State Headlines

NMPA Legislative Breakfast  

SANTA FE -- Valerie Espinoza, newly elected to the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission, began her term by suggesting that the agency's leaders hold a closed meeting after every public session.

Her idea, offered at a public meeting, brought an immediate rebuke from a member of the League of Women Voters and a later one from the PRC's chairman.  Read more  

Here in New Mexico we're very lucky to have excellent laws that guarantee your right to know what your government is up to. The Inspection of Public Records Act was designed to ensure, as it's authors wrote, "all persons are entitled to the greatest possible information regarding the affairs of government and the official acts of public officers and employees." But IPRA dates from 1994, when only a small fraction of us had computers on our desks at work. How things have changed!  Read more  

Public bodies would have to publish agendas three days before their meetings under a proposal due to be considered by the state Legislature this year.

New Mexico's Open Meetings Act currently requires city councils, county commissions, school boards and other public bodies to provide at least 24 hours of notice about a meeting. But a bill introduced among pre-filed legislation from Rep. Jim Smith, R-Sandia Park, and Sen. Daniel Ivey-Soto, D-Albuquerque, would triple the requirement to 72 hours.  Read more  

Four days after being fired without comment by Curry County commissioners, former jail Administrator Gerry Billy has filed suit against the county seeking unspecified money damages.

Billy's attorney Eric Dixon filed the suit Friday in U.S. District Court in Albuquerque.

The lawsuit charges Billy was fired in violation of his $87,000 a year contract without cause and in violation of his First Amendment rights of free speech.  Read more  

ALBUQUERQUE - The New Mexico Department of Public Safety says it will release work and vacation schedules of officers who, at taxpayer expense, accompanied Gov. Susana Martinez's husband on an out-of-state trip.

Department of Public Safety spokesman Tony Lynn said the records will be released as directed by Attorney General Gary King, the Albuquerque Journal reported Friday.

Two state police officers accompanied Martinez's husband, Chuck Franco, on the 2011 hunting trip to Louisiana.

The documents had been requested under the Inspection of Public Records Act by the executive director of Independent Source PAC, a union-funded political group that has been sharply critical of the Martinez administration.  Read more  

The state Public Education Commission is planning to re-do its votes on two charter school renewals, after the votes were held one day early without public notice.

The decision to take the votes a day before they were scheduled was made with the OK of an assistant attorney general.

Martin Esquivel, an Albuquerque school board member and attorney who specializes in open government issues, said the commission violated the state Open Meetings Act and that holding a re-vote is not enough. Read more  

Former Mayor Harry Mendoza dropped his appeal of the final dismissal of his defamation and "false light" lawsuit against The Galluip Independent and Bob Zollinger, the publisher of the paper. Mendoza who eventually pleaded "no contest" to a criminal charge of public affray based on a physical confrontation with Zollingerin in 2010, filed the lawsuit shortly after the confrontation with Zollinger in a Gallup bank parking lot.

New Mexico State University has chosen the Association of Governing Boards of Colleges and Universities to assist with its selection process for the next president.

NMSU Regents Chair Mike Cheney said using professional services offered by AGB would lend expertise to NMSU that cannot be replicated using other resources.

For 20 years Russ Kistler ran his Optic with bravado and bluster, and by the time he sold the newspaper in about 1898, the Optic was a mainstay in Las Vegas. Yet there is no known photograph or likeness of Kistler, and little is known of his personal life, or his pursuits after he sold the Optic - but that may soon change.  Read more  

Public Notice promotion 

Thanks to Maria Lopez Garcia and the Rio Grande SUN we have new promotional ads letting the public know they now have several options to find notices: in print, the NMPA website, sunshineportlanm.com and now newmexico.gov.   The state websites do not upload our content, they only provide a link to the existing website.  Please run the ads as space permits.  Not only does it let the public know where to find these notices, it will also be instrumental in the upcoming legislative session to make legislators aware of how the newspaper industry has made these notices accessible and a clear message to any outside interests that have thoughts of creating new public notice websites that newspapers already have that covered.   No other medium can deliver public notices to the public in print and online like newspapers can.     Find the ads online at NMPA Public Notice Ads.  

Webinar Training

There are a series of upcoming webinar training sessions offered through Inland Press.   NMPA members are afforded special member prices through co-sponsorship of these convient training sessions.  Please take a look at the upcoming topics on the left hand side of this newsletter.   Clicking on the title will bring you to the registration page and provide additional information.  

Around the Industry

AOL Inc. (AOL) CEO Tim Armstrong said Monday about 100 of the company's 900 Patch sites are now profitable, as the Internet media firm seeks to use its costly local online news network to help fuel an ongoing turnaround effort.

"There's about 100 [Patch] towns, or more than 100 towns, that are profitable," Mr. Armstrong said during an appearance at the Citi Global Internet, Media & Telecommunications Conference.

Mr. Armstrong added that AOL is working to take the overall Patch network to profitability by the end of this year.

Patch is an ambitious effort to capitalize on demand for local online advertising by publishing news sites for small and mid-sized U.S. towns.

AOL has been investing an estimated $160 million annually in the collection of sites. During an earnings presentation in November, AOL executives stressed that they were seeking to run Patch more efficiently.

Time Inc. carries out long-rumored layoffs 

As was rumored earlier this week, Time Inc., parent company of 21 US magazines, including Time magazine, Sports Illustrated, and Real Simple, cut almost 500 jobs today, about 6 percent of its total head count, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal.

Time, Inc.'s profits were down about 14 percent through the first nine months of 2012, according to Business Insider. That report also said subscription revenue was down 6 percent and advertising revenue was down 5 percent during that period.

When Aaron Kushner was named publisher of The Orange County Register in Santa Ana, Calif., this past summer, he introduced a "subscriber-first" strategy, which he said is devoted to finding ways to "deliver more value to (his) subscribers."

In July 2012, 2100 Trust, Kushner's investment group, acquired Freedom Communications, Inc., the Register's parent company. 2100 Trust president Eric Spitz also serves as co-owner and president of Freedom.  Read more   

Print's financial future may last longer than expected, according to new reports

As this year begins, three notable reports share the same conclusion about the future of news: The path we are on is uncertain and debatable. But two of the three studies now see an extended economic shelf life for print, even as audiences swing digital and the search for viable digital news products continues. Read more    

Newspaper readers are not graying as quickly as reported 

Alan Mutter wrote something startling this week in his always thought-provoking blog, Reflections of a Newsosaur: "The population of people reading newspaper has aged dramatically in the last three years."

By Mutter's analysis, roughly three-quarters of newspaper readers are now over age 45. That, according to his calculations, is up dramatically from half in 2010 - a graying of newspaper readers by 50 percent in two years.

He based his analysis on data from the Pew Research Center that I was involved in producing from summer 2010 and summer 2012. (I left the Pew Research Center in December to take the helm of the American Press Institute).

The problem is, the analysis doesn't reflect reality.  Read more   

Folly. Gigantic mistake. Rearview-mirror strategy.

Paywalls have taken their share of abuse since The New York Times reopened the digital circulation debate three years ago. But in those three years, my, how things have changed. Charging for digital access has gone from experimental to mainstream. In fact, you'll be hard-pressed to find many daily newspapers in the U.S., Canada, Scandinavia, or Germany that won't be charging something for digital access by the time 2015 rolls around.

Send updates of new hires, promotions, retirements, memorials, etc to  [email protected].  We will print the news in this section each month.