From the publisher…
The Taos News and Sandoval Signpost were honored by the state’s largest newspaper publisher group for public service journalism by the state’s largest newspaper publisher association this year. The New…
Where’s the pride in Sandoval County?
As a Rio Rancho resident and editor of the Sandoval Signpost, I noticed something striking: despite being one of the largest cities in New Mexico, Rio Rancho had never hosted a Pride event.
While neighboring cities like Albuquerque and Santa Fe celebrated Pride Month with parades and festivals, Sandoval County remained silent. Reporter Jesse Jones wrote the May 2025 article to shine a light on this absence and give voice to LGBTQ+ residents who felt invisible in their own community.
The article catalyzed real change. City Council member Deb Dapson explicitly told the Signpost, “Your article did get the ball rolling.”
After reading the piece, she reached out to experienced event planners and connected with the Rio Rancho Pride Facebook group. By June, a planning committee had formed and held its first meeting. Three months after the article was published, Rio Rancho announced it would host its first-ever Pride celebration at Haynes Park in June 2026, a free, community-organized festival featuring vendors, food trucks, performances and family activities modeled after the city’s successful Juneteenth event.
Our journalism didn’t just document an issue; it sparked the community action needed to address it.
What happens when a missile factory moves in next door?
Like a lot of readers, I was pretty impressed when I first heard that a rocket manufacturing company with links to Space X was considering Sandoval County for its huge new campus.
But, the more I looked into it, the more I realized just how many big questions were still unanswered, despite assurances from government officials that it would all work out.
Using public records searches and interviews with local officials, we were able to share site plans with readers and check safety plans — most of which don’t exist yet.
It turns out that several homes and a school could be inside the “worst case” scenario danger zone and, as I reported last week, plans to ship materials along US-550 have the Town of Bernalillo worried.
I’m not sure where this story will end, but I know that without our newsroom reading those documents, checking the safety plans and challenging rosy assumptions from local politicians, our readers were better informed to ask tough questions at public forums as these decisions are being made.
Would anyone be asking these questions if the Signpost wasn’t here?
Very early in my career, I was instructed, “Don’t cover the meeting; cover the story.”
I’ve covered local government in New Mexico — in Gallup, Albuquerque and, now, Sandoval County — for more than a decade and this always stuck with me.
This discussion wasn’t on the agenda per se, but I did notice a recurring theme of the public comment period — people concerned about their community and looking for relief from their local government.
Case in point: For months, neighbors kept coming to public comment in the Village of Corrales’ public meetings complaining about a trashy house on Corrales Road. It sounds like something small unless you live next door.
Being there to hear those concerns and being able to dispel errant rumors is pretty nice, as is illustrating the potential threat level with which the neighbors are dealing.
I took a few days to look into the village’s ordinances and talked to neighbors and found that, as always, there’s more to the story. In the end, the village and the owner came up with a clean-up plan (that I’m still following).
The village later authorized the clean and lien, and the property owner’s representative has pledged to attempt some kind of abatement.
“How can I help?“
It may not sound like much, but if half of our online readers donated just $2 a week ($8 a month) we’d have enough to hire another reporter to double our coverage in The Sandoval Signpost.
This season of thanks, we hope readers who are thankful to be one of New Mexico’s few communities with local news are thankful enough to support it.
Donate $8 month starting today (just put “For The Signpost”) in the comment box so your donation stays local.