Decrying ‘photocopy journalism’, news watchdog spotlights Denver TV station merger

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.

Saccone talks Colorado journalism with Salzman: ‘The show goes on’

Colorado Independent contributor Jason Salzman has been tracking down veteran Colorado journalists who have exited the field, at least temporarily, to talk about local journalism in the era of the Great Transition. This week he exchanged emails with…

Denver Post: Pay no attention to those down-spiraling circulation numbers

This week, the Audit Bureau of Circulations released its dreaded figures. The news for the nation’s papers was pretty much bad all around, part of the ongoing New Orleans-style national funeral march for the world of daily paper-and-ink journalism. …

Rocky Mountain Independent, online magazine experiment, folds

Weeks-long rumors of the end of the Rocky Mountain Independent journalism experiment have been confirmed. On Thursday evening the three-month-old website announced to subscribers that it would cease producing content Monday, October 5. The RMI was founded by more…

InDenverTimes cougar chronicles: Grroar

After a mostly distinguished 150 years spent delivering daily journalism, the Rocky Mountain News closed this past February. Thirty dedicated staffers took to the web, determined to carry the spirit of that great enterprise forward. They founded InDenverTimes. So what…

Denver Post hikes single-copy street rack, newsstand price by 50 percent

Readers who buy The Denver Post one copy at a time had better start stocking up on those quarters. The newspaper announced Wednesday the price for its weekday and Saturday editions will jump from 50 cents to 75 cents…

After the bilious newspaper tribe dies, journalism will thrive

A few months after the demise of the Rocky Mountain News, another western paper bites the dust. Last week, Gannet shuttered the Tucson Citizen, which hobbled along under bad management for years.

The Citizen’s closing edition has already become an ignominious artifact of the end of the newspaper era, mostly for the classy middle-finger salute it raised to the Internet and online journalism:

Suthers warns against scam selling subscriptions to extinct newspaper

Attorney General John Suthers told Colorado residents to be on the lookout for door-to-door scammers selling subscriptions to the “new” Rocky Mountain News, a Denver newspaper that ceased publication in February. According to a warning issued Friday by Suthers and AARP Elder Watch, salesmen have been selling the bogus subscriptions in Colorado Springs, telling victims they can only accept cash.

Jared Polis versus the News, cont’d

Mike Littwin, the former Rocky Mountain News columnist who’s now at the Denver Post — one of the few lucky transplants — weighs in this morning on Boulder Rep. Jared Polis’ comment about new media’s killing the News and stating that was “mostly a good thing.” Littwin is justifiably offended. His paper died. Many of his hardworking and talented colleagues and friends are out on the streets, and that is a tragedy.

But Littwin is playing at naif — and that won’t work.

Community papers struggling: Vail Daily cuts staff to 2002 levels

On the day Denver lost one of its major metro newspapers, the Rocky Mountain News, there are signs that even small-town community newspapers in Colorado — once believed to be relatively bulletproof — are starting to struggle.