The Colorado Index

The Rocky Mountain News (Sort Of) Lives

While Jared Polis and the nutroots took credit for killing the paper edition of the Rocky Mountain News, these individuals failed in their nefarious plot.  Many of the former Rocky Mountain News staff members migrated to the internet to continue their work.

Since the Denver Post and the Joint Operating Agreement with the late Rocky  does not allow the actual "Rocky Mountain News" moniker, former Rocky reporters and commentators post at the former advocacy site I Want My Rocky.

I Want My Rocky is updated throughout the day and contains a mix of original reporting and commentary (mostly separate from each other). For example,  transportation reporter Kevin Flynn posted two articles yesterday on the state of RTD and its FasTracks program.  In addition, it has arts and entertainment reporting, and even sports reporting and commentary from Sam Adams and Bernie Lincicome.

Sports cartoonist Drew Litton posts his latest works at both the I Want My Rocky site as well as his own website.

For those who are baseball fans, former Rockies reporters Tracy Ringolsby and Jack Etkin, along with editor Steve Foster, report at Inside The Rockies.  Updated throughout the day, Inside The Rockies contains game recaps and interesting tidbits from training camp.  I expect that Inside The Rockies will become the go-to place for Rockies news once the regular season starts.

It is good to see that the former Rocky employees continue to produce a first-rate product on the internet.  These sites are now at the top of my list for morning reading, and I wish them luck with these online endeavors.

by Civil Sense

Did Jared Polis Kill The Rocky Mountain News?

That is what Jared Polis claims per this story from Denver's surviving daily newspaper:

U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, who made his fortune selling greeting cards and flowers online, gave a shout out to the blogosphere Saturday, giving it — and himself — credit for the "demise" of traditional journalism.

"We killed the Rocky Mountain News. Long live new media," said Polis at the Netroots Nation speaker series in Westminster, according to the Denver Young Democrats Examiner website.

Jared Polis shows his typical hubris in making a nonsensical claim.  Bloggers and new media did not kill the Rocky, its outdated revenue model based upon advertisement collapsed due to internet companies.  Scripps (the Rocky's owner) decided to divest itself of the Rocky. 

In addition, the Joint Operating Agreement gave the Denver Post a right of first refusal in any sale.  The following exchange via Twitter from the Rocky site details why the Rocky could not change into a "new media," web-only publication.

Question: Why not start an online-only edition. Contreras: If we thought we could do that, we would not be here today.

Contreras says for Rocky to continue as online-only product , the partner in the JOA - Dean Singleton's Denver Post - would have to agree.

In other words, the Denver Post was much more culpable in the Rocky's demise than Jared Polis and his ego.

For those readers who are not Jared Polis, the Columbia Journalism Review has a tribute site where the former Rocky Mountain News staffers posted their remembrances of the late, great Rocky.

by Civil Sense

The End Of An Era

The fate of the Rocky Mountain News arrived today.  Starting Saturday, Denver will be a one-newspaper town.

The Rocky Mountain News publishes its last paper tomorrow.

Rich Boehne, chief executive officer of Scripps, broke the news to the Rocky staff at noon today, ending nearly three months of speculation over the paper's future. He called the paper a victim of a terrible economy and an upheaval in the newspaper industry.

"Denver can't support two newspapers anymore," Boehne told staffers, some of whom cried at the news.

This is not a surprising turn of events. The death of the Rocky Mountain News was expected for months.  However, the immediacy of the closing is akin to a death in the family. It is sad to see the Rocky Mountain News go after nearly 150 years of publication.

Of course, reverting to a one-newspaper town now gives the Denver Post a monopoly.  Without the Rocky to keep the Post semi-honest, the Post will have even more opportunities to embarrass itself.  However, in this environment, the Post will have to move to attract Rocky subscribers or risk going out of business as well.

We in the "new media" can attempt to keep the Post honest.  However, there is no substitute for a reporter who follows stories full-time (as opposed to bloggers who have a day job).  Joshua Sharf at View From a Height made some similar comments on this matter.

And, to the soon-to-be former Rocky employees, I wish you good luck in your future endeavors.

by Civil Sense

New Blog in Town and the Blame Game

The Right Cafe is now serving free coffee,donuts, facts, and opinion here in El Paso County.

The author, who hopefully got himself elected as a bonus member on Saturday is a heavy duty Party volunteer.  Since I tried to vote for folks who were willing to do actual work for the party, I'm fairly certain that he got my vote along with Reb and Patsy and one other person whose name escapes me.

He has an interesting analysis on HD 17.  The numbers are doubtlessly correct.  The analysis completely ignores some ugly facts:

As the facts illustrate, HD17 was lost because the district is shifting to the left and the "Obama" factor also happened to be in the race. Kit ran a solid campaign and the EPCR did all it could to Get Out The Vote.

I did some more research on HD 17 last week (some before, some at the meeting) as well.  I found:

1.  Others who had heard the rumor that Focus on the Family was coercing local elected officials to avoid being seen with Roupe.

2.  Someone who claimed to personally know pro lifers who lived in the district and hadn't voted for Roupe.  Right Cafe notes:

It should also be noted that 10% of all those who voted did not vote for either candidate, more than three times the margin of victory. That further demonstrates the impact of the "Obama" factor on the race.

Apparently, those Pro-Lifers voted for Obama, at least according to this "don't blame us" analysis.

3.  At the central committee meeting, not a single candidate for any party office addressed the unwillingness of the party to support fiscal conservatives or how to solve that problem.  If anyone is contemplating trying to match candidates with districts and then to support those candidates who have to be less conservative to win, no one said anything. 

4.  Before I agreed to support Kay Rendleman for County Chair, I talked with her about the 2008 HD-17 election.  She didn't tell me that my concerns weren't justified.  She commented that "the base" wouldn't support Roupe because she was Pro Choice.

5.  As I told another blogger, James Dobson was actively and openly discouraging his followers from voting for McCain from February until Sarah Palin was named.  This is a pattern going back several elecctions.  Given that history, and similar histories in other elections, it is much easier to believe the rumor that he or his organization interfered in the HD 17 race than to believe he and his organization would keep hands off.

6.   My very favorite comment from Saturday:  "We dropped from 15 state senators to 14 (out of 35).  We now have the most conservative group of Republican state senators we have ever had."  The social conservative mindset is that they are completely content to be deep in the minority in the legislature as long as they are not contaminated by a fiscal conservative let alone a liberal Republican (if such a thing exists).

There is too much evidence from too many people that suggests that there was an active effort in El Paso County to sabotage Roupe, or at least let her twist slowly in the wind. 

This has happened in at least four of the last five elections.  It does no good to gloss the problem over in the name of "Party Unity."  That has been and would again be faux unity.  If no one is willing to talk about the problem and make a commitment to fix it, it won't get fixed.  

The "blame game" should not end until there is a commitment to fix the problems.  Elected and party officials have to have the spine to publicly object to the pride with which Pro Lifers. the RMGO, the school choice crowd and others take in sabotaging the candidacies of Republicans who aren't in lock step with them.  

Even though I find the Right Cafe analysis on this particular subject  at best incomplete, I do welcome the new voice in the blogosphere, and especially the capability to do data mining.  The more the merrier.  He'll fit right in with the RMA and should apply immediately.  

The Year in Colorado Blogging

What follows is my impression of the year in blogging.  It will doubtless not be the same as other blogger’s impressions:

The Good:

The best of the best was the maturation of Face the State.  It went from an intermittent site with very little original content in 2007 to a regular site with daily original content in 2008.  It went from a site whose major figure too often bashed blogs and bloggers as unpaid basement writers to be ignored to a site that regularly promotes blogs.  I can’t say enough about the turn around.

Civil Sense joined as a regular contributor to this blog and Betsy Red joined as a less regular contributor.  It is easy for me to admit that when Civil Sense has the time to write, he is often a better, more well rounded blogger than I am.

Jon Caldera and the Independence Institute were more supportive of blogs and bloggers in 2008 than in 2007. 

The recognition of the value of political blogging by major Republican operatives and candidates in 2008 will encourage more bloggers to pick up the load in 2010.

The Bad:

The demise of PolitickerCO wasn’t a surprise.  It was an idea about five years ahead of its time.  The demographics are too inverted to support it.  People over 50 don’t get their news from the internet but, at the same time, they are the age group most heavily involved in politics.  Hopefully Jeremy Pelzer will land on his feet.

The numbers also did in the large staff at Colorado Confidential / Colorado Independent.  Last summer I looked at their daily hit counter.  They were getting about 1000 readers a day who opened 2000 pages a day.  Even worse, two thirds of their readers were from out of state.  It was a very small bang for a very big buck, but I was sorry to see the staff cuts.

A long time Colorado based conservative blogger passed away after a long illness.  He didn’t write on state issues so I didn’t follow his blog.  Even so there are so few conservative bloggers that his voice will be missed by those who did follow his blog.

The Ugly:

I quit doing the sweep in March and discovered very quickly that my two hours a day of work for more than a year was largely unappreciated.  The only blogger who thanked me for my work was Mark Hillman, showing in one more way what a class act the guy is.

Senator-Elect Mark Udall refused to participate in a blog debate sponsored by schaffervudall and Liberal and Loving It.  He didn’t like it that schaffervudall had a “Udall as a Liar” category.  After the election, it came out that Mark Udall’s staff was being told to lie to the public.  It wasn’t that Mark Udall minded lying to the public—he only minded when it was pointed out that he was lying.

The half dozen or so conservative bloggers who signed up to write for the Colorado Union of Taxpayers blog before it was created and then couldn’t find the time to write a single essay.

As with many years, the good outweighed the bad.  There isn’t much one can do about the ugly.

Blogging at Christmas Time

This is my third Christmas as a blogger.  I’ve learned a lot in those three years.  One of the things that I have learned is that Christmas week is the slowest week for blogging of the year. 

Readers understandably lose their interest in politics and turn their attention to their family and friends during the holidays.  This is as it should be. 

We will be doing the same thing as we host what has become a traditional Christmas Eve overnight.  Santa somehow knows to come to our house to drop off the presents for the grandchildren so we, as grandparents, get to relive the magic of Christmas morning that is usually reserved to parents.

For the next week, the essays coming from this blogger will not be much about politics.  We will try to pick up some loose ends on non political subjects.

In the days before the New Year we will be writing about the year in blogging.  Stick around, but do enjoy this time of year with your family.  If you wander away, remember that we will still be here and still writing about politics in the new year.

Have a merry Christmas.

We Welcome a New Blog

Some months ago, Jeremy Pelzer and I engaged in a good natured banter about his being a paid journalist and his supposition that I might be jealous of his income and his status.  I assured him that my retirement was significantly more than his income and that I wasn't in a hurry to change places with him.

Jeremy has unfortunately entered the ranks of unpaid bloggers, a fate that I wouldn't have wished on him.  It seems only fair to link to his blog and wish him well.

Edited to add:  Jeremy has moved his blog.

The Coming Democrat Tsunami

Today’s Denver Post reports on how Obama will be using the internet to govern.  If you are a political junkie and not yet burned out on politics, you might want to read it.  It will impact your life.  It will impact Colorado politics.

"He's built the largest network anyone has ever seen in politics, and congressional Republicans are clueless about the communications shift that has happened," Democratic strategist Joe Trippi proclaims. The results, he says, "will be amazing to watch."

Yes, Republicans are clueless, but they won’t be for long.  They will get hammered.

The transition operation has a new website, www.change.gov, designed for anyone who wants to post a message of congratulations, offer suggestions for the new administration or apply for a government job. People are invited to submit their names and e-mail addresses, with the goal of creating a new list for the president-elect to tap when he wants to communicate directly about a program he's promoting or seek help urging members of Congress to support legislation he's proposed.

"Just imagine what happens when a congressman comes back to his district and 500 people are lined up for his town-hall meeting because they got an e-mail from Obama urging them to attend," said Thomas Gensemer, managing partner of Blue State Digital, which designed Obama's campaign website and change.gov.

In my experience, Republicans will find that they have the same problems that the Hillary Clinton campaign had for the same reasons:

Peter Daou, who ran Internet operations for the Clinton campaign, said her camp's Web outreach was limited because older and lower-income people — groups most supportive of her — weren't using the Internet for communication. Obama will need to find ways to reach them, he said.

Rebuilding the Party Begins With Us

 NOTE: I fixed the bad link to www.rebuildtheparty.com below.

After last week's shellacking at the polls, it became obvious that the Republican party needs structural change.  Colorado's results on the tax-increase initiatives shows that small-government, fiscal conservatism is alive and well. However, due to a lack of a cohesive message and the decidedly non

 Former Colorado House District 6 Candidate and blogger Joshua Sharf wrote a very well-reasoned essay about the elections that contains a strategy for the future.

As part of its rebuilding, retrenching, and strategy to win back one branch of the legislature and/or the governorship in 2010, the Republicans will be tempted to redirect resources from Denver to other areas. This would be a mistake. (snip)

Abandoning Denver is the first step to abandoning Westminster, Arvada, and Arapahoe (which isn't safe now, either). It's thinking tactically rather than strategically, and that all the good tactics in the world won't help a rebuild tarnished brand. We want to change the map, not just build walls here and there, and I think to do that, we need to think big. If we abandon Denver, we leave the other party free to do the same thing.

Look at District 6. We managed to get almost 33% - up significantly - and turn out nearly 12,000 votes for our side in a year when the tide was running the wrong way. We did this with a party where barely 1/4 of the precincts had active precinct committeepeople, where we had to spend time reconnecting with Republicans who hadn't been visited, mailed, or otherwise contacted by a local candidate in almost a decade. (emphasis mine)

Joshua Sharf's essay touches on a large problem: both the state and national parties are in total disarray.  How can Republicans not run candidates in every district within the state?  Perhaps because the local parties are in disarray as well, but that is the topic of a different essay.

Rebuilding the party begins with us.  What we need is a grassroots effort; an "Army of Davids" if you will.  A coalition of national bloggers and activists came up with a plan for this rebuilding (h/t Jennifer Rubin from Pajamas Media).

Read the plan at http://www.rebuildtheparty.com.  I will discuss some of the ideas further, including how to apply some of these ideas specifically to Colorado, in future essays.

by Civil Sense

Election Liveblogging Roundup

I will return to live-blog some of the election results after 7 p.m.  As this is my first time through election night as a blogger, I look forward to commenting on election information with our readers.

Ben DeGrow of Mount Virtus will be blogging at his site after 7 p.m.  El Presidente of Slapstick Politics will be part of CBS 4's election coverage from 7 to 8 p.m.

Vodkapundit (a.k.a. Stephen Green) is drunkblogging the election and has a list of cocktail suggestions for the evening.  Personally, I will go with my grandfather's favorite, the bourbon Manhattan on the rocks (2 shots bourbon, 1 shot sweet vermouth, a dash of bitters, and a maraschino cherry).  Tonight's outcome may dictate how many of these I will have...

by Civil Sense