Newsland is closing

Saddest thing I've heard all week

they better not change the store front

When I heard Newsland is closing on July 24, part of me died inside. The fight for print media will lose a valuable asset.

Newsland, across from UNM, opened in 1972 in a very different world. It was a world before the Internet, Kindle, iPads or smart phones. Owner Roger Walsh says business dropped off after the popularization of online media and declined even more in the past two years as the economy suffered. Walsh bought the store 29 years ago.

Sales no longer generate enough money to keep the store afloat, Walsh says. The most popular magazines he sells are Scientific American and Albuquerque the Magazine. I go for Harper's Magazine orJuxtapoz. Or to peruse the shelves looking for an obscure poetry journal to bring to Winnings and leaf through over a cup of coffee.

Newland's closure comes on the heels of the national liquidation of Borders by the end of September due to a lack of interested buyers. It's hard not to feel a little doomed.

Walsh says the store will receive credit from the publishers for any magazines they do not sell in the next couple days. He doesn't know what his next step will be, he says, but it would be nice to work for someone else and skip the long hours and responsibility of owning a business.

My next step will be to head on over, load up my arms with magazines and search for another venue half as good as Newsland.

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• borders
• print media
• closures