We’re working to save the Roswell Daily Record, an American journalism institution. Here’s how.

Not many local newspapers can lay claim to being a national journalism institution or launching a pop-culture phenomenon, but most communities aren’t home to a UFO crash, either. 

Earlier this week, the owners of the 133-year Roswell Daily Record (yep, the “Flying Saucer Crash in Roswell” paper) announced that the paper had printed its last issue. 

“My big emphasis is community newspapers, we can’t lose them,” third-generation owner Barbara Beck told the Albuquerque Journal. “We just can’t. And what’s been so hard for us is fighting and fighting finances and it just comes to the point where you can’t do it anymore, you know? That was unfortunately where we were.”

In a few days, the journalists behind The Paper. and Santa Fe Reporter, nm.news, offered a lifeline and set off to rebuild the paper with “sustainability first” principles they learned from saving and running other papers in New Mexico.

The Citizen Media Group (nmreports.org), a New Mexico-based IRS 501(c)3 nonprofit, has long supported local journalism in-state, most recently with our civic journalism training programs to train and embed journalists in community papers where coverage of state and local government has shrunk or no longer exists.

Citizen Media Group is joining the effort to save and rebuild The Daily Record by enrolling the paper in our local newsroom cohort and raising funds to subsidize salaries for journalists assigned to local news and arts coverage. The paper’s new owners have committed to making all of that coverage free for readers.

Join the effort to save an institution of American journalism by donating to support these efforts. You’ll receive a receipt for tax purposes and the thanks of a community and local journalists who benefit from your help.

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