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Death of a newspaper
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I thought the death of the Rocky Mountain News deserved an obit from me, despite my having been an old Postie, and despite the Rocky's telling my ex-wife, a former journalist, when we arrived in Denver in 1988, that she could not have a job there because I had gone to work for The Post.
Old slights die as hard as old newspapers, it seems.
But then when I saw the headline on Frosty Wooldridge's obit for the Rocky, I knew I had to jump in because ,if the Rocky's demise was many things, it was not a "literary tragedy."
The Rocky Mountain News, despite its Pulitizer Prizes, as far as I am concerned, never approached the level of writing that could be called literature.
No newspaper in my experience, perhaps with the rare exception of The New York Times, could ever approach the level of writing that I deem literature.
But the Rocky's loss can be mourned on many other levels.
It out-competed The Post for many of the last ten years even as The Post won the newspaper war in circulation and profitability while it was waged. At its end, the Rocky was still out-competing The Post for Pulitzer Prizes despite losing the war of survivability, even under the protection of the JOA that allowed both papers to combine business functions.
Everyone who has said so is absolutely correct: Competition does drive excellence among journalists. But it was competition, in the end, that killed the Rocky Mountain News. Economic competition.
And in that regard, you might actually see The Post become a better newspaper in the absence of other newspaper competition.
For The Post still has competitors for the delivery of news, that's sure. Four local major broadcast television stations, national broadcast television news operations, cable TV news operations, local radio stations and the damned Internet all remain quite viable competitors to The Post.
And even if its writing did not approach the level of literature at the Rocky, some of it was very, very good writing. There's no doubt that that excellence will be missed.
Home-drawn cartoons also will be missed.
And the harshness of the Rocky's conservatism will be missed by many people as well, if not by me.
Vince Carroll has taken up the post of new-conservative-in-residence at The Post, but no one should be surprised to find out that he joins other conservatives in The Post's editorial department.
The publisher of The Post, Dean Singleton, is as conservative as they come, and he remains a member of The Post's editorial board. Carroll will give Dean another vote for his side of an argument.
Here's to the Rocky!
It was a grand competitor while I competed against it, and its journalists were among the best I've ever known. As Dylan Thomas would have said: Let them "Rage, rage against the dying of the light" for a long, long time to come, no matter what news outlet they find to pay them for their talent.
And say a prayer they all find places where they can practice their craft for pay. Their's and mine is a dying profession, unless something or someone comes along to save it. Say a prayer, too, that our savior comes soon.
