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.

The Onion vs AP: Which is more likely to give you real news?

 The Onion, under its new ownership that acquired it from G/O, among other changes for the better, has ditched its ties with Taboola.

The Associated Press? Was running Taboola's news-lite, sort-of-news crap at least seven years ago, then, this spring, announced it was entering the e-commerce world with guess who?

So, the question is more than rhetorical, and it's more than Onion snark.

Pinch Sulzberger, gutless wonder; Keven Kruse, pressing for problems

 It is weird — or laughable — that the New York Times publisher and owner chose to write the op-ed mentioned in this Substack in the Washington Post and not his own paper.

The jokes aside?

The substance?

"Both sides" reporting is still good, Pinch says. Well, sure. It prompts subscribers.

That said, the Substack IS Kevin Kruse, a good librul Democrat type who has no problem with his party putting thumbs on scales against third-party and independent candidates. Having 2-starred his most recent book, I know that.

The complaints against the NYT are valid, and on a LOT more than electoral politics.

For example, beyond not doing "both sides" on climate change, how seriously does the NYT report on and about and from climate scientists more alarmed than climate change Obamiacs Michael Mann, Katharine Hayhoe and their ilk? You know that.

How much does it really report about the reality in Gaza? You know that.

The reality of American exceptionialism that Kruse accepts? You know that.

This is Kruse working the refs first, with serious concerns about journalism a distant second.

But, this is about journalism, not BlueAnon and duopoly politics, which I did elsewhere.

What issues get covered, as well as how many sides of them get covered, is itself an issue.

There's a multitude of sins the NYT commits and I'd be typing out 5,000 words if I enumerated them all in detail.

As for Kruse, he either knows that, which shows his piece is about working the refs, or he does NOT know that — which, per his book, may be the case, at least in part — and that's an even bigger problem.

Internet Archive loses its appeal

The Second Court of Appeals upheld a district court ruling earlier this month over copyright issues, filed by the book giant Hatchette (Hatchet!). The Archive had claimed fair use rights in the initial case and on appeal. It's unclear if it will appeal again to the Supreme Court or not. Full ruling here.

It should be noted the suit was against just one of the Archive's programs, one started in 2020 in response to COVID called the National Emergency Library. This, the Wired piece linked up top notes, was an expansion of its old Open Library. That had a one-to-one lending policy. The NEL did not.

The Second Circuit did offer what Wired calls a Pyrrhic victory, ruling that the Archive is non-commercial.

I don't understand why Archive staff is so puzzled by the ruling.

Had I read the district court's ruling when it came out, I would have seen this as correct. The story also notes the two sides negotiated terms of a settlement while the Archive filed the appeal.

And, I don't know who Ben Werdmuller is, but he's wrong.

Per a link in the story, the Archive probably should cut its losses and settle the lawsuit by music companies before it goes to trial. If it wants to lobby for cutting back some of the recent extensions in length of copyright? Fine. This is different.

Will Texas Observer's new head do more than rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic?

 So, the Observer's new executive director, Loren Lynch, worked at The Nation? Will she learn from it and her time there to get the Observer off its purity potty and start a paywall, online ads, or both? Anything else from her remains nothing more than rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

I discussed these issues in MUCH depth 18 months ago re the Observer, and specifically compared it to The Nation, as well as Counterpunch. It can either learn, or not.

In fact, as I noted in another piece, the Observer has even gone backward in this respect in the last year, removing its "please become a contributor" Javascript screen. I wouldn't be surprised if it went belly-up by the end of 2025.