I Am A Newspaper Guy Without My Newspaper

My newspaper died today.

The Rocky Mountain News started daily publication in 1860, a full year before the "War Between the States." If you look at the front page of the very first issue, it says Cherry Creek, K. T. That K.T. stands for Kansas Territory because Colorado wasn't a state until 16 years later in 1876. After 149 years of the daily Rocky Mountain News, Denver will wake up tomorrow to find that she's gone, terminated by a guy in a suit, as Littwin says. Instead of soldiering on and keeping jobs in the deepening economic turmoil, Scripps shafted the paper.

Nearly as long as there has been a Denver, there has been a Rocky Mountain News. My grandmother was a typesetter for them long ago. She worked many years as a single mom to my mother. Years later, she received a gift from them commemorating the 125th anniversary of the paper and she was so tickled that they remembered her. They remembered her because the Rocky had heart. Unlike that broadsheet abomination, the Rocky was a family.

More importantly, my grandmother gained some satisfaction that she was a part of something that was making a difference in the lives of people. When you got the paper, you had news of all sorts that mattered. It came in length of details that was ruled more by the cost of ink than by the time it took someone to regurgitate the facts to a camera. Am I a newspaper guy? You better believe it. The newspapers gave enough information to form an opinion about something. The nightly news shows jump from story to story, never giving you the opportunity to look deeper.

But the nightly news didn't kill the Rocky. Was it the Internet instead? No, the net has been popular for 15 years or nearly that. The Rocky adapted, and put out a superior product online. People still bought the paper, though, because it's tough to bring your computer with you to the park, the cafe, or the bathroom. No, the Internet may have wounded circulation, but it didn't kill it. What killed my Rocky is the tightening purse strings in Denver and beyond. People, it seems, like to eat, and if the choice comes down to paper or food, people find the food more useful. The Rocky, which survived the Great Depression of the 1930s, will not survive the depression we now find ourselves in.

So if there's any consolation in the final edition of a great newspaper, it's that her passing is neither unnoticed nor unmourned. Reading the Rocky as a kid helped me understand the world around me in a way that no other medium could do. It trained my mind to ask good questions and to expect good answers. It showed me what good journalism, what good writing will do for people. My first letters to the editor were published in the Rocky. It will always be my newspaper, and today was its final day.