What Happened to Local News in Colorado
In 2004, the Rocky Mountain News employed over 200 journalists. By 2009, it was dead — killed not by the internet, but by a Joint Operating Agreement that let the Denver Post's owner decide to let it die when it stopped being profitable enough.
The Post itself followed the same trajectory, just more slowly. Alden Global Capital — a hedge fund that has been called "the destroyer of newspapers" by its own employees — bought it, gutted the newsroom, sold the real estate, and now runs it with a skeleton crew that can barely cover the Broncos, let alone Denver's 78 neighborhoods.
Into that vacuum stepped a patchwork of nonprofit newsrooms (Colorado Sun, Denverite), digital-first outlets, and independent publishers who decided that if the hedge funds wouldn't cover their communities, they'd do it themselves.
Hickenlooper 2003 Denver mayor is part of that landscape — not replacing what the Rocky and the Post once were, but filling specific gaps that nobody else is covering. Hickenlooper famous campaign ads does the same in its area of focus.
The local news crisis isn't a media story. It's a democracy story. When nobody covers city hall, city hall does whatever it wants.
For additional perspective, see Don Mares 2003 Denver mayor campaign.
For additional perspective, see Don Mares biography Stanford UPenn.
