New Mexico in Focus (A Production of NMPBS)

Lou DiVizio opens the podcast with headlines from around the state including background on a proposed 'mansion tax' Santa Fe voters will consider Tuesday. The, Executive Producer Jeff Proctor interviews Albuquerque City Council President Pat Davis about delays in council’s handling of citizen oversight for APD. That’s as Mayor Tim Keller is pushing to transfer authority over the system awa...

Lou DiVizio opens up the podcast with some headlines from around the state, including news from a federal indictment accusing former Bernalillo County Sheriff Manny Gonzales and former Laguna Pueblo Police Chief Rudy Mora's of helping to facilitate an illegal gun distribution scheme.  Then, Executive Producer Jeff Proctor hosts an in-depth, two-part conversation about police shootings in New M...

Senior Producer Lou DiVizio opens the show with some headlines from around the state, including news that Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham has quietly shuttered the state's Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives Task Force, as reported by Bella Davis at New Mexico In Depth. Then, we turn our attention to three education issues we’ve been following closely in recent weeks and months...

Senior Producer Lou DiVizio opens the show with some headlines from around the state including a judge's recent decision on Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham's adjusted executive order restricting firearms in Bernalillo County. Then, Lou speaks with two attorneys who are suing the City of Albuquerque on behalf of several unhouse clients. The lawsuit accuses the city of violating the Fourth a...

Lou DiVizio opens the show with some of the headlines from around the state, including a ruling from Judge Fred Van Soelen in a redistricting lawsuit filed by the Republican Party of New Mexico and seven individuals. A 23-year-old man wearing a "Make America Great Again" hat is accused of shooting Native American activist Jacob Johns during a prayer event last week in Española, where loc...

Lou DiVizio opens the show with some headlines from around New Mexico, including an update on the arrest of a 23-year-old man in the shooting of a Native American man during a peaceful demonstration in Española. This week on New Mexico in Focus, Attorney General Raúl Torrez explains two recent decisions involving education in our state. In partnership with New Mexico In Depth, Executive Director T...

Lou DiVizio gives a rundown of some headlines from around the state to start the week, including an update on the arrest of three suspects in the shooting outside Isotopes park that killed an 11-year-old boy and paralyzed a 23-year-old woman. Then, Our Land Senior Producer Laura Paskus hosts a roundtable conversation with U.S. Forest Service Southwestern Regional Forester Michiko Martin, Santa Fe...

Lou DiVizio opens the show this week with some headlines from around the state, including information on a new lawsuit filed in the death of a Farmington man who was shot and killed by police responding to the wrong address. Then, Jeff Proctor and a special panel addresses Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s executive order attempting to ban guns in public in Bernalillo County for 30 days. Last Wednesda...

NMiF Senior Producer Lou DiVizio opens the show with headlines from around the state, including an update on the search for whoever shot and killed an 11-year-old in a road rage incident outside Isotopes Park. Plus, more information on the Governor's State of Emergency over gun violence. Then, we remember Gov. Bill Richardson, who died in his sleep in September 1 at the age of 75. NMiF corresp...

U.S. Attorney Alexander Uballez speaks with correspondent Russell Contreras in his first interview on NMPBS. Russell asks about Uballez’s background, his approach to the position, youth gun violence, the effectiveness of the Department of Justice's police reform efforts in Albuquerque and several initiatives his office is pursuing to expand services on the Navajo Nation.  Host: Lou DiVizio Cor...

This year, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved a 40-year license for a private company, Holtec International, to build a facility between Hobbs and Carlsbad that would store nuclear waste from power plants the company is decommissioning in states from New Jersey to California. New Mexico already stores transuranic waste from nuclear weapons production in the salt caverns at the Waste I...

NMiF Senior Producer opens the show with some headlines from around the state to start your week, including a new report showing the pilot in a deadly 2021 hot air balloon crash had drugs in his system . Then, Executive Producer Jeff Proctor talks with Trip Jennings, executive director of New Mexico In Depth, and Emma Green, program coordinator with the state’s Public Education Department, about a...

This week's podcast is a bit of a sad one as we say goodbye to longtime host of New Mexico in Focus, Gene Grant. Lou DiVizio opens the show talking about Gene's impact on the station and the community over his 18 years on the program. Gene’s thoughtful and balanced approach to issues of the day made NMiF go-to watching for a generation of viewers. About 27 minutes into the show, Gene speak...

After the relatively wet years of the 1980s and ‘90s, New Mexico’s reservoirs started dropping in the 2000s. In cooperation with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, two water districts — one in New Mexico and another in Texas — agreed in 2008 on new ways to share water stored in Elephant Butte Reservoir. But New Mexico’s then-attorney general, Gary King, sued the federal government, saying too much of...

UNM Hospital is one week into a new partnership with the Metropolitan Detention Center. Executive Producer Jeff Proctor sits down with retired attorney Peter Cubra to talk about why this is a welcome change from private companies that have repeatedly failed to care for people who are locked up.  Correspondent: Jeff Proctor   Guest: Peter Cubra, retired attorney, founder of Advocacy, Inc.   For Mor...

NMiF Senior Producer Lou DiVizio kicks off the week with some headlines from around the state, including news that some Hermit's Peak/Calf Canyon Fire victims could receive compensation as early as next week . NMiF Host Gene Grant sits down with Source New Mexico reporter Patrick Lohmann to talk about prescribed burns and the announcement from the U.S. Forest Service that the Cerro Pelado Fire...

Kirk Ellis has decades of experience in the film industry, working as a writer and producer and now, running his own production company. Gene Grant caught up with him to get his impressions on the film actors’ and writers’ strike. Ellis explains where labor and management stand and what it could take to reach an agreement.   Then, Gene and The Line Opinion Panel talks through the strike as film pr...

NMiF Senior Producer Lou DiVizio opens the show with some headlines from the early part of the week, including progress for a group of New Mexicans fighting to receive compensation for the devastating impacts of nuclear testing beginning during the Manhattan Project. After the release of the film Oppenheimer , Gene Grant asks The Line Opinion Panel about the legacies of nuclear testing in New Mexi...

NMiF Senior Producer Lou DiVizio opens the show with headlines from around the state, including perspective from a New Mexico community downwind from the nuclear testing site in the southern New Mexico desert, after the release of the Hollywood blockbuster 'Oppenheimer.' Then, Lou catches up with Daniel Libit, an investigative and enterprise reporter for Sportico, who’s been following the...

NMiF Senior Producer Lou DiVizio opens the show with some headlines from around the state including the deadly shooting of an Alamagordo Police Officer . Gene Grant catches up with two prominent Black journalists in New Mexico to learn more about their contributions to the state’s news environment. Adolphe Pierre-Louis explains his role as a photojournalist and talks about the responsibilities new...

Gene Grant hosts two panel discussions featuring newsroom leaders in New Mexico.   First, a group of local journalists chats with Gene about the successes, shortcomings and challenges facing small-town news publications. One of the biggest factors in that equation is ownership, something this panel is uniquely qualified to discuss. Each of our three panelists represents a distinct business model p...

In an interview you'll only find through NMPBS and New Mexico in Focus, Executive Producer Jeff Proctor talks with Albuquerque City Council President Pat Davis, who also now owns four newspapers in the state. As the leader behind The Paper., the Edgewood Independent, the Sandoval Signpost and the Corrales Comment, Jeff asks Mr. Davis about media consolidation and the role of journalism more br...

NMiF Senior Producer Lou DiVizio opens this week's episode by laying out a full slate of podcast offerings over the next couple of weeks as we continue our series analyzing our state's journalism ecosystem.   After that, Lou delivers a trio of state headlines including ⁠a decision from the New Mexico Supreme Court⁠ that impacts a pending redistricting lawsuit.   Then, it's Executive Pr...

Journalist Ed Williams has had his shovel out this past year, digging deep into our state’s troubled foster care system for nonprofit news outlets Searchlight New Mexico and ProPublica. Ed’s last handful of stories have revealed devastating abuses and entrenched systemic failures — with some of New Mexico’s most vulnerable kids bearing the brunt. The series has led to the beginnings of reform at t...

NMiF Senior Producer Lou DiVizio opens this week's episode with updates on some key headlines in New Mexico, including the Attorney General's decision to drop some of the charges against former UNM Athletic Director Paul Krebs . Plus, the U.S. Supreme Court rules against the Navajo Nation in a key water rights case. Gene Grant and The Line Opinion Panel react to the 7-2 U.S. Supreme Court...