By Denise Tessier

New Mexico’s State Land Commissioner must find it annoying to have a past commissioner looking over his shoulder, raising questions about his performance on an Internet blog. Former commissioner Jim Baca certainly didn’t have that to deal with when he was in office.

Baca’s blog this week says perhaps it’s time the Journal unleashed Journal Investigative Report Thomas J. Cole on current Commissioner Patrick Lyons’ land office, saying:

A couple of years ago I met with Thomas Cole of the Journal to brief him on what I thought were really suspect transactions at the land office.  It was complex stuff and required deep investigative reporting.  I never saw anything come of it.

Questions regarding Lyons’ performance – specifically proposed trades of state trust lands around White Peak in northern New Mexico — likely will receive an answer soon enough in court. The New Mexico Supreme Court on Tuesday (Feb. 2), put a stop to the White Peak land swap, demanding a response from Lyons by Feb. 15 regarding the deal, after state Attorney General Gary King filed a motion to stop the trading.

Baca does have a point about how the Albuquerque Journal has played this story. On his blog, he asks whether the controversy might at least merit “being above the fold on the front page …“ and says:

Of course not, because this little controversy does not involve the Governor.  This story was buried on the state page.

To be fair, the stories (like this one and this one) have been running on the front page of Journal North, the Journal’s northern edition.

Which brings us to the problem posed by zoned editions. There’s no question it’s a front-page story in northern New Mexico, where most of the trust lands in question are located.

But because the Albuquerque Journal is a statewide paper, its inside-the-paper placement in the home edition makes it look like the Journal is being partisan (the state land commissioner is Republican; the governor and attorney general opposing the swap are Democrats). What appears partisan is running stories critical of Lyons on North’s front page for the benefit of “liberal” readers in that part of the state, but burying them inside for more conservative readers further south.

It might not be an accurate impression, but certainly provides fodder for bias claims.