About

Our story.

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The hometown paper for the East Mountains, Edgewood and the Estancia Valley since 1999.

New Mexico-owned. Supporting local journalists, local small businesses and our readers.

Of all the newspapers that have come and gone east of Albuquerque, The Independent is the last one standing. The Independent was founded in 1999 by husband and wife Wally Gordon and Thelma Bowles as a community paper serving Tijeras. Since then, teams of local journalists and community contributors expanded coverage across three counties. Under editor and owner Leota Harriman, the paper relocated to Edgewood and expanded to cover one of the state’s largest newspaper service areas: 4,000 square miles including the East Mountains, Edgewood and communities across Torrance County. In 2022, after the loss of local advertising and pandemic challenges, the paper briefly ceased publishing.

In 2023, CTRL+P Publishing, a community newspaper group owned by Pat Davis that is working to save small-town local newspapers across New Mexico, with help from the New Mexico Local News Fund and small-dollar donors purchased the paper and restored it to print and online publishing. Today, the Independent, and sister publications the Sandoval Signpost, and Corrales Comment are part of the CTRL+P group.

Read more at newmexico.news

Our team.

The Independent is published by the Ctrl+P Publishing group of local newsrooms covering New Mexico local news like no one else. Find our other papers and meet our other newsroom teams here.

Contact us.

Our policies.

Our ethics.

Our newsroom and journalists are required to follow the Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists. This code ensures that we adhere to the highest professional standards of journalists, and they hold us accountable as a member of the journalism community.

Corrections and balance.

We require our reporters to report only facts they can support with research and attribution – and we hold outside contributors (including opinion writers) to the same standard. In the case of breaking or developing stories where information available at the time of publication may change afterward, we strive to update original reporting when we learn of additional information that changes the original reporting.

Most readers who ask for a correction are usually asking to add an additional perspective or supplemental information that continues the conversation but does not require a correction of fact in the original story. Where practical, we will offer those persons the opportunity to submit a letter to the editor or opinion column on the topic.

But we also acknowledge that journalists are human and can make mistakes. In those rare instances, we correct erroneous reporting as quickly as practical and publicly acknowledge the change in the format in which it originally appeared.

If you would like to submit additional information or request a correction, please contact us here.

Advertisers, owners and conflicts of interest.

In order to prevent the appearance of improper influence of advertisers, subscribers or our owner on the editorial decisions of professional journalists we maintain a firewall between the editorial decisions and the business side of our paper. Decisions about stories we cover and how we cover them are made by the editor of the paper who is not involved in any of the business operations of the paper.

Read our advertising policies, terms and conditions here.