Albuquerque Tribune Adios

Decades-Ago Downtown Albuquerque

"Were it left to me to decide whether we should have government without newspapers, or newspapers without government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter." --Thomas Jefferson, 1787

“Here is the living disproof of the old adage that nothing is as dead as yesterday’s newspaper...This is what really happened, reported by a free press to a free people. It is the raw material of history; it is the story of our own times.” --Henry Steel Commager, historian, 1951

“News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising.” --Lord Northcliffe

Eighty-six years of history. Eighty-six years of news and opinion, scandals and civic pride. Eighty-six years of original stories about the characters, the quirks, the unique economic, social and political landscape of Albuquerque and New Mexico. From the roaring 20s through the Great Depression and World War II, railroads and Route 66, the Manhattan Project and Ernie Pyle, Clyde Tingley and Harry Kinney, mesa and valley, cowboys and atomic labs, artists and rebels, brothels and churches, schools and sports, streets and alleys, board rooms and barrooms.

Rio Pecos Oil Company's Gas & Eat Cafe on site of Lobo Theatre.
Library of Congress 1943.

The Albuquerque Tribune was a newspaper that never succumbed to the lures of becoming a stenographic service for political press releases, that never gave up on journalism as a legitimate profession, that was never satisfied with the easy skim of a shallow story. This was a newspaper that served the people, not the political schemes and spin of the worst of us. This was a newspaper admired for the compelling prose of its columnists and the curiosity and grit of its reporters. It was ours, and now it's gone.

Why is it always the best ones that seem to go down early and hard?

Yes, we all know that newspapers are on the way out, or at least on the road to a very different kine of existence. We can't stop time or change. But we can at least stop and think about the gifts this particular newspaper gave us -- holding up a mirror for 86 years to our flaws and triumphs, our people and our places, our arts and our sport and our vanities, with accuracy and heart. Adios Albuquerque Tribune. Your readers mourn you. There's a gap in the civic center of our civic lives. I expect it will be difficult to fill it.

Modern Albuquerque

Read and remember:

The official announcement that the Tribune will publish its last edition this Saturday.

The masterful Tribune columnist Ollie Reed  Jr. on the characters and culture of the paper's early days paper's early days and how its first editor focused on rooting out corruption: rooting out corruption and life in the newsroom.

A history of the Albuquerque Tribune.

A reminiscence and roundup of blog and otheer coverage of the paper's demise.