AlamogordoTownNews.com KALH Radio Correspondent and Investigative Journalist Spotlight for 2024
A special message from the Chairman of the Board of 2nd Life Media, Rene Sepulveda.
“As we move into the new year of 2024, 2nd Life Media is more committed then ever to expand the features of our written content, to more align with our on-air content, to bridge a broader more diverse audience.
We are thrilled with the growth we have witnessed the last half of 2024.
I want to personally thank my business partner Chris Edwards for contributing 1000s of hours to written content generation with little support. I also want to thank our on-air personality, Anthony Lucero who works tirelessly without proper adulation to produce a professional product in a market that under appreciates the intricacies of the job at hand.
Anthony Lucero and Chris Edwards as the creators of content, that at times can be controversial, opinionated, and disturbing; on those in power or those seeking power or those uncomfortable being spotlighted - are doing exactly - what the board of directors and our shareholders and I, have asked of them.
Because they are good at raising debate, asking questions, delivering speculative perspectives as well as hard news; they get kicked hard, at times, by the public, for their opinion pieces and commentaries.
They get beat up in social media but, so what! They are big boys and understand that’s part of the job. They sometimes fight back and upset those that engage them. Not a problem.
They upset politicians and individuals on both sides of the political isle and engage in debate that turns heated at times. Good!
They are doing exactly what their mandate from our board of directors has assigned them to do. Report, engage and drive discussion. That is the principles behind the first amendment.
Over the last year I’ve been told both should be terminated
Let’s be clear, Mr. Lucero and Mr. Edwards are valuable commodities that provide information to the community, spark debate and provide a service as advocates of opinion, thought and discussion
Both Lucero and Edwards represent the 1st Amendment through and through. As long as my family remains majority stockholders in 2nd Life Media Corporation, both are welcomed in their roles, for as long as they continue to deliver value to our community of stakeholders.
Value however is not just monetary return to shareholders.
We believe value runs deeper and their value includes their talents, viewpoints, investigative reporting and ability to find a story. Their abilities to peel an onion and get to a core that is a value. Their ability to gain trust from sources and gather information that we may discreetly verify - that adds value - to our intelligence position and our ability to back our stories and claims as, our truth. The ability to back a claim via our internal checks that is value.
The public will never know the detail in whole on some stories due to 1st Amendment protections of our sources and that is value - a network of relevant and reliable sources of information is of keen importance to any news organization.
As we expand our offerings, we would like to introduce our readers to a few of our team members who have been working the radio side of our business as
AlamogordoTownNews.com on-air correspondents for the last year via podcasts and news segments on KRAZY KALH Radio.
Many of you have heard our staff reporters on streaming KRAZY KALH Radio but haven’t seen their coverage in written format.
As an enhancement to our work in journalism in 2024 we are going to more aligned and sync features from our audio offerings with our written offerings via AlamogordoTownNews.com and Alamogordo Conservative Daily on Newsbreak.
Thus new regular content and features are being added to include:
Journalist Sarah Moro with the weekly fishing report.
Correspondent Katelin Spradley with the weekly agricultural report.
The Weekly Health Report
Special Reports and Newscasts by Keith Raymond
Continued contributions of Introspections by Pastor Johnnie L Walker
Thoughts by Lorin Noble
What’s Happening in Real Estate by Meike Schwarz and Sharon Carr and the team of Welcome Home Realtors.
Upcoming contributors will include Commissioners Corner with Warren L Robinson and Sharon McDonald
Special reports and features by Stella Rose and Mica Maynard
And we will be linking featured weekly interviews from KALH of programs we support with Kitty City, Animal Village NM and Love Inc
Additionally the written version will feature more links to interviews and investigations led by Anthony Lucero leader and News Anchor of the AlamogordoTownNews.com radio platform of streaming KRAZY KALH Radio.
As Mr. Edwards alluded to in another article, we are expanding our offerings with a partnership in some new markets.
2nd Life Media began as a book publisher. To date 9 books have been published under its toolkit with 3 more in the pipeline. We then expanded into local news online. Our first year we grew to 500 readers. We acquired the rights to manage KRAZY KALH Radio and expanded. We expanded onto Newsbreak onto YouTube, Spotify and Apple and Google Podcast platforms. Since that expansion the reach of our audience has grown as we are where they are.
We now have over 12,000 daily readers and listeners amongst the multi-pronged platform. Our demographics skew more diverse and younger than the traditional news planforms. Our engagement with traditional news followers has grown by leaps and bounds the last 6 months as a result of several streams of news we have engaged in covering.
On some days we have had spikes in our daily readers and listeners to over 30,000 which is broader than just Alamogordo.
The nice thing about online media is we are able to view metrics by geographic locations, time spent reading or listening and a multitude of demographic data thanks to analytics tools that are available to media companies. Modern technology enables science as a tool to engagement for our contributors to know what keywords to include in stories to engage the audience.
What some people don’t understand is journalism of yesterday is dead.
Today’s journalism is science, meta tags, demographics , geo tracking, IP address monitoring, analytics, social media interaction and engagement. Of course it also involves content as the starting point.
A journalist of yesterday struggles in today’s market as journalism school of decades past did not teach 21st Century journalism through social media engagement
Today’s journalism is faster paced and a completely different animal than the old fashioned newspaper newsrooms of the last century.
We appreciate the growth. Small town media does not generate wealth to its ownership, but it does provide a community service. A community rich in community engagement through the power of media is a community that can grow, can thrive and can evolve.
Communities where media engagement lacks are communities that eventually wither, shrink and splinter.
Alamogordo is a city with many serious issues of concern and we address just a few of those issues.
Alamogordo, however has the potential of greater economic prosperity and social development, if true leadership, would take a hold of the reigns, inspire confidence, and build collaborations.
There are sparks of leadership. Will those sparks turn into flames of collaborations that unify the community out of its post Covid malaise and into a community to be proud of?
We will be seeking those sparks and fanning the flames. We look forward to presenting our expanded regular offerings and more in 2024.”
- Rene Sepulveda Chairman of the Board, 2nd Life Media
