Back to the '70s: Museum exhibit stirs newspaper memories

Next month marks 50 years since I got into the newspaper business. I started working as a reporter for my hometown newspaper, the Natchez (Miss.) Democrat, in October 1973.

My first story for the Democrat was about a hospital board meeting.

In October 1976, I left the Democrat to take a job as a staff writer for The Albuquerque Tribune.

My first Tribune story, on the top of page A8 of the home edition of the Oct. 30, 1976, issue, provided coverage of a Saturday morning meeting of the University of New Mexico Board of Regents. The regents tentatively approved the construction of a $330,000, 19-court tennis facility on campus.

Not all newspaper articles get nominated for the Pulitzer, but most are important to somebody.

Recently, I’ve found myself thinking frequently about my early days in the newspaper business. One reason is that approaching 50th anniversary. Another is “News for the People: Local Journalism in the 1970s,” an exhibit up at the Albuquerque Museum through March 3, 2024.

But the third reason, the main one, is I miss those wild and crazy days, the pressure of the competition, the camaraderie that teamwork builds, the confidence that reporting the truth counted for something.

Internal archives

Earlier this month, I went to see that Albuquerque Museum exhibit with four friends, who, like me, launched their newspaper careers in the 1970s.

Denise Tessier started at the Albuquerque Journal as a photography intern in 1974 and interned at the paper as a reporter and on the copy desk before taking a staff writer’s job covering district court in 1975. Before her run at the Journal ended in 2005, she covered federal court and other federal agencies, agriculture and the environment, worked as a general assignment reporter, and on the copy desk and more.

Tom Harmon broke into journalism as sports editor with the Gallup Independent in 1974 and joined the Albuquerque Journal as an assistant city editor in 1978. Prior to retiring from the Journal in 2009, he had served as city editor, features editor, editorial writer and columnist.

Isabel Mardiat was a reporter and editor with the New Mexico Daily Lobo in the ’70s and interned at the Journal in 1974. She joined the Journal staff in the mid-’80s to work on the paper’s Impact magazine and continued with the Journal as a reporter and assistant city editor until her retirement in 2017.

Liz Staley went to work as a copy editor and reporter for The Albuquerque Tribune in 1979. In 1982, she moved to the Journal and covered media until she left in 1983 to attend law school. She is the widow of long-time Journal columnist Jim Belshaw, who died last year.

At age 67, Liz is the kid in this group. The rest of us are in our 70s.

The “News for the People” exhibit included displays about things that happened before our time as reporters, as well as things that occurred during our watch.

Photos depicted a May 1970 confrontation between student protestors and Army National Guard troops on the University of New Mexico campus in which 10 or 11 people — teachers and members of the media, as well as students — were bayonetted.

There were photos of Albuquerque’s June 1971 Roosevelt Park uprising in which police clashed with Hispanic activists. Dozens of people were hurt, hundreds arrested and several million dollars in property damage done.

The exhibit includes a photo of Journal reporter Susan Landon standing in water as she interviewed an Albuquerque homeowner during a 1977 flood caused when an irrigation wall failed. We all knew Susan, who died in 1997.

There was a display of an Oct. 19, 1975, Journal story, written by Denise and Journal reporter Jim Dawson, about a Florida man who confessed to an Albuquerque murder for which four motorcycle gang members had already been convicted and sentenced to death. Riveting stuff.

But it was after we left the museum, while eating at an Old Town restaurant, that we delved into our internal archives and the memories started to move around the table like sopaipillas in a basket. Tom recalled reporting about an armed takeover of tribal offices on the Navajo reservation, and Liz remembered covering the March 1982 landing of Space Shuttle Columbia at White Sands.

Denise told us how some ranchers had tried to frighten her with a snake’s head while she was working on an article about the installation of rural phone lines, and Isabel said she and Journal photographer Richard Pipes found themselves surrounded by Brahma bulls as big as motor vehicles while chasing a story on the road.

And me. Well ...

Energy and urgency

I remember the old, dimly lighted, crowded, noisy and smoky Tribune newsroom of the late ’70s and early ’80s. Back then, The Tribune and the Journal shared a building at Seventh Street and Silver Avenue SW, and the Associated Press had offices on a floor above us. Don’t go looking for that place. It was demolished to make room for a parking lot after the Journal, The Trib and AP moved to 7777 Jefferson St. NE in 1985.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I know now, that I loved that grim building and the cluttered Trib newsroom where I spent more than eight years of my life.

The newsroom sizzled with the kind of energy and urgency you don’t find in newsrooms today, and the building was near the nerve center of city and county governments. I was hired by The Tribune to cover City Hall and could walk there from the newsroom. If I had a breaking story I needed to get into the paper’s second edition, I could run from City Hall to my newsroom desk in less than 10 minutes. I was still in my 20s then.

Part of the vibrancy that existed in the newspaper world in the ’70s and ’80s was due to the intensity of the competition during that era.

“There were so many reporters, so many newspapers,” Denise said. “I would go to (New Mexico) Press Women’s conferences and the room would be full of tables — the Santa Fe New Mexican, Los Alamos Monitor, Taos News, Hobbs — and all of the tables filled with people.”

She remembers journalists congregated on courthouse stairs, reporters and photographers with giant camera, waiting for a news announcement of one sort or another.

“We were all competing,” Denise said. “We were motivated to get that stuff first, and the fear of failure was strong. Journalism was robust.”

Tom talks about the exhilaration of writing under pressure every day and the challenge of running a city desk.

“I would be multitasking six stories, and the police radio is going and everything is coming down,” he said. “The Journal was doing a lot of investigative reporting in the late ’70s and early ’80s, good, aggressive journalism in a small city. We were punching above our weight.”

Liz left the newspaper business to pursue a legal career 40 years ago, but she still believes good journalism is vital to democracy and the best job in the world.

“The excitement put me over the moon,” she said.

One truthThe Tribune, which, like most afternoon newspapers, had been battling a declining circulation for years, closed in February 2008. I was out of the business for seven years, trying to figure out who I was since I was no longer a reporter.

But the Journal hired me in January 2015, and, except for a few months, I’ve been with the paper in one capacity or the other since then.

I found a different landscape when I returned. Less competition, for one thing. The Tribune had been the Journal’s chief rival. And newsrooms are much quieter now, more like business offices than the clamorous dens of deadline-driven reporters of 40 years ago. It’s been awhile since I’ve heard a police radio.

In 1974, confronted by truth uncovered by newspaper reporters, a U.S. president resigned from office. Now, if people don’t like the truth as printed by newspapers, they go to the internet to find narratives better suited to their views.

The people who work for newspapers are as dedicated and hard working as they ever have been. There are fewer of us now.

But we’re still here because there is only one truth, and it’s our job to report it, to provide news for the people.

More than ever, to borrow Tom’s phrase, we’re punching above our weight.