Smaller daily in Albuquerque shuts down
ALBUQUERQUE -- The Albuquerque Tribune said goodbye Saturday to the city it had served for nearly nine decades as it closed in what observers described as the latest newspaper to succumb to the digital age.
Eighteen editors, reporters and photographers hunkered down in front of computer screens to put out the last edition. The final front-page headline read simply, "Goodnight, Albuquerque."
The Tribune's circulation had dropped from 42,000 in 1988 to about 9,600; some blamed the advent of an era in which readers increasingly shun ink and paper to consume news online. Its main competitor was the much larger Albuquerque Journal.
The paper's owner, The E.W. Scripps Company, put The Tribune up for sale in August and said it would shut the paper down if a buyer wasn't found. News of the closure was announced Wednesday.
The newspaper was more than simply a business and will not be forgotten, said Tribune photojournalist Michael Gallegos.
"It's just a bunch of hearts and minds and souls that put out a paper every day," he said.
On its last front page, the newspaper paid tribute to the community it served, featuring a photo of a longtime reader scanning the paper in bed.
Editor Phill Casaus and office manager Louise Kutz tacked up a blue banner with the newspaper's name printed in white near the desk where the final button would be pushed for the final edition.
On Friday, Gov. Bill Richardson called on New Mexicans to celebrate the newspaper's long history and its service to the state.
"The Tribune has been an important institution — a voice for the people — for 86 years," Richardson said.
Richardson proclaimed Saturday as "Albuquerque Tribune Day" in New Mexico. The proclamation praised the paper for "consistent, award-winning and in-depth coverage as well as dramatic, surprising and quietly beautiful photography."
The paper won a Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for a series about the experiences of Americans who had been used without their knowledge in government radiation experiments nearly 50 years earlier. The Tribune was a Pulitzer finalist in 1996 and a first-place winner in the 1998 and 2001 National Headliner Awards.
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