The Rocky Mountain News Remembered: Media Roundup

DENVER, CO – By Corey Hutchins for The Colorado Independent. This Wednesday marked the 10-year anniversary of the death of The Rocky Mountain News, the beloved newspaper that folded its flag on Feb. 27, 2009, putting a stake the Great Denver Newspaper War and hitting a kind of high water mark for the bottoming out of the local news business model.

“We hope Coloradans will remember this newspaper fondly from generation to generation, a reminder of Denver’s history — the ambitions, foibles and virtues of its settlers and those who followed. We are confident that you will build on their dreams and find new ways to tell your story,” the Rocky reported on its last day. Here’s a roundup of Remember When coverage:

• Poynter did a “10 years Gone” piece. (“The Rocky Mountain News was a newspaper before Colorado was a state.”)
• In the CU Independent, Lucy Haggard wrote how in the ensuing decade “the Colorado journalism landscape has changed dramatically.” (Smart line from Westword editor Patty Calhoun who “says that if she knows another outlet or journalist is covering a story, she’ll redirect the staff’s attention elsewhere.”)(The story includes a look at the nonprofit Longmont Observer.)
• Rocky editor and publisher John Temple published “My Newspaper Died 10 Years Ago. I’m Worried the Worst Is Yet to Come,” in The Atlantic. (“What if local governments created local taxing districts to support local news, the way the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District in the Denver metropolitan area levies sales taxes to support cultural organizations?” he asks. “Or what if states included capped opt-in donations on income taxes that could be directed by taxpayers to fund local news organizations in lieu of giving the money to the state?”)
• Temple also told his “fascinating life story” to talk-radio host Craig Silverman. (“I became an American when I was at the Rocky Mountain News.” Literally.) (Silverman asks if Temple believes Democrats would have as much power as they do right now if the center-right Rocky’s editorial page was still around. “I think it might have.”) (Temple: “Jared Polis, the current governor— one sad thing was I don’t think Jared at the time when he was a congressman, I don’t think he really understood what the Rocky meant to the community, and he was not very sympathetic when the Rocky closed.”) (Ed note: Media at the time reported Polis, a young congressman at the time, had told a Netroots Nation crowd, “So, The Rocky Mountain News published its last edition yesterday. And I have to say that when we say kinda ‘Who killed The Rocky Mountain News?’ we are all part of that … … we truly are. For better or for worse, and I would argue that it’s mostly for better.”) (Asked if newspapers are dead and dying in cities like Denver, and if new media will be where “we get our news,” Temple said, “I think they are. … Look, there’s no way that we’re going to be printing daily newspapers in just a few years, I just don’t see how it’s economical.”) (He says he’s working with the Colorado Media Project.)
• Colorado Sun editor Larry Ryckman wrote how the Rocky “might be gone long gone, but The Colorado Sun ###/em
• Former Rocky reporter Kevin Vaughan, now at KUSA 9News, reflected on TV. (“There are fewer people sitting in city council meetings and in courthouses pulling documents and figuring our how public officials are spending money and making decisions.”)
• FLASHBACK from December 2014 in CJR: “As a billionaire floats reviving the Rocky Mountain News, The Denver Post might buckle its chin strap.” (“Anschutz had quietly bought the right to use the Rocky’s name, URL, and intellectual property back in 2009 when the paper folded.”)

READ MORE at The Colorado Independent