Two-thirds of New Mexico residents say they do not have access to trustworthy local news, according to a new report by the New Mexico Local News Fund.
On Saturday, Nov. 8, the NMLNF released their 2025 Local News Ecosystem Report, detailing choices that people around the state have for getting specialized or general news about their communities.
Along with access, there are issues with a lack of staff, as 90% of news outlets statewide were found to have fewer than 10 full-time staff members, and 75% of news outlets statewide have fewer than five full-time staff members, according to the report.
Gwyneth Doland is a Professor of Practice for the University of New Mexico’s Communication and Journalism Department, and was one of the authors of the report.
“In our research, revenue emerged as a consistent challenge,” Doland said. “The whole business model for journalism has shifted radically over the past couple of decades, and big legacy media outlets that used to be really big businesses in their towns, no longer find it so easy to make money selling newspapers, so the business has shifted to digital. Both newspapers and TV stations told us that some of them get the majority of their audience online, not in a printed paper or on their TV broadcast. And advertising just generates less money online.”
According to the report, 80% of outlets serving the state have annual budgets under $500,000.
Doland was adamant that these are jobs to be reserved for humans, rather than automated or given to artificial intelligence agents, and that they be compensated equitably.
“This is a job that humans need to do, and they deserve to be paid fairly for it,” Doland said. “If this industry can’t pay people decently, then we can’t attract people to these jobs. And it’s important to remember that our democracy depends on it.”
Part of the issue these days is a digital divide or disruption, as social media is the most preferred source of news for New Mexicans, and 20% of people surveyed said distrust is a barrier to receiving local news, according to the report.
“People reach for their phones and they’re not getting the same quality of news. They’re not getting the same trustworthy news as they used to get, so that has huge ramifications for us as a community, a city, a state, a country and a world,” Doland said. ”If we don’t share an understanding of what’s going on around us, if we don’t share a set of reliable, trustworthy facts about what’s happening in the world today, then we can’t come up with solutions to problems. We can’t make any progress if we don’t agree on what’s going on.”
Another area to be addressed is communities being left out in coverage, with the report finding that 25% of residents believe local media does not reflect them at all. Doland said this can also extend to coverage with less negativity, and more about what is working for those communities.
“There are a lot of small communities out there where no local television covers them,” Doland said. “So they get Albuquerque TV and they hear a lot, maybe they subscribe online to the Albuquerque Journal or they see the Journal and the (Santa Fe) New Mexican’s posts on social media, and they get an awful lot of news about car crashes and DWIs and murders and child abuse and terrible things that happen in big cities all over the country. They are tired of it because it doesn’t represent the communities they live in. Everybody deserves to get news about the place where they live, and that’s not really what’s happening across the news deserts that we found in our study. There are so many counties where there’s no one reporting the bad or the good. That’s something we hope will change in part because of our research.”
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
The methodology that was conducted for their research included surveys, focus groups throughout the state and content analysis. Doland said that the NMLNF team “scoured the state pretty hard” to assemble the full list of more than 130 news outlets assessed in the report, even after decisions to not include some outlets on their New Mexico News Map and in the report.
While there are a number of issues with the local news ecosystem, Doland said she is hopeful with this report that change is headed in the right direction.
“We feel very confident that our news map includes the vast majority of outlets doing journalism and of providing other important sources of high-quality civic information,” Doland said. “Sometimes these lines are hard to draw, but we did not include opinion blogs, for example. We didn’t include some printed things that didn’t include any local news, but instead included some syndicated content around ads.”
Alex Joe is a freelance videographer for the Daily Lobo. He can be reached at news@dailylobo.com or on X @DailyLobo
