Opinion of one

“Assholes!” came the indignant response as my main man snatched the Albuquerque Journal’s John McCain endorsement from my limp grip.

“Asshole,” I corrected him, using the singular. “This is the opinion of just one person.”

A look of confusion, then scorn spread across his face.

“What do you mean? How can one person control the whole newspaper?” he protested.

“Because he owns it,” I said.

That one person, of course, is none other than Albuquerque Journal Publisher T.H. Lang. His name is right there on every edition of the newspaper, in the box above the unsigned editorials on the Editorial Page. So is his dad’s. Upon his death years ago, C. Thompson Lang handed down the lucrative community institution to son Tom Lang, as he’s known to top subordinates at the Journal.

I would argue that Tom Lang is probably the most powerful man in New Mexico you likely know very little about. More on that later.

Lang the younger is the same man who approved my hire when I was tapped to be an Albuquerque Journal editorial writer in the summer of 2001. While I never exchanged any words with Lang — I would joke with Journal colleagues at the time whenever I had a “sighting” of the elusive publisher — I stayed put on the editorial board of the state’s largest and most influential newspaper through the 2004 election and beyond, leaving the Journal on good terms in August 2005. I remain grateful for the opportunity.

So yesterday, when I opened the Sunday Journal and learned that the state’s paper of record had endorsed McCain, I immediately knew the endorsement wasn’t the product of a reasoned consensus involving the members of the Journal’s current editorial board: editor Kent Walz, editorial page editor Steve Mills, editorial writers D’Val Westphal and Tom Harmon.

Each is an extremely smart, capable, experienced journalist, but presidential endorsement deciders they are not. Nor is the Journal’s endorsement the verdict of some kind of newsroom poll in which every reporter has a vote, as some might think.

But it’s this kind of confusion that plays right into the hands of the Journal’s top brass, and elevates the importance of the endorsement in the eyes of readers and ultimately voters.

After all, in the news biz newspaper endorsements — a subset of all unsigned editorials — are considered the collective opinion of the newspaper, even though at the Albuquerque Journal they most certainly are not.

Ask any Journal reporter if you don’t want to take my word for it.

Instead, the Journal’s McCain endorsement is the dictate of one man — Lang — which calls to mind the brute constitutional insight attributed to the late New Yorker writer A.J. Liebling:

“Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.”

Half the joy of owning the state’s most-read newspaper, I imagine, must lie in being able to throw around its weight from time to time.

In 2004, I can confirm that Lang weighed in after preliminary deliberations of the editorial board as we were pointlessly discussing who the newspaper should endorse in that year’s hotly contested presidential election: Democrat John Kerry or the incumbent Republican, George W. Bush.

The vote on the inside, as I recall, was 4 to 1 in favor of endorsing Kerry. But “the Journal” — i.e. Lang — endorsed Bush. It was the publisher’s personal view reflected in the Sunday Journal four years ago and distributed to its 100,000-plus circulation.

Curious how this year the Journal opted to wait until the Sunday before Election Day before making its presidential pronouncement known. Could be strategic. Or maybe just a delay caused by mountains of endorsements to write and fewer fingers to type them these days.

I bumped into a Journal staffer with knowledge of the editorial process on Sunday who told me the Journal is already getting “hundreds of calls about the endorsement.” The staffer didn’t need to say those calls were mostly critical of the endorsement. I could tell by a roll of the eyes. No doubt some of them are probably threatening to drop their subscription over the McCain endorsement.

“And they deserve every call!” the Journal staffer said with a smile walking away.

It’s worth noting that in the same Sunday edition, the Journal also endorsed Democrat Tom Udall for the open U.S. Senate seat. Republican Steve Pearce was on the losing end of that one. A day earlier, the newspaper endorsed Republican Darren White over Democrat Martin Heinrich in the 1st Congressional District.

Do you see the pattern? In competitive races, Lang’s bias is clearly with Republican candidates, but when the writing is on the wall and it’s clear a Democrat is probably cruising to victory, Lang has shown a willingness to allow the writers he employs to write the occasional endorsement recommending Democrats for high office. Gov. Bill Richardson and congressional hopeful Ben Ray Lujan, both Democrats endorsed by the Journal in the general election, also make the point.

And if both Obama and Heinrich win on Tuesday — as increasingly appears likely — it will again underscore that fact that the Journal’s endorsement doesn’t move many voters these days. If it ever did.

For the record, I continue to think highly of the Journal. I know and respect many of its editors, writers and photographers. I’m a paying subscriber. I read, or at least scan, the paper every day. I think there’s still a lot of good storytelling there, even if there’s less than there used to be.

An upstart like NMI proves that the near-monoply on news and editorial judgments the Journal once enjoyed in New Mexico is long gone, But even as its circulation is sliding, and its subscribers greying, the Journal remains an extremely powerful local institution. That very concentration of power is why the Journal’s publisher should be held accountable for his decisions, such as endorsements.

That’s usually the standard journalists apply to powerful government or private sector officials in determining worthy news subjects. For example, does Lang’s media properties or real estate business stand to benefit with the election of one candidate over another? How about a story detailing how much in tax savings Lang would reap if McCain is elected president over Obama?

Don’t hold your breath.

Should Lang read this commentary, I imagine he might react with anger that a former employee had the bad form to spill the temple’s secrets in pursuit of the truth and holding power accountable.

But isn’t that what journalism has to do?

Just like presidential endorsements, I guess it all depends on who gets to make the call.