The pseudoscience-driven marketing #fails of New Mexico mag PLUS copyediting fails

I understand that, as an official state magazine, they're trying to drive tourism to the state. I still don't have to accept pseudoscience used to promote The State Different (riffing on Fanta Se as The City Different, capital of The Land of Disenchantment).

They had two new entries in the "service" of pseudoscience, in their March issue.

First, in the story "Ancient Enigmas," about pueblitos (of which I'd already read plenty by David Roberts), there's:

“We emerged as one people,” says (Timothy C. Begay, cultural specialist with the Navajo Nation Heritage and Historic Preservation Department) of all the tribes that occupied the Four Corners. “We were one culture until Chaco fell. It was one voice, one people, one belief. We have sacred places that we still visit all over this area. If we came across the Bering Strait, why don’t we have sacred places in Canada and Asia?”

OK, I know any traditionalist Indian is going to say that. No need for the author to abet with this:

The story melds with the tribe’s longer-lived sense of its history in the area, a history centuries older than archaeologists can prove. The scientific research points to Athabaskan people (Diné and N’dé, or Apache) traveling across the Bering Strait and working their way down to the Southwest around the 1400s. The Diné say they were here far earlier, emerging near a lake in southwestern Colorado, and that First Man and First Woman settled at Gobernador Knob, a sacred mountain south of Navajo Lake. Begay says his people have always been here, something that future archaeology may yet confirm.

Oy.

Begay is wrong in two ways. First, the Diné have not always been there, and as far as sacred sites, I'm sure your "cousins" in northern Alberta and northeastern British Columbia have them in plenty. He's also wrong in that, no, the Navajos didn't emerge with other peoples. This, to go woke on the woke, is just another installment in Navajo cultural appropriation of Pueblo traditions and religion. 

Then, in the piece "Abiquiu State of Mind," we have the tagline of author Molly Boyle:

Molly Boyle thinks even the truest atheist can have a spiritual encounter in Abiquiu ...

Tied to the end of the third-to-last paragraph of the body copy:

I’ve had metaphysical experiences during fireside suppers in campgrounds that line the Río Chama along Forest Road 151, and while winding through the wooden Stations of the Cross on an alternate path toward the Monastery of Christ in the Desert.

Kind of like the "To the Atheist" chapter in the AA book, eh?

Ms. Boyle may be an atheist in the narrow sense, like countless millions of Theravada Buddhists. But, as it's usually used in the modern West, to imply rejection of metaphyiscal entities? She isn't, if she's claiming to be one, and if she thinks a "spiritual encounter" should include metaphysics, even for atheists, like the AA chapter, she's patronizing as hell.

And, years back, there was Roswell. In reality, from the best we can piece it together, it doesn't appear Mack Brazel ever called it a flying saucer. And, there's no indication the military forced a cover story on him of a weather balloon. That said, the story more than redeemed itself by interviewing Ben Radford.

Having grown up at the edge of the Big Rez, having read a lot about the Anasazi and a fair amount about the Navajo, and having been to Roswell as an adult more than once, including one free trip (no way I'd pay) to the UFO museum, I know this is marketing. And blech marketing when it engages in the perpetuation of pseudoscience.

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The copyediting fail? I was belatedly looking at my March issue yesterday. It's a standard 8 1/2 x 11 size magazine. Knock off 1/2 inch or so on both sides and that's 7 1/2 inches wide on the horizontal, maybe a bit more..

Who the hell had the bright idea of flowing that as 6-column text, as was done in parts of the feature story on Carlsbad Caverns? And worse, and probably necessitated by that, running rules that look to be a full 1-point wide between the columns. That and gutters knock out another full inch or so in total. So, we've got 6 1-inch and change wide columns. It's distracting reading, but most people will still gush over it.

The special travel guide advertising pages, at 5 columns, no rules, aren't horrible. But, even that's pushing it.

NO way to run a railroad or print a newspaper

 The "this is no way to run a railroad" comes from an old-school executive editor at a newspaper group I was at many moons ago. Unfortunately, he never told that to his boss, the owner and publisher of the group, who should have known better himself, but I digress.

The second half of the saying is courtesy my favorite area CNHI whipping boy.

It had a special section Tuesday for its Medal of Honor weekend.

And, were I about one-third of the advertisers in the section, I'd want my money back.

Either a bunch of ads were PDFed in low resolution, or, if the page-building work was some combination of local and CNHI's nearest printing press in Palestine, stuff wasn't embedded.

In either case, some serious pixelation/bitmapping. You know, the typical stuff, like fonts with jagged straight-line edges, that look pretty bad at 36 point or bigger.

If it were two ads instead of one, understandable. Three, even, halfway understandable.

But, I counted one FULL page ad (color, too), four half-pagers and one quarter-pager that definitely were bad and would have been noticeable to a journalist layperson reader. Some smaller ads were iffy, but probably not noticeable to others. My guess? If this was laid out remotely, it was from last year's similar special section, with unembedded ads.

Do we really need another newspaper "incubator"?

 By that, I mean a "support" company designed either to help start-ups, especially "HUB" start-ups, or else one to keep non-chain small newspapers already in existence from imploding.

We've got several of those already, don't we?

Well, Mike Orren from Pegasus News (old personal acquaintance) thinks we need another. So, News Oasis.

Here's a fuller description on LinkedIn:

As many know, I took a six-month sabbatical from the news biz to focus on family health matters. I also really unplugged in order to get a reset, in what I called my "halftime break."

I mostly stuck to that, but over the last few months, I've been working on a new startup, one that I'm taking out of stealth mode with this post.

News Oasis is a company dedicated to eradicating true news deserts in the U.S. within a decade. To us, that means any community that has no one covering local government and schools. By that definition, there are upwards of 4,000 such communities. We will not compete with any existing news operation that is already filling a gap.

We intend to do this with a hub-and-spoke model. The hub is a centralized, but geographically distributed home office covering editing, design, product and business development. The spokes will be small owned-and-operated community sites pre-funded by local philanthropy and sponsorship. The size of the local staff will be determined by community support.

This is early stage, with a lot going on behind the scenes. We're fundraising; building out product models; and selecting our alpha markets with an eye towards launching late this year or early next.

Sounds interesting, but what makes it different from others?

What does not make it different from others is that it's peddling pagination and other services. It otherwise appears to be for start-ups, or not-yet-started-ups. More on its About page.

As for $$$, can you really fund a start-up on $150K a year and have it launch with that as a turnkey?  The "About" mentions "a couple of reporters" and "incremental costs." Are you paying an ads person straight commission? Even then, there's a cut of ad sales. Office manager? Even in smaller areas, you're near $150K right there. Not discussed? Utilities, building rent and more. Not discussed? News Oasis' cut for pagination, etc. And, if the word pagination is being used, we're talking print, right? Not discussed is paper and ink costs, printing press fees, and postal.

I think $250K is closer to reality than $150.

And, beyond that, given that Orren, a dozen years ago, uncritically slurped up on non-convicted felon Joey Dauben, I'm not sure I'd fully trust his editorial judgment either.

Update, Aug. 28: Nieman Lab writes about grants to newspapers. It notes that, despite grantmakers' stated preferences for nonprofits, more of their money still goes to for-profits. It also notes that conflict of interest issues are rising. And, Dick Tofel notes that more money is going to, well, folks like "field building organizations," which to put it more bluntly, probably include "incubators" like the one created of Orren.

Craphouse (new Gannett) really does suck

 I think most of us knew that already, but at Nieman Lab, Joshua Benton whlps out the numbers on circulation decline for 2018-22.

First, yes, COVID has accelerated problems at struggling big chains. But? Not like this, as Josh compares Craphouse to non-Craphouse medium and large regional dailies.

The real issue is that, even by modern media merger standards, the two companies took on a lot of debt, and bad debt.

That said, per one of the links in Joshua's story, did Gannett and Craphouse really have to merge after Alden's failed takeover? Probably each one could have acquired some smaller company instead. But, both — even though Gatehouse has vulture capital behind it, even if not quite as rapacious as Alden — were likely still worried about being acquired themselves.

Back in 2017, Ken Doctor talked about the "Gatehouse method" and added that he thought there wouldn't be much news left in 2022.

That said, the detritus is even worse.

Trying to find dimes under the couch cushions to service that debt, Craphouse/Gannett is now selling more and more of those merged papers. Here in Tex-ass, the most willing buyer is CherryRoad, which makes Craphouse look almost like a newspaper saint, as I told Josh. 

I wouldn't be surprised if they chase the craptacular southern New Mexico newspapers next. (Nothing I see about CherryRoad says they would also take El Paso.)

In other places, like Lafayette, Louisiana, as Josh notes, other companies are expanding to replace dying husks. In yet others, like Springfield, Missouri, digital-first or digital-only startups are launching.

Salinas should be next, if it isn't already. The Craphouse/new Gannett paper there has ZERO paid editorial staff, per this LA Times piece.