In last week’s Albuquerque Journal, there was a sad (to me) story that the Gallup Independent newspaper was ceasing operations. The long-time daily newspaper on the far west edge of New Mexico had been struggling financially, like many other print publications around the nation, and finally faced the realization it could no longer continue.
As I’ve mentioned before, I grew up working in the family-owned Ruidoso News, a weekly newspaper that my father helped shape into an independent and valuable source of local news in our mountain community. My father sold the newspaper after almost 20 years of ownership, and it changed hands several times after that, finally to be acquired by a national newspaper group. Under that ownership, with profits becoming more important than keeping the community informed, it eventually ceased operations.
The Independent, under the ownership of the Zollinger family, was almost 100 years old. It served not only the Gallup area, but was a source of information for many on the Navajo Nation.
“I grieve, mainly for Gallup,” publisher Bob Zollinger said when discussing the closure of the newspaper. “It doesn’t feel good. It’s a death.”
But in the same edition of the Albuquerque Journal that announced the closing of the Gallup Independent, there was some hope.
Source New Mexico, which brands itself as “Scrappy independent journalism for you” wrote a story which appeared in the Journal about some shady handling of funds intended for victims of the Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon fire in northeastern New Mexico. Source New Mexico is an independent news organization supported by donations from readers and grants. You can reach it online at:
The story said that the federal official who was in charge of a multi-billion dollar fund to compensate victims of the Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon fire personally received a six-figure payment from the fund because of “smoke damage” to his Angel Fire resort home. Angel Fire was far from where the actual fire burned.
Many victims of the fire lost homes directly from the fires from the flooding aftermath and many of those are still struggling to secure compensation for their losses. The federal official in charge of allocating those funds received $266,000 in compensation for smoke damage to his home and his wife, a realtor, received more than $250,000 for business losses.
The story did not mention whether the fund manager and his wife were members of one political party or another. It doesn’t matter.
What matters is that diligent reporting by a free press uncovered this matter and brought it to the attention of citizens and government officials who I hope will be able to correct the situation. It was journalism at its best.
While I try not to be political in my blog, I make an occasional exception when it comes to freedom of the press and the First Amendment. I think it is important for readers to know that a free and independent press is essential to keep government officials honest, to be at school board and county commission meetings to represent the people who can’t be there and to keep citizens informed about what’s going on in their community. I’m sure most of my readers have had complaints over the years about legitimate news outlets but despite its warts, we’re much better off with a free press than without one. Think of Russia, Iran, China, North Korea, Venezuela and other countries dominated by power-hungry individuals
Our own local newspaper is a shadow of what it once was. It was acquired by the same large media group that purchased my father’s Ruidoso News. The local paper seems to make most of its money on lavish obituaries and mostly publishes outdated wire or syndicated copy. True local interest stories are few and far between.
We need to support good local journalism, particularly in print form.
And remember that Thomas Jefferson was quoted as saying that if he had to choose between “a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter”
aero-cordero.com 