The Sandoval Signpost, the local paper of record for Placitas and southern Sandoval County, has been sold to the CTRL+P Publishing Group, a publishing company owned by Pat Davis.
The publishing group also owns The Corrales Comment and The Paper.
The Sandoval Signpost was published by Barb and Ty Belknap of Belknap Publishing, Inc. since 1988, with a short break under outside owners.
The Sandoval Signpost serves more than 5,000 Southern Sandoval County households monthly and an additional 1,000 other readers through pickups.
Davis says the deal ensures all the group’s publications can continue to publish and expand offerings despite increasing pressures from rising print and distribution costs.
“More than 2,000 small communities around the country have lost their local newspaper in recent years,” Davis said. “Democracy does not get healthier if a community’s only source of news is whatever a neighbor decides to post on Nextdoor or the local Facebook group.”
The Sandoval Signpost joins the Corrales Comment, which was purchased by Davis earlier this year, and The Paper, Albuquerque’s weekly independent paper, which Davis co-founded with partner Abby Lewis in 2020. The publishing collaboration allows each publication to provide additional products and coverage to readers across the group’s coverage area and demographics.
All three publications will continue to maintain their own subscribers, reporters, contributors and advertising teams to ensure that each remains focused on their unique community.
One of the first experiments under the group is the new “pay what you can” subscription pricing at The Corrales Comment. It allows subscribers to pick their own subscription price, down to $0, to ensure every household in the Village of Corrales has access to local news, no matter how much they can afford to pay. Future innovations include new websites, bonus digital issues and online-only content to provide new platforms for local news to reach readers in different ways.
