One Brick Short

There is no cure for birth and death, save to enjoy the interval, said George Santayana, some Spanish-born, American philosopher, and I have to admit I enjoyed my interval.

The imminent death of the Rocky Mountain News tabloid in Denver, has been the subject of much discussion, conjecture, speculation and supposition. Yesterday, the paper’s owners and editors ended the guesswork and pulled the plug.

According to the Associated Press, Colorado’s oldest newspaper, which launched in Denver in 1859, printed its last edition Friday, leaving The Denver Post as the only daily newspaper in town.

The E.W. Scripps Co., which owns the News, said Thursday the newspaper lost $16 million last year and the company was unable to find a viable buyer since announcing a sale Dec. 4.

“Today the Rocky Mountain News, long the leading voice in Denver, becomes a victim of changing times in our industry and huge economic challenges,“ Scripps CEO Rich Boehne said Thursday.

Old journalism buddies who still work in Denver called to me the news. They cried. We recalled great times working in the midst of a true newspaper war in which government could make nary a move without it being scrutinized by a reporter somewhere.

Great stories, late-nights meeting sources in parking lots, long days making sure a story was complete and accurate lest something prove wrong and be highlighted in the competition the next day. The winter hot-tub parties in Aspen… uh, never mind that.

The Rocky’s demise is a common story nowadays. The News is the largest newspaper to fail in these economic times as advertising contracts and people amuse themselves by reading vapid, narrow-minded, one-eye blind blogs and viewspapers or cable news networks hawking political ideals.
Four of 33 U.S. daily newspapers have sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the past three months. A number of other newspapers are up for sale.
Mike Hankinson, 25, of Denver blamed the format. “It’s the paper. People go online now,“ he said.

Sure, they do. They go online to read the results of reporting by the newspaper’s staff. Without that staff, what will they read on line?
Scripps said it will retain ownership, and still offer to sell, the Rocky Mountain News name and the newspaper’s archives and Web site. Ed Atorino, a newspaper industry analyst at The Benchmark Co., said that indicates the News could become an online-only venture at some point.
“Online newspapers seem to be doing pretty well,“ he said. “It’s a very low-cost business.“

Possibly. Unfortunately, it’s hard for online business to earn enough income to pay for the large staff needed to produce quality journalism. Cities, counties, schools, universities, health centers, police, courts; for people to know what’s really going on takes a staff. To get it right, takes a trained staff.
That costs money, something the old journalism model provided.

As for the new model, it’s income and ability to support real reporting on the scale to which Americans have become accustomed in their newspapers and to do it in a community as large as Denver—or even Charlottesville—well, that has yet to be seen.

Goodbye Rocky. It was one hell of an interval.