MOSQUERO, N.M. — Erin Hayoz works in New Mexico’s smallest county for what must be New Mexico’s smallest newspaper.
She is a sports reporter for the Harding County Roundup, and because the operation is so small, she knows how to report the stories, write the stories, take the photos, choose and size the photos, lay out the pages and write the headlines.
Erin does not drive the finished pages into Raton to the printer — others on the Roundup’s 12-person staff take on that chore — in part because Erin is 15 and she does not yet have her driver’s license.
It’s no problem, though, for Erin to get to the games she covers or for her to follow the action on the court or field.
She is a member of the volleyball, basketball and track teams at Mosquero School, the subject of much of the newspaper’s sports coverage.
The 48-page tabloid is published four times a year, and each edition contains news and sports from the schools in Roy and Mosquero, information from village offices and the county clerk and announcements of births and marriages and deaths.
Among the remarkable things about the Roundup is that it is profitable at $3 a copy, that it sells about 500 copies of each issue in a county that is home to only 716 people, and that the whole operation happens in a classroom at the Mosquero K-12 school.
