One of the first things I remember hearing when I worked at the Albuquerque Tribune was it was doomed. I started in late 1996, and this doom was spoken of openly in the newsroom. Not constantly, but enough to know it was possible the word could come down anytime to close the paper. At the time, circulation was between 20 and 30K.

On Saturday, February 23, 2008, The Albuquerque Tribune published its last edition. Albuquerque is now a one newspaper town.

Circulation was less than 10,000 at the end. And I was in one of those households still getting the Trib delivered on a daily basis. Talk about a minority? What about being in a group of around 2% of the population in your city.

I was a layout jockey between November 1996 and September 1999. I was fast (hence the jockey title), quiet and efficient. And I was one of the lowest paid people in the newsroom. I never made above $10 an hour. I officially retired a weekly "grace under fire" award represented by a grenade. The award was retired because it was defunded (the winner was supposed to get $5 for lunch which I never claimed because I never ate lunch), and the grenade sat on my desk until I left. They called me "Mattman."

Everyone had nicknames, although the use of them wasn't always consistent. Charles Googe, who was a full time layout jockey (and part time car race columnist), had a few nicknames. I called him Charles most of the time, because no one else did. Most called him Googe, but, when we found out he'd been called "Stick" when he worked at the Journal years before, that name popped up from time to time. He was officially the fastest layout jockey, but on occasion he would float the suggestion that "maybe Mattman is the fastest."

I sat in a corner of the Sports section, so I heard all the rumors about sports trades, commentaries about famous athletes and war stories about out of town assignments. One of the writers was like Hunter Thompson if Hunter had never gotten famous and been made to clean up his act. The sports editor for most of the time I was there was a guy named John O'Rourke, and he was a darkly amusing, if somewhat stiff, guy. He had the best stories. When he left to work in Texas, a bell tolled. It seemed like another nail in the coffin, losing a guy who had worked at the paper for more than 20 years. He was a lifer--and then he wasn't.

Phil Casaus, the last editor-in-chief at the Trib, moved over from the Albuquerque Journal while I was there. He started out on the Sports desk and sat adjacent to me. He quickly moved to the City desk and was a really nice and funny guy. And local. He's lived in Albuquerque his whole life.

There are tons of great things about the Trib that, obviously, have nothing to do with me. The paper won the Pulitzer in 1994 for a story about how our government injected 18 people with Plutonium decades before. It's always been the more liberal of the two papers, but also the corporation-owned one. The Albuquerque Journal is locally owned, and that probably put it over the top in the minds of most people. And, for some reason, the routine of getting a paper in the morning always trumped the afternoon.

When I was working there, everyone figured the Journal would buy the Trib out. The joint operating agreement between the two made the Trib financially stable, if not actually profitable. In late August of last year, Scripps announced they were putting the Trib up for sale, but without the joint operating agreement. They gave it two months to find a buyer. But without the joint operating agreement (which covered advertising and printing), what would a buyer actually be buying?

And so the countdown began. I knew I'd be writing this column eventually, but didn't really plan for it. On days the paper was late, I wondered if it had died silently, without even telling us. More often than not, I would pick up the paper and scan the front page for an announcement of the end. I knew, even as rumors of a buyer emerged, that this was it. The last hurrah for the Albuquerque Tribune. My first post college job that lasted more than a few months, and the whole damn thing is gone. Wiped off the face of the Earth.

You get used to things that come daily. A routine. Looking for the paper after work or, in the last few years, around 3:30 or so in the afternoon. Some days there is no news. Nothing I hadn't read earlier in the day on the web, and nothing except continuing updates of old local stories. And then, on other days, the entire first section was incredibly relevant and I read most of the stories. Local sports (UNM, high schools and the Isotopes) always got great coverage. I'd given up on comic strips (although I'd occasionally read Doonesbury), and, until recently, never did puzzles or crosswords. In the last couple of months I started doing the NY Times Crossword in the Trib. I wonder, now, why I never did before.

What is a local newspaper? What makes it relevant in today's 24-hour news cycle? Why should I subscribe to the Journal now that the Trib is gone? I can get most of the news from elsewhere. I can find crosswords online. But I can't get local news. I can't get continuing scuttlebutt about the upcoming Senate and House races in my state. What about local arts information? And a TV schedule to navigate the 70 channels of cable?

And yet, I'm still torn. Not getting a local paper would simplify my recycling certainly. But there are days when there's nothing on the TV, and I still pay for TV. Maybe its the same with papers. Or maybe it's just a needless routine, and I can take this opportunity to break the cycle.

As I've said a few times in past columns, there are no facts anymore. Only opinions. And the loss of a side of debate just makes this more and more true. If you take my word for it. Does the loss of the Albuquerque Tribune make the world bigger or smaller? Does it shrink our knowledge base? Does it bring more people together by force? Does it blur the lines so much that we'll never even find a kernel of truth in anything?

All I know right now is the Albuquerque Tribune is dead. And that's a fact.

Matt Worley will no longer crawl under his car to get the Trib in the afternoons.