On a mission to save local reporting one outlet at a time.

Our story.

When communities lose their newspaper they lose more than just a small business. Newspapers accountability for local city councils and county commission, connect local residents to small businesses who need their support, and — perhaps most importantly — connect a community around a common sense of place and spirit that, once lost, can never be replaced by Facebook or Nextdoor.

When Albuquerque’s 27-year old alt-weekly announced it would close, Pat Davis rallied the former employees and business partner Abby Lewis to save it. It was too late to save that paper, but from those lessons a new weekly (The Paper.)was born.

The struggles to build a new paper during the pandemic led Davis and publisher Tierna Unruh-Enos to search out opportunities to preserve other local news outlets before they were lost.

In 2022, Davis purchased the Corrales Comment, a 40-year local paper, from its retiring founder and publisher. Later that summer, the owners of the Sandoval Signpost, a 30-year local paper in nearby Placitas and Bernalillo, sold that outlet to Davis upon their retirement and CTRL+P was born.

Davis describes CTRL+P as a “lab” for news innovation born out of a love for local news. “My first paying job was with a small-town AM radio station reading the local news. When I came to New Mexico two decades ago, the Weekly Alibi was my guide to finding my place in my new home. Watching these local connections fall away over the years, Tierna and I decided that if no one else was going to try, we would give it a go.”

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What does CTRL+P mean?
CTRL+P is the computer keyboard short cut for printing. The name and simple printed newspaper icon symbolize our commitment to preserving print publications through the use of innovative digital tools for news gathering and reader engagement.

Our principles.
We are first and foremost local news outlets. We live and shop where we work. Our contributors are from the communities we cover. Where we partner to share great work by other independent news outlets, we provide our readers context for why that matters here. We require our reporting to meet the highest professional standards and support the work of professional news associations to hold us accountable.

It’s OK to make mistakes. We hold our reporting and our business to the highest standards; but, we are human and we don’t know everything (despite what we think!). If we get a story wrong, we admit it publicly and correct it. If there is another angle, we open our pages to others to share it.

This is an experiment. We are transparent about the challenges and the need for community support. More than 1,300 local communities have lost a local newspaper to a big hedge fund buyout, the pandemic crisis, or an inability to adapt to reader transitions online. No one has found a single solution to save a local paper, so we’re experimenting with ours. We are transparent with our readers and advertisers about how much it costs to make and deliver their paper and we aren’t ashamed to ask for help or advice to make it better.

Journalism should be more diverse, in ownership and the newsroom. The best local news is written by reporters who live it but journalism (like many sections of society) often overlooks important voices. We are proudly LGBTQ-owned, women-led and we give space for young and underrepresented voices to develop their storytelling talents.

Our team.

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