ALBUQUERQUE — The Albuquerque Tribune closed shop Saturday after nearly nine decades with a simple front-page headline: "Good night, Albuquerque."

"I've been taking calls from readers sobbing and crying," said Phill Casaus, editor of the afternoon paper. "What can I say?"

Eighteen editors, reporters and photographers hunkered down in front of computer screens to put out the last edition, hashing out last-minute changes.

"The hardest part is planning a party for a day like this," Casaus said. "In this case, we have worked so hard to make sure there wasn't a day like this."

He praised his staff's commitment, will and "love of a newspaper" and of each other.

With that, Rick Hindley, The Tribune's newswire editor, punched a button on a computer keyboard, sending the paper to print, 18 seconds before the 9 a.m. deadline.

A pair of voices from the approximately 90 people in the newsroom piped up: "To the spirit of the Trib." "Forever." Tears welled.

"I guess now I'm officially retired. No more getting up at 3 in the morning," said Hindley, The Tribune's senior staffer, with 41 years under his belt.

With its final edition, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Tribune became the latest newspaper to succumb as readers increasingly shunned ink and paper for electronic media such as the Internet and television. The Tribune's circulation has hemorrhaged from 42,000 in 1988 to about 9,600.

A photo below Saturday's banner headline captured the changing trends — Myron Robart lying in bed, reading a copy of The Tribune, while his wife, Rosemary, watched cable news on a small television. The couple had subscribed to the newspaper for 60 years.

The paper's owner, The E.W. Scripps Co., put The Tribune up for sale last August, and said it would shut the paper down if a buyer wasn't found. There was no knight in shining armor and on Wednesday, news of the closure was announced.

Tribune photojournalist Michael Gallegos said Saturday that he believed the newspaper was more than simply a business — it was a family, and it would not be forgotten.

"It's just a bunch of hearts and minds and souls that put out a paper every day," he said.

"It's not a death, it's not a closure, it's a chapter," Gallegos said.

"For me, it's been my book," said Charlotte Hill Cobb, the newspaper's graphic artist, choking back tears.

Ollie Reed Jr., a reporter who worked at The Tribune for 31 years, said he was asked what he would miss most. Not the stories, but "it's gonna be the people I've worked with," he said.

And why did he stay aboard for all those years?

"Because y'all love me. I've never wanted to go anywhere else," Reed said.

Casaus and office manager Louise Kutz tacked up a blue banner with the newspaper's name printed in white near the slot — the desk where the button was pushed for the final edition.

More than a dozen kids wandered around the newsroom as staffers and friends hoisted plastic cups of faux champagne. Denver, an Australian cattle dog belonging to reporter Joline Gutierrez Krueger, scanned the floor for orts.

Casaus said he must have missed the part in the editor's manual about prohibiting kids and dogs in the newsroom.

"I've always felt like if it wasn't a family, how is it gonna be fun," he said.

Saturday's featured story was about a young Navajo man who was living in Albuquerque when he was killed. He was finally identified through skull reconstructions and artist renditions.

Reporter Maggie Shepard said she had been working on the story since January and wanted to meet the paper's final deadline. She and Casaus fine-tuned the story Saturday morning.

"This story means a great deal to Maggie. At one point she was in tears. She wanted it right and first," Casaus said.

On Friday, Gov. Bill Richardson called on New Mexicans to celebrate the newspaper's long history and its service to the state.

"The Tribune has been an important institution — a voice for the people — for 86 years," Richardson said.

Richardson proclaimed Saturday as "Albuquerque Tribune Day" in New Mexico. The proclamation praised the paper for "consistent, award-winning and in-depth coverage as well as dramatic, surprising and quietly beautiful photography."

Among its honors, the paper won a Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for a series about the experiences of Americans who had been used without their knowledge in government radiation experiments nearly 50 years earlier. The Tribune was a Pulitzer finalist in 1996, and a first-place winner in the 1998 and 2001 National Headliner Awards.

The Tribune was published Monday through Saturday as part of the country's first and longest-running joint operating agreement, or JOA, created in 1933.

Scripps had purchased the newspaper in 1923, a year after it was founded by Carlton Cole "Carl" Magee, whose columns titled "Turning on the Light" were the inspiration for Scripps' "Give light, and the people will find their own way" slogan and lighthouse logo.

On this rain-soaked day, The Tribune's remaining band of journalists met one last deadline, gave their readers light, then turned out their own — for good.




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