BY KARYL ANN ARMBRUSTER
League of Women Voters of Los Alamos

Our next Lunch with a Leader will be on Thursday, Oct.17 from noon-1 p.m. at the Unitarian Fellowship Hall on Sage. Our speaker will be Stephanie Nakhleh, the co-founder of Boomtown, a Substack newsletter focused on revitalizing local journalism in Los Alamos. Raised in Los Alamos by a physicist father and a small-business owner mother, Stephanie has witnessed both progress and challenges in the community over the years. She is married to Charlie and has a son and a daughter.

With 30 years of experience in newspapers, she began as a cub reporter for the Los Alamos Monitor and later wrote feature stories for the Santa Fe New Mexican. Her passion for investigative journalism led to co-founding Boomtown with photographer Minesh Bacrania. Boomtown covers critical local issues like homelessness, downtown redevelopment, and road safety. Despite the challenges of running a small, independent newsroom, Stephanie remains committed to ensuring transparency and accountability through local journalism.

She will speak about the importance of local journalism in upholding accountability and transparency in a democracy.

As a local journalist she will reflect on the evolving role of journalism in Los Alamos over the past three decades. Attendees will hear about the history of local news coverage, the challenges that have emerged with the decline of traditional newsrooms, and how new models like Boomtown on Substack are working to fill the gap. She’ll discuss critical community issues such as housing, substance use, and road safety, while emphasizing the importance of transparency and community engagement in addressing these challenges. This event will provide insight into how journalism can continue to serve as a vital pillar of democracy in a rapidly changing world.

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