Angie and Mike's Blog

I wrote this essay a couple of weeks ago. I intended to post in right away but time got away from me. Even though it's old news, I still want to share it with you.

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Occasionally, I become captivated by a news story. Most often it’s not local or even regional. Usually it resides in a corner of the country far from Kansas. My last fascination was a couple of years ago with the crash of Comair Flight 5191 in Kentucky, when the pilots guided the small jet onto the shorter of two runways at Bluegrass Airport. Without enough pavement to reach take-off speeds, the jet careened off the end of the runway and bounced to a firey halt near a farmer’s field, killing 49. The questions mounted in my mind and stayed there for days.

What were those last few seconds like for those people? What was the conversation on the plane as it taxied to the runway before sunrise? Had some passengers already fallen asleep? When did the pilots realize they’d made a mistake? What was their reaction? Where was the control tower operator? What was his reaction? Why are control tower operators under-staffed and required, at the time, to often work two shifts in a 24-hour period? How long did it take for everyone to die?

We make wrong turns in our vehicles every day. Doing so doesn’t cost us our lives. Perhaps that’s why this story was so intriguing to me. As with most news stories it was quickly replaced with the news of another day. Time, though I’m not sure how much, has passed since that day.

Now I find myself hoping that time again passes quickly to get me though my latest captivation: The closing of the Albuquerque Tribune.

The Trib, as it’s affectionately called by those who worked there, ceased publication this past weekend after 86 years. Declining circulation brought on by the Internet Age and a news cycle for which the bell tolled long ago brought The Trib to a slow and painful death. A death that was both mourned and celebrated by its employees, las Tribunistas.

The final three editions of The Trib were dedicated to the newsmen and women who did great work for the paper and the readers in Albuquerque over the years. From first editor Carl Magee all the way to a young reporter named Ellen Welsome, who won a Pulitzer in 1986 for a story she uncovered about secret U.S. testing that involved the injection of plutonium into 18 people at the same time the government was denouncing Nazi Germany for doing similar things.

And let’s not forget that The Trib was most likely the best photo newspaper in the country.

For years, The Trib was the afternoon answer to The Journal, the dominant morning newspaper that, many say, often fell short of the journalism integrity and responsibility to provide innovative and intriguing information to the public it claimed to serve. It wasn’t just enough to report on the minutes of a city council meeting or to respond obligatorily to handout press releases. It wasn’t enough to just be the messenger of information. The Trib reported the story, and got to the heart of each person and every issue.

Until Saturday, that is, when it wrapped up its final edition with a eloquent headline that punched me in the gut: “Goodnight, Albuquerque.”

Just like that, it was gone. It’s not hard to understand the loss.

“It’s like the death of a newspaper,” Angie said, while reading over my shoulder as I browsed the last edition on, gasp, the Internet.

Many blame the Internet for the decline of the news industry. In the case of The Trib, it was exacerbated because of its afternoon print cycle, which became redundant when network news hit the airwaves. It also fell victim to a JOA, or Joint Operating Agreement, that was signed in the 1930s to allow the two newspapers in town to share essential business and printing functions while maintaining separate and independent editorial staffs. Though not unheard of such agreements are rare these days. There were 12 in 2003, including the one in Albuquerque. Ironically, JOAs were created so that newspapers could save themselves from radio. The very same agreements that would save half of the country’s newspapers a half-decade ago are the beast that ate them today.

It hasn’t helped that in the past 20 or so years, most newspapers went from local, family-owned operations to the revenue generating arm of some giant media conglomerate. Corporations are run by, with all due respect, bean counters whose jobs it is to make sure the numbers line up with projections at any cost. In the newspaper business, that cost is service to the local community and society as a whole. Suddenly, the only profession with Constitutional protection is being eroded from the inside out thanks to those at the top now with no respect for journalism or concern for a community hundreds of miles away demanding ridiculous profits margins that hover around 35%.

Staffs are slashed. Tools aren’t replaced. Morale is non-existent. Newspaper reporters, not really journalists anymore, fall victim to the spin of corporate PR. We all suffer for it.

Need proof? Our country is fighting a war that many feel is unjust. Our president is a liar. The vice president is a bully. The prices on essential commodities have sky-rocketed in recent months and our economy is headed for a recession, not that those men at the top who’ve killed our newspapers much care.

Unlike the days of Woodward and Bernstein, there are no great reporters, I contend, to keep the government honest or to look out for the best interest of the general population. Instead, the middle class has slipped to the working class thanks, mostly, to unchecked special interests. Folks like you and I are left to fight the battle alone. There’s no sense of community in this social warfare. There’s no collective Trib.

As in sports, the best team doesn’t always win. And while The Trib may not have righted all that ails us, it stood guard at the Albuquerque post for many years. One part of the country has lost a voice but its loss is felt far beyond the desert.

Labels: newspapers