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Welcome to The Paper.
It’s been a month. A month of really hard work by a lot of really talented people. But we’re here, we did it, and this is our first print issue of The Paper. It’s a simple name with a simple concept; produce great news, food, arts and entertainment content in a weekly alternative format. I’m sure you’re thinking, “Who starts a newspaper of all things during a pandemic?” We did. I’ve been in the media business in New Mexico for almost 20 years, and I’ve been working in the newspaper business for five years. Maybe I’m old school, but I don’t believe print is dead. Call us crazy, but I think we’ve got a winning formula, and I know that we will be filling a void in the weekly independent format in Albuquerque.
Print is still the original journalistic format, and it still has a strong enough following that people like to pick up their daily or weekly paper and read about what is going on. Of course we can’t forget about our digital readers, and the strength there is in the numbers. Our online content will be robust, with daily newsletters, fresh daily content and guest columnists. Some names you’ll be familiar with, like Devin O’Leary who is one of the last full-time film and television critics in the country. We’re really excited to have veteran reporter Carolyn Carlson along with us for local political coverage and stellar investigative pieces. We’ll be working hard to reach as many people as possible however we can. We’ll be producing a monthly cannabis publication called The [Rolling] Paper, which will cover medical cannabis news, reviews and culture and will be distributed around the state.
The media business is a competitive one, and we’ve got a lot of ground to cover to build our brand and our base, but we’re ready to work. We’ll be providing independent political coverage and investigative news coverage of under-reported issues. We want to highlight the communities that are often overlooked, and we want to celebrate those highs with you as well as cover the lows. We’ll have a community forum called “The [Community] Paper,” where you can have your voice heard and unedited. If COVID-19 and this shitshow of a year we call 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that we must be here for each other. We’re nothing without our community, and everyone deserves to have a voice.
We’re interested in hearing from you, with the good, the bad and the ugly. Send it our way, we can take it. Check out our new website at abq.news and sign up from our newsletters. Follow us on our social platforms @thepaperabq. Help us grow so we can deliver the kind of newspaper Albuquerque needs.
Tierna Unruh-Enos
Managing Editor