You’ve heard about the Denver Rebellion and the crisis at Colorado’s flagship newspaper. But what can you do as readers? Subscribe to The Denver Post to support local news? Cancel your subscription to deny the paper’s New York hedge-fund owners greater profits to incentivize them to sell to a local owner? Advertise or don’t advertise? What is it going to take?
The Colorado Independent, The Colorado Media Alliance, and The Denver Press Club present this live panel discussion from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Have questions during the discussion? Tweet them to us @COindependent.
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This Politico article is not very optimistic, but makes some good points to keep in mind.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/05/13/denver-post-profits-newspaper-industry-218360
What I took away from last night’s meeting is that we aren’t likely to get a billionaire to buy the Post anytime soon, and that we need to form a Colorado-based investment group (including getting support from our state university journalism schools), built around a solid business plan to support a 100+ person news operation with cooperative agreements with regional news sources.
It will easily need $100 million just for startup and operating expenses for the first few years.
I also believe if a print version is to be done, we will need to leverage existing print facilities. Anybody know what happened to the A.B. Hirschfeld print facility? Who does Westword or Aurora Sentinel’s printing?
Damn if I’ll give Alden any blood money! If sufficient funds can be raised in this very affluent state, then we should hire the existing newspaper talent available and start a new paper of record.
A newspaper serves as the nexus for information to understand what is happening and why. It is needed to capture the first draft of history, without which there can not be an accurate final draft.
As for business savvy, we probably need new, younger blood. Unfortunately, those with most experience in the industry do not appear to have cracked the code on bridging the generational divide.
Just a thought… Perhaps this new entity could be taken under the wing of a national news organization — say a Colorado edition of the New York Times, with local reporting from all corners of the state (or region, for that matter)?
There seems to be an exaggerated sense of self-importance in the air. Why should I care about the Denver Post?