I am saddened that one of the most unique newspapers in the country has gone under. It was a tabloid-size format, and its front page design was often one I looked at and took ideas from (shhh!) when creating my front pages at Stars and Stripes. I always wanted to work for the Rocky.
But Denver is (was) a two-newspaper town, and in this economy and the Internet news age, the city isn't big enough for two newspapers. Very few cities are any more.
I am saddened for the no doubt hundreds of people losing their jobs. And I am saddened for my industry, which is slowly dying because the powers that be have not figured out how to work with the Internet, make money on Internet advertising and many other elements that are newspapers' only hope.
So I am soul searching and skill searching for an arena I could thrive and love as much as I have loved newspapers. Who knew 10 years ago when I was graduating college that my industry would be in such trouble. I guess if anyone knew 10 years ago, they might have found a solution to work with the Internet and not reject it for so long. By the time they figured out the Internet was something that was going to stick around and they better learn to work with it, along came Craigslist's free classifieds and a recession that caused consumers to cancel their subscriptions and advertisers to quit buying ads, and it has put a nail in the coffin of many newspapers.
So for now, I continue my (I still think) noble task of getting important information out to the masses and I hope that I will be able to continue to work with the written word in some form, even if it's on the Internet.
For my colleagues in Denver, I'm so sorry to hear the bad news. I hope and pray that you will find something else or somewhere else that you love just as much as newspaper journalism.
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