Scripps, owner of The Rocky Mountain News, has put the Denver paper up for sale. The Rocky (tabloid size, like the Chi Sun,) is one of the two long-term news rags in Denver, the other, The Denver Post (full sheet). The Rocky tended to lean left, the Post tended to lean right… though frankly both were pretty well-balanced, giving voice to many disparate views… and differing most on their editorial pages written by anon.
Over the years there have been a few blood fights between the two papers, but truly each paper is more recently battle-scarred just from trying to stay alive in a time of
–devastating loss of advertising to Craig’s List and Angie’s List and Free-cycle,
–and free online real estate ads with video…
–as well as online reading of news from various newspapers ‘for free,’ and,
— from having been bought by shareholder companies that put the squeeze on for more and more share value and dividends
–and, in a way too, from following an old-fashioned trope that has never quite been successful in relating to young readers… but rather is more interesting to older readers… who are, given that Thanatos still walks the earth, an ever-dwindling audience.
–and lastly, probably not listening soon enough –more than 20 years ago, to those who saw the future in electronic and cable TV delivery, approached the papers numerous times, and were rebuffed ignorantly or scornfully by ‘those who could not imagine’ what they’d not yet seen painted red, white and blue. So odd an irony for decision-makers in the business of investigation in depth.
I remember once seeing a live theatre venue shuttered because of declining audiences. The troupe led the last performance out in the parking lot. At night. In the rain. The audience standing in the rain too, often weeping.
I’m afraid it’s that time for many newsprint groups… who over the years have carried many venerable storytellers’ words to us, many journos who never lost their jing no matter how strange creatures and events they covered tried to turn them into cynics who believed in nothing. The venerable journo kept on. Full heart. Half out of their minds with stress. But didn’t, like some journalists, who had a tin ear for both news and storytelling, who took the safer road just for the paycheck and the quasi-fame…. which they will soon find is evanescent… just like a soap bubble once they no longer have a daily or weekly print venue.
Yet, there’s the brave pack… paradoxically both fierce and helpless. When you’re called as a writer, you can’t not write. You must write. It’s less a choice than a need. Nearly autonomic need to seek the story in things. Fierce to write. Helpless to not.
Knowing so many journos who are hanging in there… in the equivalent of the parking lot now, yet keeping writing… I just say I have nothing but sadness for an era of so many storyteller venues going dark so sharply, and admiration for those straight hearts that were part of it for all these decades.
Though there are some few journos who cracked others’ bones to make their own names internationally known, most of all the journos I know are craftsmen and craftswomen, more like saddle-makers and farriers, than like those whose main bone is to seek influence only.
I feel certain, most journos in the newspapers that are listing badly, those writers who have the fire, after a rest, will surface elsewhere. The need-to-tell-show gene doesn’t corrode; it only adapts, seeking new and fertile ground.
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CODA: When you’re called as a writer, you can’t not write. You must write. It’s less a choice than a need; a early autonomic need to seek the story in things. Fierce to write. Helpless to not.
Though this can sometimes feel like a compulsion, even a mad all night psychosis to break bones, to write ’til at least the gist of the story is told, or told ten different ways… still, it’s not a disorder. It’s just a calling. A demanding one. Ask any of our clan, “the all-night and after-midnight bloggers” … they’ll tell you true in their own unique ways.