Thursday, September 03, 2020

RIP Los Alamos Monitor

The sole paid subscription newspaper in the city of Los Alamos and Los Alamos County, New Mexico, is calling it quits.

And, I have a personal connection of sorts to the story of the cheap bastards.

I interviewed there to be managing editor there eight or so years ago, when it was still a five-day daily, usually eight pages on the weekdays and 12 or so on the weekender. I could have done the job, no doubt.

After I, and other candidates, I presume, made it past a first round of interviews? They hired internally. I think that Landmark Community Newspapers, the parent, was "salary scraping" to see what the market would bear and how much they could lowball a staff writer to run the whole thing.

No shock to see the company with 1.7 star average on Glassdoor. Cheap, tech-cheap, and conservative good old boys running the ship are among the complaints. If they really are running old Drupal, that explains why no websites are paywalled. Too damn hard. And, still trying the old "buy this online photo" schtick, to boot.

That said, the Los Alamos Daily Post (daily online, or always online, and weekly in print) may be free (I guess), but its website kicks the Monitor's ass, and going by ads there, has been kicking the Monitor's ass in other ways.

Interestingly, it started up just a year after I interviewed there. Presumably, their hire of not-me and other Landmark decisions may have started an exodus and former staff started the new paper?

Indeed. The publisher of the Post is the person I could have been replacing.

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