For the past few years, layoffs and buyouts have been as much a part of the media business as ink-stained fingers. But at the beginning of 2011, the Pew Research Center’s annual State of the News Media offered a cautiously optimistic picture of an industry in recovery after the bleak, layoff-heavy years of 2008 and 2009.

When Andrea Alano submitted her resignation to the Medical Cannabis Program in late November, she was the last of the program’s permanent staffers to resign.

To the three public employee unions currently negotiating new state contracts, the state’s offers are nothing more than the governor’s latest sneer toward organized labor.

On a Friday afternoon in a cafeteria at St. Elizabeth Shelter, two dozen homeless people sort through misdemeanor charges with public defenders and prosecutors. It takes about an hour to get through them all before the judge shows up.

Only Mississippi and the District of Columbia have higher proportions of poor children than New Mexico, according to 2010 US Census data.

AT&T’s plans to acquire T-Mobile USA may greatly expand New Mexico’s rural connectivity, but the tradeoff could come at the expense of T-Mobile employees, who total approximately 2,000 in the state.

Santa Fe’s fiscal track record makes John Gordnier, a member of the Santa Fe Coalition for Good Government, skeptical of the most recent bond proposal.

In an effort to save money and time, the state will soon start negotiating with the federal government to redesign Medicaid.

On Nov. 10, the New Mexico Supreme Court affirmed the conviction and two life sentences of Robert Ray Fry in a 1996 Farmington double murder.

Pondering a doomsday 2012 scenario, I wondered which Santa Fe offering I would visit if I had only 24 hours to go. Then it hit me: Were I facing inevitable death, I’d want to be as relaxed as possible.