Rocky Mountain News closing

HISTORIC ROCKY SLIDESHOW
DENVER - Colorado's oldest newspaper, the Rocky Mountain News, announced Thursday that the paper will publish its last edition Friday because it is being shut down.
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E.W. Scripps announced that its search for a buyer for the paper was unsuccessful and therefore the paper's last edition will be delivered on Friday, Feb. 27. The paper's closure comes just two months before its 150th anniversary.

"Today the Rocky Mountain News, long the leading voice in Denver, becomes a victim of changing times in our industry and huge economic challenges," said Rich Boehne, chief executive officer of Scripps, (pictured to the right, arriving at Denver International Airport Thursday morning). "The Rocky is one of America's very best examples of what local news organizations need to be in the future. Unfortunately, the partnership's business model is locked in the past." (read full news release)

During an afternoon news conference, Boehne said he had come from the newsroom where he had just spoken with the Rocky's staff. Boehne and Mark Contreras, the company's senior vice president of newspapers, told employees of the Rocky's closure in a meeting on Thursday.

"A terrible tragedy for the paper, for everybody involved and a very sad day for Denver as well," he said. "I doubt it's a big surprise to most of you in this room. We had hoped to find a better solution, either a buyer, or any other solution than this, frankly we had hoped to find - but we didn't."

"This is not a day that anybody really wanted to see," Dean Singleton, chairman and publisher of The Denver Post, said.

Boenhe says the Rocky's Web site will continue to be a property of Scripps and is "technically for sale."

Rocky Mountain News Editor, Publisher and President John Temple says the Web site will be "technically shut down but they will represent the long and amazing history of this newspaper."

"People are in grief and they're very, very upset trying to process all the emotions going with it and recognizing that we're putting out our final edition tomorrow," Temple said. "I hate that this day arrived."

Boenhe said the economic problems that have plagued not just the Rocky but all newspapers is "dramatic and at times pretty scary."

"I told the staff upstairs, you know this may look like a shutdown of a newspaper that many of us have seen over the years," he said. "This is nothing like what any of us have lived through before."

Boenhe also pointed to the loss of revenue in classified ads as a major problem that hit the newspaper industry.

Cincinnati-based E.W. Scripps has owned the Rocky Mountain News since 1926. In late 2008, the publishing company publicly announced plans to sell the paper, adding that if no acceptable offers emerged the company would "examine its other options." At that time, Scripps President and CEO Rich Boehne elaborated, saying Scripps may be forced to shut the paper down.

In January, Scripps announced that interested buyers had until Jan. 16 to submit bids. A little more than a month later, the paper announced details of its closure.

As initial plans to sell the paper were announced, the financial trouble of the Rocky became clearer.

In 2001, the Rocky and The Denver Post formed a joint operating agreement (JOA), known as the Denver Newspaper Agency. With that agreement, the Rocky took on $130 million in long-term debt following consolidation of production facilities. That long-term debt, combined with the $11 million loss on operations during the first nine months of 2008 brought Scripps to the decision to sell the paper.

"While we're silencing a voice here in Denver, one of the reasons we're also doing this is we believe Denver deserves a great daily newspaper and we hope by us doing this and you know trying to give the Post a good head start out of the gate, hopefully Denver can be well served for many, many years to come by a great daily newspaper," Boenhe said. "I would have much rather that had been the Rocky Mountain News. And if you want to know which paper in Denver is the best, through tomorrow, [it] is the Rocky Mountain News. And I wish that could have been the surviving brand, but that just didn't make a lot of sense."

Boehne says Scripps did not receive any offers to buy the Rocky.

"There was one interested party who backed away several weeks ago," Boehne said.

He would not say who the potential buyer was citing a confidentiality agreement, but said it was not "somebody who was an industry player."

"I certainly knew that this was the most likely alternative and you live with the hand you're dealt," Temple said.

Temple said Friday's edition of the paper was going to be "spectacular."

"You know a newspaper isn't ink on paper, it's the people who make the paper. And the people who work at the Rocky Mountain News have a tremendous spirit and attitude. It takes a certain type of person to join in the gang, the gorilla group, and I think you'll see that there's a real deep respect both for the staff and for the loyalty of our readers," he said.

The paper will include a 52-page special section on the closure with "Goodbye Colorado" as the headline. The publisher planned to print 350,000 copies. The normal weekday circulation is around 210,000.

"I want to take my hat off to the Rocky Mountain News," Singleton said. "They are an outstanding newspaper, run by an outstanding editor, with an outstanding staff that held up their end of the bargain extremely well. For 22 years, I've read it every morning and the first day I wake up not reading the Rocky will be a sad day for me."

Many of the paper's popular writers and features will now join the Denver Post, the Post said Thursday, in addition to all Rocky comics and many of its puzzles. A news release says Rocky employees will remain on the Scripps payroll through April 28.

Boehne said that many employees are still under contract with their guild and any severance package for leaving employees would be worked out with the guild.

Even though newspaper publications will cease, Scripps will continue to own and offer for sale the assets of the Rocky, including its name, masthead, archives and Web site.

Subscribers of the Rocky will receive the new Saturday Post starting this Saturday, and they will continue to receive The Post for the length of their subscriptions.