When it comes to Colorado’s controversial roadless rule, conservation groups are waiting to see whether the Obama administration delivers a Keystone XL-style victory or the disappointment of delaying tougher EPA smog standards.
The sprawling greater-Denver metro region is in news-media crisis. In the information age, when there seems to be more and more to know, there is less and less being reported by the diminishing number of local mainstream news outlets here. So it comes as little surprise that media watchdog organization FreePress this week is highlighting the Denver news market as a negative example for the nation. The organization reports that, on top of shrinking newspaper reporting, the local TV news market is host to a “severe” form of the kind of sly consolidation that media corporations have been effecting across the country for nearly a decade. FreePress says this “covert consolidation,” where direct ownership is never transferred, is gaining momentum and that it skirts federal ownership laws and erodes market variety and competition.
Former Denver Post editor Gil Spencer died in New York this morning at the age of 85.
Last year government watchdog group Colorado Ethics Watch asked the state’s Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel to investigate charges that Colorado-licensed attorney and former Congressman Scott McInnis violated professional ethics when he reportedly plagiarized articles he was contracted to write for the Hasan Family Foundation. The plagiarism charges tanked McInnis’s 2010 campaign for governor, but the Regulation Counsel found McInnis not guilty of either plagiarizing or misrepresenting his work to the foundation. The Counsel’s report on the investigation released Friday fingers the Denver Post, which broke the plagiarism story, as the guilty party in the scandal, saying the paper’s reporting was riddled with errors.
It’s not exactly a tidal wave. But the three Republican members of the House who have gone on record as supportive of state Senator Pat Steadman’s civil unions bill suggests Democratic House sponsor Mark Ferrandino is right to be confident that the bill will pass if it could somehow climb over likely House committee hurdles.
Republican Colorado Attorney General John Suthers Saturday explained to critics again why, on behalf of the citizens of the state, he joined a Massachusetts gay marriage case. Progressive groups have accused Suthers of overreaching in support of an anti-gay politics agenda and have ridiculed his explanations for the move as waffling and unconvincing. Attorney General’s office spokesman Mike Saccone told the Colorado Independent there’s nothing inconsistent about Suther’s position and that Suthers penned an op-ed for the Denver Post in response to criticism.
Denver Post management has taken aim over the past year at the internet, apparently sweeping the web routinely for Denver Post content and threatening litigation if it finds unlicensed material floating free of the Denver Post brand. It sent a letter to popular blogsite ColoradoPols this past summer sounding Orwellian warnings against quoting even the smallest amount of material from the paper. The Post has now sued the national conservative politics Drudge Report for running a Denver Post photo. The Las Vegas company suing on behalf of the Post is asking for $150,000 and for Matt Drudge to surrender his popular website domain names drudgereport.com and drudgereportarchives.com.
Excerpts trickling out from police records describing a 1999 drunk driving accident in San Francisco seem to corroborate the account of Ginger Vasquez, a victim in the accident, who said Colorado Treasurer-elect Walker Stapleton was driving drunk and attempted to flee the scene of the accident. The police report conflicts with Stapleton’s version of events, in which he has repeatedly denied fleeing the scene.
In Minnesota, some smart Catholic school kids at Benilde-St. Margaret’s took issue with the anti-gay propaganda sent out by their archdiocese. They picked the propaganda apart in a school website editorial, which they posted alongside a personal essay…
Colorado’s conservation community reacted with predictable disappointment to a decision by incoming Republican state House leadership to do away with the energy part of the House Transportation and Energy Committee.
“Colorado is Energy Country,” Colorado Conservation Voters Executive Director…
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