Henry M. Lopez
Digital Development Manager & Project Manager
Henry M. Lopez is manager of digital development for Santafenewmexican.com. He focuses on developing digital business opportunities for The New Mexican by reaching across traditional organizational lines. He is a former Web editor and reporter for the newspaper and teaches multimedia journalism online and at industry conferences and fellowships.
[NM 0301] - Part 1: Introduction and Contribution (5:04)
Henry M. Lopez, digital development manager and project manager, The Santa Fe New Mexican, started at the newspaper as a reporter in 2004. He says he became a reporter because “I always wanted to know what was happening around me.” When he came to The New Mexican, he says, “It was really apparent that the company had an attachment to the community that I didn’t see in other cities and states that I lived in. It had a much larger shadow that it cast on the city that it covered.”
[NM 0302] - Part 2: Skills (7:15)
Henry M. Lopez, digital development manager and project manager, The Santa Fe New Mexican, says the key to his job is “a lot of imagination. We need to be creative and bold, and being fearful is not a good reason to do [something new.]” And the reason for all this entrepreneurism is simple: “To fund journalism! Everything that I do comes back to that,” says Lopez.
[NM 0303] - Part 3: Adaptation & the Future (6:59)
Henry M. Lopez, digital development manager and project manager, The Santa Fe New Mexican, says there’s no holy grail for newspapers’ revenue problems. “What’s the new business model?” says Lopez. “The question is wrong. It’s not what is the new business model. It’s what are the new business models?” Lopez is convinced that newspapers need to tap multiple revenue streams to fund their newsrooms. “There is a lot of inertia in all organizations,” says Lopez, “but we learned that we can be flexible and that we can change. And now we are learning how to do journalism and newspapering all over again.”