Santa Fe Reporter - Media - Santa Fe, New Mexico



City: Santa Fe, NM
Category: Media
Telephone: (505) 988-5541
Address: 132 East Marcy St.

Description: No doubt, the first issue of the Santa Fe Reporter on June 26, 1974, gave the local hometown daily, the Santa Fe New Mexican, the willies. Grown fat and lazy from lack of any real competition, the Reporter’s predecessor, the Santa Fe News, was primarily a “shopper” and didn’t pose much of a threat. Now, the New Mexican had to deal with the new kid on the block, who was lean and hungry. Founding publishers Dick McCord, a former Newsday reporter, and Laurel Knowles, a writer for Women’s Wear Daily, were ready to kick butt. And kick butt they did, in the very first issue, with a scoop on commercial flights between Santa Fe and Denver. A mere weekly, and a free one at that, over the next 15 years, the Reporter would beat the New Mexican on other occasions on local news and investigative stories, garnering journalism awards in the process.Under its second publisher—Rockefeller heiress Hope Aldrich, a former Newsday reporter and a staff writer for the Reporter who bought the paper in 1988—the alternative weekly focused on issue reporting, publishing the occasional investigative pieces.In 1997 Aldrich sold the newspaper to the owners of an alternative weekly in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. For the first time in its 24-year history, the Reporter was in the hands of absentee owners. The new publishers lived up to their promise to put greater emphasis on art coverage. The current staff is young and smart and in your face. The paper is not adverse to shocking readers with its subject matter, language, and graphics as well as down-and-dirty investigative journalism. It provokes engagement, not a bad thing in a city that is so accepting it easily becomes apathetic. The paper is a popular advertising vehicle for businesses, both mainstream and alternative. It has an estimated circulation of 60,000 a week.


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