Albuquerque The Magazine: The Monthly That Insists, “We Love It Here”
Albuquerque The Magazine, often shortened to ATM or ABQ The Mag, is a monthly city magazine published in Albuquerque, New Mexico, since 2004. Its formula is unapologetically local and unapologetically positive: restaurants, hiking trails, neighbourhood businesses, artists, public figures and everyday residents of New Mexico's largest city, presented by a staff described as largely native to New Mexico. Its advertising and branding have long closed with the line “We love it here,” a slogan that doubles as an editorial mission statement.
City magazines live or die on whether residents recognise their own city in the pages. Albuquerque The Magazine has built more than two decades of publication on that recognition, capped each year by its reader-voted Best of the City issue, which the magazine regards as its most-read edition of the year. Its website is www.abqthemag.com.
Overview
The magazine is classified as a regional, monthly publication in English, based in Albuquerque. Reference listings give a circulation figure of 85,000 and name Larryl Lynch as publisher, with the first issue dated May 2004. The magazine's own staff history says Lynch launched the title in April 2004, a one-month difference that reflects the gap between a launch announcement and the cover date of a first issue, a common pattern in magazine publishing.
On its own site, the magazine describes its appeal in retail terms: it calls itself the top-selling publication at virtually every newsstand in the city, and explains that position with a simple formula, 100 percent positive and 100 percent local. Whether a reader picks it up at a newsstand, subscribes, or follows its Best of the City ballot online, the product is the same: an insider's view of Albuquerque dining, outdoors, arts and civic life.
History and Founding
Albuquerque The Magazine was founded in 2004, with its first issue appearing that spring. The founder and publisher, Larryl Lynch, brought an unusually varied background to the launch. According to the magazine's staff biography, his experience as a newspaper reporter, including work for publications such as the Los Angeles Times and the Sacramento Bee, as an independent filmmaker, as a photographer and as a graphic designer, led him to start the magazine. He is a journalism graduate of New Mexico State University.
That mix of reporting, photography and design helps explain the magazine's character from the start: visually driven, service-oriented and boosterish in a deliberate way. At a time when Albuquerque's media landscape was dominated by the daily Albuquerque Journal, a monthly magazine devoted entirely to celebrating city life, rather than covering its government or crime, was a distinct bet. The bet held. The magazine marked its long-term presence through the growth of its signature franchise, Best of the City, which the magazine dates to a 2005 launch, one year after the magazine itself began.
People associated with Albuquerque have been prominently featured throughout its run, from entertainer Bob Odenkirk, whose career is closely tied to the city in the public imagination, to former mayor Richard J. Berry. The cover logic is consistent: put a recognisable Albuquerque face, plate of food, or landscape in front of readers, and fill the issue with the city they already live in, seen at its best.
Publisher and Ownership
Larryl Lynch remains the named publisher in reference listings for the magazine, an unusual continuity for a city magazine over more than 20 years. The staff page that profiles him presents the launch as a personal project: a New Mexico journalism graduate returning the skills he had used in California newspapers, film, photography and design to his home state, and building a publication whose proudest claim is that it shows readers, month after month, what is true and appealing about their city.
The operation is a mid-sized, advertising-supported local media business, headquartered in Albuquerque with a staff in the dozens. It has extended the brand into events, contests and limited-edition city-themed merchandise sold through its website.
Editorial Content and Sections
Dining is the magazine's centre of gravity. Its homepage invites readers to explore everything from the best local eateries to the hiking trails worth sweating for, and a publisher's note in May 2025 was devoted almost entirely to food: the city's restaurant scene going, in the publisher's view, to another level, a set of 2025 Hot Plate honourees recognised elsewhere in the issue, and interviews with figures in Albuquerque food life. That issue's ABQ The Interview featured Scott Clapp, the longtime public face of Central New Mexico Community College's culinary arts programme, who arrived in Albuquerque in 2001 to teach recreational cooking and brought both a law degree and professional chef training to the job. Another feature profiled Paul Gallegos, owner of Cutbow Coffee in the North Valley, who learned roasting during a long tenure in California alongside coffee figure Alfred Peet.
Beyond food, coverage spans arts, events listings, outdoor recreation, profiles of business owners and community figures, and subjects such as the future of medicine in Albuquerque. Its Datebook function reflects its role as a calendar of city life as much as a feature well.
Staff listings over the years have shown the working structure of a small city magazine: a publisher, a publishing director, a director of photography, advertising sales staff and account executives, and editors responsible for both features and the events calendar. Rozanna Martinez served as editor-in-chief before later returning to the Albuquerque Journal, where her years in arts and entertainment, including her time leading Albuquerque The Magazine, were cited when she became the newspaper's entertainment editor.
Best of the City
The Best of the City annual issue is the magazine's flagship franchise and, by its own account, its most-read issue of the year. Readers vote on the best of everything in Albuquerque, in categories that run from best restaurant to best place to propose, with new categories typically added each year. Noteworthy past recipients have included long-established local restaurants such as Sadie's and Twisters, names that function as shorthand for New Mexican food in the city.
For 2025, the magazine announced 28 brand-new categories, including Best Mocktail, Best Arts Event and Best Veterinary Clinic, plus a new Community section aimed at volunteerism and charity. With those additions, the 2025 awards featured 345 categories, the most since Best of the City launched in 2005, turning the ballot into a yearly census of Albuquerque consumer life.
Audience and Circulation
The reference circulation figure of 85,000 places Albuquerque The Magazine among the larger city magazines in a mid-sized American metro, and its readers are primarily Albuquerque residents rather than tourists: people choosing a restaurant, a roaster, a vet, a bank or a place to volunteer. Best of the City voting deepens that relationship, because readers are not just consuming the rankings but producing them, then returning to the annual issue to see their city reflected back.
The magazine also serves newcomers, visitors planning around local favourites rather than chains, and former residents who keep a subscription as a connection to home.
Print and Digital Editions
Print remains a monthly newsstand and subscription product, sold at retail locations across the city that the magazine lists on its website. Digitally, abqthemag.com carries the ballot for Best of the City, publisher's notes, issue features, event submissions from readers who want their events considered for the magazine's pages, and an online shop for city-themed merchandise. The website extends the monthly rhythm into a continuous one: voting campaigns, announcements of new categories and feature excerpts keep the brand in front of readers between issues.
Awards and Recognition
For a city magazine, the most meaningful recognition is the institution it has created. Best of the City winners display the designation in windows and advertising across Albuquerque, and a ballot that reached 345 categories by 2025, twenty years after the franchise began in 2005, is evidence of a readership willing to vote in categories as specific as best local Mexican lager or best coffee shop vibe. The magazine's longevity itself, a monthly independent title still publishing under its founding publisher more than two decades after a 2004 launch, is a form of recognition in an industry where many city magazines have folded or been absorbed.
Recent Developments
Recent issues show the magazine broadening while keeping its formula. The 2025 Best of the City expansion added a Community section reflecting civic and charitable life, new service categories such as Best Real Estate Agent and Best Place to Bank, and contemporary dining categories such as Best Mocktail. Feature coverage has ranged from the future of medicine in Albuquerque to culinary education at CNM and the city's coffee culture, and the brand has added limited-edition monthly merchandise under its “I love it here” line.
Twenty years after its 2004 launch, Albuquerque The Magazine remains a monthly, locally staffed celebration of a city its people insist they love.
