Another crappy NM paper bites the dust, sort of

 About two months ago, I blogged about the Los Alamos Monitor going belly-up.

This new post also involves a newspaper where I applied long ago, then got lowballed (as did others) by a publisher engaged in resume bottom feeding.

That would be the Rio Rancho Observer.

Or should I call it the Albuquerque Journal Observer?

JournalismJobs recently had a listing for a new ME at Socorro's El Defensor-Chieftan Chieftain, yet ANOTHER place I applied to about a decade ago. (Initial phone interview, publisher indicating he liked me, then no follow-up on his part.)

I applied via JJ's website, then thought .. do I apply directly by email?

So I hit its website. At lower right, I saw a listing of "Partner sites." One I thought was in Belen, and indeed the News-Bulletin is. Then I saw the Albuquerque Journal.

Then, "RRObserver."

I web-searched, and sure enough, the Observer is owned by Number Nine Media, the Journal's parent.

Which means the cheap-ass publisher of the Observer took the money and ran.

He reminded me of the owner of the Focus Daily News in the Best Southwest suburbs — cheating on his distribution so as to fudge numbers similar to a free throw shopper. And, in the interview, he admitted it.

He said he zoned Rio Rancho into quadrants and did a free throw once a month, on a rotating basis of the four quadrants. And this was with a loophole-laden, but not fishnet-level, ABC at that time. That's before the Audit Bureau of Circulations basically washed its hands of such things entirely. (A perfect strategy for the newspaper of the city of Glengarry Glen Ross, eh?)

Especially now that the Journal is printing-partnering with the Santa Fe New Mexican, it can throw its muscle around about anywhere north of Los Cruces and SE New Mexico, and with Hobbs, Carlsbad and Roswell oil-imploding again, who knows on that?

Anyway, the Observer is not disappeared, but it's surely a shell of its former self.