Today a GREAT newspaper, one that was just short of 150 years old, that practiced respectable and impressive journalism always, printed its final edition. The Rocky Mountain News of Denver, Colo., closed its doors and shut down its press on this day, Friday, Feb. 27, 2009.
Newspapers, which for those of you who don’t know, started journalism and was really the first far reaching media. It came long before radio, television and computers. The sad thing is that this medium is now on the endangered species list and that is a sad, sad reality that should be cause for alarm. Media in other mediums have little time to dedicate the resources, space and energy to getting the facts like newspapers. To tell both sides of a story sometimes all three sides, if it can't be done in one story they follow that story until it has found an end.
Newspapers were meant to improve the lives of the common man while keeping them informed about what was happening in their communities and country. The first newspaper in this country was published in Boston in 1704 and contained mostly news from London but in 1722 Bartholomew Green took over as its editor and began devoting the space to domestic news, his son who took over for him grew the newspaper and the industry began. The four page paper fit news from Boston, the 13 Colonies and abroad on its pages.
The Rocky Mountain News will not be the last great paper or paper of any caliber to close its doors, it is a foreboding truth that industries that don’t change with the times decline to nonexistence. We saw it with the Steel industry, the Mining industry, the Lumber and Logging industry and we are seeing it in the Auto and Newspaper industries now. If a four-time Pulitzer Prize winning paper can in fact fold then what is to keep your community paper from doing the same?
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