My dad was a Rocky Maountain News fan, and back then, with two major dailies in town, which paper you picked said something about you. Usually, choosing the Rocky meant that you had adopted Republican leanings, but that’s not why my dad chose it over the Denver Post. You might think content is king, and maybe it is for most people, but my dad, a Denver native and first-generation Colorado native, was a devout disciple to principles such as neatness and simplicity.
The Denver Post was formatted in a multi-section mess, each folded into quarters, so that Dad would have to disassemble and then unfold the whole paper, and unfold again, just to find out if there was something there he wanted to read, even if he was–and still is–a Democrat. The Rocky was more like a newsprint magazine without a binding at the spine. You simply unrolled it, and started reading, flipping the pages as you went. You didn’t have to leave unwanted sections all over the place, unless there was special advertising inserted; you just had to turn to the next page.
As of February 27, however, there’s only one big paper left in town, like it or not. The Rocky Mountain News closed its doors after nearly 150 years of dutiful service. Some say Denver’s not big enough for two papers, but as a town with all these professional sports teams, I don’t buy it. Times are changing, like it or not, and in any event, here’s what the front page of the final edition had to say:
It is with great sadness that we say goodbye to you today. Our time chronicling the life of Denver and Colorado, the nation and the world, is over. Thousands of men and women have worked at this newspaper since William Byers produced its first edition on the banks of Cherry Creek on April 23, 1859. We speak, we believe, for all of them, when we say that it has been an honor to serve you. To have reached this day, the final edition of the Rocky Mountain News, just 55 days shy of its 150th birthday is painful. We will scatter. And all that will be left are the stories we have told, captured on microfilm or in digital archives, devices unimaginable in those first days.
