OPINION: Santa Fe's great escape: Shedding Gannett
Aug. 15—It didn't take a jolt from the news wires to raise my awareness. I know how lucky I am. Santa Fe is even more fortunate.
The family-owned New Mexican remains a beacon in a country growing dimmer as newspapers fold or their staffs shrivel.
Trouble escalated Friday for tortured newsrooms in many other cities. Gannett, the country's largest newspaper chain, ousted more of its staff. The company's highly paid executive tier cast aside workers who were scratching out a living.
Some described Gannett's cuts as "layoffs." That euphemism implies the displaced workers someday could return to their newspapers. Gannett didn't disclose how many jobs it eliminated.
What's clear is there will be less news coverage in places such as Athens, Ga.; St. Cloud, Minn.; and Beaver County, Pa. Reporters in those communities used social media to announce they'd been dropped from Gannett's payroll.
Many people outside the business said there will be more news deserts, a twisted term if ever one was muttered.
There's no shortage of news. What's lacking is a commitment by Gannett to cover news, perhaps because doing so would lessen the $7.7 million in total compensation its CEO received last year. He can live like a king while his understaffed newspapers subsist on filler.
Gannett is free to operate however its leadership likes. What the chain can't do is claim it serves readers well in most markets.
The New Mexican was a Gannett newspaper for almost 14 years, from 1976 until December 1989. One of the more important days in Santa Fe's history was when the late Robert McKinney and his daughter, Robin Martin, regained ownership of The New Mexican from Gannett.
The two sides had waged a nine-year legal confrontation for control of the newspaper. Santa Fe would be a lesser city if Gannett had prevailed.
Because of local ownership, The New Mexican escaped an existence as a thinly staffed newspaper that looks and reads like dozens of others. By now, daily print editions probably would have been reduced or eliminated.
Content would have been skimpier, too. People and institutions go uncovered in comparably sized cities with Gannett regimes. Santa Fe still has a newspaper with the firepower to be a good watchdog.
That's a smart business model. I haven't seen another city where readers cared as much about coverage of city hall, public schools, the state Capitol, commerce and the arts.
The late Santa Fe newsman Richard McCord worked for four years at Newsday on Long Island. He once told me he never received a comment from a reader while at Newsday. Santa Fe was a different world, a paradise for McCord because of so many engaged readers.
I hear from them all the time. Not all are happy. One with myriad complaints wrote to me last month.
"The SFNM is a paper I loathe as a longtime subscriber and one of the lone Republicans in a city where we are mostly spat upon and reviled. See anti-Ronchetti articles, letters to your editors," the man stated in an email.
Mark Ronchetti is the Republican candidate for governor. He's absorbed plenty of criticism on the opinion pages and in my column. I also wrote about Ronchetti being far and away the strongest of the five Republican candidates for governor, even though his own party regulars tried to deny him a place on the ballot.
My skilled colleagues, political reporters Robert Nott and Daniel J. Chacón, have been as tough on Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham as they have on Ronchetti.
Lujan Grisham falsely claimed in an advertisement that Ronchetti wanted to defund police departments. Her baseless attack was exposed in a news story by Chacón. I suspect his coverage will make the governor more conscious of truth the next time she wants to slam Ronchetti.
The gent who wrote me to complain later telephoned. We had a pleasant talk. That's usually how it works in Santa Fe. Most readers will engage in civil conversation.
With nothing to gain or lose at this stage of my working life, I can say The New Mexican's Martin advanced Santa Fe in ways no governor or mayor could.
Also evident is that every newspaper has foibles and flaws. This one is no different in that respect.
But absent from The New Mexican is the cookie-cutter look and abbreviated coverage of budget-slashing Gannett newspapers.
I'm confident of one other position. If Gannett still had its formulaic thumb on The New Mexican, you wouldn't be reading this. The job of city columnist would be buried alongside the print edition.
Ringside Seat is an opinion column about people, politics and news. Contact Milan Simonich at msimonich@sfnewmexican.com or 505-986-3080.
