Community drives Journal's commitment to Lobo basketball coverage - Yahoo Sports

As the University of New Mexico Lobo basketball season tips off, the Albuquerque Journal remains an outlier in modern American sports journalism by keeping year-round, home-and-away beat coverage alive. As the Pepperday and Lang family celebrates 100 years of owning the Albuquerque Journal, the publication stands as the last newsroom in New Mexico—and one of the few remaining in the country—committed to following a college basketball program through year-round, home and road-game coverage.

Walking Down the Pit Ramp

NBA champion head coach Steve Kerr once compared walking down the tunnel at the Pit to entering a coliseum for combat. For fans across the state, that arena holds a profound sense of identity. Geoff Grammer, the Journal’s sports editor and lead Lobo basketball beat writer, marked his 15th year covering the program by reflecting on what that physical space means to New Mexico.

The Pit is not only where the state’s best athletes go to perform, but it’s also where New Mexico’s soul lives, Grammer wrote in his Centennial series column, detailing a tenure that spans eras of shifting media landscapes.

Expanding Beyond the Daily Print Deadline

While print remains part of the daily routine, the workflow has expanded to meet fans across digital formats. The Journal now deploys postgame press conferences and complete player interviews on YouTube, bypassing the strict space limitations of next-day print editions. Audio listeners tune in to the Talking Grammer podcast—which recently featured an in-depth episode with sophomore shooting guard Jake Hall—while web traffic flocks to postgame columns like Emptying the Notebook.

The newsroom also produces interactive live web broadcasts, including Pregame from the Pit, Lobo Football Postgame, and the weekly ABQJournal Sports Live! show. These programs draw thousands of concurrent viewers who submit real-time questions that steer the conversation.

A Century of Community-Driven Stories

The Journal’s ongoing coverage of Lobo basketball sits alongside a broader tradition of profiling everyday New Mexicans. Grammer’s weekly Monday column frequently highlights community figures, such as Louis Trujillo and the North End Zone Howlers following Lobo football, Hall of Fame high school sports referee David Briseño, and Wendy Thomas, the driving force behind the Rally in the Alley cancer fundraiser.

Other recent profiles include Albuquerque Academy basketball standout Harper Dunn navigating an ACL injury while leaning on her agricultural roots, sports broadcasting rising star Caroline Pineda, and Albuquerque Isotopes general manager Chrissy Baines making history as the club’s first female GM. The paper has also chronicled beloved UNM game-day parking attendants Mike and Yolanda Sanchez battling stage 4 cancer, golfer Notah Begay III receiving the 2026 Payne Stewart Award for his Native youth health foundation, and the community surrounding Albuquerque’s lowrider scene.

As the winter schedule gets underway, that community-driven archive continues to expand, linking the daily box score directly back to the people in the stands.