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Perhaps Denver will be able to attract a better class of delegates once the railroad yards are ripped up behind Union Station. Until then though, it will have to settle for minor conclaves like the annual convention of the Colorado Press Association this week.
From Durango to Julesburg, publishers will gather to swill free liquor, complain about the cost of newsprint and attend seminars on how to earn better returns from their small-town newspapers.
Despite their protestations to the contrary, despite their praise of editorial quality when they hand out awards at their convention, Colorado newspaper publishers have demonstrated no fervent desire to reward their editors for putting out good papers.
In fact, it would be easy to make a case for the opposite: The surest way to lose your job as the editor of a small-town Colorado newspaper is to be good at your work.
Consider John Young, editor of the Alamosa Valley Courier from 1978 to 1983. He won a wall full of awards from the Colorado Press Association for everything from overall general excellence to his personal colurnn on the Wednesday editorial page. Under his direction, the Courier was an attractive, interesting paper.
But it was owned by a Kansas-based chain that sent in a new publisher -- some offspring of one of the principal owners. The new publisher wanted to put ads on the front page; he wanted to pull back on the Courier's coverage, and he wanted the paper to be less controversial. At last report, John Young was in El Paso, Texas. Reading the Courier now is about as interesting as watching paint dry.
Allen Best edited the Winter Park Manifest for Virginia Cornell; he stayed as editor after she sold it to William Potter Johnson, who controls about a dozen Colorado papers from his home in Tucson, Ariz. But Best didn't stay long. Last spring, less than a year after the sale, he was fired.
Never mind that the Manifest's circulation had risen
from 900 to more than 4,000 while Best edited it, and never
mind his writing awards dunng his seven years in Grand
County. Best was fired because he didn't fit in with the
community.
The rising circulation would normally
indicate that Best was putting out a paper that fit in well
with the community. But in the world of Colorado
journalism, one is supposed to believe that someone in
Tucson knows more about the needs of Winter Park than the
subscribers in Wintee Park do.
Best has served most of this winter on a snowmaking crew at a ski resort, and the Manifest now fits in so well with Winter Park that its circulation has dropped.
Nowhere in the Rockies was there a finer newspaper war than the battles in Summit County. A decade ago, Bill King, a chain owner, had the Summit Sentinel in Dillon. Bob Sweeney, another chain baron, owned the Summit County Journal in Breckenrldge. Even through several ownership changes in succeeding years, the papers went after each other hammer and tongs.
Stephanie Capitina edited the Journal in 1982 and 1983. During her tenure, she amassed awards, including the sweepstakes prize for putting out the best weekly newspaper in Colorado. Then the Journal owners decided to sell; the owners of the Dillon paper bought the Journal. When they met the Journal staff they told the customary lies about how no one had to worry about losing his job.
In any other enterprise, someone as talented and
enthusiastic as Capitina would be considered an asset. Not
in Colorado journalism, though. She was told that, Now
that we own both papers in the county, we don't have to
waste money and effort on putting out a good paper, so we
don't need you any more.
The last I heard, she was
waiting tables.
Those are merely one-time colleagues whom I happen to know or know of; only the publishers meeting in Denver know precisely how many other Colorado editors have damaged or destroyed their careers by putting out good papers. Maybe it will come up at one of the seminars while they're learning how to put 15-watt light bulbs in the lavatory to keep their employees from reading on company time.
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