Article Contributed on: 3/3/2009 8:58:40 AM
The pathological tendency of journalists to turn everyone's pain and misery into a perverse form of "currency" is now being applied to their own situation. The post-mortem as to the reason for the Rocky Mountain News' death hasn't waited for a competent, independent autopsy. Here's my assessment of the crime scene.
First, let's get past the notion that this came about because of the economy or the Internet. Since its founding during the heyday of Colorado's gold mining days, the paper has survived two major Depressions and countless recessions. Second, Colorado's economy has not been that damaged and the demographics are stronger than ever. If you can't be successful with Colorado's 4 million people, you need to go to work for the Billings, Montana Gazette.
Second, the Rocky survived the coming of the bicycle, the automobile, electricity, airplanes, radio, television, and innumerable other technologies. Papers are high touch and like books, have survived in spite of the emergence of complementary technologies.
Here is my grand theory of what happened:
The Rocky Mountain News became irrelevant because its content no longer mattered to anyone but the staff at the paper. It was killed off by leaders at the top who wanted to monopolize the Denver market and by 2nd-tier managers who lacked the requisite skills and motivation to rise to the occasion.
I recognize this is an inflammatory statement,likely not to be taken kindly by people still grieving, so let me elaborate.
Papers are no longer the gatekeepers to knowledge. Therefore, unless they are
"first-est, with the most-est", they will lose reader's mind-space, which inevitably leads to a loss of advertisers. Newspapers are a two-sided market.
This might have been overcome with enlightened and visionary leadership from John Temple, but, my guess is he was a double agent from the git-go. He'll resurface eventually, probably as a consultant, as repayment for carrying water for the
suits upstairs, you mark my words.
You see, ever since the creation of the Denver News Agency and the joint operating agreement, Dean Singleton and the
do-dahs at Scripps have been conspiring how to put the Rocky out of business and not incur the wrath of the anti-trust apparatchiks at the Fed. They have long wanted a monopoly in the front range market. And, if you don't believe me, ask Jake Jabs at American Furniture who was one of their biggest advertisers. Jake went on the warpath a few years ago when advertising rates went through the roof.
Now, the suits have their way. They can monopolize the Denver market, cream the assets of the Rocky's staff and move forward unobstructed. (That is were it not for certain disruptive technologies such as digital multimedia, not to mention the Denver Post's own dangerous problem of becoming irrelevant itself.)
There is no organization more attuned to relevance than Google. It took them five years from their founding to develop an advertising revenue based business model that worked. But, what Google has NOT done is go out and hire a bunch of hacks represented by the likes of Paul Campos to pontificate about his alternative view of reality. Google's approach is to help the reader "search" and find the information relevant to what the reader believes is his situation. There is no deference to an authority sitting at an observation point in the hierarchy. The reader is front and center, not banging on a glass door trying to attract the attention of an editor by writing him letters he seldom publishes and never acknowledges. That tyranny is done with.
The flip side of this is that many supposed-readers are really closet writers, or bloggers in the vernacular of the internet. Wisdom is not concentrated in some staffer at the newspaper. Instead, in an internet model expertise and opinion exists in snippets and fragments distributed across a holographic landscape where reader has as much presumed expertise and the host provider is facilitating getting the knowledge to other reader-writers. I know that this might come as a shock and inflame a full-fledged personal crisis for John Temple, Vincent Carroll, Mike Litwin, Mike Rosen and Paul Campos, but people long ago(about 1996) quit caring what they think. It was only by virtually giving the paper away that they maintained any illusion of a readership at all. And that was primarily to old people. The young long ago abandoned the papers and they represent a demographic that advertisers must reach to sell overpriced blue jeans, lattes, and rap music.
The threatening clouds of an approaching perfect storm began to go from an amorphous state to crystalline several years ago. The rise of the Internet, Google, Craigslist and other challengers made their presence known nearly 10 years before the final day of execution of the Rocky. And, how did management and staff at the Rocky react? At first, denial, then with a detached aloofness and arrogance. Just look at the content of the paper during the past year alone. They have been obsessed with dredging up 40 year old bus accidents and making them news. Ironically, the paper has been filled with the typical police blotter, knife and gun club news, combined with Rocky staff writing editorials on foreign policy, national economy and all manner of topics they know nothing about. Their treatment of health care, education and economic development have been abysmal. And, their obsession with Douglas Bruce bordered on the pathetic. Journalists are supposed to report and when they stray over the line into punditry, they are like the soldier on the battlefield who puts his head up out of the foxhole to see what's happening and gets it shot off.
Now, Mike Shanahan's firing was a surprise and something we had to come to grips with. The Rocky's demise has been a mercy killing; the paper had been in the hospice for two years before someone cut the hose on the respirator.
The turn of the century has put Colorado firmly into the 21st century and we are about to witness immense change. When I arrived in Colorado in 1972, it was still a mid-western cow-town, that was short on sushi and long on its enthusiasm for the Broncos. Colorado now has 4 million people and will grow to 8 million by 2050. Should other pertubating events such as natural disasters, terrorism, economic collapse or pandemic occur on either the east or west coasts and we will go to 15 million very rapidly. The only thing slowing us down from growing right up to the Kansas border is water and self-actualized public officials. Thank God we have finally found a politician in the form of John Hickenlooper who appears to have the right stuff to lead the public sector. The private sector is fragmented and increasingly small business. No longer do Gates, Coors and other big businesses call the shots. Leadership is now coming from a variety of non-governmental, eleemosynary organizations focused on the environment, economic development and education.
Colorado will go on to be the crown jewel in the Rocky Mountain regional economy. The Rocky Mountain News, and, perhaps later, the Denver Post have been largely rendered irrelevant in the debate. They now represent one opinion amongst many. And, in so many ways the opinions of the readers, whether it is expressed through YourHub( the singular smashing success of the Rocky staff, by the way), blogging, letters to the editor, or not buying the paper or the products of its advertisers represent the last, best vote in the process.
P.S.#1- There is one person I will miss and I am glad she has a new cubicle at the Post and that is Tina Griego. She is a keeper and easy on the eyes, too.
P.S. #2-As for the staff, I think those of you at the lower levels who tried so hard and have now lost your jobs deserved better from the suits upstairs. You have every right to feel betrayed. As Roger said in the Comcast commercial, "You Tiger Now".