"Goodbye, Colorado" - Rocky Mountain News closes

Posted by Simon Day on February 27, 2009 at 12:54 PM

Colorado's first and oldest newspaper, the Rocky Mountain News, is the latest U.S. paper to announce its closure, publishing its last edition Friday, 55 days before its 150th birthday.

First published on April 23, 1859, the paper survived a flood in 1864 that destroyed its building, but could not survive the impact of the Internet an

d the global recession, The Associated Press reported.

"Thursday was probaly the most difficult day in my working life," John Temple, the paper's editor, publisher and president, wrote in the final edition. "As you can imagine, the news of our demise hurt."

The closure of the Rocky is the largest and most illustrious casualty of the recession that has had a marked impact on the newspaper industry. Owner of the News, E.W. Scripps Co., was unable to find a buyer for the newspaper after it lost US$16 million last year. The closure comes amid four owners of 33 U.S. dailies seeking Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the past three months and a number of other papers going on the market, the AP lists.

The award-winning newspaper has survived a tumultuous history, but lost an ongoing struggle for print revenue and advertising income. In 2001 amongst growing losses, the Rocky and its rival, The Denver Post, owned by MediaNews Group Inc., accepted a joint operating agreement, sharing costs while retaining separate newsrooms.

However, many felt that the joint arrangement was merely a band-aid that would eventually prove insufficient for the survival of one of the papers, the AP reported.

Temple stated in the final edition that the Rocky has been hit by the national economic downturn and a shift in advertising spending, just like all other papers, yet other unique aspects also contributed to the closure.

Although the two Denver newspapers have "exceptionally high household penetration in their core, seven-county metro market, the area advertisers care about most," reaching 36 percent of households on weekdays and 46 percent on Sundays - the nation's highest for metro papers - circulation has spiralled.

"Circulation is a contributor to the economic success of many newspapers. But here in Denver, subscription prices - despite what many think - are considerably below industry norms for newspapers in comparably sized markets. For example, the average subscription price in Denver for 52 weeks is about $120. In Chicago, it's $234. In Phoenix, $200. I could cite a long list of cities with prices far higher than Denver," Temple stated. "The owners subsidised circulation prices during the newspaper war to try to build an advantage they could sell advertisers and use to win the war. After it was over, they didn't raise prices to anywhere near the average for similar metropolitan areas, which meant that they left a lot of money on the table. Now whether they could have done so is another question. But the fact is that because they didn't, they had less money to pay their own bills than owners in comparable markets."

Meanwhile, on the ad side: "the owners contributed to the commercial vitality of Denver by offering advertising at prices much cheaper than in comparable markets. After the JOA went into effect, the agency tried to raise the rates ... (However,) businesses resisted. And although rates ultimately were hiked, sometimes many times over their initial levels, once again the owners weren't able to get their charges to the levels of other cities."

Over the past 150 years the Rocky Mountain News has covered the Civil War, Colorado statehood, the Oklahoma City bombing and Columbine school shootings, for which it received one of its four Pulitzer prizes.

"For many of us you can't imagine your first cup of coffee without the Rocky Mountain News," Tom Noel, a history professor at the University of Colorado Denver, told the AP.