SANTA ROSA, N.M. — Ten years ago this week, I launched the Community News Exchange (CNEx) of New Mexico.
Specifically, I wanted to help independent newspapers, mostly locally owned weeklies, by providing quality, relevant news and commentary as a supplement to their local content.
Just weeks earlier, I was publisher of the Las Vegas Optic facing another corporate-ordered downsizing. I was being told to permanently shut down the newspaper’s press, lay off (more) workers and plan to (again) reduce the frequency of our publication, and I just couldn’t stomach that as my professional future. I was sick of working for an out-of-state newspaper company with faraway interests and I wanted to do something that would help newspapers rise above, or at least survive, a print industry in decline.
At the time, I thought local ownership of local newspapers was a key to long-term success. Plus, I wanted to stay in New Mexico. So I quit my job and started Gazette Media Services LLC as a way to provide products and services for “the independents” out there.
The first thing I did was travel the state talking with independent newspaper publishers and editors. Nearly all of them were receptive to the idea of joining the news-sharing service I was envisioning, and on May 6, 2013, CNEx was born.
Simply put, here’s how it works: Newspapers give CNEx permission to take their local content and edit it into news reports and opinion pieces that are then distributed to the other subscriber newspapers every Sunday, for them to republish at-will in their coming editions.
Of course, to give it a future, CNEx needed to pay for itself, which it wasn’t doing at first. I was able to secure a one-year Knight Foundation grant funneled through the New Mexico Community Foundation, which served as a fiscal agent of sorts. They provided me with enough revenue to keep CNEx afloat until I could grow it into a self-sufficient news service, and by the time those grant funds ran out, the service was standing on its own two feet.
Of course, I had others help along the way. Las Vegas’ own Kayt Peck and Santa Fe’s Renee Villarreal provided me with tools and resources I needed to get it off the ground. And back when it was necessary, I hired some bright and eager teenagers to help me with the typesetting and other chores.
Over the years, Misty Choy and Linda Quintana have been critical to keeping CNEx alive. Linda was the CNEx copy editor for nearly five years, until she grew ill and passed away last January. And Misty has been helping off and on as a top-notch copy editor since 2015. Without them, CNEx wouldn’t have made it 10 years.
During the early days of CNEx, I also hired myself out as a consultant, freelance journalist and more to make my own ends meet — but after a couple of years it just wasn’t enough, so I went back to on-site newspapering. After a short stint at The Taos News, I was offered a job at the Roswell Daily Record, first on the business side of things and then as its editor.
Then came a dream I’d had for years — to own my own newspaper — and in December 2017, I bought the Guadalupe County Communicator in Santa Rosa. I’ve been knee-deep in owning my own weekly newspaper ever since.
Meanwhile, CNEx keeps going. Through the years, it’s gone from its original 11 newspaper subscribers to as many as 19 newspapers — several of which have since gone out of business — to where we are today, with 14 subscriber newspapers.
Every week, for 10 years now, CNEx has been supplementing small-town local news with rich statewide content. Later, I’ll share a bit of what I’ve learned through it all.
Tom McDonald is founder of the New Mexico Community News Exchange, which distributes this column statewide. He’s also editor and publisher of the Guadalupe County Communicator in Santa Rosa. He can be reached at tmcdonald.srnm@gmail.com.
Editor’s Note: The Rio Grande SUN and its readers benefit greatly from a service called the Community News Exchange of New Mexico. Supplying news from 19 New Mexico newspapers, the report supplies newspapers such as the Rio Grande Sun and our sister paper in Artesia important news and opinions from around the state. It’s invaluable as a way to keep up with statewide news. Below, the founder explains its origins and describes his own personal effort to keep locally-owned community newspapers alive. It’s a philosophy we are dedicated to here at the Sun.