Former Rocky Mountain News staffers announce the potential revival of the Denver Times

March 17, 6:04 PMMedia Industry ExaminerJudah Freed

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Three Denver-area entrepreneurs have offered to support the launch of a new online replacement for the Rocky Mountain News, starting with about 30 former Rocky staffers, providing the new publication can attract 50,000 paying subscribers by April 23, the 150th anniversary for the founding of Rocky.

Named after the old Denver Times, published under various ownerships from 1872 to 1926, the new Denver Times would be a digital-only daily news publication supported mainly by subscriptions with support from advertising and investors. If all goes as planned, the new publication would go live online at InDenverTimes.com on May 4.

Assuming the venture launches, former Rocky Mountain News assistant sports editor Stever Foster will serve as managing editor of the new publication. Among the other former Rocky staffers who've joined are deputy news editor Jay Lee, city Web editor Hank Schultz, columnist Gary Massaro, columnist and blogger Mark Wolf, general reporter Tillie Fong, health reporter Bill Scanlon, transportation reporter Kevin Flynn, business reporter and columnist David Milstead, government reporter Tom Auclair,  sports columnist Sam Adams, arts and architecture critic Mary Chandler, theater critic Lisa Bornstein, music critic Marc Shulgold, and award-winning editorial cartoonist Ed Stein.

The basic news product would be free online, but subscriptions will be required to access the columns and special features of the publication. An early preview is available now at IWantMyRocky.com, the website created by former Rocky staffers before the new Denver Times venture was announced.

Project backers want to see enough subscriptions to finance the experiment for at least the first year. This means about 50,000 charter subscription pledges by April 23. Subscriptions will cost $4.99 for a full year,  $5.99 for six months and $6.99 for three months. Credit and debit cards will not be charged unless and until the venture commits to publication.

That goal of 50,000 charter subscribers at $5 each would yield $250,000 to cover operating costs and modest staff salaries for the first year of operations. The number is ambitious but doable because the online edition of the Rocky Mountain News averaged 50,000 to 60,000 distinct visitors daily. In terms of marketplace realities though, The Wall Street Journal is the only major news source successfully charging for subscriptions.

Who are the three investors behind InDenverTimes.com?

Kevin Preblud is a fourth generation Denverite with a history of success in recycled paper who's now the CEO of Service Solutions, Inc., a green janitorial and commercial cleaning company founded in 1984. Preblud also is the secretary/treasurer of the nationally renown annual Cherry Creek Arts Festival in Denver.

Benjamin Ray co-founded the digital marketing agency Xylem Digital, now serving as its Chief Growth Officer, and he’s  a co-founder of the Tribusette executive consulting firm. ray is the son of former Littleton Independent editor and publisher Garrett Ray, now a journalism professor at Colorado State University. His grandmother wrote for the Greeley Tribune.

Brad Gray is a founding partner of the executive search firm McAleer Gray (http://mcaleergray.com/) and co-founder of the Wi-Fi service provider Wayport Inc., which was acquired by AT&T last November  for about $275 million in cash.

During a press conference on Monday in front of  the historic St. Cajetan's Center (a former Catholic church built in the early days of Denver), Ray said, "Although I spent my childhood helping my father in his paper, if you'd asked me two months ago if I'd ever be in the news business, I would have quickly said, 'no.'  But when the Rocky closed, I felt I had to do something."

When Grey spoke at the press event, he asserted that 70 percent of the costs associated with running a newspaper go toward printing, especially paper and presses. This structure is "upside-down," he said, arguing that "journalists ought to be the ones getting the 70 percent."  As a man who's job is finding jobs for others, Gray hope to establish a profitable business that "will sustain careers and livelihoods" for the journalist at the new Denver Times.

Curiously, the announcement of the potential launch for a new digital Denver news source same on the same day that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer announced that it would stop publishing a print edition, effective today. and from now on will only published digitally online.

While I personally lament the recent closure of the Rocky Mountain News and other print newspapers in the U.S., while I lament the shrinking diversity of established editorial voices, I'm content with this shift from print to digital journalism as a necessary step in our cultural evolution.

From an ecological vantage point alone, print publishing is unsustainable in an era of global climate change when we need more trees than ever before to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.  The Sunday edition of The New York Times, by itself, consumes about 3.9 million trees a year.

Technologists still need to work on the form factor, of course, because I still want something more appealing than a laptop screen to read when eating breakfast in the morning, yet that will come eventually.

Meanwhile, even though the new Denver Times will be a digital competitor to the Examiner in this city of my birth, I wish the venture well, and I encourage people to subscribe. A rising tide raises all boats. 

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