Denver Magazine / Denver Magazine February 2010 / The Greatest Story Ever Lived

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The Greatest Story Ever Lived

Why the Rocky Mountain News itself was the headline. By a former Rocky Mountain News staff writer

I was 24 and fresh out of college the day I settled into my desk at the Rocky Mountain News in 1981. But I didn’t need to leave the office for my first glimpse of a great story. The old-timers in the room were colorful eccentrics. Travel editor Joan McCoy had a husky voice, raccoon coat, and don’t-mess-with-me attitude. The oversized Marge Barrett, daughter of esteemed author William Barrett, tottered around on skinny piano legs the same way she precariously stacked papers and books on her desk. Al Nakkula — once a hotshot reporter who brought down some 50 Denver police officers over a corruption scandal — seemed satisfied to monitor the police scanner and teletype machine all day, throwing out the occasional wisecrack to whoever would listen. They had been here most of their adult lives, languishing at this small-town tabloid. That wouldn’t happen to me, I vowed. I had bigger things

in store.

But a funny thing happened on the way to my big job in journalism. I stayed nearly as long as any of them — 28 years to be exact. The irony, never lost on me, is that I wish I could have stayed 28 more. It’s not only that I found a family at the Rocky, but I also wonder at the fate of the entire profession.

The Rocky’s parent company, Cincinnati-based E.W. Scripps Co., closed the paper last February, about two months shy of the tabloid’s 150th birthday. Scripps said the paper lost $16 million in 2008, and finding a buyer was problematic. Employees were cast adrift in the strange world of New Media where newspaper journalists often feel about as valued as Russian peasants. Now, we’re just another bunch of bedraggled job seekers. In our slice of the market, bloggers share the same status as seasoned reporters. Those who prefer getting paid for writing must agree to do it for sweatshop wages. No wonder I find myself looking back through the rose-colored tint of nostalgia.

Morning, Betty

When I started at the Rocky, it was housed in a small, squat building across from the Denver Mint. We said hello every morning to Betty, the receptionist with the stiffly sprayed hairdo, and hurried up a small flight of stairs to an open room crammed with linoleum floors and metal desks. Windows were scarce and political correctness hadn’t been invented. Men in the back room pasting up the paper were never too busy to ogle a young woman, but no one ever filed a lawsuit.

Over time, the quirky edges were slowly filed down. Betty was replaced by a string of nameless security guards. Our final home was on the fifth floor of a gleaming, white mid-rise at Broadway and Colfax Avenue chock full of mounted televisions and sleek desk chairs. The place was a beauty. But on some days, it seemed so hermetically sealed and sedate it might have been an insurance office.

Just as the buildings changed, so did the work. With the advent of USA Today, we had to write shorter, faster, and more. Once the Rocky went online, even that accelerated pace seemed a luxury. Two minutes after a story broke, someone was breathing down your neck wondering why the item wasn’t on the Web yet. There was plenty of goofy journalism — weather stories, random police chases, animal stories. But there was also standout reporting, from wildfires to Columbine. In its latter years, the Rocky won three Pulitzers in photography and one in feature writing.

None of the unwelcome changes could ever trump the reasons I stayed: The Rocky was always filled with witty, irreverent people. The deadlines, although maddening, also united us. Nearly every night now, I have a dream that involves someone from the paper. These are happy dreams although I wake up disappointed when I realize that world is lost.

Slowly, some of us are reinventing ourselves (as if someone could reach inside your brain, tinker with a few crucial parts and — voila! — suddenly you’re an engineer). For the six-month anniversary of the paper’s closing, former editor, president, and publisher John Temple surveyed former employees for his blog Temple Talk. The posting started out tough with this entry: “I feel like the cadaver being asked by the funeral director, how did you like the flowers?” wrote sports columnist Bernie Lincicome.

But common themes were pride at having worked at the Rocky and sadness at having to walk away. Reporter Alan Gathright said, “During nearly three decades in journalism, I found the Rocky had the best teamwork of any newspaper for which I’d worked. It was just an unofficial credo of the Rocky that you put your ego aside, dived and helped your colleagues do the best possible journalism.”



“There are certain romantic aspects to living in Italy, and the food is great, but at the end of the day, everything is harder,” wrote graphic artist John Sopinski. “There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t miss The Rocky and being a journalist. I loved everything about the place — my cluttered, map-filled desk, the new building’s HVAC system that seemingly targeted Mark Christopher and would blow super-chilled air on his neck, cranky colleagues on deadline, Dean Lindoerfer — never giving up the faith — wheeling by in yet another Bronco’s jersey, Nancy Mitchell working the refs (read Armando Arrieta) about who chopped her story. I could go on and on. My wife keeps asking me why — when people query me as to where I’m from and what I do — I say I’m from Denver, Colorado (when I was born and raised in Kansas City) and a journalist. I reply, ‘Because I am and I am.’ The Rocky is a hard habit to break, I guess.”

So in the end, maybe we took the place of those colorful characters I first worked with. And although the Rocky has left town, it has not left us.