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July 15, 2015 10:05 AM UTC

Stop shrugging or laughing at the collapse of The Denver Post and Colorado journalism

  • 16 Comments
  • by: Jason Salzman

(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

POLS UPDATE: As if to drive the point home, word spread today that veteran political reporter Lynn Bartels of the Denver Post will take the buy-out offer. Bartels is taking a new job as spokesperson for Republican Secretary of State Wayne Williams.

—–

I listen to a lot of conservatives and progressives, and, the overwhelming response by both to the troubles of The Denver Post has been either a shrug or a snicker. (After years of devastating staff cuts, the newspaper is laying off another 10 percent of its newsroom staff and shrinking the print even more.)

The shrug comes from people who see the newspaper as useless, even though it still serves as the primary information source for political and other news in the Colorado. And it’s the primary driver of local news that you see on TV and on social media.

I’m floored by how frequently people trash The Post as irrelevant in one breath and then spend an entire meeting or radio show discussing an article that just appeared in the paper–or, even more ironically, talking about stories that have been left out of the newspaper. If only the irrelevant Denver Post would cover [fill in the blank].

The newspaper is so small and weak already, they say, it doesn’t matter if 20 journalists or more are cut, as planned on July 20 or so, joining about 20,000 journalists laid off nationally.

The thing is, even now after all the cuts already made, if you read the print edition of The Denver Post, or just a fraction of its online content, you’ll still get the information you need to function as a citizen in Colorado–to understand the state legislature, to keep up on elections, to follow civic and cultural life. What other media source could possibly make that claim?

The snicker about The Post’s ongoing decline comes from the folks who feel the newspaper gets in their way, unfairly shifting public debate against them and their causes. Conservatives are more likely to feel this way than progressives, because they’re deeply attached to the notion of “liberal bias,” as if The Denver Post has been undermining their agenda, as well as that of the Republican Party, for decades and its disappearance will give them an opening to win over public opinion. This is so outrageous, and unsupported by evidence, that it needs no response.

And it’s not just the people crusading against gay marriage and abortion who feel this way. It’s the fiscal conservatives, too, who repeatedly say how much The Post’s news coverage is biased toward big government and social support networks.

For their part, progressives complain that the newspaper is a slave to big corporate interests, which has some truth to it but is often proven false by the reporting you actually see in the newspaper.

These people love to ridicule the shrinking news pages and say the newspaper’s demise proves them right about its skewed coverage. With the rise of social media, people now see how bad the newspaper is, they say. Well, you have to wonder what garbage these people are finding on Facebook.  Where do you find better local journalism than The Denver Post? Nowhere, except maybe itsy bitsy pieces here and there. Sometimes.

They also say The Post is getting what it deserves, having been so fat and rich for so long that it failed to see the social-media forces that have upended its business model. It’s hard to argue that newspapers screwed themselves by missing the shifting media boat early on, but is this any reason to take pleasure in the demise of an entity that uniquely informs the public and holds government officials accountable?

The truth is, if you’re not sad about the demise of The Post, you really don’t care about the elimination of local journalism, which actually factually helps people make sense of the world and be informed citizens.

I don’t mean to slight the journalism you see on local TV stations or online outfits like this dumb blog, but The Post’s Colorado-based journalism, even now but especially just a few short years ago, makes all the rest of the professional journalism practiced in Colorado look ant-like.

So where’s the discussion of what we can do about the collapsing Denver Post and the gutting of local journalism? It’s absent.

Is there really nothing to say? Can’t grandstanding politicians, maybe a few from each party, spotlight the problem and call on philanthropists to step up and fund local journalism? Or figure out something else to say? Even if it’s just to acknowledge the tragedy unfolding in front of us?

Or how about a state journalism tax, to set aside public funding for independent Colorado-based journalism?

A ridiculous idea that has no prayer, you say? Right. But do you have anything else to suggest?

The alternative, for those of us who care about local journalism, is to stand aside and watch everyone else shrug or laugh.

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16 thoughts on “Stop shrugging or laughing at the collapse of The Denver Post and Colorado journalism”

  1. I'm very sad about the decline of the Post. If you have any suggestions about what we can do besides complain, I'd very much like to hear those suggestions.

  2. I was a Denver Post baby. My father worked there for 25 years. The newsroom was a magical place, loud, smoky, with a maze of desks inhabited by giants yakking on phones, scribbling on legal pads, and later, typing away on futuristic devices called "computers". When Dad first started there, they still used lead letters on giant plates for imprinting the papers. Maybe those are still in the basement.

    Yes, I'm sad about its decline. I personally think a tax is a good idea. We fund other arts and public endeavors. But more likely, you'd be looking at private charitable funding, like from the Gates Foundation.

    1. If hard news is the lifeblood of a democracy, it should be a publicly supported service.  I would look to the leading university schools of journalism to seed and referee regional news gathering and publishing services, supported with taxpayer monies, and ensuring a large degree of unbiased reporting.

      At least they should know their audience as well as anyone in defining, producing and editing the content.

  3. I'm not sure that we baby boomers have the answer, because the print business model is following us to the grave (well, preceding us in death, actually).

    Newspaper management is also dominated by baby boomers, so as with any industry experiencing disruptive change, they are attempting to adapt, but aren't likely to succeed without a wholesale change of management comprised of the new evolving demographic.

    The issue is, what are the rising and dominant demographics demanding for news and information?  Apparently not the hard news of decades past.

    I will always want unbiased and comprehensive coverage of current events, local, national and international.  I get that from a variety of online websites and electronic versions of conventional newspapers.  But even I don't have the patience for lengthy pieces of online journalism anymore.  In the age of Twitter and Facebook, our successors have even less.

    So I don't know how we would support, much less supply, unbiased, comprehensive news if there is no demand.

    Idiocracy is fast approaching.

  4. Ok, I get your point.  Still The AFW Circular owes much of their decline to no one but themselves — by kowtowing to the editorial dictates and "news" (non)reporting whims of their Jabsian advertisers. 

    Davie is is correct, news reporting should be a publicly funded and independent enterprise. (Unfortunately, the GOPers and Oligarchs would wet themselves unceasingly to ensure that never happens — and cut any and all funding granted.)

  5. A tax is is a truly bad idea. The financial reality is that whomever supplies the gold supplies the agenda. It has been forever thus. Online news'' sites all have an agenda. Discerning readers know this.

    Jason's basic point is on the money, that print serves as the source material for all other outlets. Online advertising does not command the price that print ads do, and therein lies the problem.

    If I knew the answer, I'd be rich. I do not cheer what's happening to the newspaper formerly known as the Post. It now is merely a ghost.

    Nor does it surprise me one little bit that Bartels would flee for the Republican camp.

     

    1. Funding is only part of the problem (and doesn't need to be a separate tax — Corporation for Public Broadcasting is taxpayer funded, but not with a dedicated tax.  But as Dio states above, the GOP would be endlessly trying to stop it whatever the source).

      We need to ensure robust demand for quality news and information.  And as any marketing guru will tell you, the only way to grow demand is to start when your demo is young.  Then the revenue and market growth will follow.

      What are we doing in our schools to interest students in learning facts (vs. infotainment)?  Much like the recent emphasis on STEM education to inspire a new generation of scientists, we need more of social studies and current events that I so much enjoyed 50 years ago in school.  Is that even taught anymore?

      1. Davie,

        If teachers are willing to buck the system, and step away from the planning and pacing guides and godawful continuous test preparation to better serve their students, then, yes, current events assignments are widely used. But here, again, you really need a print paper for students to spread it out on their desks, read it closely, highlight, re-read it. It isn't fair to say, "Look this up on your phone", or project it for the whole class to read, although that's an alternative way to access it. Most English and reading teachers I know routinely go over news articles, getting at least the basic Who-What-When-Where-Why-How summary.

        Less common is instruction which requires students to  read critically – that checks for sources on stories, that questions assumptions and exposes bias. For example, during the Ebola scare last year, I had kids coming in with stories that "Mexicans were bringing Ebola", or "Hundreds of cases of Ebola in the US". Even the school newspaper had to be fact-checked on that. Just asking, "Who said that? Was it a reliable source? Is the source biased?" got kids thinking.

        That's what really must happen if the press is to retain its role as the fourth estate in US politics.

        1. Teachers need to know (and pass along) the following:

          What is a fact?

          What is an opinion?

          What is a report of a fact?

          What is a report of an opinion?

          How do they differ?

          Should all be taken as equals?

  7. The number of pols rising up to praise Bartels today is proof of how poorly she did her job. She has been a flack for years — way more concerned with being a social Queen Bee than being a reporter. Can you think of one political story the Post has done lately that a politician didn't want in the paper? Now that she's an official flack, it won't take much for the Post to do a lot better at politics.

  8. I'm surprised there's as much support for the state paper of record as there is in this diary. It wasn't too long ago that said paper threatened this website for even an obvious fair use quote complete with a link that would have driven ad revenue to their site. And their political bias at certain times is legendary.

    But I do agree with your premise, Jason. Traditional media reporting still drives most online political discussion and is the source of most of our news. We knock it for all of its inadequacies – and there are many and increasing numbers of shortcomings – but traditional media is still "the news" for the most part. That's even more true for state and local stories than it is for national and international news.

    Organizations like ProPublica are a start on a new model. Talking Points Memo, SCOTUSblog, and other purpose-driven sites do offer quality original reporting, but they are limited resources. Public and state sponsored media like NPR (and CPR), the BBC, AFP, and even Al Jazeera are good sources, but IMHO would be insufficient without the commercial providers.

    I don't know that there's a solid solution right now – the Internet isn't very kind for revenue generation – most ad revenue is calculated by click-through (placing the blame for crappy ads on the displaying site while taking up their screen real estate regardless of click-through rates…).

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