While Denver is one of the few remaining metropolitan areas blessed with two major newspapers, that is about to change. A dismal economy and on-line competition have conspired to doom the newspaper as we know it; the latest casualty is the Rocky Mountain News. At the ripe old age of 149, Colorado's oldest business has been placed in hospice by owner E.W. Scripps Co., as it is hemorrhaging red ink at the rate of $15 million a year. It has been formally put up for sale, but buyers are in notoriously short supply these days.
Under normal circumstances, I might see this as a tragedy. But as the only investigative journalism still done in this cowtown is done by the Westword, and the Rocky does little more these days than merely regurgitate Associated Press stories and spew incontinent opinions, there seems to be no real point in saving it.
In a desperate attempt to save their jobs, the Rocky employees have created a website, pleading the case for its survival to the people of Colorado.
The case for letting the Rocky die:
On the negative side, investigative journalism has become a dying art. TV station owners faced with dwindling market share and revenues are trimming local news coverage, to the point where the only investigations being done involve either petty graft and/or extramarital affairs, and sex scandals in general. Judges and attorneys can commit crimes on the bench with impunity, but there will be hell to pay if they ever hire hookers in bulk. More importantly, the nature of local television journalism is such that if a story can't be told in two minutes, it won't be told.
When it comes to reporting the mundane minutiae of municipal governance, there is more than enough redundancy built into the system, even if we do lose the Rocky. The Fort Collins Coloradoan, Daily Camera, and Colorado Springs Gazette do a creditable job of covering their home communities, as do a number of more obscure local papers. Four television stations cover the juicier scandals, and aging radio icon Peter Boyles can still deliver on occasion, despite having lost some of his game.
Truth be told, the stylings of editor Vincent Carroll -- slightly to the left of Attila the Hun -- will not be missed. He's a regular feature at Colorado Media Matters (our local media watchdog), as he serves as an echo chamber for the Republican talking points. His sins are mostly those of omission; Heaven forfend that readers should know, for instance, that indicted Jeffco Treasurer Mark Paschall was-- OMG-- a REPUBLICAN! Okay, Carroll isn't nearly as bad as ambulance-chaser Dan Caplis (a walking Republican talking point), but you can reliably expect him to carry water for Dick Wadhams and Mitch McConnell:
The announcement Friday that the Bush administration would prevent the "precipitous collapse" of the Big Three automakers - most likely with bailout funds from the Troubled Assets Relief Program - is a stunning capitulation.
Just hours earlier, rescue talks had broken down because the United Auto Workers refused to allow any reduction in wages or benefits before 2011, when the current contracts with Detroit expire. The union insisted that the Big Three's total compensation (including payments supporting laid-off and retired workers) would continue to surpass that paid by foreign-based manufacturers to its U.S. workers by as much as $25 per hour. [cite]
It is a delicious irony that Carroll may be run over by the very steamroller he has cheered.
...and a Possible Solution:
At the risk of indulging my snarky side, there is a solution. Maureen Dowd recently reported that
[i]n October, Dean Singleton, The Associated Press’s chairman and the head of the MediaNews Group — which counts The Pasadena Star-News, The Denver Post and The Detroit News in its stable of 54 daily newspapers — told the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association that his company was looking into outsourcing almost every aspect of publishing, including possibly having one news desk for all of his papers, "maybe even offshore."[cite]
At bare minimum, the Rocky should consider hiring Indian lawyers -- instead of third-rate journalism grads -- to write their legal news. They couldn't do worse....