Albuquerque Tribune

Fellow media types have been lamenting the loss of the journalistic voice of the Albuquerque Tribune which ceased publishing February 23. As part of  Capitol Report New Mexico, a year-old addition to the New Mexico media scene, this blog cannot celebrate the loss of any media outlet. However, it is worth a passing moment to consider the other requirement for having a real journalistic voice, other than being out there and voicing. This survival requirement is making profit, something disparaged as an uncomfortable concept by a good many media types. 

Profit plays an important role. It measures how well any firm executes its purpose, whether informing readers or delivering widgets of value to customers. While a good many of the Tribune's economic problems stemmed from structural matters—lifestyle changes, television, the internet—at some point the Tribune's value to readers disappeared. Circulation showed an amazing plunge the last few years—to fewer than 10,000 at the end—in a metro area that has grown to more than 800,000 population. The subsidy from the corporate owner, the E.W. Scripps Co., and the clever press-sharing, anti-competitive "joint operating agreement" with the Albuquerque Journal kept the Tribune alive for a long time. 

It would be nice to think my column, printed occasionally by the Tribune through New Mexico News Services, was the most wonderful thing in the paper. Certainly some of my mother's friends thought so. But even if the column was wondrous, it was a long way from restoring that lost journalistic voice and the accompanying profit.

There is one other element. The scripps.com news February 20 release announcing the Tribune's demise mentioned that The Journal and the Tribune had shared profits under the joint operating agreement and then said, "Under a new agreement with Journal Publishing, Scripps will continue as a partner in the Albuquerque Publishing Co., which directs and manages the operations of The Journal newspaper." Being a partner should mean sharing profit. If so, the folks at Scripps are geniuses. They no longer have to lose money running the Trib, but get part of The Journal's profit. Wow.