The reports of newspapers' demise have not been greatly exaggerated. The Rocky Mountain News, Colorado's oldest newspaper and one of two daily papers in Denver, announced it will publish its final edition, Friday, February 27th. The date is two months shy of its 150-year anniversary.
Update: The final issue of the paper was printed today, February 27th, with a commemorative edition whose headline read "Goodbye Colorado" and which included some of the newspapers' Pulitzer Prize-winning photographs and stories. The headline on the front page read "Stop the Presses."
The paper had been sharing business services, including advertising and printing, with The Denver Post in a U.S. Justice Department-approved arrangement since 2001. As of Saturday, however, the editorial voices in the community will be reduced to one.
In December 2008, the E.W. Scripps Company (NYSE: SNI) said it could no longer sustain the millions in financial losses it was suffering at the Rocky Mountain News, and said it was going to sell the paper, along with its 50% interest in the Denver Newspaper Agency, the company that handles business matters for the city's two papers. A buyer could not be found, and Scripps CEO Rich Boehne said the Rocky Mountain News, "long the leading voice in Denver, becomes a victim of changing times in our industry and huge economic challenges... Unfortunately, the partnership's business model is locked in the past."
Also locked in the past: most of the other newspapers in the U.S., most notably Seattle's two daily newspapers, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Seattle Times, both of which are in similarly dire straits to the Rocky Mountain News. Will 2009 be the year the newspaper died?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
2-26-2009 @ 6:22PM
Frank ODonnell said...
I just renewed my six month subscription last month, News is full of car ads, weekly specials
and classified.................sorry the labor costs
are so prohibitive, still a good paper. It must
cost a fortune to operate a paper.
2-26-2009 @ 8:18PM
bob said...
Could they possibly be like the NY Times that has become an editorializer and censor of the news instead of a reporter of all the news.