OPINION: Contribute to the Daily Lobo’s election coverage

When I stepped into the role of editor-in-chief of the Daily Lobo at the University of New Mexico, I told my colleagues that we would never report from the perspectives of people in power. Instead, we would report from the perspectives of the people affected by the decisions of people in power.

Our coverage of the upcoming unparalleled general election will stick to this idea. To do so, we need your voices. We want to broaden our reach beyond the conversations our reporters have time for between classes and the other responsibilities that come with being student journalists. Those are valuable, too, but we want to increase the scope of our connection with the campus community.

The Daily Lobo has partnered with newsrooms across New Mexico — including Source New Mexico and the Las Cruces Bulletin — to develop a survey that allows people to share their perspectives ahead of the election. We want to know what you wish candidates would talk about.

In the survey, we’ll ask you which local and national issues you care about most. These can range from education to the economy to crime. From our reporting, we found that many people are concerned about campus safety, for example. I also know this to be true from experiences and conversations I’ve personally had as a UNM student.

To that end, we also want to know what you wish the Daily Lobo would cover. If you’ve been a student for several years and noticed gaps in our past election coverage, point those out. We want to address them.

Anyone in New Mexico can participate in the survey. You can be someone who votes in every election, or you can be someone who is not registered to vote.

All that matters is that you have thoughts you want to share about issues and your community. We would like the survey results to reflect as many viewpoints as possible, so please share it with anyone else you know.

You can choose to remain anonymous or provide your name and contact information. We will not publish your name in anything without your consent, but we may reach out if you want to have a follow-up conversation when we report on an issue you care about. From there, you can decide if you would like to go on the record with a Daily Lobo reporter.

Each newsroom involved in this project, including the Daily Lobo, vows to use the information you give us solely for editorial purposes. With that, we promise to use the information to shape our coverage, which will thus be tailored more accurately to our readers.

I aim for the Lobo’s staff and sources to be as diverse as possible, and as student journalists, we are closer to reflecting the demographic of the student population than some other newsrooms. But we cannot alone reflect the vast diversity in people and perspectives our state holds.

News outlets often focus on reactions when covering elections. Yet every day, stories are filled exclusively with quotes from politicians; TV segments feature interviews with the highest-ranking government officials available. These voices, though significant, do not paint the full picture of the stakes of an election.

Election coverage is not complete without the voices of everyday people — those who know and experience an election’s stakes. These voices lead reporters to the truth, whether through an issue New Mexicans care about that an outlet hasn’t covered or a previously unexplored impact of something a candidate said.

In 2023, only 10 of New Mexico’s 33 counties had more than one news outlet. Five counties had zero, according to Northwestern University’s “The State of Local News.”

The survey will ideally bring voices from news deserts, expanding the Daily Lobo’s coverage beyond the traditional boundaries enforced by its lack of resources. The student perspective in particular will help with this goal — you hail from all around the state, country and world.

The 2024 presidential election has been unprecedented so far and will likely continue this way. It is more important than ever that we strive to break the pattern of traditional election coverage and get to the heart of what you care about.

I commit to the Daily Lobo reporting on as many topics as we’re able to. I hope to leave a blueprint for this paper’s future editors so they can look back and see what New Mexicans valued during this historic election.

Your voice matters to us, and we hope ours matters to you in tandem. Consider taking our survey and helping the election coverage of the Daily Lobo and our fellow outlets be its best.

Lily Alexander is the editor-in-chief of the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at editorinchief@dailylobo.com or on X @llilyalexander

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