The year is 2004. I’m in my early 20s, maybe three months into my editorship at the Daily Lobo, a position no one can be totally prepared for. University President Louis Caldera just sent a one of his men down to talk to me about strip club ads run by the Lobo. The university wanted to replace the revenue the Lobo made from those ads so that the paper would stop running them. Serious journalism no no. You can’t accept cash from an entity you cover. That compromises the independence of your paper.So I called Bob Johnson, executive director of the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government, an organization that supports the press and the public by making sure we have access to information. Our conversation went something like this:Me: Hi, this is Marisa from the, uh, Daily Lobo. The, um, president of UNM wants us to take some money from the university, to, you know, not run strip club ads. I said no. That’s right, right?"Johnson: Right. And I was relieved. He talked to me for a while longer about the importance of an independent press. I hung up the phone confident that I had done the right thing. Little did I know that Johnson was calling the Journal and Tribune to tell them the story and that reporters would shortly begin phoning to write an article, which would receive small-time national attention.I called Johnson again, when the student government subpoenaed me later that year because it didn’t like the things the Lobo wrote about ASUNM. It was always a relief to talk to Johnson, who in my mind, was a kind of lighthouse for ethical journalism. I was sorry to hear on Monday that he died. Those are the highlights of my experiences with Johnson, a man with a career to be proud of. Read about it here.
Newsman And Advocate For Open Government Dies At 84
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