By Whitney Cheshire
The Albuquerque Tribune looks like it’s gone with the wind: Do we pop open the bubbly or draw the shades and stop the clocks?
Yesterday, the Tribune announced that it will be shutting its doors unless an unexpected buyer shows up to purchase the Scripps-owned, afternoon news publication. The Tribune’s circulation has dropped to a tiny 11,000 and rumors of its slipping solvency have been bolstered by visible cutbacks on Web site coverage and the recent exit of longtime managing editor Kate Nelson.
Some conservatives would like to throw a party.
Seriously. I’ve been helping Republican candidates here in
The Tribune editorial board rarely misses an opportunity to bash President George W. Bush – on anything, you name it – or endorse Democratic candidates over Republicans. Board members have been consistent cheerleaders for just about every left-wing, big-government, liberal piece of policy – local, state and national – with very few exceptions. Their editorials and candidate endorsements are so predictably one-sided that most Republican campaigners in
In fact, the only reason I keep a subscription to the Tribune is because I don’t know anybody else who does, and you never know when you’ll need a hard copy of an article for something.
Oh. And there’s also the fact that I like their in-state political news coverage.
Long-time political reporters Kate Nash and Eric Seimers, most notably, have been as consistently unbiased in their reporting as their editors have been in their biased editorializing. Unlike the small army of political reporters who sought greener pastures with Gov. Bill Richardson’s administration, Seimers and Nash, along with a few others, have made a go of it and served the people of
The Tribune also hosts a wide variety of pundits. Our own Heath Haussamen writes for the paper a little bit, and of course there’s my fellow “Liner” Gene Grant. Jefferey Gardner’s perspective is always worth a read (even though I don’t agree with him about David Iglesias, but that’s OK). In a nutshell, while the editorial section of the Tribune has focused like a laser beam on Dubya’s head, the newspaper’s local columnists offer something much less expected.
And that’s a good thing.
The loss of competition will be felt
But I don’t mean to sound like I’m writing an obituary.
Has somebody died?
I was reminded by one of my most media-savy QBs (that stands for quarterback, in case you’re a new reader and don’t remember it from the olden days) yesterday that this is, sadly, the marking of an end of an era.
How many afternoon papers around the country have survived the onslaught of internet news? Who has time to read a print newspaper after work, especially after reading breaking news all day on the internet?
Fewer and fewer, obviously.
The Tribune’s impending exit is just the latest casualty in the global news war. And while some conservatives may be smiling and grateful that the left-wing propaganda machine may be seeing its last days, most recognize that the Tribune’s contribution to community, government, and democracy in
It will be missed. The loss of competition will be felt. Guaranteed.
I have no doubt that the Tribune’s readership sunk and stayed low, in part, because many, many readers were tired of putting money into a paper that couldn’t get off the Bush-Bashing Bandwagon and could rarely find a redeeming value within the GOP. That aside, afternoon papers are dinosaurs. They’ve seen the asteroid hit and they’re waiting for the cloud.
It is a sad day, I believe. I’m more inclined to pull the drapes and ponder the future of a free media and the role our print journalists will play during this technological transition in an open democracy than I am to do a tap dance on the table.
And who knows, maybe this is all premature speculation. Maybe he Washington Times will come in and purchase the paper, giving
Now that would be nice. If that happened, I’d celebrate with a glass of bubbly, for sure.