Every once in awhile, one of the newsroom staff members falls ill. It happens, like any other workplace. Today, it was our editor, who left mid-morning to visit the doctor.
That means it fell on me to design/paginate today’s front page.
I love doing layout — Adobe InDesign makes it easy simplifies the process, and it’s a nice change of pace from just writing all the time. It’s still stressful, though, like trying to build a puzzle whose pieces don’t have a set shape and can change during the procedure.
Today my colleague Meredith Purvis penned a thorough piece on the opening day of a murder trial. I had coverage of last night’s Silver City Town Council meeting, and Mary Alice Murphy reports on rising gas prices.
MAM’s article was groundbreaking because, for the first time, local gas retailers spoke on the record about pricing. You’ll have to wait for the article to appear online tonight to find out what they had to say, but I do have one treat for you:
You may want to click through to see the larger version, but that is the average gas price locally, statewide and nationwide for the past three years. It’s interesting in a “huh” kind of way, since the “Silver City” and “New Mexico” lines don’t ever track far from the national average.
Unfortunately, the information didn’t arrive in time for publication, but I wanted to pass the data along anyway.
Steve London
Your graph washes out the really interesting information. Why don’t you graph the difference between Silver City, NM and national gas prices ?
Why don’t you graph the difference in gas prices between Silver City and other medium-size towns in New Mexico, such as Alamogordo ?
How about a little investigative journalism as to why there is absolutely no gasoline price competition in Silver City ?
roy emerson
The El Paso Times reported on October 5, 2008 that a campaign by a few disgruntled residents in Taos successfully lowered the gasoline prices in Taos by 20 cents per gallon.
Did the newspapers in Silver City dare to report this?
Certainly, Taos in no larger than Silver City or any farther off the beaten path.
Are the prices in Silver higher than other similar-sized cities in NM?
I understand that there is no competition in Silver City because most of the stations are owned by the one person. What is the truth about station ownership?
Silver City has a food cooperative that beats any of the commercial food stores in town in food quality. If some true competition is needed, maybe it is time for a gasoline cooperative to bring fairness to gasoline prices.