The equity-group vampires running Freedumb Communications, owner of the Gazette here in scenic cosmopolitan Bibleburg, are said to be entertaining offers to buy its newspapers and TV stations.
“Who gives a shit?” you may inquire, and it’s not an unreasonable question. I worked there briefly in the Seventies and ran away like a Tea Bagger from a meaningful deed. Plus we canceled our subscription quite some time ago, reasoning that it was not in our community’s best interest to keep feeding the retarded, right-wing Rottweiler shitting all over the Gazette‘s Opinion pages.
Still, a daily paper’s sale is almost always bad news, especially for the people who work there, and believe it or not, there are owners both meaner and more inept than the Freedumb libertards.
Take Gannett (please). Gannett is one of the unindicted co-conspirators behind the MacPaperization of the American daily. Thanks to this soulless information-homogenization device — the nation’s biggest publisher in terms of circulation — it’s become impossible to tell one town’s paper from another.
There are rare exceptions; The New Mexican in Santa Fe may be one such, with its recent attempts to focus on local content instead of the redistribution of canned, flavorless generic bullshit. (The New Mexican also kicked Gannett’s fat ass when its 1975 sale to the chain went sideways and returned to local control in 1980.) If you’re not cursed with a Gannett paper in your hometown, as is my sister in Fort Collins, you can learn more than you care to know about the outfit at the Gannett Blog.
Then there’s MediaNews, a nut-cutting outfit that has presided over the miniaturization of The Denver Post, a once-proud regional publication. Like Gannett, MediaNews thins the newsroom herd, sharing staffers among its papers the way dopers pass a bong. And the Post is already sharing content with the Gazette, as you can see here.
It would be in character for MediaNews to snap up first the Gazette, then The Pueblo Chieftain, a privately held typo distributor that should be rechristened Bob Rawlings’ Water Law Newsletter. Slash the staffs to a position or two below bare minimum and share content, ad sales and printing facilities up and down the Front Strange like a truck-stop pimp turning out a couple of new girls.
Who knows? The readers might not even notice. They’ve become accustomed to having their low expectations met, after all. Just don’t mess with the horoscope, the funny pages and the TV listings.
Mad Blog Media 
Albuquerque Journal still owns itself. Good rag, even if a bit conservative. Maybe the New Mexican has improved but it seemed a bit thin on content. Plus, its free on the web. We pay to get the Journal in hard copy and on the Intertubes.
The Los Alamos Monitor, aka the Vomiter, has historically been the ultimate in non-product and is owned by one of those MacNewspaper Chains. They recently hired a new writer-reporter who is young but pretty good and hard working. Hope she gets a real job soon. I get the Bombtown Rag because I’m a board chair in local government and its one of the few ways to know what is going on around here. I need to know what is being reported after a meeting of my board, i.e., whether to lock the doors and load the shotguns.
Hey, let’s not forget Tribune, which has ruined more good papers than an unexpected morning rain.
K, The New Mex just got thin, period. Last time I picked up an actual copy it felt about as weighty as a Safeway mailer. The website ain’t so much of a much, either. But I think they’re starting to get it — that the only path to survival involves a focus on local news, features, sports, business, all those things that you can’t get elsewhere.
And Joe, yeah, Tribune. Jesus. Management should be imprisoned for what they’ve done to The Los Angeles Times. When I worked for The Arizona Daily Star in Tucson I routinely bought a Sunday Times for its sheer heft. Today its website is fluffier than a Persian cat in a San Francisco bathhouse.
How about McClactchey? They are not known for their wonderful outlook at the local scene. Our alt weekly has many punts at the corporate owners but one of the more recent may be thought provoking: http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/culldesac/blogs/post?oid=1854676
There is plenty of local news in New Mexico to report. Shit, the government corruption alone would fill volumes, which is why we now have a Republican governor-elect.
Rumor has it that Big Bill has decided to rename the Big I in Albuquerque (the actually quite beautiful flyover that is the heart of the cloverleaf at I25/I40) after himself. Apparently the shit has hit the windmill on that one.