As for the parties, in one word: awesome. I didn't go to very many, though. I felt like I'd already been there and done that with the convention, and for some reason I don't have as much pull in DC as I do in Denver… I'll have to work on that. I did, however, get to meet Sarah Silverman! We had a moment. It was awesome. My girlfriend wasn't happy about it. But I was.

It didn't seem appropriate to mention our own layoffs in this story since the topic is the slow demise of capitol news bureaus. The Colorado Independent has never had a statehouse office — in small part because of the CCPA debacle led by Charles Ashby but mostly because we're not interested in the pack mentality journalism too often fostered by capitol bureaus.

We did point out the sad loss of our own colleagues, you included, in the story about area media cutbacks — Westword cuts staffers, pay amid ‘roughest stretch we’ve ever seen’ — that is linked to in this piece.

How were the inaugural parties? Any good stories to tell?

By the same token, is it also policy now not to mention that Ashby spearheaded the effort to thwart competition among news organizations by attempting to bar House and Senate floor credentialing for new media organizations such as the Indy? I know that would have contradicted the big BJs that Jeremy Pelzer and Jessica Fender gave to Ashby in their articles, but hey…