Of all the newspapers that have come and gone east of Albuquerque, The Independent is the last one standing.
Our newsrooms provides local coverage for Edgewood, the East Mountains and the Estancia Valley online for nm.news and in print for The Independent News.
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 New Mexico-owned community newspaper group 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 journalists in our sister publications the Sandoval Signpost, Corrales Comment, The Paper. and Santa Fe Reporter are part of the newmexico.news group owned and operated by New Mexico journalists.
