The loss of a newspaper is painful to those of us in the business. It doesn’t matter where that newspaper is, when one closes, it leaves behind a community missing a vital part, in many cases, the cohesive beating heart that informs, agitates and soothes.
The Los Alamos Monitor is such a part to the atomic city. It will publish its last issue Aug. 28.
When the Rio Grande SUN opened its doors Oct. 6, 1956, it covered the news in Los Alamos because there was no newspaper there. Times were clearly different as the SUN covered the removal of the main gate and the opening of the city.
In 1963 Mark McMahon, with his wife June and two partners, started the Los Alamos Monitor. We recall many times sitting outside his office waiting for he the late Robert E. Trapp to finish discussing the news business. McMahon was a gentleman and a newsman in the real sense of the word. He died in Dallas in 2017.
The Monitor printed the SUN for several years when we first went to offset. The business relationship continued until McMahon sold the Monitor to Landmark Communications in 1978.
We’re not fans of chain newspapers, most people aren’t. Landmark ran the paper in a manner to maximize profits and the newsroom took a back seat to money.
But the Monitor still had periods of greatness, mostly under former editor/publisher Evelyn Vigil, who has a laugh that could cut through soundproof walls. She was a demon on a beat and was normally unrivaled in the small daily editorial competition annually at the New Mexico Press Association banquet.
With the 2008 great recession, came the beginning of the end for many newspapers in the country. The Monitor was one of them. It struggled with fickle advertisers being wooed by an electronic “newspaper” full of chamber of commerce events, event pictures and “grip and grins” where someone is being congratulated for doing something banal.
Many in Los Alamos will feel just fine with the two online media outlets that remain. The problem is those unfortunate people don’t know what they don’t know and that is most of the relative news in their community. The Monitor once gave them that, less so after 2008.
We have to acknowledge it’s the invisible hand and economics at its most basic level. The market drives all. If businesses won’t advertise in your publication, it’s not valued.
The Monitor’s death is a tragic loss that won’t be felt in full by the community. Some may even celebrate it.
But we feel that loss for them and hope that the remaining media options step up their game and provide a wealthy, well-educated community what it needs. That means providing substantive news pertinent to the population. It means provide a lot more than regurgitating press releases and taking note of blooming trees on Ashley Pond.
It’s good neither McMahon nor Robert E. Trapp are here to witness the Monitor’s end.