Place: Planet Sub
Lunch: Beefeater, Lays potato chips, Coke
Denver is now a one-newspaper town. The Rocky Mountain News, one of Denver's two operating newspapers, published its last issue today.
Scripps, the paper's owner, broke the news to staffers Thursday. They were advised to clean out their personal effects that day, though Reuters reported Scripps is being good enough to keep them on the payroll through April 28.
The Rocky's website is full of stories, columns, and blogs by their writers saying goodbye, talking about their love for the newspaper, and as you might expect, overstating the paper's importance in history.
In the days when I would buy papers while traveling (who NEEDS newspapers with the Internet anymore), I preferred the Rocky over the Post. Can't remember why, but it was a pretty good paper.
This is happening in a number of cities that have two main newspapers. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is likely to be the next victim.
It's not surprising. Even before the Internet, cities with multiple dailies were bemoaning viability. The most common cost cutting measure has been "JOA's" (Joint Operating Agreements), sharing printing facilities and/or even some of the advertising...classifieds were often one edition stuffed into both papers.
Today, one has to wonder why printed pages are needed at all. You can make the same paper in the same layout online and publish it for far less. And you can do SO much more, with links to additional resources and video and audio. Plus you can do it all instantly. No more publishing deadlines to get stories together in time to print a paper copy and send the "latest news" to subscribers a day later.
Strip down your staff to writers and an editor who can publish the article to your server with the click of a mouse and support the whole thing with advertising (because, let's face it...paid online news subscriptions is a proven disaster of a business model.) You don't even need offices. Everybody could work from home. I don't know why I don't work from home. I'm a fax machine short of having every resource my sad little office cubicle offers. Sure I might miss my crappy uncomfortable office chair and the smell of burnt microwave popcorn from the break room, but I'd survive.
That's pretty much true about ANY white collar desk job. We could have easily solved the (completely phony and manufactured) oil and/or gas "demand" price hike scam, not to mention slashed auto pollution levels, at any time in the last five years with the advancement of high-speed internet by simply stopping the work commute and dialing in from home.
Still, it's a bit of a shock to the system to see a paper like the RMN, which has been in business since 1859...150 years...go down the drain.
Best of luck to the RMN's writers and employees. I'm sure the writers are already starting up blogs to fill the hours, if they haven't done so previously anyway...
