Karyl Ann Armbruster, right, introduces longtime local journalist and co-founder of Boomtown Stephanie Nakhleh at October 17 League of Women Voters Lunch with a Leader. Photo by Maire O’Neill/losalamosreporter.com
BY MAIRE O’NEILL
maire@losalamosreporter.com
Stephanie Nakhleh, who co-founded a new independent local online publication called “Boomtown” almost a year ago along with photographer Minesh Bacrania, was the guest speaker at the October 17 League of Women Voters Lunch with a Leader event.
Her deep dive into the importance of local journalism in upholding accountability and transparency in a democracy, as well as how coverage of local issues has changed pver the years, prompted some lively discussion with the large group of LWV members present.
Nakhleh started out as a reporter some 30 years ago at the Los Alamos Monitor in a little newsroom on DP Road where she said local stories unfolded every day – “stories that reflected the unique, sometimes strange character of our town.”
She showed slides of newspaper clippings from the Monitor in the mid-1990a then she worked there and described roaming the streets of Los Alamos as a beat reporter covering schools, police, business and endless nighttime meetings.
“I especially remember dreading the Planning and Zoning meetings: so long! So boring! Yet somehow, I can’t seem to get away from them—I’m now a P&Z Commissioner,” Nakhleh said.
She described some of the more memorable stories she covered back in the day, such as one about a family trying to face Los Alamos winter in a tent, the great need for affordable housing and incidents involving coyote attacks on residents. She recalled tragic stories such as one about teens barely surving a terrible car wreck, a 5-month old baby suffering multiple broken bones as she was literally pullled between fighting parents, a high school student dying of asthma after gym class, a murder-suicide at a bank and a guard being shot and killed in a training exercise at a LANL,
“Every day there were multiple LANL stories: we had one reporter, Stephen Shankland,
whose full-time job was covering the Lab, ranging from stories about cool robots to how budget cuts could devastate the town,: Nakhleh said. “Imagine that! Daily coverage about LANL goings-on, and how its fate was tied to the town’s.”
She noted that a story about Lab budget cuts, it says, “In this story about Lab budget cuts, it says, ‘In an interview with the Monitor, LANL Director Sig Hecker said …’ – Wow. Routine media access to the Lab director? We don’t see that anymore. The gatekeepers keep this side of
the bridge sealed off from that side of the bridge. Now I feel like I have to go through
Public Affairs to ask my own husband what to pick up for dinner,” she said.
Moving on to transparency and now, Nakhleh reflected on why transparency is essential—not just for reporting, but for its potential to save lives.
“Journalism both offers transparency to the public and depends on it to uncover the truth. When I was a student at Los Alamos High School, I survived a car crash that killed my best friend, Jennifer Fleming. It was New Year’s Eve, 1988, and we were hit head-on by a drunk driver. Jennifer was just 16 years old. Two other passengers and I were injured,” she said.
She went on to say that the Los Alamos Monitor quickly and accurately covered every painful detail of the crash—the victims’ names, the name of the man who hit us, the trial, the sentencing.
“They published photos of the wrecked car and even reported the graphic details of our injuries. Seeing all that in the news was difficult, but I did not resent it. Not at the time,and not later. That coverage did something essential: it informed the community, sparked outrage, and led to real changes in our road safety laws,” Nakhlek said. “That level of transparency wasn’t just about telling a tragic story—it was about ensuring that the public knew what had happened so they could push for reform. If that reporting hadn’t been done, we’d have been stuck with rumormongering instead of facts. And let me tell you, rumormongering is way harder on families than the truth. And it is far less likely to lead to reform.”
Today, however, she said, it’s not the same as 1988 or 1995.
“When a fatal crash happens now in Los Alamos, details are often withheld, forcing journalists to wait weeks or even months for reports – and then we gotta file official requests. This delay needlessly keeps the community in the dark. I believe it puts people at risk—without the truth, how can we push for change? Back then, the community understood that journalism based on quick and accurate police reports, when it comes to road safety, wasn’t ghoulish; it was vital for safety. Road safety is a matter of public health. And communicating about it is something we
need to fight for, today,” Nakhleh said.
She went on to describe a story that she said shows how the media used to work with public
officials pretty seamlessly to offer timely, accurate reporting on critical issues. It was about a series of coyote attacks.
“The most serious incident involved the animal dragging a baby off a porch. The baby’s mother was inside, taking a phone call, when she heard screaming. She runs outside and she sees this coyote with her baby in its jaws. She screams and runs at the coyote, which drops the boy and runs off. The baby ended up hospitalized with deep puncture wounds in his abdomen,” Nahkleh said. “Turns out, local residents had been feeding wildlife, and this had habituated them to humans, making coyotes lose their natural fear of people and making toddlers look like just another snack the neighborhood was offering up. Obviously, this ended up threatening the safety of our community’s children – and needless to say, it sucked for this coyote, too.”
One lesson learned from covering this story, Nakhleh said, is that sometimes the things you do for your own self-interest and gratification, like feeding the cute neighborhood wildlife, can
turn around and literally bite you, and that sometimes the collective good has to come before narrow self-interest.
“Back then, we were getting quick and accurate information from public officials like LAPD and Game and Fish. We worked as a team, with the public in mind: we all wanted to serve the public. We didn’t hide from them, as if anything sad or scary was classified information. When a federal agent tracked and killed the coyote, he didn’t hide it or make us spend 3 months going through their public information officer. He picked up the phone! He immediately invited me and photographer John McHale to come look at the corpse, so we could document it and reassure a very freaked-out community that their children were safe again.,” she said.
Whenever she looks through her archives, to make sure she hasn’t imagined all this, she
wonders was Los Alamos more weird back then? Or if it wasjust that were resources to cover all the weirdness.
“I suspect it’s the latter. I think Los Alamos is still pretty weird, and stuff like wildlife going after kids is definitely still happening. But now this stuff is happening in the shadows, it’s swept under the rug. I didn’t know it at the time, but I worked for the Monitor in an age when newsrooms thrived, fueled by (relatively) ample resources, community support, and sufficient staff,” Nakhleh said. ” The Monitor boasted a staff of almost 30 at its height, with half a dozen reporters delving full time into every aspect of the community. If you look at the full front page from the day of that coyote attack, you’ll notice it’s all original reporting, with staff bylines: no press releases or wire stories. That’s representative of what local newsrooms were like back then.”
From daily police briefings, to interviews with homeless families, to providing real analysis of Council decisions, Nakhleh said the Monitor team had the funding and support to dig up information the public needed.
“Armed with police scanners, tape recorders, and putting in 50-hour weeks, we were stewards of accountability and transparency. We were the chroniclers of our town’s unique character,” she said.
Addressing what has happened to local news, Nakhleh believes the internet dealt the first blow and that and that across the country, local newsrooms toppled as tech giants like Facebook and Google gobbled up ad revenue.
“The Monitor wobbled for years, collapsing completely four years ago. Its heyday, when I was lucky enough to be there, felt secure—but in hindsight, we were dancing on the deck of a
sinking ship. Since 2005, nearly 2,900 U.S. newspapers have vanished. By year’s end, we’re on
track to lose a third of them. In 2023 alone, local newspapers disappeared at a rate of 2.5 per week, leaving over half of U.S. counties with limited access to real, dependable, local news. It’s like watching a library burn, one book at a time,” she said.
She said it’s not just about the numbers, that when local news dies, democracy suffers.
“Without in-depth coverage, communities turn into ‘news deserts’, where reliable information is
scarce and conspiracy theories thrive. It might seem counterintuitive, but skeptical coverage of government is good for that institution. Studies show that when no one is holding institutions accountable, people actually become more suspicious and less engaged. Unfortunately, many local newspapers in the US that have nominally survived the cull have become what Colorado journalism advocate Chuck Plunkett calls ‘ghost ships’ —existing in name only, wrapping ads around press releases instead of doing real reporting. In that environment, hyperpartisanship flourishes, and community trust vanishes,” Nakhleh said.
The second blow, she said is was an explosion of litigation and now lawsuits against public entities drive them to hide information behind bureaucratic walls.
“What was once freely available now has to be pried loose with an Inspection of Public Records Act (IPRA) request. Los Alamos isn’t unique in this, but the urge to guard information often protects reputations more than the public’s right to know,” “Nakhleh said. “All is not lost, though. We have several outlets now, though none as fully staffed as the Monitor was. Three may seem like a lot for a town that used to get by on one newspaper, but remember: the Monitor used to pay 30 people for this work. It’s like we’re paddling in three wee rowboats where once we had a single battleship. Each outlet brings variety, but we’re all stretched thin. At Boomtown, with just one full-time journalist, it’s impossible to cover everything I want to cover. I need five more of me.”
She said local news is still alive in Los Alamos and Boomtown is committed to ensuring it continues to serve the community.
“Resources may be thin, but local news isn’t dead yet—not our watch,” Nakhleh said.
Nakhleh pointed out that Boomtown is not trying to recreate the Monitor or compete with other local media.
“Each outlet has its style. Ours is about filling the gaps, digging deep, and bringing you the context and details that might otherwise go unnoticed. Our goal isn’t to duplicate coverage; it’s
to offer something unique,” she said.
Nakhleh dug into some of the recent issues Boomtown has written about.
“For example, we’ve written about why the most vulnerable among us seem to suffer more as wealth floods into Los Alamos—how low-income residents live in conditions that threaten their safety and well-being. That piece shows how some residents of federally-subsidized housing on North Mesa live with mold, pests, flooding, and othersafety hazards, without any basic protections from the county or state,” she said.
She mentioned a more recent piece about residents of Elk Ridge Mobile Home Community where residents have serious concerns about their living conditions and access to fuel for heating and cooking.
“It’s not just adults who are struggling; we’ve found that teenagers face hidden burdens
well. It’s a cliché that being a teenager is hard, but it’s gotten a lot harder – and so has parenting. Teen mental health across the country has plummeted, and Los Alamos teens are not immune to that. In this piece, ‘A Lot of Parents Are Not Aware At All’, we looked into teen substance use in Los Alamos, uncovering troubling trends that often go unnoticed by the broader community. Issues involving our young people are not easy to discover or document. For example, how many of you knew that three Los Alamos teens have died by suicide this year alone?” Nakhleh said.
Boomtown also investigated the unsafe road conditions that plague residents and commuters alike.
“We were the first to report on details of both tragic crashes in 2024—important information that no one else had uncovered. This story I wrote, with amazing photos by Minesh Bacrania, was shared across the state, illustrating the widespread hunger for in-depth, analytical journalism, she said. “We’ve also scrutinized the accolades our town receives, like in this story ‘Good on Paper’, where we skeptically analyzed how Los Alamos keeps ending up on the “healthiest communities in the US” list. We dug into the metrics and realities behind those claims and asked the important questions: What do these rankings really mean, and who is left out of that picture?”
More of Nakhleh’s presentation may be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKC_Tul_T18.
Editor’s note: The Los Alamos Reporter congratulates Boomtown on a very successful first year and looks forward to continuing to collaborate with Nah on getting important local news coverage out to the community.