Patrick Etheridge welcome to New Mexico InFocus thanks for coming down and also welcome to Albuquerque thank you thank you so much pleasure to be here um so we are talking in this week's show about the media ecosystem and sort of the state of Journalism in New Mexico by the time folks see this interview you will be about a month into your job as executive editor of the Albuquerque Journal and we'll get to your plans and vision for the newspaper here in a little bit but I want to start with where you came from you have worked at and led newspapers in Nebraska Kentucky Indiana and all sorts of other places and I wonder how those experiences shaped you as a journalist in particular sure so I've had ink in my blood since a very young age I'm you know you could go back even further and I was delivering papers when I was 13 and 14 and that was a coveted job for a a household and that's one of those things that my brothers and I we kept for a decade in our little small town we grew up in but then more to the point um got into newspapers as a writer and have always just loved a good story the the meat of Journalism just telling a story whether it be success in sports Watchdog journalism or anything else just there's a thrill and excitement that I get from just a good meaty Story I mean that really has never changed you know my positions have changed I've climbed up the ladder I guess over the course of 28 years or whatnot but that still drives me now just doing good journalism and finding good stories that are important to people really really strongly to that actually I wonder what were some of those newspapers like in terms of size and circulation and the way they serve the communities where they existed sure so every good newspaper I think is somewhat a mere of the community that it serves so from that they've the communities were vastly different I started out in a little weekly newspaper as a very young Cub reporter back in Nebraska that's a conservative farming part of the country I'm in the newspaper really mirrored that so I went from that to Iowa Iowa not as conservative at the time you know I went on to be able to cover the Iowa caucuses um uh are covered the the closing of Maytag which was in Newton Iowa which was a huge deal we saw um you know a town that really thrived on these 3 000 people working in a factory and all losing their jobs within a matter of a year Echoes of that in the 2016 presidential election and just decimated an entire town and then it really became politicized um right or wrong folks used that but you know covering the Iowa caucuses was great and because of Iowa's political makeup all the presidential candidates cruised through there so that was a lot of fun um but then from there I took a management position in the on the Iron Range of Minnesota if you know anything about the Iron Range it's very much they call it dfl is the political driving force there um a completely different Dynamic again um and the newspaper reflected that and really that's that's been the case everywhere I've been and I think it's very true here as well that a good newspaper is really a good reflection of the community that it serves yeah and I want to unpack this question a little later in the interview but let's let's take a little bit of a stab at it now this is a state of course with a majority Hispanic population a minority white population um the politics here tend to range from like super deep blue to very weirdly purple um how do you plan to to make that reflection that you were just describing happen how do you do that you know I think the number one way to do that is by hiring good unbiased journalists um and you know we all have different backgrounds as journalists as people but a good journalist somebody who really takes it serious their background doesn't necessarily matter they approach subject matter unbiased without any preconceived notions and I really think that we have a team with that kind of dedication to the craft how much did you know about Albuquerque how much did you know about New Mexico and how much did you know about the journal when you decided to start to go down this path and um I have to be entirely honest very little especially about Albuquerque and New Mexico um actually even when I came down here to interview and it was a few day process I didn't get to see the mountains because we started the interview first thing in the morning and the interview ended and it was dark as I was meeting people and I I was a little disappointed because I didn't get to see the mountains um now I can read everything online obviously I'm a reader based on my career so I could I could read about the politics and the demographics and so I knew it from that standpoint I was really honestly more interested in the journal at the time because that's where I'm going to spend so much of my time that's what I it was very important to me to meet a lot of the staff and to get to know the history of the journal so that's probably where I invested all my time gotcha what sold you on coming here honestly first and foremost um Bill Lang and what the newspaper has done the makeup of that paper I think that Albuquerque and the entire state is so fortunate to have a paper this size these kind of journalists and a family that's been that dedicated to serving um I come from corporate newspapers a long line of them and still grateful for all the opportunities I've had but sometimes the paper's like that um there's almost a sacrifice sometimes of the product and here I feel like the Lang family and the staff as well are very dedicated to a top-notch product and in a modern era of Journalism sometimes that gets pushed to the side plate and I don't feel like it has here yeah I think the notion of a family-owned newspaper is still romantic and attractive in a lot of ways it really is um digging a little bit deeper sort of beyond that notion of newspaper as mirror I want to talk some about your journalism values and philosophies what kind of from 30 000 feet or from two feet whichever you prefer Choose Your Own Adventure here what is a newspaper's role in a community well I think that that's really multifaceted I think there's a lot of things that a newspaper has to do for its community obviously there's a watchdog portion to that that should never go away it's you know it's key to the invention of newspapers the creation and the existence of newspapers we have to be the agency that is watching tax dollars making sure that our elected officials are being held accountable that will never change and I will hold steadfast to that um on a weekly basis we talk about that are there things we need to involve lawyers and are there things that we perceive to be going on that are wrong right now with our local officials and I think that news consumers should always expect that that will never change we won't budge on that um but there are other things you know I think a newspaper can help celebrate accomplishments in its Community whether that be Sports whether that be uh you know Pride parades really just all the things that happen in a community that make it special and that people in that Community should be proud of I think it's incumbent upon us to help celebrate those things now another portion that I think that newspapers and all media do but could do better at is really affect change I feel like we are as journalists influential and shame on us if we don't use some of that to bring problems to light it's not necessarily all on our back to to make those changes but to at least make the awareness to let communities know let influencers know this is a problem and I think that that's a thing that all media should do more of and I would intend for the journal to do more of that the old saw of an informed electorate makes better choices of The Ballot Box right exactly yeah um so for as long as anybody can remember the journal has positioned itself as a newspaper of record sort of the New York Times model of all the News That's fit to print right right but on a local scale should readers going forward expect that of the journal or do you have a different idea in mind for that idea of if it happened it didn't really happen unless it went in the journal is that what we're going to see going forward so I appreciate the question because honestly that's that's something that we've discussed we've pondered and not not to great detail yet because I've only been here for a minute but very true I mean do our we've talked about do our readers expect us to be The State newspaper that reports on things that are happening three hours away but it's still New Mexico and I think the answer is yes we will continue to do that because I think our readers expect it and it's important I don't think that we can always rely on somebody will pick that up at some point you just have to do it yourself to make sure that readers remain informed however it's equally important to me that we are a community newspaper I don't want there to be news happening in Albuquerque that we miss because we're covering something three hours away so there's a fine line there and I can't tell you that I have that all figured out yet but I want to be both that's really encouraging to hear um so it going a little bit more into the weeds here and I appreciate your willingness to engage in some of this your two predecessors and the executive editor job Karen Moses and Kent walls first of all full disclosure this does not come as a galloping shock to any of our viewers I worked at the journal from 2003 to 2013. it's still a really important institution to me in a lot of ways so fair game for me to just say that out loud anyway Kent and Karen both were very Hands-On editors in particular for stuff that went in the a section of the newspaper they have their Hands-On copy I wonder and again I know you've only been there a month what kind of editor should we expect for you to be from that perspective do you plan on having your hands in the pie so again a great question that's something that um I've been having a lot of discussions with my staff even though I've only been here for a bit because I don't take that approach um I don't believe that the executive editor is necessarily best served as a line editor on a daily basis I think that I have some very qualified journalists a number of very qualified journalists who have served this newspaper and are readers for a very long time and are more than capable of doing a lot of that I see myself more as coming up with the direction that we're going to go saying that this is where we're going to go and then really I'd like to empower my staff I've never worked with a group of journalist as skilled as this as experienced as this and as capable as they are so that's really what we've been talking a lot about in my first few weeks here is just I trust you you know what to do at this point you know what to do more than I do I've only been here for a minute I'm still learning the processes and I'm still learning the names of the people in The Newsroom frankly but I would expect in the coming months that for my staff to hopefully feel very empowered and know that I'm not going to be looking over their shoulder for all those details I think that uh as the modern era of Journalism dictates we do less with more it's going to be very important that they know they have the ability to go out on their own and do more of the things that they're qualified to do and I think we have to learn to operate more efficiently that way because our number one priority will always remain good journalism keeping meat on the bone so to speak so the best way to do that is to be efficient one other question about process and going back to again both of your two predecessors they both had a tremendous amount of involvement both in content on the editorial Pages including staff editorials and in the news Operation I wonder your thoughts on that philosophically do you plan to have more of kind of that traditional separation of church and state or do you see yourself kind of overseeing both aspects of the operation opinion and news both so so I do I will serve on our editorial board I will be part of that process on a regular basis um and in terms of content I'm really looking forward to starting to to write a regular column of some sort um that's not all going to be hard news let's be honest a lot of this especially as I get acclimated and introduced to the area there's probably going to be a lot of me writing about just how how amazed I am at some of the Albuquerque isms and things that are just brand new to me but I think yeah eventually you're going to probably see me opine a bit more and I believe that myself or any other journalist worth their mud can can share an opinion and still also be unbiased when it comes to the news side I think that that separation is possible okay um let's talk about the website roll out I know there's going to be an interesting topic for a lot of folks we've watched that over the course of the past couple of weeks one consequence of that has been that everything pre-2020 is not available on the site I will lament that personally because that means all of my work is now stricken from the Obelisk and in addition to that the the morgue the hard copy the clip archive is not open to the public anymore I wonder um are there any plans to sort of restore this incredibly Rich digital and analog record of the first draft of history that stretches back more than 100 years in our state so obviously we've retained that we still have all of that obviously um when it comes to stories and Archives of that nature we've partnered with newspapers.com which we'll still have everything from the beginning of time you can still search through all of our stories that way photos we still have on archive that we we can easily pull things up you know unfortunately yeah the the ability to just dump everything back into the new website it just wasn't possible the bandwidth that it would take and just some of the details that are really over my head as well I don't understand but they just said it just wasn't going to be possible and then we just looked at statistics and we kind of let some numbers drive that um anything over three years old uh that's less than five percent of our online traffic so at some point we just had to cut it off but I I too lament not having that out at our fingertips because it's it's really nice for reporters or anyone doing research to do that but I would encourage anyone who's looking for those old stories to go to newspapers.com and you'll still be able to find it gotcha um Beyond The Challenge that I just mentioned how do you feel like the rollout's gone so far with the new website I'm glad you asked finally a question that I'm I'm so excited because I think it went really well um I come from the company who actually owns the product that we just switched to yeah right yeah so I'm familiar familiar with Town news and specifically blocks which is what we call it and it's a it's a front-end system for reporters as well it's really easy to operate most important it doesn't break very often at all it's very reliable which is why over 2000 new sites in the in the country use it um I think that blocks which supports our website it supports something like 35 36 percent of the new sites in the country right now so it's reliable relatively user-friendly users can follow the writers that they want to and just see their stuff you can easily click on just local news or just local sports if that's what you want but it does a really good job of offering more you know there are seven stories that you'll see across the top whereas the old one I would test it and you can sometimes only see a couple two or three so if nothing else it just it gives more options for a reader I think and it rolled out the rollout I thought went fantastic the staff here um I thought did really really well for it being something that they hadn't done before and I've helped roll this system out at several other papers within the corporation I came from I told the staff here that I thought it went as smoothly in Albuquerque as anywhere I've ever seen you know it created some humorous moments on Twitter too where everybody had this sort of mass freak out of oh my God the journal got sold to Lee and I'm watching my boy Matt rise I'm like hang on nope that's not what happened so right that was that was fun to watch along as he is with all breaking news Matt was on top of it right away and yeah um so the item that announced your higher and that ran in the newspaper sort of described a mix of skills Watchdog journalism which we've talked about a little bit and some tech savvy right it is after all the year of Our Lord 2023 um and we're not just bundling news and tossing it into people's driveways anymore one of the things that really stuck out from me was a quote from you and that item in which you talked about the Albuquerque Journal is not going to be offering squirrel videos which I read with some Delight that said I am a regular consumer of what goes at ABQ journal.com and of course I noticed the green chili cheeseburger videos and stuff like that so I wonder what is the threshold for you in terms of something that you do think serves readers does Drive traffic and then just straight up clickbait where's that line right so as I have learned when I moved within the first few days is that folks in Albuquerque they don't joke about their chili I've been asked a lot am I a rhetoric green person and I still don't know but that seemed worthwhile just from that standpoint and honestly also we've got a team of journalists who do need to play with this and expand and I'm so excited to see something like that because it it's a test I clickbait has become a bad word um at its heart what clickbait means is people are clicking on it because it's something that they want to consume yeah I don't think that that's bad we've coined it clickbait and it has a negative connotation but I don't think that that's Justified thank you BuzzFeed yeah but I guess what I would tell you is what will drive what we do is if people are interested in it and that's the great thing about the digital age is that we can see if this has 10 000 people who read it then it might be important maybe we should do more of it yeah if it has 200 people who read it maybe it's not as important and that's what I love about modern journalism is you have those stats right away so we can we can tell right away this is a stinker let's not do this again um I want to talk a little bit about sort of the staff at this point right an awful lot of institutional knowledge and memory has walked out the door just in the last couple of months and I mean with Karen Moses Dan Herrera Elise Kaplan some of the other reporters it reminds me a little bit of kind of what happened back in 2013 where there were a lot of folks who'd been there for quite some time I wonder your thoughts on how important that sort of institutional knowledge and institutional memory are add a newspaper like the journal sure I think it's important for any newspaper the journal especially you know Karen was very gracious and that she gave a long running warning to everybody that she was leaving and really did a lot to prepare folks did a lot to help me as well we got to spend quite a bit of time together and still now we're in communication um because this is her baby as well you know she she doesn't just retire and not care about it so that's been really great some of those other you know Elise I had the Middle East when I came down and interviewed and was crushed when I heard that she was leaving because I think she's a fantastic journalist what I'm encouraged about is that that institutional knowledge was here so long that a lot of it has really rubbed off on the team that's still there you know Elise really helped Matt become the journalist that he is and I think that he's carrying on that mission seamlessly I think that uh you have a lot of examples of that in The Newsroom and those names that you mentioned are still brought up almost daily because I think that the team is really devoted to carrying on that work and I think that they are capable enough that the loss of that institutional knowledge is really minimized because they're so committed to the craft and carrying it on what are your Staffing goals and plans what what can you do or are there gaps that you're already starting to look at kind of making some hires and then what's your sort of recruiting plan there are you looking for experience Young Folks how do you repopulate the Earth sure that's a great question um I don't know no all jokes aside we we're you know we're currently hiring for a night cops reporter because that's one of those pressing things that you just have to have indeed um you know we we have a national search going on right now for a city editor um I have an interim City editor Gabrielle who's fantastic a great journalist been there for a long time but she wants to do some other things within our Newsroom so we're going to reach out in that beyond that a lot of folks have asked me that especially my own employees and I can honestly tell them I don't know yet what positions that we need to fill because I still haven't got a full grasp on the operations but I do fully intend to uh to bring some new people in and when I approached that I want the best journalists the the people who are going to help the paper get stronger that doesn't always mean that they'll agree with that I'll agree with them but I don't you don't want Yes Man either you want people who are dedicated to the craft like I feel like I am but there's more one one way to uh accomplish that so I can't tell you exactly what I'm looking for It's a combination of everything it's a combination of experience attitude willingness to embrace the digital era but also Strength In traditional journalism but at the end of the day if I had to just measure it with one category it's do they make us stronger do they make us better yes folks uh seem unlikely Patrick journalists are obstinate Persnickety folks so as I'm sure you know as well as I do doing this for quite a long time um I want to ask another question that the journal has historically um at various times in its history had a really difficult relationship with communities of color obviously you are not responsible for any of that all of those things predate you but I'm interested in how much you are aware of that and if you are starting or in a conversation now about how the newspaper might more consistently serve all new Mexicans sure I am somewhat aware of the issue and it's it's concerning it's I would tell you that it's top of Mind as I look for new hires I would love the opportunity to diversify a little bit more I think that that would be really key to moving forward in the right direction other than that I feel very comfortable with the staff that we have and that they are devoted to improving upon that and I'd like to think that our work will show that in the future I appreciate you answering the question um one of the things we're addressing in this special that we're creating about the news ecosystem is ownership so I'm also interested if you are aware of any conversations or any plans in which the Lang family might be talking about selling the newspaper or if you're confident that readers and this community can continue to expect family ownership for the journal I want to take a drink before I answer absolutely I would tell you that um if I thought there was any threat of the journal being sold in the near future I would not be sitting here right now it's something that I asked about it's something that I talked with Bill Lang and his son pepperling about in great depths and they are committed to me at this point but really to the entire state to continue this great mission that their family has been carrying on and there are no plans and no discussions to step away from that or to sell that which is one of the main reasons that I am excited about being here and that I am here and moving my family here because a family-owned newspaper of this size um who answers only to its itself and its community rather than stockholders I think is a fabulous thing for any journalist to be a part of but even on a larger scale it's a fabulous thing for a community and a state to have and starting to become a bit of a unicorn right nationally not not enough of those left that's for sure it really is it's such a rarity that I feel so privileged to be part of that my last question is one that I'm asking kind of everybody who's participating and the special that we're making and I'd like to start by sharing my perspective on this I've been in this job now for about three months and a lot of what we do here is news analysis and conversations about the news and it has become increasingly clear to me that when the journal is doing the thing it makes the conversations we have at this table and the analysis that we do of what's going on in the state and and the news it makes that better it makes that richer it's incredibly important in the ecosystem which is why I asked you to come down here today but I'm curious your thoughts on that where does the journal fit again a month into this job in the larger ecosystem of news and journalism in the state where are y'all in the puzzle um you know I would tell you that I think we're at the Forefront I think that um we when you work at a smaller newspaper you're always kind of top of Mind of what the Metro is doing you're always trying to outshine them I'm in a new position here now where I think that we are the brightest star I think that we have the best journalists and the most resources to be at the Forefront of coverage possibly determining what the news of the day should be but we have the resources and we have the dedication to be The Driver of Journalism in the area I promised that was my last question but I'm gonna ask you one more right now what should we expect in terms of the future of investigative reporting that is something that I did at the paper and have continued to do in my career how important is that to you and how do you make it happen I think it's it's important because I think the proof is there you can look at some of the stories that the journal has uncovered some of the stories that we have done and are continuing to do that have really affected change that have raised some red flags on things that otherwise maybe wouldn't be changed at all and right now are in the process of being changed because of work that the Albuquerque Journal did that alone tells me that the work is extremely important the journalists that are working in that are going to continue to have the resources they need to do that Patrick thank you so much for coming uh good luck with the future and let's check in again a little ways down the road and have another conversation about things I look forward to it thank you yeah thanks again you bet