Happy New Year — almost.
It will still be 2022 when most of our readers open this week’s edition but it will be 2023 by the time you have the next one in your hands.
This has been a year of change both at the Rio Grande SUN and in our community. Who knows what surprises await us in 2023?
You have new owners of the Sun after decades of stewardship by the Trapp family. El Rito Media, LLC., bought the Sun last April. We’ve made some changes and there are more on the way.
Our goal is to be a watchdog on government and public officials, a vigilant reporter on crime and other problems in the community, as well as a good corporate citizen. We seek not only to point out those aspects of life in Rio Arriba County that need fixing but also to highlight and accentuate the positives of our community — and there are many.
We added two new reporters, Samantha Chavez and Kevin Deutsch who are bringing fresh and new vitality to our content. Our sports section, led by Ari Levin, ranks among the best in the state. Jen Burnham, our managing editor, continues to provide the kind of leadership that resulted in the Sun winning six New Mexico Press Association awards this year in both the editorial and advertising categories, all under the new ownership.
We have a new leader in advertising and marketing with the promotion of Mayra Aldaz from our classified department to director of all advertising at the Sun. Perhaps nothing symbolizes changes under way here more than today’s front page. We are running an opinion column by former Mayor Javier Sanchez who now writes a bi-monthly column for the Sun. We are reaching out to others in the community and state just as we did with Javier asking them to write for us. We want a variety of opinions. Sanchez’s column this week offers a hopeful and uplifting message and that, too, represents what we seek to be as a local newspaper- inspirational. Often the news can drag all of us down. We want to be uplifting and positive when we can. Today’s Sanchez column is about new beginnings, risk, and hope.
We’ve not only added other new columnists such as Dr. Jose Garcia, an education leader and prominent in Democratic politics, Sanchez, he former mayor and a Republican. We’ve also had guest pieces from El Rito investor, Tom Wright, of Santa Fe and a conservative, and offerings from Española native and state politician Valerie Espinosa, a Democrat. Added to that lineup have been national columnists Victor Davis Hansen, Cal Thomas, and Maria Sanchez. Our aim with opinion writers is to give our readers a broad spectrum of ideas. We wish to spark the need to think and debate beyond our borders both personal and geographic.We’ve made changes in news coverage that may not be noticeable but the biggest one is we no longer run suicides that appear in police news. Running them, we decided was an invasion of personal privacy and unless there was an accompanying crime not warranted in news coverage.
We seek to be humane. It signifies an effort and philosophy to be sensitive to our readers.
A newspaper belongs to the community, and we believe we should respect the community and the people in it and to treat them as individuals and loyal friends. We are merely stewards of a public trust.
We place a premium on fairness in all the news we cover and opinions we offer. That’s it for us but your newspaper is not all that is new.
John Ramon Vigil is our new mayor. He hired a new Police Chief Mizel Garcia. We have two new members of the county board, Alex Naranjo and Brandon Bustos. Our school superintendent is new — Holly Martinez. El Rito investor Joseph Sanchez is not new as a state representative but is returning to that job after being gone for one term.
Here is what is not new. The community continues to be torn apart by drugs, particularly with the rise in deadly fentanyl usage. Homelessness continues to be a major problem. Trash pickup throughout the city and county is a serious concern and we believe a state audit of the North Central Solid Waste Authority is in order. Something’s amiss in “Denmark,” as the saying goes. Our Denmark is the trash authority.
We have a new president at Northern New Mexico College, former Attorney General Hector Balderas. He has no educational administration background and is taking control of an institution that continues to fight for respect because of past problems at the school. His predecessor has been Interim President Dr. Barbara Medina. She has been a terrific placeholder during the presidential search. Statewide we continue to be concerned about the early release of prisoners, several who have gone on to commit new crimes and of the release of those charged with new crimes while awaiting hearings. The pathetic state of education in New Mexico is appalling.
There will continue to be much to write and report about, as usual, in the coming year. We invite you back to page A-1, the front page, to read Javier Sanchez’s message of new beginnings,risk, and hope. Running an opinion column on the front page might seem uncommon but we plan to step outside the boundaries and keep the Rio Grande Sun informative, unpredictable, and oh! by the way — fun.