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.
While people are increasingly getting their news from the internet, the number of those writing the news in traditional newsrooms continues to plummet. After a loss of 5,900 jobs, the American Society of News Editors (ASNE) said newsrooms cut more jobs in 2008 than any time since the ASNE’s census began in 1978.
“The loss of journalists is a loss for democracy,” said ASNE President Charlotte Hall in a statement. “The loss of people of color from our newsrooms is especially disturbing because our future depends on our ability to serve multicultural audiences. ASNE is committed to keeping newsroom diversity on the front burner even in tough times.”
Of those who lost their jobs, according to the ASNE census, 854 were minorities.
The drop in 2008 followed a 2007 which showed a decline of 2,400 jobs in newsrooms. And New Mexico newsrooms haven’t been spared. Just take a look at NMI’s coverage of newspaper layoffs.
One area that has been growing, not surprisingly, is in the online arena. From the ASNE report:
2,300 journalists worked solely online of which nearly 19.6 percent were minority. ASNE started counting online-only journalists in 2007. Then there were 1,900 online journalists of whom 16 percent were minorities.
So how did they come up with these numbers?
The ASNE newsroom employment census is based on a yearly response rate of 65 percent. For the 2009 census, 931 of the 1,405 daily newspapers responded to the survey, representing 66.26 percent of all U.S. dailies.
