Big weirdness at the Albuquerque Journal

 Its executive editor, Patrick Ethridge, was arrested for shoplifting in late August. The case was eventually dropped, per Searchlight New Mexico, which has a long story on the case, Ethridge's background, the Journal's reporting on this and more.

Chronologically, from earliest to latest, starting with the background, here's the issues.

1. Ethridge came from Beatrice, Nebraska. That's nowhere near the size of Albuquerque. Plus, being just 40 miles away from Lincoln to the north, and with either Abilene, Manhattan or Topeka covering everything south of the Kansas line, and Saint Jo probably splitting SE Nebraska with Omaha, it would be purely a community newspaper there, unlike some place out west where a newspaper in a town of less than 20,000, at least years ago, might have news coverage of 12,000 square miles.

2. When Ethridge's kids were detained for shoplifting themselves, and for general hooliganism, but before he was arrested, one of the cops knew who he was. Was it just because his mugshot is on some editorial columns, or due to something else? The story doesn't have anything further from the Rio Rancho PD.

3. Why did he cop a plea without a lawyer? Did he think this would go unnoticed? Rio Rancho isn't as big as Duke City itself, and the Journal acquired the Observer a couple of years ago. BUT, I think the alt-weekly Alibi is still around. And obviously the Searchlight and other papers are. I recently told Colorado media biz editor Corey Hutchins that I wondered if he had been Mirandaed or not, but that was because I was misthinking he'd been arrested in Albuquerque itself.

4. Speaking of? The Journal took nearly a month to report on it. Yea, a misdemeanor case, but a guy making an easy six figures doesn't need to shoplift, period. That said, per the pictures of him in the story, he doesn't look like the stereotypical executive editor for the daily paper in a city of more than 500K and metro of 750K.

That gets back to point 1.

WHY did the Journal hire him? I've emailed the Searchlight reporter to ask if any folo is forthcoming.

The Texas Observer whitewashes its Abby Rapoport history

Gus Bova does a puff-piece profile of Bernard and Audre's granddaughter and her time at the Observer ...

And ...

Totally ignores alleged issues in the run-up to the Observer nearly going belly-up, including her allegedly clashing with then-editor Tristan Ahlone during her time as chairman of the board.

That said, given that Andrea Grimes has deleted her Substack but yet puts out on her LinkedIn that she still has an affiliation with the Observer? Your piece, for those who keep receipts, actually is a reminder that the Observer still has wounds beneath its band-aids. (Here's how the "affiliation" works, per a November piece she wrote for the Observer. Clicking her byline there? She wrote a piece Nov. 15, 2024, about Texas' post-Roe landscape. First one she's written in three years. Byline otherwise makes clear she works for a reproductive justice organization. And ONLY for them.)

It's part of the Observer's 70th anniversary celebration, a milestone that isn't often commemorated. Probably not bad for the Observer to do this, though, because who knows if it will hit 75.

And ... the Observer has now removed the interim tag from Bova as editor in chief. Way to make him sweat a few months.

StartleGram contines to implode and 3x a week print is pissing off many

 The Fort Worth Report has the details on the Star-Telegram's announcement that it was going to just three times a week in print, and those delivered by the USPS, not carriers.

Given that the Charlotte Observer announced similar plans this summer, I venture this is happening across the McLatchKey chain, owned by the vulture capitalists at Chatham Capital.

First, man that's ugly if they're down to 13K print subscribers. And, 40 or less in the newsroom.

Second, beyond the reaction of people in Cowtown? The StartleGram still delivers up here on the Red. I don't know of any subscribers, but they are on a few racks. Is that being killed?

Third, but of course you're being charged the same price for print subscriptions as before.

Fourth, on the future? Why would you hire someone from New York City to be a community-type columnist? Did they come cheap due to cost of living?

Fifth, speaking of the Snooze? That dinosaur has a new trick or two ... including partnering with the Fort Worth Report for expanded Cowtown coverage.

Sixth, it's pretty hypocritical for a former StartleGram publisher who now is a consultant for Advance, the newspaper company that pioneered schedule-cutting, and union-busting in places like Cleveland, to row his oar like this:

Wes Turner, a Fort Worth civic leader who was publisher of the Star-Telegram from 1997 to 2008 and now serves as co-chair of the board of directors for the Fort Worth Report, said the Star-Telegram’s print reduction “is very disappointing for print subscribers.”

“The reduction in the frequency of the print edition is going to result in much less timely news in the print edition,” said Turner, a consultant for Advance Newhouse publications that owns publishing companies like Condé Nast and American City Business Journals. “Personally, I’m very skeptical that this will help turn things around.”

GTFO.

Seventh, are you saving THAT much getting rid of carriers and going to the USPS?

Your hometown newspaper editor won't miss you, Drew Springer

 I'm not sure when the last time was we got an email about an event or something at my newspaper from Springer's office. On the personal side, I don't think I've gotten a snail-mail mailing in at least two years, unless it was something specifically election related in 2022. (His successor in the state House, David Spiller, is much better.)

So, I noted with interest that a week ago's midweek edition of the Gainesville Register had a story about a Springer retirement event in G'ville. (I don't know if the more-than-a-shopper Cooke County Weekly News will have anything or not.)

Searching Drew's Facebook page would be about No. 10 on the list of local and area Facebook pages to check for news issues, especially knowing his retirement. The Register? Doesn't cover sports, barely covers Cooke County Commissioners Court meetings, doesn't cover the Gainesville Hospital District board meetings, etc. Even without an in-house editor, their staff writer has time to do that. Maybe he's even bookmarked.

Beyond that, I had a school board meeting that Wednesday. More important. You know, the school board at the public school district in Springer's home town.

New Mexico's wrecked media landscape and calling Harvey Yates' bullshit

I halfway pay attention to media world news in the Land of Disenchantment.

I knew that Gannett's, I mean Craphouse's, southern NM papers sucked. Still, with oil-related legal notices and stuff, I was surprised to read that they sold Carlsbad as well as Alamogordo and Ruidoso. I guess they figure they'll hold on to Las Cruces and it will now totally be an El Paso bureau.

The "who" of the buyers and the backstory is interesting.

Really interesting.

Two years ago, the buyers bought the Rio Grande Sun in Española. I remember, in the days before "internet was king" in the media world, the former owner and publisher having several store or rack sales spots in Fanta Se, and one in Duke City, just for people in the big cities to get their jollies and smugness fed by all the drug arrests and general corruption news in Española. He wouldn't admit that, but that's what it was.

Here's where it gets more interesting.

The next step? A year ago, they bought the Artesia Daily Press. 

My big question?

If it was publicly known it was for sale, WHY didn't the Roswell Daily Record, which more and more I think is a craphole itself, buy it?

Did they consider it? And were outbid? I mean, the oily, oleaginous Harvey Yates Jr., born in Artesia, IS part of the new ownership group. As in, deep GOP Yates. The Record is owned by the daughter of long-term owner, and often publisher, Robert Beck, who died in 2018. AFAIK, that's the only paper she owns.

And, per Searchlight New Mexico, while Española may have no oil, there's other reasons to view askance Harvey Yates.

So, per the opening paragraph of the Sun's news release at the top link:

Two years ago, a group of Republicans and Democrats, contrarians all, formed El Rito Media, LLC for the purpose of undertaking an experiment. Their question was whether a formula could be devised for saving local newspapers? Local newspapers were disappearing, but the members of El Rito considered local newspapers to be vital to the wellbeing of local communities.

I call bullshit. Yeah, state Rep. Joe Sanchez may be involved, but I think he's a ConservaDem. He IS, by his own words, a big supporter of the oil and gas industry. So, the "contrarians"? That's code for "anti-regulations people."

After all, at the time of the Sun's purchase, Santa Fe's alt-weekly, which 18 months or so ago wrote about how craptacular Craphouse was in southern New Mexico, called this buy a "GOP gambit."

Per the Searchlight piece, apparently Artesia was being eyed at the time of the Española buy. It goes even further than the SF Reporter on the background:

Besides Yates, a former national committeeman for the Republican Party of New Mexico and chair of the RPNM, other investors included Ryan Cangiolosi, former Republican state party chairman; cousin Peyton Yates, owner of Santo Petroleum; Jalapeño Corp., represented by Emmons, Yates’ son and the company vice president; and Francisco Romero, Jalapeño’s accountant.

Another investor is the company Los Mocositos — which translates to little snotty brats — located at the Santa Fe address of Richard Yates, a cousin and real estate developer. There’s also Tom Wright, the global outreach director of Christ Church Santa Fe and an avid op-ed writer about conservative issues; Bryan Ortiz, a former lobbyist; and state Rep. Joseph Sanchez, a conservative Democrat from Alcalde, near Española. (A tenth investor, the new publisher, Richard Connor, came on board months later.)

Yates was the unifying force and biggest investor. “Because I put in more money than anyone else, I’m involved more,” as he described it. A second newspaper buyout is in the offing in the 3rd Congressional district, largely located in northern New Mexico; he declined to name the publication until the deal is finalized.

All scum of the produced water.

In the story's next paragraph, Connor claimed he'd be running the news side straight up.

Connor, the publisher, said he made things clear to the new owners. “You’re not gonna run the newspaper. I am. And you’re not gonna make decisions. I am,” he recalled telling them. “And I gotta say that there has been absolutely not one ounce of interference, not one.”

More bullshit. As one of the investors with the rest of this group,and with what Yates just said? You have no credibility. If that much. Besides, if you're with the rest of the bagmen, no "interference" is needed.

The Searchlight also calls bullshit on both Connor and Yates as the story continues:

Yates makes no bones about wanting to chip away at Democratic dominance in the area. In 2018, his political action committee, New Mexico Turn Around, ran an internet ad aimed at convincing northern New Mexicans that “ultra-progressives” in the Democratic Party were “wolves in sheep’s clothing” who wanted to strip poor people of their land and water. “Progressives are destroying our culture,” it proclaimed.

Democrats, Yates believes, have been in power for far too long, and news outlets don’t express the conservative point of view.

Editorials and op-eds at the Rio Grande Sun have crept farther to the right since the buyout, and transparency, a cornerstone of journalism, has not always been evident. One op-ed, titled “Life and forgiveness after Roe v. Wade,” asserted that “The Common Law accepts the Creator as being the giver of life and forbids the taking of human life.” The June 29 piece failed to disclose that Tom Wright, the author, is one of the investors who bought the paper.

I can only imagine what the southern NM papers will look like with an audience more sympathetic to this. Don't forget that convicted Jan. 6, 2021, insurrectionist Couy Griffin comes from the Alamogordo area.

Basically, as I see this, this is going to be — and apparently already is in Española — pink slime with a "community journalism" veneer.

I am surprised the group didn't buy the Farmington Daily Times, which instead went to Durango, Colorado's Ballentine Group, which owns the Herald, the Cortez Journal, and had started an online-only competitor to the Daily Times. But, I then realized that, while Yates has a lot of oil and gas land, none of it, AFAIK, is in the Four Corners.

Back to Yates and his flunkies. 

They're surely already eyeballing GOP gov candidates for 2026, and maybe even looking at a ConservaDem on that side of the aisle. If Sanchez seeks that, you heard it here first.

==

More on the Roswell Daily Record. Per the "about" on its website, it's like Jill Stein trying to pretend to not be an antivaxxer while actually being one. In this case, it's trying to pretend not to push 1947 UFO conspiracy theory while actually doing so.

In July 1947, something streaked out of the sky, hitting the ground outside of Roswell, New Mexico, beginning years of ongoing speculation as to what the object was. According to initial information provided to the Roswell Daily Record by the Roswell Army Air Field, the startling headlines claimed that the military had recovered a flying saucer from a nearby ranch.

Overnight, the story changed from a flying saucer to a weather balloon, and over the ensuing years, that explanation morphed into a military high-altitude surveillance program. Over decades of conspiracy theories that the U.S. government has covered up the possibility that an alien spacecraft and its otherworldly crew were responsible for the 1947 crash. Through it all, and continuing to this day, the Roswell Daily Record was there to report the news and to spark the public interest and fascination with this story.

Wrong. 

And, Beck daughter has a reason to peddle this, as did daddy, assuming he did, too.

The paper owns its own UFO store.

Of course, here's the reality.

"Congratulations" to the Gainesville Register

 You can do a semi-puff piece about a combo therapy-rescue dog program at the Gainesville State School, but, two months ago, can't do anything beyond the Texas Tribune's generic story and report on specific issues the feds found with child sexual abuse at the same place?

That thing needs to go down to weekly in print.

It probably will in two years, and then after that, because there's no nearby CNHI paper, become either a fully ghost paper or a semi-ghost run out of Greenville.

The Guardian goes into the AP cesspool and gets Orwellian

 Two stories whose bare links I dumped on Twitter when they were "live" but that deserve more attention.

First, the "cesspool."

The Guardian has announced that, like the Associated Press, it's going into the e-commerce world. Who the partner is, I don't know. But, since it has a strong presence in the US, could it be Taboola, like AP? Or is there an exclusivity deal between those two?

That said, the cesspool is that it has no paywall and continues to indicate it won't adopt one. Neither does the AP, though it, like the Guardian, shoves out the tip jar requests.

The piece says:

Chief financial and operating officer Keith Underwood has revealed The Guardian will begin making product recommendations “based on the trust that we’ve got within the brand” with the aim of making revenue through affiliate links.

Isn't that the way these things always work? Like the Sierra Club offering a backpack for memberships, and this nearly 20 years ago, and when people like me asked its provenance and Sierra Club said "trust us" and of course ... already 20 years ago? Made in China.

So, no, Keith Underwood, why would I trust you? Old man Stott is surely turning over in his grave.

==

The Orwellian?

The Guardian, as part of the 30 or more people it's kicked to the door recently, as part of cuts mentioned at the first link?

Martin Chulov, who won the Orwell Prize a couple of years ago, has not only been shit-canned, his byline has been erased at the Guardian website.

That shit-canning apparently was for more than or other than cost-cutting, though. The link mentions an "internal investigation" along with Chulov's categorical denial it found anything. An internet search led to a link that said it was for "hitting women," but the link for Press Reader says the story is gone. That appears to have been Daily Mail, but it's referenced by sites like this that have still-active links, and indicate the allegations are of sexual as well as physical assault. Chulov was questioned by British police. The Guardian investigation reportedly sustained the physical assault but not sexual assault claims.

It's still Orwellian to erase his byline.