Did I miss something? Or was a Sunday Albuquerque Journal article the first public indication that long time publisher of the paper Tom Lang has been shown the door and replaced by his brother Bill Lang who has the title President and CEO? The story announcing cooperation between the Journal and the Rio Rancho Observer had a quote from Bill Lang about the new arrangement. Tom Lang's name is still on the masthead as publisher, but is he?
Rumor has it that the Journal staff was given some sort of statement about the changes. A million questions arise. Will the Journal take on less of a right wing stance on the editorial pages? Will editor Kent Walz be given a different kind of supervision? Will the new leadership be able to save the Journal as a major daily news paper? This is all historic for this newspaper which has seen so much bleeding of staff and revenues in the last decade. It is a great opportunity for it to remake it self into a publication for all of New Mexico, not just the right wing. The problem has been the editorial stands leak into the news coverage.
Bill Lang is seen as a good business man and not an ideologue.
Maybe it is a new day!
Rumor has it that the Journal staff was given some sort of statement about the changes. A million questions arise. Will the Journal take on less of a right wing stance on the editorial pages? Will editor Kent Walz be given a different kind of supervision? Will the new leadership be able to save the Journal as a major daily news paper? This is all historic for this newspaper which has seen so much bleeding of staff and revenues in the last decade. It is a great opportunity for it to remake it self into a publication for all of New Mexico, not just the right wing. The problem has been the editorial stands leak into the news coverage.
Bill Lang is seen as a good business man and not an ideologue.
Maybe it is a new day!
3 comments:
I'm one of those dinosaurs who still reads a daily paper. The ABQ Journal has challenged my commitment with it's horrible partisan take on not only the editorial pages but also in the news articles presented and the outrageous partisan slant of the headlines. The paper continues to shrink in its new s coverage as it grows with its ad content, so thre are many mornings I do not even open the paper to read it. The quality of writing is so low that it may very well reflect the lack of journalistic independence its writers. The best Journal writers are feature writers and so often the front page has one of their features as the lead article when important US, world, regional and local news are left to the news wires in a highly edited form or relegated to the back pages. I hope you're right and the Journal takes a turn toward a more moderate political viewpoint. Perhaps their bottom line has finally brought them the realization that this is not a "red-meat" conservative state.
Hope springs eternal.
I have heard the opposite. I heard that Tom never recovered from the death of his son and that Bill has been running the paper for some time now. Looks like they are just now making it official. The content of the paper is just as mean spirited as it has always been. I especially enjoyed the editorial cartoon of the Mexican running into the US while Americans jumped the fence to Mexico (sarcasm here).
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