mexico politics idea space. By not naming them, Monahan exploits readers’ sense that he has some special information. It gives the message being sent a certain insiders’ cachet. But all it really does is obfuscate, allowing the alligators to get away with unaccountable spin.
On Duke City Fix, I found mention of Mark Rudd’s book signing at Bookworks tonight. Rudd, an instructor at CNM, was a founding member of the Weathermen, part of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). He’ll be discussing his book “My Life with SDS and the Weathermen.”
In January, NMI ran into Rudd in Washington, D.C., for the inauguration of President Barack Obama. See him in that slideshow here.
