New Mexico’s Rupert Murdoch, where are you?
They say newspapers are a dying industry. Yes, there is no doubt that people have more ways to get information than ever before and some would even argue that blogs like the one you are reading now are helping to kill the industry. All of this may be true and, with the Albuquerque Tribune up for sale with a very real possibility of closure, the point is driven home.
That said, newspapers actually generate healthy revenues and are still a profitable business to be in. The fact is that the sale of the left-leaning Tribune represents a great opportunity for an entrepreneurial, market-friendly, wealthy individual to take over the newspaper and turn it around, preferably while focusing its journalism on investigating the wide range of abuses of power that go on in this state.
Newspapers may not have the circulation they once did, but their impact cannot be denied because people who read newspapers tend to be the best-educated and best-informed members of the population. Regardless of who buys the newspaper, I hope the Tribune survives, but I do think ownership of media outlets represents a unique opportunity for believers in the free market to reach out to the population as a whole.