Since I’m not road-tripping this holiday weekend, what say we do a bit of time-traveling?

Shortly after I joined The New Mexican in 1988, publisher Robert McKinney reclaimed that paper from the soulless zopilotes at Gannett. He’d sold it to them in 1976 on the condition that he would retain editorial and managerial control, but just two years later took them to court, alleging breach of contract.

It took a while, but McKinney beat them like a chicken-thieving mutt, returned as publisher in 1987, and in ’89 reacquired the paper he’d first bought in 1949 for a cool half-mil’, but this time paying a slightly higher price: “his remaining Gannett stock, then worth about $33 million,” according to The New York Times.

Today The New Mex remains one of the rarest of birds — a locally owned newspaper. McKinney’s daughter, Robin McKinney Martin, is the big boss.

And once again a McKinney is getting set to throw some hands with Gannett — this time, down south, where those bandidos own and operate the Las Cruces Sun News.

Now, I’ve not read that paper in ages. I do look at its website now and again, and every time I wonder why in hell I bothered.

This is what the American daily newspaper looks like in The Year of Our Lard 2026: the journalistic equivalent of the walking dead. A zombie, full of canned “news” from elsewhere, edited and printed out of town, far from its readership, if any. Check the “contact us” page: Just three staffers listed there — a news director, a news reporter, and a sports reporter.

Now check the contact page at The New Mex.

One name you won’t see there is Julia Gentin. She’ll be joining The New Mex in July to work in Doña Ana County — home of the Sun News — as the Santa Fe paper’s first bureau journalist for southern New Mexico.

“Yes, we’re growing our newsroom and expanding our coverage area,” writes executive editor Bill Church.

It’s an ambitious project, and I’ll be interested to see how it shakes out. Santa Fe and Las Cruces are very different places, and The New Mex is not the acme of perfection. Neither is the Albuquerque Journal, likewise locally owned. No newspaper is.

And speaking of zombies, I wonder whether McKinney — who died in 2001 — might be suiting up for the battle from The Beyond.

Some Gannett drone once called him an “old coot” in a memo. Which was accurate. But I don’t think he liked it.