Just as the booming —
or busting — West needs her most, the Albuquerque Tribune is no
more. The paper published its last edition on Saturday, Feb. 23,
after 86 years of rough-and-tumble journalism that included winning
a Pulitzer Prize.
The paper was owned by the
Cincinnati-based E.W. Scripps Co., which decided last August that
it didn’t need to keep bankrolling the Tribune. The afternoon
paper had a circulation of less than 10,000 by the time it was
closed, and it was dwarfed in every measurable way by the larger
Albuquerque Journal, its daily rival.
But in one
important way, the Tribune was as good or better than the Journal.
I’d also argue that the health not just of the journal, but
also of Albuquerque, depended on the Tribune. The masthead of the
Tribune used to say “Give Light,” and on its best days,
that’s what it did. When New Mexicans went looking for a
thoughtful story about how smaller events meant something big, they
knew it was worth tossing a couple of quarters at the Tribune.
The paper’s 1994 Pulitzer Prize-winning story —
about people unwittingly injected with plutonium during the Cold
War — started as just that sort of small detail that became
something larger. Eileen Welsome’s prize-winning series was
born because she paid attention to a footnote in a larger report.
She was able to convince her editors, who eventually rallied the
newsroom behind her, that her painstaking and time-consuming
research would bear fruit in a landmark story.
That’s what the Tribune did best: It searched out the people
and stories the media pack ignored. My time at the Tribune was a
blip in the paper’s history, though for three years it was
the best job I ever had. As a political reporter and columnist, I
was frequently given unorthodox marching orders. One editor
distilled his advice into bullet points: “Don’t chase
your tail. Don’t sweat the petty stories. Set your own
agenda. Go after the big story.” It was the kind of advice
that allowed the Tribune to survive way longer than anyone
expected. The odds against it have been overwhelming for years now.
Although the Tribune and the Journal shared a building
and a printing press — courtesy of the nation’s first joint
operating agreement — the competitive spirit between the two
papers was palpable. In the early mornings, I had to see what the
other guys had come up with. If my rivals missed a good story, I
was inspired to chase it. If they got it, I became determined to
find a way to get it better. That competitive spark lit up New
Mexico and its biggest city in a way that benefited both newspapers
and the people of Albuquerque as well.
My job put me in
contact with the biggies — sitting down with President Bush in
2004 was a rush — but in the end I concluded that these
orchestrated encounters didn’t mean much. I became the
reporter assigned to follow New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson in his
nonstop hustle for the spotlight. By the time I left, in 2005, it
seemed a safe bet that Richardson would run for president. It also
seemed that despite his obvious skill and ability, he was unlikely
to get far. In a way, I felt as if becoming president would have
been a demotion for Richardson. He and his fellow Western governors
always seemed to matter more than the president of the United
States because they were shaping our lives most directly.
Richardson proclaimed the day of the last Tribune edition
“Albuquerque Tribune Day” in New Mexico, praising the
paper’s journalists who “ needled those in power when
they (often) needed it and praised them when they (rarely) deserved
it, contributing to a reputation as an aggressive and tenacious
watchdog of government at all levels.”
You
don’t replicate that kind of dogged commitment easily. The
blogosphere’s one-person screeds seldom carry the impact of a
newspaper when its collective powers focus fully on a subject.
Replacing a newspaper with a collection of idiosyncratic online
chatter is a poor trade.
These days, I edit a very
different newspaper than the Albuquerque Tribune. I like to think,
though, that the spirit of the Tribune has been transplanted to
Boise.
Shea Andersen is a contributor to Writers
on the Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org).
He is the editor of the Boise Weekly in
Idaho.
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