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Albuquerque Tribune's Web site and archives might live on

By Erik Siemers
Thursday, February 21, 2008

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Even as The Albuquerque Tribune prepares for its final edition, the afternoon newspaper's brand might still have a future.

Officials with E.W. Scripps, The Tribune's parent company based in Cincinnati, on Wednesday said that despite the decision to cease publication Saturday, they are still trying to sell what remains of the newspaper.

"You still have assets," said Tim Stautberg, a Scripps spokesman. "The masthead, everything that was for sale that was announced in August, is still available for sale."

But The Tribune readers have come to know over 86 years will cease to exist after the paper prints the last of a three-day commemorative series on Saturday.

Any buyer would be purchasing the remnants, including The Tribune's Web site and archives, Stautberg said.

It would not include the paper's joint operating agreement with the Albuquerque Journal, a partnership that allowed the papers to share business functions while maintaining independent newsrooms.

Any prospective buyer would have to find a means of selling ads, printing and distributing the paper — unless The Tribune operated only as a Web site.

That has been the aim of a collective of readers who, under the mantle Friends of the Albuquerque Tribune, have discussed taking over the paper and operating it as a cooperatively owned news Web site.

Marvin Gladstone, the group's vice president, said its push to preserve multiple editorial voices in Albuquerque will continue, despite news of The Tribune's closure.

The group is hosting a community meeting at 7 p.m. tonight at the University of New Mexico School of Law, Room 2405.

"We're proceeding," Gladstone said. "There's a good deal to discuss about multiple daily news sources in Albuquerque."

Ted Cloak, the group's president, told the New Mexico Business Weekly the group could offer Scripps $10,000 for the paper's remaining assets.

Gladstone, however, said that statement was made before news of the paper's closure.

"I think there might be a difference of opinion as to whether the group ought to offer money for a discontinued paper," Gladstone said.

Stautberg said Scripps is "not aware that they have made a formal offer."

The Friends of the Tribune group isn't alone in its quest for a Web-based news site for Albuquerque.

The Center for Independent Media, a nonprofit group based in Washington, D.C., plans to launch a New Mexico news site late this spring that would be heavy on investigative reports and blogging, said Ali Savino, the group's national program director.

The group operates in other states — the Minnesota Monitor and Colorado Confidential, for example — using a mix of local news reporters and bloggers, she said. The center has yet to determine a name for the New Mexico site, she said.

"We create fresh, new content that can be used for other bloggers to blog around," she said. "New Mexico is a fascinating place that is going to have a ton of political and public policy interest in the next couple of months."

The remaining 38 employees of The Tribune, and the various departments within Albuquerque Publishing Co. that print, distribute and sell ads for the paper, are making preparations for the paper's final days — as they have since the paper was put up for sale in August.

Two executives from the Albuquerque public relations firm D.W. Turner put in a bid for the paper that fell through Feb. 1.

Since then, Scripps sought approval from the U.S. Department of Justice to close the paper. The DOJ oversees the joint operating agreement with the Journal.

The DOJ's Antitrust Division assessed the impact of closing The Tribune, said department spokeswoman Gina Talamona, but agreed that no prospective buyer was able to continue publishing it.

Stautberg said the paper's Web site, www.abqtrib.com, will remain online for an undetermined amount of time.

Scripps has yet to determine what it will do with The Tribune's archives.

"It would be our intention that those would be preserved and available in some form for the community," Stautberg said.

The paper's editorial employees will receive severance packages.

About 20 employees in Albuquerque Publishing Co.'s circulation department will lose their jobs, and some employees in the production department could also be laid off, said Brian Fantl, operations manager for the publishing company.

Outside The Tribune and Journal headquarters at 7777 Jefferson St. N.E. on Wednesday morning, Norb Gray, the publishing company's circulation director, stood near the docks where delivery trucks are filled each morning with fresh copies of The Tribune.

On this day he was the messenger, delivering the news of the paper's closing to about a dozen drivers, including two-year veteran Leta Plack.

Her reaction was much like that of her counterparts in the newsroom — a sense of relief that her months in employment limbo were coming to an end.

"I'm kind of glad to know it's finally done," she said. "It's like, OK, at least now we know we can carry on."

And, like a faithful reader, she knew what she would miss most — the comics. Said Plack, "They had some of the best in The Trib."