America’s Last Newspaper War: One Hundred and Sixteen Years of Competition

between the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News

A dissertation presented to

the faculty of

the Scripps College of Communication of Ohio University

In partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree

Doctor of Philosophy

Kenneth J. Ward

May 2018

© 2018 Kenneth J. Ward. All Rights Reserved.

This dissertation titled

America’s Last Newspaper War: One Hundred and Sixteen Years of Competition

between the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News

by

KENNETH J. WARD

has been approved for

the E. W. Scripps School of Journalism

and the Scripps College of Communication by

Michael S. Sweeney

Professor of Journalism

Scott Titsworth

Dean, Scripps College of Communication

ii Abstract

WARD, KENNETH J., Ph.D., May 2018, Journalism

America’s Last Newspaper War: One Hundred and Sixteen Years of Competition between the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News

Director of Dissertation: Michael S. Sweeney

The Rocky Mountain News and Denver Post fought for dominance of the Denver,

Colorado, newspaper market for more than a century, enduring vigorous competition in pursuit of monopoly control over a lucrative market. This frequently sensational, sometimes outlandish, and occasionally bloody battle spanned numerous eras of journalism, embodying the rise and fall of the newspaper industry during the twentieth century in the lead up to the decline of American newspapering and the death of the

News, which ended the country’s last great newspaper war.

This historical analysis charts the course of this competition throughout the lifetime of the News, which was founded in 1859. It begins by examining the Denver market’s early history, in which the News battled the city’s earlier newspapers for control in the decades before the Post’s founding. It then turns to document the 116 years of competition between the News and Post, drawing on manuscript collections scattered across the United States as well as oral histories with executives, managers, and journalists from the two papers. In particular, this dissertation interrogates these sources to better understand the strategies employed by the two newspapers in their competition with one another and against other challenges, such as widespread economic uncertainty and the decline of the newspaper industry. It explores the joint operating agreement entered into by the Post and News in 2001 to better understand its causes, conditions, and

iii results in serving the goals of the two newspapers and the Newspaper Preservation Act of

1970. Additionally, the dissertation investigates the News’s closure in 2009, critiquing the rationale for closing the paper offered by its parent, the E.W. Scripps Company.

These questions are evaluated in light of the modern media ecosystem, one in which news organizations tangle with one another on the Internet as well as their native platforms as they compete for the strained attention of their audiences. This work offers practical lessons of immediate use related to market competition, product differentiation, emergent media, economic hardship, and public versus private ownership models, advice that benefits today’s publishers as they attempt to stand out in a difficult news environment.

iv Dedication

For Christine.

v Acknowledgments

This work is indebted to the encouragement and support of more people than can be mentioned on this page. Included in this list are several institutions that kindly provided access to collections relevant to this project, including History Colorado, the

Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, the University of Colorado at Boulder, the Media School at Indiana University, Denver University, Colorado College, and Ohio

University’s Alden Library. In particular, this work thanks the staff of Denver Public

Library’s Western History department, which offered help at every turn of this project, including unparalleled access to irreplaceable manuscripts, without which this work would not have been possible. At Ohio University, instruction and financial support from the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism and the Contemporary History Institute enriched this project greatly. So too did the guidance of this dissertation’s committee—Drs.

Michael S. Sweeney, Aimee Edmondson, Katherine Jellison, and Greg Newton—without whom this work would have been incomplete. Additionally, the willingness of John

Temple, Dean Singleton, Larry Strutton, Neil Westergaard, Lynn Bartels, Jody Lodovic, and William Burleigh to share their time, expertise, and experience is greatly appreciated.

Personally, I am indebted to Will Mallory, Christine Crouse-Dick, John McCabe-

Juhnke, Lisa Parcell, and Michael S. Sweeney, a line of teachers and mentors that pushed me to become a better person and scholar. The same goes for Benny Stucky, the best friend anyone could ask for; my loving mother, father, and brother; and my parents-in- law, who graciously housed me during research expeditions to Denver. Finally, I thank

Bre, my wife, for her patience, her constant prodding forward, and her love, and I thank my baby daughter, Roz, for being adorable. I love you all.

vi Table of Contents Page

Abstract ...... iii Dedication ...... v Acknowledgments ...... vi Introduction ...... 1 Overview and Justification ...... 2 Literature Review ...... 5 Media Economics ...... 6 Regional History ...... 13 Rocky Mountain News and Denver Post History ...... 18 Method ...... 21 Organization ...... 23 Chapter 1. Primacy: 1859–1895 ...... 36 Publish or Perish ...... 38 Fighting the Frontier ...... 42 Maturing Market ...... 47 Chapter 2. Disruption: 1895–1926 ...... 57 A Full Field ...... 59 Transformation of the Denver Post ...... 63 The Post Style ...... 69 Management ...... 70 Editorial ...... 72 Advertising ...... 78 Consequence of Style ...... 81 The Post Becomes Dominant ...... 86 Napoleon Alone ...... 92 A Worthy Competitor ...... 97 Chapter 3. Stagnation: 1926–1945 ...... 113 Scripps-Howard Enters the Fray ...... 115 War ...... 118 Détente ...... 125 vii The Man from Missouri ...... 132 Surviving the Depression ...... 138 A New News ...... 148 Chapter 4. Profit: 1946–1970 ...... 173 Changing of the Guard ...... 175 “Who in Hell Does He Think He Is?” ...... 179 “Its Old Presses Roar Like the Torrents of Spring” ...... 187 Return on Investment ...... 193 The Carrot ...... 205 Too Many Cooks ...... 210 The Stick ...... 216 Two Newspaper Town ...... 219 Chapter 5. Transposition: 1971–1987 ...... 240 Empire in Decline ...... 243 Times Mirror Enters the Fray ...... 250 “They Let Us Up” ...... 258 Scripps-Howard ‘26 vs. Times Mirror ‘80 ...... 267 Chapter 6. War: 1987–1999 ...... 279 Breaking the Fever ...... 282 Curing the Disease ...... 289 Fight for Denver ...... 296 Value of an Empire ...... 302 Penny War ...... 305 Overture ...... 310 Chapter 7. Decay: 2000–2009 ...... 323 “Life is Better Than Death” ...... 324 Restructuring ...... 336 Cash Cow ...... 343 Economic Realities ...... 348 Death ...... 357 Last Run ...... 364 Chapter 8: Discussion ...... 382 viii RQ1: Competition ...... 382 Editorial ...... 383 Business Operations ...... 388 Hybrid Strategies ...... 392 Lessons ...... 395 RQ2: Survival ...... 398 RQ3: JOA ...... 406 RQ4: Fault ...... 411 Legacy ...... 418 Bibliography ...... 426 Archives and Manuscripts ...... 426 Books ...... 427 Interviews ...... 433 Legal Documents ...... 434 Newspapers ...... 434 Periodicals and Web Pages ...... 436 Theses and Dissertations ...... 440 Appendix A: A Note on Sources ...... 443 Colorado Media Histories ...... 443 Sources as Used in Each Chapter ...... 445 Appendix B: Major Individuals Mentioned in Connection with the Papers ...... 450

ix Introduction

It was early afternoon on February 26, 2009, when the staff of the Rocky

Mountain News gathered in a thick ring on the fifth floor of the Denver Newspaper

Agency building. They surrounded the news desk, which was actually three desks organized in a U-shape. In the center of the U stood three men. One of them, News publisher John Temple, was a regular behind the desk. He had been the leader of the

News since before it had moved into the DNA building in 2006. As one of the other men spoke, Temple shifted back and forth, sometimes putting his hands to his hips, sometimes leaning on a nearby chair, always moving. Immediately beside him stood Mark

Contreras, vice president of the newspaper division of the E.W. Scripps Company.

Standing almost completely still, in a dark suit and blazing red necktie, he posed a stark contrast to the restless, jacketless Temple. The third in the trio struck a balance between the two. Wearing a jacket and no tie, turning his body this way and that to address the entirety of the ring surrounding him, Rich Boehne was the one doing the talking, delivering the news the staff had expected for weeks but would never be ready to hear.

“It’s certainly nothing you did,” he said. “You all did everything right. But while you were out doing your part, the business model and the economy changed, and the

Rocky became a victim of that.”1

The following morning, slipper-clad Coloradans stepped onto their porches to pick up their final copies of the News. “Goodbye, Colorado,” it read.2

1 Overview and Justification

Was Boehne right? Had something changed by 2009 that made operating the

Rocky Mountain News, which had been fighting for survival in the Denver newspaper market against the Denver Post for more than a century, untenable? Or was the closure of the News the result of something else, such as changing priorities for the E.W. Scripps

Company, the effects of a 2001 joint operating agreement between the News and Post, smart decisions made at the Post, or something else entirely? The answers to these questions are paramount to understanding the newspaper industry in the first years of the twenty-first century, as the death of the News was one in a string of newspaper closures and sales typically ascribed to the rise of the Internet as a news source.3 As such, it is a central concern of this work.

This study analyzes the history of the competition between the Rocky Mountain

News and the Denver Post, a history which began with the Post’s founding in 1892 and continued until the News’s closure in 2009. It does so by considering the “biographies” of both publications in an effort to see how they responded to competition from one another and from outside forces. It begins with the birth of the News in 1859, exploring how its founders and early managers established their newspaper as the leader in the Denver news market in the face of numerous competitors and natural forces that could have cut its life short. Later, it considers the competition between the News and the Denver Post, which quickly displaced the News as local leader and became dominant for several decades. With the purchase of the News by Scripps-Howard in 1926, however, came a new approach to the company’s management, and the post-World War II era ushered in a phase of intense competition for supremacy. This battle culminated in the newspaper war

2 of the 1980s and 1990s in which each paper poured resources into efforts to force its rival out of the market. Finally, this work analyzes the apparent peace established by the joint operating agreement signed by the two newspapers in 2001, the effect that agreement had on competition in the first decade of the 2000s, and the factors contributing to the News’s closure in 2009.

These developments are explored through four research questions that probe the competition between and business practices of the two newspapers:

1. What were the main strategies employed by the Rocky Mountain News and

Denver Post as they competed for a limited audience from 1892, when the

Post was founded, to the closure of the News in 2009?

2. How did the News and Post respond to other threats, such as other Denver

newspapers, news media, and economic forces, to their long-term viability

from 1859, when the News was founded, to 2009?

3. What changed in the late 1990s that made a joint operating agreement

between the News and Post appealing to both parties?

4. To what extent do the reasons for closure of the News cited by the E.W.

Scripps Company match the evidence available to independent researchers?

Each of these questions carries with it assumptions about the two newspapers and must be explored using a variety of sources. The first assumes the News and Post were, in fact, in competition with one another, as measured primarily by the business practices of the companies such as advertising and subscription rates, editorial practices, use of technology, management decisions, public behavior of newspaper employees reflected in company documents, the written and spoken testimonials of individual managers and

3 employees, and contemporary newspaper articles. The second assumes that outside threats, including other newspapers, news media, and environmental factors existed and that the News and Post responded to them—at least eventually—as documented in the same places as question one. The third question takes for granted that something did indeed change in the 1990s that led both newspapers to embrace a joint operating agreement and that this change can be identified by studying trends of competition between the newspapers leading up to and during the 1990s combined with claims made by the two newspapers in their joint operating agreement application, business documents, and the comments of News and Post employees. Question four assumes only that the accuracy of Scripps’s claims can be gauged using information in business records, interviews with News and Post employees, and historical trends of the challenges faced in Denver by Scripps uncovered in the course of answering earlier research questions. The first five chapters of this work grapple with questions one and two to establish the historical record of competition between the newspapers. Chapters 6 and 7 draw in the last two questions, analyzing the impact of the joint operating agreement and causes of the News’s death.

Unlike every other major historical work about the Rocky Mountain News and the

Denver Post, this work is not a celebration of either newspaper. Book-length histories cast a rosy light on the publishers, editors, and reporters of both papers, even when their behavior was unquestionably amoral. News founder William Newton Byers, for example, has been portrayed as a determined pioneer rather than a savvy but risk-taking settler who frequently played on the fears of readers to secure the future of his newspaper. Likewise,

Frederick Gilmer Bonfils and Harry Tammen, who transformed the twice-failed Post into

4 the leading newspaper between the Missouri River and the Pacific coast, are portrayed as rambunctious caricatures of yellow journalism rather than ruthless businessmen who bullied enemies into compliance through editorial sensationalism and, occasionally, physical violence. This research does not seek to canonize or vilify anyone. Instead, it attempts to understand the actions of such men and women in the context of the competition they faced in their own times rather than applying the worn tropes of the history of the American West. Those running Denver’s newspapers were not prospectors or cowboys but rational actors seeking to make money and ensure the stability of their businesses.

As a dispassionate historical analysis, this research offers much both to media researchers and casual readers alike. Most significantly, it presents an analysis of newspaper competition on a scale not reached by similar works of journalism history. By looking at the entire life of the News, it allows media historians and economists to see strategies of newspaper competition play out over time, providing insights useful to researchers of the past as well as the present. This drives the work toward a contextualized consideration of the newspaper crisis of the 2000s, which, given its recentness, is only now becoming clear enough for accurate analysis. Contemporary history of this nature provides insight for those struggling today to identify ways to ensure newspapers and other news media remain viable into the future.

Literature Review

The present study requires competency in a number of fields both inside and outside of the typical purview of journalism history. This includes a broad understanding of landmark and recent texts in the fields of media economy and newspaper competition;

5 histories of Colorado, the Rocky Mountains, and frontier journalism; quantitative and qualitative studies of Colorado journalism; and histories and analyses of the Rocky

Mountain News and Denver Post themselves. The following literature review introduces those texts used as a foundation for this work, moving from the general to the specific.

Media Economics

Although this dissertation is not a study of media economics in the social scientific sense, it relies heavily on theories, terms, and taxonomies from that field. The reader could turn to any number of texts that survey that literature. This study, however, relies specifically on the descriptions of general media economics provided in Alexander,

Owers, Carveth, Hollifield, and Greco’s Media Economics: Theory and Practice.

Specifically, it borrows the authors’ definition of media economics: the line of study

“concerned with how the media industries allocate resources to create information and entertainment content to meet the needs of audiences, advertisers, and other societal institutions.”4 This dissertation is interested in both macroeconomics, which pertains to the newspaper industry as a whole, and microeconomics, which focuses on the individual firm (such as the Rocky Mountain News and Denver Post) and consumer, and benefits from observations made by Alexander and others that detail the simultaneous decline in the number of daily newspapers and circulations and increase in newspaper profits characteristic of the second half of the twentieth century.5

A comprehensive consideration of the newspaper industry in particular is found in

Lacy and Simon’s 1993 Economics and Regulation of United States Newspapers.

Advances in newspaper printing technology led to an explosion in the number of newspapers in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century, leading most

6 major cities to have several newspapers vying for a limited readership. Through the course of the twentieth century, however, single newspapers came to dominate most

American cities.6 This occurred in part because advertisers typically purchased space in only one newspaper in a market, usually whichever had the largest circulation. The stronger newspaper could invest the extra advertising revenue to improve the news product, leading to higher circulation at the detriment of the weaker newspaper, the latter suffering from what media economists call a “circulation spiral.” In time, the weaker newspaper folded, and the high capital required to start a new competing newspaper, combined with the circulation advantage of the survivor, discouraged the entry of a new competitor to the market, resulting in a monopoly for the survivor.7 By the end of the century, on the eve of the rise of the Internet as a widely adopted medium for news, 98 percent of all daily newspapers held monopoly positions in their markets.8

The circulation spiral emphasizes the newspaper’s status as two distinct products in a single package. One is the information contained within—the articles, opinions, and advertisements sold to readers by subscription or by the individual copy. The other is the newspaper space and reader attention sold by newspaper firms to advertisers.9

Newspapers grew increasingly reliant on the latter as the twentieth century progressed, with 81 percent of their revenue coming from advertising by 2000.10 Newspaper advertising is typically divided into three categories: national, local (retail), and classified. This three-legged stool was imperiled by television, which took national advertising from newspapers and increased their reliance on local and classified advertising.11 Newspapers were thus vulnerable when the Internet attacked a second leg of the stool, classified advertising, through sites like Ebay.com and Craigslist.org, leaving

7 papers to survive on what were by the mid 2000s steadily shrinking advertising revenues.12

Newspapers were originally family companies, but they increasingly came under public ownership after 1960, as described in Cranberg, Bezanson, and Soloski’s Taking

Stock: Journalism and the Publicly Traded Newspaper Company. Newspaper firms felt pressured to expand their financial resources in the latter half of the twentieth century. In part this was protective—newspapers issued public stock, seeking to reduce indebtedness and prevent the takeover of family firms by capital-rich outsiders.13 Yet they were also swept up in the wave of consolidations that came to define the industry in the 1980s and

1990s, and the capital provided from public stock allowed them to finance acquisitions of competitors and newspapers in other markets. While editorial operations remained decentralized in the rush to public ownership, which by 1998 drew 44 percent of all US newspaper circulation into publicly owned newspaper firms, editorial staffs watched as newsroom budgets were slashed to appeal to shareholders.14 The result of the shift to public ownership was a sharp decline in the number of family-run newspapers in favor of widely distributed ownership in shareholders who often favored short-term profitability and made decisions for financial reasons with little concern for news quality.15

As media scholars such as C. Edwin Baker, Ben Bagdikian, and Eli Noam point out, the trends of consolidation seen in the transition to public ownership were visible in a shift toward chain ownership and conglomeration throughout the century. Bagdikian’s work, The Media Monopoly, made waves when it first appeared in 1983 by claiming that only fifty corporations controlled the media of the United States.16 At that time, the holder of the largest number of newspapers, Gannett, owned eighty-eight newspapers

8 with a combined daily circulation of 3.8 million, Thomson controlled seventy-seven,

Knight-Ridder thirty-four, and Scripps-Howard sixteen. Some newspapers have since changed hands and a few companies have left the field, but newspaper concentration has intensified, leaving the industry susceptible to the concerns Bagdikian raises. Problems derive not just from the chains themselves, which are susceptible to poor management, inattention to editorial quality, and censorship imposed by mass advertisers, but from the interlocking of corporate directorships as well, threatening the integrity of the news product. Media economists such as Noam show the trend of consolidation noted by

Bagdikian continued into the twenty-first century, with 77 percent of all US daily newspapers under chain ownership by 2000.17 By that year, nearly 99 percent of US cities were monopoly markets for daily newspapers—Denver, then, was exceptional in terms of newspaper competition. Newspaper ownership concentration has only increased since

2000; by 2013, the largest ten chains controlled 50 percent of total US daily newspaper circulation, compared to 45 percent in 2000.18 While Bagdikian specifically points to instances and risks of corruption in his work, Baker’s 2007 book Media Concentration and Democracy: Why Ownership Matters highlights the dangers concentration poses to the very foundation of the United States. Chain newspaper ownership threatens the

“distribution of communicative power” among Americans while limiting the ability of the media to act as the watchdogs of democracy.19 Unfortunately, the rise of the Internet has done little to increase competition and protect these important roles traditionally relegated to newspapers. While the Internet has significantly impacted the overall media ecosystem in the United States, the changes it has brought about have done little to lessen the pitfalls of media concentration.20

9 Newspaper firms consolidate in a few ways. In some cases, one firm purchases another. The new owner can operate the newspaper as a chain, often pooling its resources with others held by the company, or, if the buyer already has a newspaper in the market, it can close the newspaper, taking its subscribers and property and sometimes adding the name of the killed newspaper to its own flag. Unlike most other businesses, however, newspapers in the same market have the option of attempting to enter into noncompetitive contracts called joint operating agreements, or JOAs.21 As Busterna and

Picard explain in Joint Operating Agreements: The Newspaper Preservation Act and Its

Applications, JOAs are not mergers but binding agreements in which two newspapers agree to share production, distribution, advertising sales, or other similar resources while remaining separately owned and editorially independent.22 Congress passed the

Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970 with encouragement from newspaper publishers ostensibly to curb the death rate of American newspapers. Designed to preserve a diversity of editorial perspectives in a given city, JOAs are anticompetitive by nature, allowing newspapers to legally collude on matters such as subscription and advertising rates. As such, they are only permissible if one of the two newspapers filing for a JOA is failing as determined by a distinct disadvantage in its market share, having entered a circulation spiral, or otherwise having irreversible financial losses.23 However, the US attorney general, who has almost unlimited discretion in approving and denying JOA requests, has historically erred in favor of combinations, even in circumstances when the status of a newspaper as “failing” has been questionable. Busterna and Picard conclude

JOAs are rarely successful in sustaining high degrees of editorial quality and do little to prevent powerful newspapers from continuing to attempt to push their subordinate

10 partners out of business.24 The Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News entered into a

JOA in January 2001. Interestingly, Edward Adams has shown that the E.W. Scripps

Company, which owned the News, began creating “combinations” in the 1890s with stronger newspapers in agreements similar to JOAs as defined by the Newspaper

Preservation Act and continued forming combinations, later as formal JOAs, until the

Post-News agreement in 2001.25

Media consolidation and the shift toward public ownership were helped along by the disruptions brought to the newspaper industry in the post-World War II period.

Newspapers flourished in the late 1940s, but, as David Davies shows in The Postwar

Decline of Newspapers, 1945–1965, they were then afflicted by economic pressures that intensified through 1965 and continue to this day.26 The scope of the challenge facing publishers was often difficult for them to see, masked by ever-increasing advertising revenues and circulations.27 Beneath the surface, however, labor and production costs, led by skyrocketing prices for newsprint, were wreaking havoc on newspaper budgets, with expenses rising faster than revenues by 1965.28 Circulations were growing but not keeping up with the rise in the US population.29 Gross advertising revenue was increasing, but newspapers’ share of advertising revenues against other media was actually falling.30 Television was making its influence known, and Americans were beginning to see TV as a news source in addition to, or in place of, newspapers.

Broadcasters capitalized on their increasing popularity, stealing away national advertisers in particular. Newspapers failed to react to these challenges as forcefully as was necessary. As noted above, they were beginning to see themselves as beholden solely to profitability rather than a hybrid of profitability and public service. Publishers, satisfied

11 by increasing advertising revenues, were slow to react to the challenges rushing at them.

In Journalism at the End of the American Century, 1965–Present, James McPherson argues this shift toward an emphasis of short-term profitability over the long-term viability of a newspaper’s editorial content was probably the most influential change to the industry after 1965.31 New competitors such as cable and the Internet joined broadcast television to disrupt the newspaper industry’s business model, further damaging national advertising revenues. The long-term trend of newspaper deaths continued, particularly in the nation’s urban cores, spurred on by suburbanization. McPherson notes that “as newspaper disappeared, so did readers—especially the working-class readers of afternoon papers, who now could watch ninety minutes of local news in the afternoon and another thirty minutes in the evening before going to bed.”32 While publishers were increasingly focusing on profits, rising costs and competition threatened to make running even the most illustrious newspapers difficult. Scholars such as Philip Meyer have since claimed that newspapers can only survive in the modern media environment if they focus on just the opposite, investing in newsrooms and strengthening their editorial product.33 Few publishers have heeded this advice.

In If It Ain’t Broke, Break It: How Corporate Journalism Killed the Arkansas

Gazette, Donna Lampkin Stephens explores the confluence of these forces—media concentration, the shift toward public ownership, and competition from other media platforms—in one competitive newspaper market. In charting the fall of the Arkansas

Gazette to its Little Rock rival, the Arkansas Democrat, Stephens fixes blame on Gazette corporate owner Gannett’s commitment to market concerns over journalistic values.34

Starting with the purchase of the Gazette by the Heiskell family in 1902, the newspaper

12 had been a bastion of journalistic integrity in the state, taking bold moral stands on civil rights and other issues in the face of widespread opposition. Despite its willingness to fly in the face of the majority, the Gazette remained on top of the Little Rock market into the

1970s against competition from the Democrat. When the Democrat came under chain ownership in 1974, its buyers accepted the challenge of a newspaper headed into a circulation spiral.35 They offered a joint operating agreement to the Gazette that would have heavily favored that paper, but the Gazette owners declined, leading to a newspaper war that steadily ground away the Gazette’s dominance. Eventually, the family lineage that had managed the Gazette was forced by increasing costs and a failed antitrust lawsuit against the Democrat to sell. Despite allocating substantial funds in a bid to kill the

Democrat and end the war, Gannett’s company culture, poor management, and degradation of the journalistic quality of the paper held the company from overwhelming its competitor, and the Gazette closed in 1991.36 Stephens concludes the Gazette was wrong to decline the joint operating agreement, underestimated its competitor, and failed to respond with sufficient speed and aggression to its in-town underdog rival. She holds remote management chiefly responsible, however, concluding the “Gannett corporation murdered the Arkansas Gazette.”37 Other historians, such as Richard Kluger in The

Paper, analyze market competition and the deaths of particular newspapers, but not with the degree of focus Stephens gives to the factors leading to the Gazette’s closure or the level of relevance to the present study.38

Regional History

A background in several distinct periods of American history as played out on the

Great Plains and in the Rocky Mountains is crucial to understanding the history of the

13 state of Colorado and its effect on Denver’s newspapers. The region that became

Colorado experienced a constant reimagining of its economy, politics, and its collective identity. As Elliott West explains in The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, and the

Rush to Colorado, the discovery of gold in the region brought the strain of tens of thousands of settlers and hundreds of thousands of head of livestock to a land already inhabited by horse-ranging Indians, leading to violent clashes.39 As they pressed across the Great Plains from the Missouri River valley and reached into the Rocky Mountains, the white settlers developed technologies in response to the challenges of the American

West such as windmills and barbed wire, both reactions to the arid and seemingly endless plains described in Walter Prescott Webb’s The Great Plains.40

Just as eastern agricultural practices had to be adjusted in adaptation to life in the

West, so too did newspaper practices, as described by journalism historians Barbara

Cloud and David Fridtjof Halaas. Cloud’s work, The Business of Newspapers on the

Western Frontier, details the establishment and practices of newspapers west of the

Missouri River beginning with the California Gold Rush of the 1840s through the

“closure” of the frontier in 1890 as defined by Frederick Jackson Turner.41 The establishment of newspapers consistently outpaced population growth throughout the era, booming in the 1860s and remaining strong through 1890, with an average population of

5,329 supporting each daily Colorado newspaper and 2,520 each weekly in 1880.42 The economics of frontier newspapering were far different than those of the twentieth century professional press. Publishers needed to develop subscription and advertising rolls from scratch, find ways to distribute their newspapers in widely dispersed areas lacking transportation infrastructure, maintain access to distant supplies such as newsprint, and

14 overcome unpredictable disasters including fires and floods. Early publishers supported themselves not only through advertising and subscriptions but also through job printing, often the determining factor of profitability.43 Partisanship presented another opportunity to make money. Publishers who offered editorial support to politicians and parties were rewarded with lucrative public printing contracts, political offices, and even cash.44

Survival, however, required more than money alone. Cloud identifies three factors that contributed to the success or failure of a newspaper: location, with proximity to lasting economic and natural resources and the concentration of competitors being key; management, both in terms of decision-making and the ability to collect advertising and subscription fees from customers; and credit, with indebtedness and periods of financial strain increasing the likelihood of failure.45

Halaas’s Boom Town Newspapers enriches Cloud’s work by focusing on the day- to-day concerns of the frontier editor specifically in and near the Rocky Mountains.

There, editors fought desperately to secure stability for their communities and, in turn, themselves by promoting their towns to readers in the East, encouraging the continuing westward flow of settlers and capital.46 Their struggles led them to regular conflicts with competing editors in vitriolic press wars, which presented entertainment to readers but the outcome of which might determine the success or failure of a particular newspaper.47

Complementary research projects by journalism historians such as David Vergobbi delve deeper into the workings of mine camp journalism in particular, investigating the interplay of local boosterism, politics, capital, and labor in the mineral-producing towns of the Rocky Mountains.48

15 Frontier Colorado was formally organized as a territory of the United States in

1861 and admitted to the Union as a state in 1876. The state’s frontier period is highly researched, providing a specific literature focused on that period alone. From there, the histories of Colorado considered in this research broaden in scope. Wilbur Fisk Stone’s three-volume History of Colorado covers a multitude of topics under the domain of

Colorado history through 1918, including treatments of Colorado’s press and its most significant publishers.49 It is assisted in its treatment of early Colorado by Frank Hall’s

History of the State of Colorado, which is equally thorough but stops more than two decades earlier.50 Modern histories are numerous, although two stand out as the most comprehensive and balanced available. The first, and that which was used as the primary source for a fundamental knowledge of the major turns in Colorado history, is

Ubbelohde, Benson, and Smith’s A Colorado History. Like many histories of the area, however, it focuses a disproportionate amount of energy on the first fifty years of settlement in the state. Consultation of Abbott, Leonard, and Noel’s Colorado: A History of the Centennial State rounds out one’s understanding of twentieth-century Colorado.

The events reviewed in these texts are often geographically represented in Noel,

Mahoney, and Stevens’s Historical Atlas of Colorado, which maps the distribution of settlers, industries, and transportation routes across the state from the gold rush through

1990.51 These general texts are enriched by William Wyckoff’s history of Colorado’s human geography titled Creating Colorado: The Making of a Western American

Landscape, 1860-1940. Wycoff explores the state’s development through five regional themes that inform this study: the importance of being first (in settlement or business alike), the regional tendency to blend cultures, the conflict between capitalism and

16 individualism, the influence of natural factors to development, and the impact of politics.52

The literature detailing Colorado’s political history is badly lacking despite the contentiousness and uniqueness of the state’s politics. R. G. Dill provides a biased but detailed account of early Colorado politics in his 1895 book The Political Campaigns of

Colorado. It favors the Republicans, who were dominant through most of the period Dill reviews, and Dill admits in his preface that “political history is made by the dominant party.”53 However, this downplays the fact that the Democrats were an influential minority party throughout the area and ignores the rise of populism in the state in the

1890s. Dill’s book was published before the state Republican Party was ripped apart by the silver question in the late 1890s, positioning the Democrats to find limited success throughout the Progressive era.54 The details of the era between 1895 and World War II are most efficiently gleaned from general Colorado histories, as they have not received comprehensive book-length treatment. Cronin and Loevy’s Colorado Politics and Policy:

Governing a Purple State, however, reviews Colorado’s postwar political history, noting in particular the gradual decline of the conservative and staunchly independent “frontier ethos” throughout the twentieth century.55 By the time the book was published in 2012,

Colorado was a fiercely divided state, with Republican-leaning rural areas surrounding a

Democratic-leaning urban core.

In many ways, the history of Colorado is the history of Denver itself. Though it faced initial competition from other settlements vying to be the state’s commercial, political, and transportation hub, Denver has been Colorado’s nexus since the first gold rush towns were platted in 1858. Yet while general histories of the state focus a great deal

17 on the city, more can be learned by turning to the few city-specific books that have been written. Once again, a dominant early history and modern history are worth noting.

Denver’s ascendancy in the state is captured in Jerome C. Smiley’s History of Denver, which reviews in incredible detail the city’s chronology through 1901.56 Yet while

Smiley charts Denver’s rise as the state capital, his book stops before the city became the regional leader it is today. Thus, Leonard and Noel’s Denver: Mining Camp to

Metropolis is a crucial addition, filling in most of the twentieth century.57

Rocky Mountain News and Denver Post History

General histories of both the Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Post have been written at various points in the last sixty years, and each has been the subject of focused scholarly review as well. To begin, the story of the News’s early history is most comprehensively told in Robert L. Perkin’s The First Hundred Years: An Informal

History of Denver and the Rocky Mountain News. The title says it all. The First Hundred

Years presents the highlights of the News from its founding in April 1859 to the book’s publication in 1959. It focuses heavily on the newspaper’s frontier years, committing only about a third of its pages to the twentieth century. Perkin tells a thoroughly researched and entertaining story of a newspaper growing into maturity, but it is an uncritical celebration of a newspaper—as Gene Fowler says in his foreword to the book, it reads like “a love letter to two of my old sweethearts: the City of Denver, and the

Rocky Mountain News.”58 Thus, it is best read alongside more rigorous histories such as those written by Deryl V. Gease and Lawrence Michael Kennedy, both of whom centered their master’s theses on the News. Gease’s work, “William N. Byers: Promoter of Early

Colorado Agriculture, 1859-1870,” argues News founder Byers was one of the first to see

18 the arid high plains and temperamental river valleys of Colorado’s eastern slope as untapped agricultural resources, casting aside eastern farming practices and advocating for innovation.59 Kennedy, on the other hand, draws attention to the role of News editorials and reports in inciting Colorado settlers against Native Americans.60 Both works are limited in scope and focus exclusively on the early days of Colorado newspapering.

Histories of the Denver Post are more numerous but equally uncritical. The first, which was published in 1933 by Post reporter Gene Fowler, is the least formal and perhaps the most entertaining of the group.61 It imagines dialogues and hyperbolizes events, and it is a generally unreliable account of the Post’s history. Thunder In the

Rockies, published in 1976 by Post associate editor Bill Hosokawa, is a step in the right direction.62 It is to the Post what The First Hundred Years is to the News: a thorough and thoughtful popular history that, while sourced with insufficient clarity, shares enough about its sources to lend it some credibility. It looks at the shady and sometimes violent business practices of Post cofounders Frederick Bonfils and Harry Tammen in a playful manner, as do nearly all histories of the newspaper. Included in this list is William H.

Hornby’s Voice of Empire: A Centennial Sketch of The Denver Post.63 Voice of Empire comprises a selection of Hornby’s Post columns celebrating the newspaper’s centennial in 1992. It is as uncritical as an in-house history might be expected to be. Unfortunately, there are few rigorous histories of the Post. The work of Mort Stern, who wrote his dissertation on the management of Post publisher Palmer Hoyt and, later, a biography of

Post cofounder Harry Tammen, comes closest. His dissertation, “Palmer Hoyt and the

Denver Post: A Field Study of Organizational Change in the Mass Media of

19 Communication,” investigates the influence management plays on the running of a newspaper.64 It is a thorough and well-written work that generally supports the importance of newspaper management and specifically highlights how Hoyt transformed the Post into a postwar newspaper.65 Stern’s dissertation should be approached with a skeptical eye, however, as he served as personal assistant to Hoyt. Stern’s biography of

Tammen, Looking for a People’s Champion: A Search for the Real Harry Tammen, is similarly complicated.66 That work argues Tammen’s reputation was tarnished by his association with Bonfils and by portrayals of him in books such as Fowler’s Timber Line.

Stern was commissioned to write Looking for a People’s Champion by Tammen’s descendants, who sought a book that would bring their forebear out of Bonfils’s shadow.67

Finally, a limited number of academic studies used the Post and News together to explore media issues. One such work that is central to this study is Chen and Shughart’s

“Bargaining for Monopoly: The Joint Operating Arrangement between the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News.” Its authors analyze the conditions of the joint operating agreement between the two newspapers, which was approved in January 2001, to determine whether the News was at risk of failure, as required to enter into a JOA, when the agreement was proposed. Chen and Shughart conclude that, based on the fact that the newspapers agreed to split profits equally, the News was not in immediate danger and the

JOA should not have been approved.68 Allowing the JOA turned a competitive duopoly market into a monopolistic one that harmed readers, advertisers, and other Denver publications.69

20 Method

This study utilizes primary sources spanning the period under review, 1859-2009.

As neither the Post nor the News have been the subjects of recent histories, the sources used here include collections never before tapped for academic consideration. The sources consulted can be divided into three categories: manuscript collections containing business correspondence and documents, interviews with News and Post employees, and newspaper articles.

Dozens of manuscript collections were consulted, most of which are housed in either Denver Public Library’s Western History Collection or History Colorado, both in

Denver. Particularly important to the study of the nineteenth century were the diaries in the John Lewis Dailey papers, the William N. Byers papers, and the William Russell

Thomas letters, all in the Western History Collection. At History Colorado, first-hand recollections of the early development of Colorado journalism provided by William

Byers in Newspaper Press of Colorado and History of Colorado were crucial to the frontier period. For the early twentieth century, important collections in the Western

History Collection included the Bill Hosokawa papers, Tammen family papers, Wallis

Melvin Reef papers, Leonel Ross O’Bryan papers, Robert Lamont Chase papers, Thomas

Hornsby Ferril and family papers, and Robert L. Perkin collection. The Roy Howard papers housed at both the Library of Congress and Indiana University span the 1920s through the 1960s. Additional sources viewed at History Colorado included the Sue

O’Brien Papers, the Frederick G. Bonfils collection, the Ellis Meredith collection, and the

Bill Hosokawa collection.70 Manuscript sources for the late twentieth century through

2009 included the O’Brien and Hosokawa collections mentioned above as well as the

21 Rocky Mountain News papers at Denver Public Library, which include a mass of papers retrieved from News publisher John Temple’s office when the paper closed and which seem to have not been used in previous historical research. Of particular interest in these collections are business papers—memos, budgets, legal proceedings, market analyses, and so on—that shed light on the decision-making processes carried out at both the Post and News.

While manuscript collections are crucial to the early period reviewed here, employees and executives of the newspapers enriched this study’s understanding of competition during the newspaper war of the 1980s and 1990s as well as the period between the signing of the joint operating agreement in 2001 and the News’s closure.

Oral histories were collected from the following individuals: Dean Singleton, publisher of the Post and CEO of MediaNews Group; John Temple, editor and publisher of the News;

Jody Lodovic, CFO and president of MediaNews Group; Larry Strutton, first a News pressman, later a Times Mirror executive, and eventually publisher of the News; Neil

Westergaard, executive editor of the Post and editor of the Denver Business Journal; and

Lynn Bartels, reporter at the News and, following that paper’s closure, the Post.71

Finally, articles in the Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Post, as well as articles in other Denver newspapers, were reviewed as necessary to explore how the newspapers competed editorially and for reports contemporary to developments in the two newspapers’ history. Given the large time frame studied, even a representative sample of all articles published in the papers would have proven unmanageable, and most content would have contributed nothing to the study at hand. Thus, the newspapers were only consulted to answer specific questions drawn out by other primary and secondary

22 sources consulted. Articles were viewed in a few ways. For the frontier period, many issues of the News and its contemporaries were available via the online Colorado Historic

Newspapers Collection.72 This was the most accessible means available to the researcher as was the first choice when available. However, its holdings of the News extend only to

1876. Thus, it was supplemented by the microfilm collection of the News and Post at

Denver Public Library for most years. For 1988 and later, the Post was read online on

ProQuest through Ohio University’s Alden Library, while the News was available from

1990 to 2009 online on NewsBank, again through Alden Library.

Organization

As noted above, the nature of a project that encompasses over a century of competition requires the use of numerous methods as well as regular shifts in focus.

Thus, the character, sources, and style of each chapter in this work are unique from those around it. There was no Denver Post when the News’s wagons first pulled into an infant

Denver; likewise, the waves of intense competition between the two newspapers were interrupted by long periods of peace or the subjugation of one paper by the other. Sources were alive and able to be interviewed for the last several decades of history reviewed here, while they obviously were not for its early chapters.

This difference in style is most pronounced in chapter 1, which details the founding of the Rocky Mountain News, its ascendance in Denver, and the numerous challenges to its early existence, spanning a period from 1859 to 1895, the largest covered in a single chapter in this work. Far more primary sources detail the first decade of the paper’s history than subsequent years, which is accounted for here by turning to issues of the newspapers themselves to fill in the gaps. However, focusing on the

23 founding of the News rather than the decades that follow makes sense, as these formative years set the tone for the Denver newspaper market throughout most of the nineteenth century.

Chapter 2 pivots toward the core concern of this work, the competition between the News and the Denver Post. It opens with the 1895 purchase of the Post by Frederick

Bonfils and Harry Tammen, two men who successfully challenged the News’s dominance and established the tone of twentieth-century Denver journalism. The newspapers themselves are the most important source for the early sections of this chapter, as they illustrate the ways Bonfils and Tammen employed the practices of yellow journalism in their paper. Sections leading to the chapter’s conclusion in 1926, the year Scripps-

Howard purchased the News, benefit from transcripts of interviews conducted by

Hosokawa and Stern in their own studies of the Post.

Chapter 3 begins with the purchase of the News by Scripps-Howard in 1926 and the newspaper war that ensued, a fight that signaled a change in Scripps-Howard’s overall competitive strategy, siphoned away the revenues of both the News and Post, and, after two years of vigorous competition, drove the papers’ owners to the bargaining table.

After examining the subsequent truce between the papers, which included some of the anticompetitive tenets of a joint operating agreement, the chapter reviews the steps taken by both papers to survive the Great Depression and adaptations, including the News’s shift to a tabloid format, made as a result of World War II. Chapter 3 ends in 1945 and is primarily told through manuscript collections, especially the Roy Howard papers held by the Library of Congress.

24 With Chapter 4 comes a wave of modernization at the Post beginning in 1946 that, combined with the News’s tabloid format, affected the voices and appearances of the two papers throughout their remaining years of competition. The chapter focuses on the strong management at both papers, which set the News on an upward trajectory and established the Post as a regional newspaper, while taking time to detail the Post’s successful defense against an attempted hostile takeover. It observes the first years in which the two newspapers began cultivating the audiences they ended with, the Post claiming white-collar, upper-class readers and the News a more diverse and working- class readership. The chapter ends with the retirements of leaders at both papers in 1970.

Chapter 4 benefits from the largest number of sources available for any period of study considered in this work and draws on manuscript collections, oral histories, and management studies from archives spanning from Washington to Denver.

The years covered by chapter 5, 1971 through 1987, focus on the rapid ascendance of the News to the top of the Denver newspaper market and the fall of the

Post under seventeen years of weak management. It focuses on the failures of the Times

Mirror Company, which ended the independent ownership of the Post in 1980 when it bought that paper, as well as the opportunities missed by the News to end the newspaper war by putting the Post out of business. This is the first chapter in which oral histories collected specifically for this project are utilized. These interviews are complemented by manuscript collections and interviews held in Denver.

Chapter 6 transitions to the late stages of competition between the Post and News.

It begins with the purchase of the Post by MediaNews Group, the company led by ascendant newspaper collector Dean Singleton, in 1987, before exploring the changes he

25 made to the paper in returning it to profitability. The chapter’s focus then shifts to the unsuccessful attempts by the News to face the resurgent Post, including the shrinkage of its operating area in Colorado and the penny war of the late 1990s. It concludes in 1999, after two years of penny newspaper sales and damage to the papers’ profits, when a joint operating agreement was offered by Scripps to the Post. Chapter 6 combines the oral histories collected for this research, business documents salvaged from the News and stored at Denver Public Library, and preexisting interviews to chart the course the two papers took toward their JOA.

The narrative history of the competition between the papers concludes with chapter 7, which covers the brief but defining period between the legal proposal of the

Post and News to enter into a JOA in 2000 through the News’s closure in 2009. Chapter 7 alternates between a micro focus on the Denver newspaper market and a macro focus on the newspaper industry and economy at large to contextualize the end of the News in the larger story of the industry’s collapse, observing how the latter drove Scripps away from newspapering toward more profitable ventures. The chapter relies primarily on oral histories, company documents from the News, and content in the Post, News, and other

Denver newspapers.

The dissertation ends with chapter 8, which answers the research questions posed at the beginning of this introduction and situates this project toward the future. Drawing on the News’s nearly 150-year history in Denver and the 116 years of competition between the News and Post, chapter 8 offers several suggestions to today’s publishers of both print and digital content. The chapter concludes with a brief reflection on the

26 significance of this research and the fate of Denver’s residents in the wake of the News’s closure almost ten years ago.

1 Rocky Mountain News, “Final Edition—The End of a Newspaper,” YouTube video, 21:43, posted May 26, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGBacrUAIDQ.

2 “Goodbye, Colorado,” Rocky Mountain News, February 27, 2009.

3 The Seattle Post-Intelligencer stopped publishing a print edition in March 2009, the same month the Tucson Citizen closed. In June 2010, the Honolulu Advertiser was sold and merged into the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Other newspapers, such as the Ann

Arbor News, reduced home delivery schedules to less than seven days a week. William

Yardley and Richard Pérez-Peña, “Seattle Paper Shifts Entirely to the Web,” New York

Times, March 16, 2009; “‘Tucson Citizen’ to Close Saturday—After 138 Years,” Editor and Publisher, March 15, 2009; “Honolulu Star-Advertiser—About Us,”

StarAdvertiser.com, accessed February 2, 2018, http://www.staradvertiser.com/about;

Rem Rieder, “Reduced Newspaper Delivery: Smart or Death Knell?” USA Today,

January 31, 2013, accessed February 2, 2018, https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/columnist/2013/01/31/syracuse-post- standard/1878315.

4 Alison Alexander, James Owers, Rod Carveth, C. Ann Hollifield, et al., eds.,

Media Economics: Theory and Practice (Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum

Associates, 2004), 5.

27

5 Robert G. Picard, “The Economics of the Daily Newspaper Industry,” in

Alexander et al., eds., Media Economics: Theory and Practice, 109-26; James Owers,

Rod Carveth, and Alison Alexander, “An Introduction to Media Economics Theory and

Practice,” in Alexander et al., eds., Media Economics: Theory and Practice, 3-48.

6 Stephen Lacy and Todd F. Simon, The Economics and Regulation of United

States Newspapers (Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex, 1993), 14-16. Regarding the newspaper industry and newspaper management, see also Conrad C. Fink, Strategic

Newspaper Management (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1996).

7 Ibid., 18-19. Exceptions to such market forces are exemplified by the

Washington Times, founded in 1982 by Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church in the

Washington Post’s monopoly market. “Sun Myung Moon Paper Appears in

Washington,” New York Times, May 18, 1982.

8 Picard, “The Economics of the Daily Newspaper Industry,” 110.

9 Lacy and Simon, The Economics and Regulation of United States Newspapers,

42.

10 Picard, “The Economics of the Daily Newspaper Industry,” 113.

11 Lacy and Simon, The Economics and Regulation of United States Newspapers,

16.

12 Regarding the decline of classifieds advertising, see Keith L. Herndon, The

Decline of the Daily Newspaper: How an American Institution Lost the Online

Revolution (New York: Peter Lang, 2012), 163–66.

28

13 Gilbert Cranberg, Randall Bezanson, and John Soloski, Taking Stock:

Journalism and the Publicly Traded Newspaper Company (Ames: Iowa State University

Press, 2001), 27.

14 Ibid., 105.

15 Ibid., 7. Family-owned newspapers did not disappear altogether, as demonstrated in Mary Jane Pardue’s 2010 work, which explored eight family-owned newspapers as case studies demonstrating the strengths and weaknesses of family ownership. See Mary Jane Pardue, Who Owns the Press?: Investigating Public vs.

Private Ownership of America’s Newspapers (Portland: Marion Street Press, 2010).

16 Ben Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly (Boston: Beacon Press, 1983), xvi.

17 Eli M. Noam, Media Ownership and Concentration in America (New York:

Oxford University Press, 2009).

18 Eli M. Noam, Who Owns the Media?: Media Concentration and Ownership around the World (Oxford Scholarship Online, 2016), B-18.

19 C. Edwin Baker, Media Concentration and Democracy: Why Ownership

Matters (New York: Cambridge, 2007), 6, 16.

20 Ibid., 113-120.

21 Similar agreements, such as joint sales and joint marketing agreements, allow broadcasters to operate multiple stations in a single market.

22 John C. Busterna and Robert G. Picard, Joint Operating Agreements: The

Newspaper Preservation Act and its Application (Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex, 1993), 5-

10.

29

23 Ibid., 51.

24 Ibid., 99, 110-11.

25 Edward E. Adams, “Secret Combinations and Collusive Agreements: The

Scripps Newspaper Empire and the Early Roots of Joint Operating Agreements,”

Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 73, no. 1 (Spring 1996): 197.

26 David R. Davies, The Postwar Decline of American Newspapers, 1945–1965,

History of Journalism Series (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2006). It should be noted that the point of greatest newspaper penetration had already passed by World War II.

More newspapers were published in the early 1910s, when 689 cities had competing dailies, than at any other point in American newspaper history. Industry trends, economic forces, and competition from the rise of radio after World War I cut into newspaper penetration in the following decades. Michael Emery and Edwin Emery, The Press and

America: An Interpretive History of the Mass Media (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey:

Prentice Hall, 1992), 289–90.

27 Davies, The Postwar Decline of American Newspapers, 2–3.

28 Ibid., 77.

29 Ibid., 113.

30 Ibid., 60.

31 James Brian McPherson, Journalism at the End of the American Century,

1965–Present, History of Journalism Series (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2006), 189.

32 Ibid., 191.

30

33 Philip Meyer, The Vanishing Newspaper: Saving Journalism in the Information

Age (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2004), 14.

34 Donna Lampkin Stephens, If It Ain’t Broke, Break It: How Corporate

Journalism Killed the Arkansas Gazette (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press,

2015).

35 Ibid., 86.

36 Ibid., 196. Stephens describes Gannett as a company that “stressed profits above all and featured an absentee ownership that had no stake in the community or state.” Ibid., 5.

37 Ibid., 211.

38 Richard Kluger, The Paper: The Life and Death of the New York Herald

Tribune (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986).

39 Elliott West, The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, and the Rush to

Colorado (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998), 79, 89; J. Donald Hughes,

American Indians in Colorado (Boulder: Pruett, 1987), 9.

40 Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains (Lincoln: University of Nebraska

Press, 1981).

41 Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American

History,” in Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American History (New York:

Henry Holt and Co., 1921), 1-38.

42 Barbara Cloud, The Business of Newspapers on the Western Frontier (Reno:

University of Nevada Press, 1992), 6, 11.

31

43 Ibid., 83. In job printing, editors printed products such as business cards, event tickets and programs, and political leaflets aside from their newspaper operations.

44 30.

45 Ibid., 179-86.

46 David Fridtjof Halaas, Boom Town Newspapers: Journalism on the Rocky

Mountain Mining Frontier, 1859–1881 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press,

1981), 10.

47 Ibid., 64.

48 David J. Vergobbi, “Hybrid Journalism: Bridging the Frontier/Commercial

Cusp on the Coeur d’Alene Mining Frontier” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of

Washington, 1992).

49 Wilbur Fisk Stone, “The Press of Colorado,” in History of Colorado (Chicago:

S.J. Clarke Publishing, 1918), 781-815. Biographies appear in volumes 2 and 3.

50 Frank Hall, History of the State of Colorado (Chicago: Blakely, 1889–1895).

51 Thomas J. Noel, Richard E. Stevens, and Paul F. Mahoney, Historical Atlas of

Colorado (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994).

52 William Wyckoff, Creating Colorado: The Making of a Western American

Landscape, 1860–1940 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 8–13.

53 R.G. Dill, The Political Campaigns of Colorado (Denver: John Dove, 1895), 3.

Some degree of balance to Dill’s bias is found in James Chandler Prude, “Parties and

Politics in Denver, 1893–1904” (master’s thesis, University of Denver, 1969).

32

54 Paul F. Gerard, “The Silver Issue and Political Fusion in Colorado, 1896: A

Study of Pre-election Maneuvers of Political Parties and of the Members of the Colorado

Delegation to the Fifty-fifth Congress,” University of Wichita Bulletin 35, no. 4

(November 1960). The so-called “silver question” referred to proposed changes to US monetary policy that would have increased the use of silver as currency.

55 Thomas E. Cronin and Robert D. Loevy, Colorado Politics and Policy:

Governing a Purple State (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012), 23.

56 Jerome C. Smiley, History of Denver (Denver: Times-Sun Publishing, 1901).

57 Stephen J. Leonard and Thomas J. Noel, Denver: Mining Camp to Metropolis

(Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1990).

58 Gene Fowler, “Foreword,” in Robert L. Perkin, The First Hundred Years: An

Informal History of Denver and the Rocky Mountain News (Garden City, New York:

Doubleday, 1959), 7.

59 Deryl Vaughn Gease, “William Newton Byers: Promoter of Early Colorado

Agriculture, 1859–1870” (master’s thesis, University of Denver, 1966).

60 Lawrence Michael Kennedy, “The Colorado Press and the Red Men: Local

Opinion About Indian Affairs, 1859–1870” (master’s thesis, University of Denver, 1967).

61 Bill Hosokawa, Thunder in the Rockies: The Incredible Denver Post (New

York: William Morrow, 1976).

62 Gene Fowler, Timber Line: A Story of Bonfils and Tammen (New York: Blue

Ribbon Books, 1933).

33

63 William H. Hornby, Voice of Empire: A Centennial Sketch of the Denver Post

(Denver: Colorado Historical Society, 1992).

64 Mort P. Stern, “Palmer Hoyt and the Denver Post: A Field Study of

Organizational Change in the Mass Media of Communication” (PhD diss., University of

Denver, 1969).

65 Ibid., 532–33.

66 Mort Stern, Looking for a People’s Champion: A Search for the Real Harry

Tammen (Denver: 1989).

67 Ibid., 1. The closeness of Tammen’s descendants to the project are highlighted in the Rippey papers at the Denver Public Library.

68 Shuo Chen and William F. Shughart II, “Bargaining for Monopoly: The Joint

Operating Arrangement between the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News,”

Antitrust Bulletin (Spring 2004): 46.

69 Ibid., 48.

70 Collections of Bill Hosokawa’s research are available at Denver Public Library and History Colorado.

71 William Dean Singleton, interview with Ken Ward, October 27, 2017; John

Temple, interview with Ken Ward, October 22, 2017; Jody Lodovic, interview with Ken

Ward, October 20, 2017; Larry Strutton, interview with Ken Ward, October 21, 2017;

Neil Westergaard, interview with Ken Ward, October 20, 2017; Lynn Bartels, interview with Ken Ward, October 20, 2017. Transcripts available from researcher upon request.

Titles identified are those most important to this study and, except in the case of

34

Westergaard, who is still editor of the Denver Business Journal, are not the positions currently held by those individuals.

72 The Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection is online at http://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/.

35 Chapter 1. Primacy: 1859–1895

There was little reason to believe the Rocky Mountain News would last a year.

When whispers about gold in the mountains at the far western end of Kansas

Territory began circulating in the early and mid 1850s, there was much excitement—and much humbugging. News reports were sensational, including an article in a Kansas newspaper reporting “plenty of glittering ore upon the surface” of the ground.1 As interest grew, rumors that filtered east were often printed, then exaggerated, then printed again.

Even when the reports of gold were proven true by a party of prospectors, prompting a mad rush westward in the spring of 1859, there was no evidence treasure was to be found in any sizeable quantity.2 The mine camps built around the gold strikes were tent towns.

In most cases, a hoard of hopeful prospectors would rush in, take whatever gold was present, and either rush off to investigate the latest reported find or wander home, and there was no reason the camps along Cherry Creek at the place that would later be called

Denver would be any different. There was always a chance a town could establish itself and outlive the inevitable exhaustion of gold in the immediate vicinity, perhaps as an outfitting post like Independence at the start of the Oregon Trail or, if the region proved valuable, as a political center, but such ideas were mad dreams as farfetched as the hopes of instant riches in the minds of those rushing west.

Yet not all was uncertain when aspiring News publisher William Newton Byers set off for the site of the gold strike, chasing the mad dash of wagons, horses, and pushcarts racing to the mountains. Byers was confident he knew the way, having written a guide describing the route to the mines (without actually having taken the trail himself) in 1858.3 He also knew there was a readership of tens of thousands waiting for him, eager

36 for the arrival of a press.4 Those pioneers were hungry for news from the East and hungrier for news related to mining—where luck was being found and where it was not, which outfitters had what kinds of equipment, the locations of lawyers to help stake their claims, assayers to evaluate their gold, and saloons to take their gold away. Land speculators laying out towns were eager to publicize the purported riches of the region to spark further settlement. No one knew how long the Cherry Creek settlements would last, but as long as they did, a newspaper would do well.

Byers’s Rocky Mountain News, the first newspaper in Colorado, grew with it.

Relying often on its primacy in the embryonic market, Byers and subsequent owners of the News built and maintained the paper as the leading news source in nineteenth-century

Denver. This chapter analyzes these early years of the Denver newspaper market from

1859 to 1895 and the ways in which the News tackled the challenges posed by competitors and the Rocky Mountain frontier. It begins by describing the founding of the

News, racing alongside Byers from Omaha to Cherry Creek in his longshot bid to establish the first newspaper in the region. The chapter then turns to review the various challenges, including fires, floods, frontier economics, and fleeting partnerships, faced by the fledgling News while explaining the paper’s purpose in young Denver. Finally, the chapter examines the conditions that arose as the Denver news market stabilized over the following decades, briefly summarizing both the newspapers that rose to challenge the

News as the city’s voice as well as changes in the News’s ownership. It concludes on the eve of the Denver Post’s meteoric rise in the market, a development in the waning years of the nineteenth century that fundamentally restructured newspaper competition in

Denver.

37 This chapter does not attempt to exhaustively describe the first thirty-six years of the News’s existence. That has already been accomplished in works such as Robert

Perkin’s The First Hundred Years, which provides a rich narrative of the paper’s early days.5 Instead, the following remains tightly focused on the competitive pressures acting on the News during the era, forces that primed the city’s news market for the entry of the

Post in the 1890s and the vigorous fight between the News and Post that followed.

Publish or Perish

William Newton Byers had a knack for spotting opportunities created by the westward expansion of the American frontier. Born in Madison County, Ohio, in 1831,

Byers moved with his family to sparsely settled Iowa in 1850, taking a job as a surveyor plotting the eastern sections of the state for the government.6 In 1852, he struck out on his own, migrating to the Pacific Coast to survey newly organized land in Washington and

Oregon territories. After a stint on the coast, Byers returned east, settling in Omaha shortly after the establishment of Nebraska Territory in 1854.7 He was successful there, serving as deputy surveyor to the federal government, real estate agent, alderman of

Omaha, and a member of Nebraska’s first territorial legislature.8 After flitting about from

1850 to 1854, he was an established member of the community and had much to lose by leaving. Yet when persistent rumors of gold in distant sections of the territory proved true, prompting a steady westward flow of prospectors through Omaha in late 1858 and early 1859, Byers again saw opportunity.

Setting his mind to establishing a newspaper at the site of the diggings along

Cherry Creek, Byers moved quickly to secure partners and printing machinery. He sent a message to John Lewis Dailey, a lifelong newspaper printer and partner of Byers in an

38 earlier failed newspaper project, inviting him to join the journey west as a partner.9

Dailey started for Omaha two days later. In the meantime, Byers convinced a local doctor and publisher of Omaha’s Nebraska Republican, Gilbert C. Monell, to buy into the business. Monell joined, but he brought a printer of his own, Thomas Gibson, into the project as a partner.10 Cash in hand, Byers rushed off to purchase the printing press of a nearby failed newspaper.11 Dailey, meanwhile, arrived in Omaha to find he had been squeezed out of partnership in the rush to start the newspaper. Yet he was undeterred.

Monday, February 28, just five days after receiving Byers’s letter, Dailey set to preparing the outer pages of the first issue of the prospective newspaper in Omaha, the company wanting to push out their initial run as soon after arriving at Cherry Creek as possible.12

Not knowing what town they would be settling in, Dailey listed the location simply as

Cherry Creek, Kansas Territory. Across the top of the first page, in large, block letters, he put “Rocky Mountain News.”

The News founders set out only eight days later, the two wagons carrying their newly purchased press and equipment joining a train of pioneers headed for the diggings.13 The team faced a number of challenges along the first half of the trail, including mud and washed-out river crossings resulting from a recent spate of wet weather. The most alarming incident of the trip, however, occurred after the group pulled into Fort Kearney twenty-two days after leaving Omaha. There, Byers was told that a man had passed through the fort only a few days earlier carrying a large quantity of printing type, presumably intending to found a newspaper.14 Being beaten to the punch at

Cherry Creek could threaten the viability of Byers’s entire enterprise. But there was nothing that could be done except press onward and hope the unknown publisher would

39 be slow in putting out his paper. By mid-April, the team was nearing its destination, and

Byers rode ahead of the group to scout his fate at Cherry Creek. An evening after his departure, an urgent message arrived at his party’s camp urging it to press on with haste.15 The team set out the next day, reaching Cherry Creek in the afternoon, and, upon learning of the situation, its members immediately unloaded the press and equipment from the wagons and assembled them in the attic of a combination store/saloon.16 Work on the News began the following morning.

Byers had spurred his party because he learned upon arriving at Cherry Creek that the man mentioned at Fort Kearney, Jack Merrick, had indeed headed to the diggings intent on establishing the camp’s first newspaper.17 Luckily, Byers and his men had something Merrick lacked: focus. Merrick had squandered his advantage, spending his time acquainting himself with the diggings rather than setting up his press and getting to work. When the Byers party pulled into town, Merrick’s equipment still sat where it had been unloaded from its wagon, unassembled and far from producing its first edition in

Colorado.18 The Rocky Mountain News might have been out of business before pulling into town. Instead, it had a fighting chance.

The ensuing race to push out the first newspaper at Cherry Creek was a welcome diversion from the snows and frigid cold of a long Colorado winter—a sensation for the prospectors huddled in drafty shacks along the creek bed. Deep snow on the ground encouraged prospectors to neglect the diggings and instead follow the developing competition. They watched as two very different operations, each with its own advantages and disadvantages, arranged type in their presses. On one side of Cherry

Creek, in a settlement called Auraria, Byers’s crew labored to prepare a six-column

40 broadsheet similar in size to all but the largest New York dailies. Across the creek in

Denver City, Merrick was throwing together a much smaller paper. At only three columns wide, his newspaper required far less content, but his press was small, slow, and capable of registering only one page per impression.19 Byers had a team working alongside him and a Washington hand press, the press of choice among small newspapers in the American West for decades, which could register two pages per impression.20

Merrick’s few days wandering Cherry Creek gave him a better understanding of the local news. But Byers had a head start, with most of the News’s two outside pages already complete as a result of Dailey’s hard work back in Omaha. It was anyone’s guess who would win, and prospectors expended considerable energy trudging back and forth across

Cherry Creek to observe Colorado’s first newspaper skirmish.21 For the gamblers in the audience, a pinch of gold dust might have been on the line. For Byers’s News, the wager was quite possibly survival.

Those longing for excitement in the frigid April air must have been satisfied. The race grew increasingly close as the sun set on April 22, and as Merrick in Denver City and the News team in Auraria furiously set thousands of tiny pieces of type in place, it seemed as if either newspaper could be the victor. Then, at about 10 p.m., the News’s outside pages having been printed, its inside pages were locked into the press and inked.22

The lever was pushed, then retracted, and from the machine Byers pulled the first copy of the first edition of the first newspaper published from Cherry Creek. A mere twenty minutes later, Merrick stepped away from his own press clutching the first issue of the

Pioneer.23 It would be that paper’s last.

41 The gamblers in the crowd settled their bets. For Byers, the winnings were survival. But the race to publish was only the first salvo in the News’s long battle for survival. It had earned the right to publish at Cherry Creek, but it would have to continue to fight if it wanted to last.

Fighting the Frontier

Having secured a market for his newspaper by winning the race against Merrick,

Byers turned his attention to expanding its readership. In this earliest period of its existence, the main purpose of the News was not to print for locals the day-to-day activities of the Cherry Creek settlements, which consolidated into the single municipality of Denver in 1860, but instead to publicize the mines to easterners.24 As was the case for many frontier mine camp newspapers, the News was foremost a booster—an advertising medium that sought to encourage a westward flow of settlers and capital to sustain the embryonic community.25

Denver in spring 1859 was in dire need of such a champion. The city faced a mass exodus of “go-backs,” pioneers who found the hard and often disappointing work of prospecting too much to bear. Of the 100,000 hopefuls historians estimate set off for the diggings in Denver’s early days, half likely turned back even before reaching the mountains, many at the urging of a stream of dejected prospectors headed east.26 Of those who made it to the diggings, another half gave up and returned home after only a few discouraging weeks. For young Denver, the go-backs posed an immediate public relations crisis. As they trudged eastward, they spread pessimism about the diggings to editors eager for any information they could get from the West. One newspaper in far northeast Kansas relayed the observations of Ike Hite, a man who had wandered to the

42 diggings in fall 1858 before staggering back east, defeated, in early summer 1859. Hite provided the local newspaper with a copy of the Rocky Mountain News, for which he had traded twenty-five cents worth of coffee at Cherry Creek, and the newspaper published his claims that the News was full of falsehoods and that Byers was broke and on the verge of starvation.27 In his paper’s first issue, Byers fired back that go-backs like Hite were

“restless spirits who are of no advantage to any country” who had shown up at the diggings, prospected foolishly, and left disappointed when they could not “shovel out nuggets like they have been accustomed to dig potatoes.”28

At the same time, Byers strove to make it as easy as possible for gold-struck easterners to make their way to Denver. The News’s second issue was dominated by a map of the route to Cherry Creek and articles that explained the safest passages across the

Kansas plains.29 Other articles were of interest to locals and easterners alike. One story about the possible organization of the region around the diggings into the new state of

Jefferson suggested to those already at Cherry Creek that the settlement’s prospects were looking up. Even more importantly, it suggested to distant easterners that Denver was a stable, prosperous community, encouraging them to migrate or invest in the area’s businesses.

This idea of stability was central to Byers’s boosterism, particularly as doubt in the eastern press was quelled by visits from high-profile journalists verifying the abundance of valuable minerals in the mountains.30 The News was an outspoken opponent of lawlessness, sometimes decrying violence with such vehemence as to attract to itself the ire of gunslingers.31 Byers’s desire to secure Denver’s stability and his confidence in the righteousness of US expansion into the territory led him to support

43 violent action against the area’s Native American populations, including the Sand Creek

Massacre of 1864.32 But many of the News’s positions were less damning, such as its advocacy for the development of intensive agriculture in the region. Byers understood that the eastern model of farming, with its dependence on precipitation, was untenable on the territory’s high, dry plains. But he also knew that Denver’s survival depended on the development of local food sources. As such, he called for agricultural expansion along the region’s rivers, publicizing successful methods of irrigation while encouraging the US government to help spread irrigated farming throughout the territory.33

Such boosterism was published for the benefit of locals and easterners alike, spurring distant financiers to capitalize the agricultural efforts of settlers who had given up the pickaxe for the plow. The News also contained a large amount of information from the East specifically for the benefit of locals, especially once Denver’s position was strengthened by the formation of Colorado Territory in 1861. Of particular interest was news of the Civil War, carried to the News first by Pony Express and then, beginning in

September 1863, by telegraph.34 News from the mines filtered down from the mountains and into the paper’s pages, which also featured an abundance of partisan political reporting. The quantity of local news in the newspaper was often less than accounts from other parts of the country, however, both because of the gravity of that information during the ravages of the Civil War and the preferences of a readership that, because of

Denver’s small size, often already knew local goings-on before they were published.35

From its earliest days and throughout the era, the News served as a nexus of a young and fragile town. Its pages notified new arrivals where they could find lodgings, grab a drink, buy equipment, find the best diggings, stake claims, have their gold assayed,

44 and store their money. They served as Denver’s bulletin board, airing ideas and disagreements before the public, and as a pulpit for the paper’s preferred politicians. And they documented the isolated community’s triumphs and tribulations as it developed from a dusty mining camp to a successful and growing frontier city.

The paper’s ability to serve as Denver’s hub was frequently threatened. The economics of publishing a frontier newspaper, for example, often drove Byers to champion infrastructure improvements and to be creative in sourcing printing materials.

Such challenges were faced by all of the settlement’s businesses. With the exception of wild game, the food sold and served by grocers, merchants, and restaurateurs had to be hauled across the vast plains from Missouri River towns such as Omaha and Kansas City.

The equipment used in Colorado’s mines had to be moved along the same shipping lines from the eastern manufacturing centers in which they were produced. Likewise, the success of the News depended on a consistent supply of paper and ink, both of which had to be sourced in the East and freighted by wagon to Denver. This could not always be relied upon, especially in the paper’s earliest days. In one instance, Byers was forced to print on brown wrapping paper that happened to be available in Denver when a shipment of newsprint failed to arrive.36

But unlike other Denver businesses, Byers was reliant on the East for more than material goods. He needed news. Additionally, as a result of its booster role and the hunger in the East for information about gold discoveries, the News was an early export of the region. This two-way flow of information required access to the mail. Throughout

1859 and into 1860, mail delivery was infrequent and dependent on the good graces of the Leavenworth & Pike’s Peak Express Company, later the Central Overland, California

45 and Pike’s Peak Express Company, which maintained a near monopoly of freight service to and from the city.37 The situation improved in August 1860 with the establishment of a post office in Denver and the resultant use of regulated postage rates. Yet deliveries to and from the town remained slow and faced interruption by weather and confrontation with Native Americans.

Still other threats appeared without warning, sometimes bringing the News to the very brink of failure. This was particularly true in 1863 and 1864, when Denver was subjected to a series of devastating natural disasters. The spring of 1863 was one characterized by little moisture and harsh winds that turned the town’s wooden buildings into tinderboxes. Driven by the winds, an April fire torched a large swath of Denver, coming within only two blocks of the News’s home, a two-story structure elevated on stilts above Cherry Creek.38 While the newspaper was spared from cremation, it still faced an enormous economic hurdle. It would be months before less-fortunate Denver businesses that had been destroyed in the fire would be able to again advertise in the paper. Readers who lost their homes or businesses would likewise be unable to pay for their subscriptions. Byers was fortunate to have been spared the flames, but his News was likely affected as seriously as any other business in Denver that had not been directly burned.

An even greater challenge arose one year later, when heavy May rains throughout

Colorado’s mountains and foothills caused Cherry Creek to gradually rise before, without warning and in the dead of night, driving a wall of water through the heart of town.39

Homes, businesses, and Denver’s city hall were washed away, and at least eight people died in and around town. The News building, perched above the creek, was torn from its

46 foundation and destroyed, and five of the newspaper’s employees who were asleep inside were nearly swept away with it.40 So strong was the torrent that the News’s improved three-thousand-pound steam press was washed away with ease. Thirty-five years later, parts of the original Washington press that had printed the inaugural issue of the News were fished from the bed of the nearby South Platte River. The entire News plant was gone.

The paper survived only as a result of an offer by the publisher of another Denver newspaper, the Commonwealth, to allow the News to be printed in his plant. An agreement was struck to jointly produce the daily edition of the Commonwealth for delivery to all News subscribers until Byers could secure new equipment.41 It would not take him long. One month later, he purchased the Commonwealth and its plant, discontinuing that paper and allowing the News to stay in business.42

Maturing Market

Time would prove the unhurried Merrick, whom Byers and his team had beaten in the rush to publish first at Cherry Creek, among the weakest competitors in the Denver newspaper market. After losing that race, Merrick had willingly surrendered the field to the News. Others would be less willing to cede Denver to Byers. First among these stronger challengers was Thomas Gibson, the News’s printer and one of its three founding partners. By summer 1859, Gibson had already become eager to strike out on his own, offering his stake to John Dailey, who had joined the News party when it left

Omaha despite having his offer of a share in the company rescinded. After negotiation among Byers, Dailey, Gibson, and Monell, the latter having never made it to Denver, the

News was reorganized as a partnership between only Byers and Dailey.43

47 This freed Gibson to publish his own paper. He bought Merrick’s small, idle press in exchange for twenty-five dollars in flour and bacon and moved it to a new settlement along Clear Creek in the mountains west of Denver, founding Colorado’s third newspaper, the Rocky Mountain Gold Reporter.44 That newspaper did not last long,

Gibson selling it to a group of investors who began publishing yet another paper, the

Western Mountaineer, in the fledgling Golden City, yet another new territorial settlement.45 Then, in spring 1860, Gibson mounted a direct challenge to the News’s dominion over Cherry Creek, launching the Rocky Mountain Herald, later called the

Colorado Republican and Rocky Mountain Herald, in Denver and bringing the past partners into direct competition.46

Like most of the News’s competitive fights throughout the era, of which there were many, the battle was waged on multiple fronts. First and most entertaining was the war of words, in which Gibson lobbed insinuations and insults at the News from the columns of his newspaper in almost daily flights of editorial flourish. Examples are plentiful. On a day in August 1861, for example, the Herald criticized the “bummer’s organ in Cherry Creek” for publishing false news, for criticizing a nearby encampment of soldiers, for allegedly stealing content from the Herald’s pages, and for being mistaken in its weather forecasts.47 In October, the News fought off accusations by the Herald that it had been bribed to favor certain companies. “Of course the charge . . . is a lie— manufactured for a purpose,” Byers fired back. “It is almost unnecessary to add that no one will try to buy the Herald’s influence for any measure. It isn’t worth a groat.”48

Such editorial clashes were certainly played out to attract amused readers, leading to increased subscriptions. Higher circulations would appeal to new advertisers, who

48 were eager to place ads where they would be seen by the largest audience. But the fights between newspapers also served a political function. Denver’s frontier papers retained the vestiges of the lingering era of the partisan press, during which the primary purpose of a newspaper had been to circulate political ideas, with advertising and circulation revenue often keeping the lights on rather than yielding great profits.49 Partisan newspapers were commissioned by politicians and parties to persuade the public to throw their support behind particular ideas and election candidates. When their efforts were successful in carrying their patrons into power, editors received lucrative government printing contracts, with lesser rewards sometimes doled out to those newspapers supporting opposition politicians. The fight between the News and Herald, both of which supported the Republican Party, was one mounted in support of factions within the party in an effort to curry favor.50 Byers, who had quickly ingratiated himself with Colorado’s

Republicans, secured the territorial government’s printing contract, staved off repeated assaults from the Herald, and rose to the top of the Denver newspaper market. Gibson lasted only until 1863, when he sold his paper and left town. The Herald, then rebranded as the Commonwealth and Republican, was the same newspaper Byers bought out following Denver’s flood.51

The News’s competitive struggles pushed it to modernize, innovate, and improve.

Indeed, it was the Herald, not the News, that introduced the first daily newspaper in

Colorado and led the latter to publish more frequently than its initial once a week.52

Settlers demanded news from their old homes in the East, especially during the Civil

War, when the News procured accounts of battles and political maneuverings first via slow overland mails and the much faster Pony Express before, in September 1863,

49 telegraph wires reached Denver.53 As the town and market matured, so too did the interests of its reading public. The political role of the News, though central to its content into the twentieth century, gradually receded to provide more space to local, national, and international news. Such reflected the rise of the popular press model, which emphasized information of mass appeal and grew increasingly prominent in the East throughout the century.54 As the content of the paper changed, so too did its ownership. Byers sold the

News in 1878, with the paper first passing into the hands of a group of Denver businessmen. It was sold soon thereafter to William Austin Hamilton Loveland, one of the state’s foremost Democrats, who changed the political orientation of the News and managed to expand the paper’s circulation from 1,800 daily, which it had boasted when

Byers sold the paper, to a claimed 7,000 in 1885.55 The following year Loveland sold his interest in the newspaper to his editor, John Arkins, and Arkins’s brothers, who were joined in the venture in 1890 by a local lawyer and politician named Thomas MacDonald

Patterson, a man who would take the paper to new heights in the decades that followed.56

While the News bested its early competitors, it was constantly harassed by upstarts hoping to knock it off its perch atop the market. By 1895, a heap of unsuccessful newspapers lay at the News’s feet. The precise number of failures depends on how one counts. News historian Robert Perkin identified at least thirty abortive papers in the first twenty years of Denver’s history alone.57 Only a handful had summoned the strength to look the News in the eye, and, despite circulation figures that claimed one or two newspapers rivaled the size of the News’s readership, the paper’s primacy in the market afforded it a privileged position. But that special standing did not mean the News was a runaway leader in Denver—the field was hotly contested. And a new kind of newspaper

50 was coming to town, one that would capitalize on the fragmentation of the market in a bid to become Denver’s leading newspaper.

1 “Rocky Mountain Gold,” Topeka Tribune, January 9, 1858.

2 Carl Abbott, Stephen J. Leonard, and Thomas J. Noel, Colorado: A History of the Centennial State (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2013), 44.

3 William N. Byers and John H. Kellom, Hand Book to the Gold Fields of

Nebraska and Kansas (Chicago: D. B. Cooke, 1859).

4 Byers himself later estimated no fewer than 150,000 hopefuls tramped their way west, while historians suggest that number was closer to 100,000. William N. Byers,

History of Colorado (Denver: 1884), Q 978.8 B999H, History Colorado, 6; Carl

Ubbelohde, Maxine Benson, and Duane A. Smith, A Colorado History, eighth edition

(Boulder: Pruett, 2001), 62.

5 Robert L. Perkin, The First Hundred Years: An Informal History of Denver and the Rocky Mountain News (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1959).

6 Byers, History of Colorado, 1.

7 Ibid.

8 Wilbur Fisk Stone, History of Colorado, vol. 3 (Chicago: S.J. Clarke Publishing,

1918), 498; autobiography fragment, folder 15, box 2, Dailey Papers.

9 Autobiography fragment, Dailey Papers; diary transcript entry for February 23,

1859, folder 1, box 2, Dailey Papers.

10 Perkin, The First Hundred Years, 84; autobiography fragment, Dailey Papers.

11 Byers, History of Colorado, 3.

51

12 Diary transcript entry for February 28, 1859, Dailey Papers.

13 Letter from Charley Sumner to family, March 8, 1859, folder 68, box 3,

William N. Byers Papers, WH55, Western History Collection, Denver Public Library.

Hereafter referred to as “Byers Papers”; William N. Byers, The Newspaper Press of

Colorado (Denver: 1884), Q 071.788 B991N, History Colorado, 4. Dailey’s diary suggests part of the group waited until the following morning to depart and caught up with the group a short distance outside of Omaha. Diary transcript entries for March 8 and 9, 1859, folder 2, box 2, John Lewis Dailey Papers, WH94, Western History

Collection, Denver Public Library. Hereafter referred to as “Dailey Papers.” Partner

Monell did not join the group on its journey west. He was to wait a few months and then follow with a fresh supply of newsprint. Byers, Newspaper Press of Colorado, 6.

14 Ibid.

15 Diary transcript entry for April 19, 1859, folder 2, box 2, Dailey Papers.

16 Perkin, The First Hundred Years, 29.

17 Byers, Newspaper Press of Colorado, 5.

18 Ibid.

19 Perkin, The First Hundred Years, 35.

20 David J. Vergobbi and Glen Feighery, “The Pioneer Press: 1800–1900,” in The

Age of Mass Communication, ed. by Wm. David Sloan (Northport, Alabama: Vision

Press, 2008), 186.

21 Perkin, The First Hundred Years, 33–34.

22 Ibid.

52

23 Byers, Newspaper Press of Colorado, 5.

24 Stephen J. Leonard and Thomas J. Noel, Denver: Mining Camp to Metropolis

(Niwot, Colorado: University Press of Colorado, 1990), 24.

25 David Fridtjof Halaas, Boom Town Newspapers: Journalism on the Rocky

Mountain Mining Frontier, 1859–1881 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press,

1981), 88.

26 Ubbelohde, Benson, and Smith, A Colorado History, 62.

27 “Another Arrival,” White Cloud Kansas Chief, June 16, 1859.

28 The Returning Emigation” [sic], Rocky Mountain News, April 23, 1859.

29 Rocky Mountain News, May 7, 1859.

30 Visitors included Henry Villard of the Cincinnati Commercial, Albert D.

Richardson of the Boston Journal, and Horace Greeley of the News York Tribune. Perkin,

The First Hundred Years, 121. See, for example, Horace Greeley, An Overland Journey from New York to San Francisco in the Summer of 1859 (New York: C.M. Saxton,

Barker & Co., 1860).

31 “Attack Upon the ‘News’ Office,” Rocky Mountain News, August 1, 1860.

32 Byers continued his defense of the raid at Sand Creek long after the massacre was subjected to federal investigation. William N. Byers to the editor of the Tribune, box

1, folder 22, Byers Papers. Regarding Sand Creek and the editorial treatment of Native

Americans, see Michael Lawrence Kennedy, “The Colorado Press and the Red Men:

Local Opinion about Indian Affairs, 1859–1870” (master’s thesis, University of Denver,

53

1967); Stan Hoig, The Sand Creek Massacre (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,

1961).

33 “Agricultural Prospects in the Valley of the Arkansas,” Rocky Mountain News,

June 13, 1860. A comprehensive consideration of Byers’ treatment of agriculture is found in Deryl Vaughn Gease, “William Newton Byers: Promoter of Early Colorado

Agriculture, 1859–1870” (master’s thesis, University of Denver, 1966).

34 Perkin, The First Hundred Years, 204–6.

35 Regarding the dearth of local news in many pioneer papers, see Vergobbi and

Feighery, “The Pioneer Press: 1800–1900,” 181.

36 In this case, the newsprint failed to arrive because Byers’s early partner,

Monell, had been convinced by go-backers to turn around before arriving in Denver with a desperately needed shipment of paper. Clipping from Davenport Gazette, Rocky

Mountain News, August 20, 1859.

37 Jerome D. Smiley, History of Denver (Denver: Times-Sun Publishing, 1901),

334.

38 “Great Fire in Denver—Immense Loss of Property!” Commonwealth and

Republican, April 23, 1863; Smiley, History of Denver, 369–70; Weekly Bulletin and

Supplement to the Rocky Mountain News, June 6, 1860, 2.

39 Smiley, History of Denver, 371.

40 O.J. Goldrick, “Sketch of the Great Deluge in Denver, Weekly Commonwealth,

May 25, 1864.

41 “A Card,” Weekly Commonwealth, May 25, 1865.

54

42 “Plain Talk,” Daily Rocky Mountain News, June 27, 1864.

43 Diary transcript entries for July 13, 1859, folder 2, box 2, Dailey Papers; diary transcript entries for August 15, 1859, folder 2, box 2, Dailey Papers; “Notice of

Dissolution” and “Notice of Copartnership,” Rocky Mountain News, August 20, 1859.

They would later take on Horace E. Rounds and Edward Bliss, who had originally traveled to Denver in 1862 to found their own paper, as partners in the News. Perkin, The

First Hundred Years, 189.

44 Byers, History of Colorado, 8.

45 Ibid., 10.

46 Ibid., 11.

47 Colorado Republican and Rocky Mountain Herald, August 24, 1861.

48 “Bought Up,” Daily Rocky Mountain News, October 1, 1861.

49 Wm. David Sloan, “The Partisan Press: 1783–1833,” in The Age of Mass

Communication, ed. by Wm. David Sloan (Northport, Alabama: Vision Press, 2008),

109–134.

50 Perkin, The First Hundred Years, 132.

51 Ibid., 133.

52 Daily Rocky Mountain News, August 27, 1860; Thomas Hornsby Ferril and

Helen Ferril, The Rocky Mountain Herald Reader (New York; William Morrow &

Company, 1966), v.

53 Perkin, The First Hundred Years, 203–6.

55

54 David W. Bulla, “The Popular Press: 1833–1865,” in The Age of Mass

Communication, ed. by Wm. David Sloan (Northport, Alabama: Vision Press, 2008),

135–60.

55 Geo. P. Rowell & Co.’s American Newspaper Directory (New York: Geo. P.

Rowell & Co., 1887); N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual (Philadelphia:

N.W. Ayer & Son, 1885); Perkin, The First Hundred Years, 311, 323, 337–38. Dailey had sold his interest in the company in 1870.

56 Perkin, The First Hundred Years, 378–80.

57 Ibid., 311–12.

56 Chapter 2. Disruption: 1895–1926

It was a Thursday, a few minutes before 9 on the morning after Christmas, 1907, and Thomas Patterson stepped out of his grand, three-story red stone mansion in

Denver’s Capitol Hill neighborhood to begin his ritual morning jaunt to the News’s offices.1 Patterson’s son-in-law, Richard Campbell, had left the home at the same time, leading a short distance ahead of him, walking quickly east from the house at the corner of Pennsylvania Street and 11th Avenue. At Logan Street, one block down, Campbell crossed the intersection and hopped aboard a streetcar, leaving Patterson alone to finish his walk. The sixty-eight-year-old Patterson turned north onto Logan, strolling two blocks along the east side of the street before crossing diagonally at 13th Avenue. A few steps later, he cut through the block, veering left onto a path that led directly to the

Colorado State Capitol, the dome of which wouldn’t be blanketed in its characteristic gold leaf until the following year.

If Patterson was too distracted to pay attention to his surroundings, to watch for threatening movement behind every bush and corner, he might be forgiven. During the preceding decade, he had watched as competitors rapidly cut away at the News’s position as the leading newspaper in Denver. His paper’s circulation had grown significantly during that time—the News reported an average weekday readership of more than 49,000 in 1907 compared with about 28,000 just five years before.2 But that wasn’t enough to keep the fifty-eight-year-old News on top of the market. Just twelve years earlier, two men, Frederick Bonfils and Harry Tammen, had taken the reigns of the Evening Post, a sad excuse of a newspaper that was then as bland as it was unsuccessful. In 1907, however, Bonfils and Tammen proclaimed their Post was ahead of the News, posting a

57 circulation of nearly 53,000, 7 percent larger than their older competitor.3 When

Patterson had served six years in the United States Senate from 1901 until spring of 1907, he had been able to distract himself from the fact that his business was struggling. Now, as he trudged toward the office, he carried with him the heavy burden of a newspaper in serious trouble.

A bicyclist whirred past along the path toward the Statehouse, and then the crunching of light footsteps came from just behind Patterson. “Good morning,” a man’s voice said, and as Patterson turned to see who had greeted him, a heavy force crashed into the side of his head, the blow landing with an audible thud.4 Stunned, Patterson staggered, trying to recover his balance, but was immediately struck again, driving him to the ground. He collapsed in a heap as blow after blow rained down on him, breaking a rubber plate in his mouth, bruising his forehead, cutting both cheeks. Ahead of him on the path, the bicycle clattered onto the ground as the man riding it dismounted and ran back to help Patterson, seeing he was being beaten by a younger and significantly stronger man. The bicyclist tore away the attacker, who cursed and shouted at Patterson, finally giving the elder man a chance to identify his assailant.

“You have had this coming a long time,” Post owner Bonfils yelled at the prostrate Patterson, “and if my name appears in your paper tonight, tomorrow or a month from now, I’ll shoot you.”5

A handful of men had now gathered, separating the two men. Patterson got to his feet and called Bonfils a coward, and Bonfils said he wouldn’t leave until Patterson turned around and went home. As the men followed Bonfils to ensure he wouldn’t stalk the older man once again, a battered Patterson shuffled the three blocks back to his home,

58 washed the blood from his face, and then set off anew for the News offices to begin crafting his newspaper’s account of the incident.6 That afternoon he swore out a statement accusing Bonfils of assault and battery, and a warrant was issued for Bonfils’s arrest.

The attack and subsequent trial represented a boiling over of tensions as Denver

Post owners Bonfils and Tammen challenged the right of the News to the Denver news market, which the elder paper had led as a result of its primacy in the city. Denver was, by 1895, a stable market in which the News was widely respected as the dominant newspaper, although other papers competed with it in terms of circulation. Such a market should have proved difficult for a new competitor to break into. However, using the techniques of yellow journalism such as stunts, sensationalism, populism, and illustration along with aggressive and morally questionable business practices, Bonfils and Tammen managed to radically rebalance the local market. The brash Post style, which regularly violated the rules of social acceptability and, occasionally, the law, made Denver a yellow city in the 1890s, at the same time Hearst’s New York Journal, the newspaper most emblematic of the emerging yellow style, was rising to power. But it was only through the implementation of such questionable techniques that Bonfils and Tammen were able to break into the Denver field, raising the definition of success in the city and setting the stage for the circulation wars between the Post and News that would rage in the twentieth century.

A Full Field

Newspapering in Denver was conducted in the first half of the 1890s much as it had been during the decades preceding. The market was characterized by stability among

59 the leading newspapers, equity in circulation, and acknowledgment of the News’s prestigious position in town.7 Four daily, general interest newspapers were issued from the city in 1895: the News, the oldest in Denver by several years; the Republican, founded in 1866; the Times, founded in 1871; and the Evening Post, a newcomer established in 1892.8 The circulation of the embryonic Post in 1895 is uncertain. Among the three staid competitors, however, numbers were tight. In a city with an 1890 census- pegged population of 106,000, reported circulations ranged from 21,000 to 25,000, which, allowing for exaggeration on the part of their publishers, put them in a virtual dead-heat, although newspaper directories suggest the News was likely slightly ahead of its competitors.9 No paper but the failing Post had made a lasting effort to join the ranks of the Denver dailies in the 1890s.

At the News, Patterson’s one-third minority interest in the paper had blossomed into a two-thirds majority, and in 1895 he shared ownership with the heirs of John

Arkins, who had died in 1894.10 Editorially, the newspaper was his. The politician used it to champion causes as he saw fit, and the newspaper therefore had objectives beyond those of independent publications. Whereas other papers such as the Times were operated purely for financial gain, limiting the editorial and advertising decisions made by its managers, Patterson sought not only to sell but also to persuade. As such, in meeting the full scope of its strategic goals, it might be advantageous to adopt unpopular partisan positions to the detriment of circulation, at least temporarily. Additionally, the newspaper’s political alignment brought it into regular confrontation with the

Republican, which operated on similarly partisan terms.11

60 As Patterson came to control the News, which was issued from a towering five- story building at the corner of 17th and Curtis streets, in the early 1890s, a young man named Harry Tammen was developing a business of his own just a few blocks away.12

Harry Tammen, originally Heye Heinrich Tammen, was born March 6, 1856, in

Baltimore.13 His father died while he was a child, and he was sent by his mother out into the world as a teenager. After working for a stint as a printer’s apprentice in Philadelphia,

Tammen gradually made his way west, landing for several years in Chicago, where he tended bar while selling pretty minerals as keepsakes on the side.14 In the early 1880s, he moved into Denver, at first continuing to split his time between bartending and his own business before focusing on expanding his growing curio shop.

Researchers disagree regarding the degree of success Tammen found in the early days of his business. They note that he moved his storefront frequently in the 1880s, which has been interpreted by scholars as indicating either success (Tammen moved because business outgrew preceding spaces) or struggle (Tammen moved because he couldn’t afford rent and was fleeing ahead of eviction).15 The former interpretation, which casts Tammen in a business-savvy light, is the more compelling, because by the end of the 1880s Tammen had amassed enough resources to launch a magazine, the

Great Divide, to promote his curio products.16 Although it featured regular advertisements for minerals and American West-themed wares, the magazine was no mere catalogue. First appearing in March 1889, Great Divide included stories about romance, adventure, Native Americans, and nature in the Great Plains and Rocky

Mountains.17

61 Historians have overlooked the degree to which Tammen’s time publishing Great

Divide prepared him for the challenges that awaited him in newspapering. When he began his magazine, Tammen was immediately faced with the challenge of attracting a readership for the publication to survive. Journalism professor and Post managing editor

Mort Stern, who wrote a biography of Tammen, claims that to develop a foundational circulation, Tammen sent unexpected letters to thirty thousand potential readers, fifteen thousand of whom replied. In a bid to draw in new advertisers, he mailed figurines to business owners along with solicitations for advertisements. New subscribers were offered a cabinet of attractive minerals as premiums, and existing subscribers were promised jewelry in exchange for signing up their friends. The effectiveness of such aggressive tactics was apparent. Within five years of founding the magazine, Tammen had grown, from nothing, a monthly readership of 32,000.18

Tammen, however, had chosen to start his magazine at a prosperous moment in

Colorado. His luck, like that of many Americans, would change when the Panic of 1893 swept westward in the summer of that year. The response to the crisis by President

Grover Cleveland and Congress—repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act—badly damaged Colorado’s economy, which was built upon silver mines that dotted the mountains in the center and southwest of the state.19 In the period of social, political, and economic unrest that overtook Colorado in the years that followed, Tammen moved his business and magazine back to Chicago. Having left its Colorado editor behind, Great

Divide struggled, and Tammen abandoned it by the end of 1895.20

As Tammen was learning how to operate a periodical from 1889 to 1895,

Frederick Gilmer Bonfils was amassing a small fortune for himself in Missouri. He had

62 been born several years after Tammen, on December 31, 1860, in Troy, Missouri, about fifty miles northwest of St. Louis.21 Troy was a town of only about six hundred people where F.G.’s father, Eugene Napoleon Bonfils, presided as a probate judge. Once grown,

Bonfils received an appointment in 1878 to the United States Military Academy at West

Point. According to the story he told people in Denver, he received an honorable discharge from there in his third year before flitting about, marrying in New York City, and temporarily teaching at a school in Cañon City, Colorado, before returning home to

Troy. He wrote briefly for a newspaper in Troy, learning the basics of newswriting, and then left to start a career in real estate in Kansas City.

His first years in the city were difficult. He made little money, having to borrow from a business partner to afford a winter coat.22 In time, however, fortune found him.

First, he made a shrewd land deal in Texas, where he purchased an inexpensive section of land in the Texas panhandle and platted a town, selling hundreds of plots from his office in Kansas City and elsewhere with the help of land agents. When Oklahoma opened to non-Indian settlement in 1889, he became one of the first to rush into Guthrie, Oklahoma, where a building bearing his name still stands. Then, in the early 1890s, came the big money. According to Bonfils, he won $10,000 playing what was called the Little

Louisiana Lottery while in Kansas City.23

Transformation of the Denver Post

In its earliest years, the Denver Post was an unqualified failure. It first appeared

August 8, 1892, as a Democratic rag created primarily to support Grover Cleveland’s reelection campaign against a statewide Populist insurgency within his party.24 From the time Patterson purchased the News in 1890 until the summer of 1892, his well-established

63 and successful newspaper unofficially carried the voice of the Democratic Party in

Denver. Patterson, however, was partially at fault for the local Democratic rift, having abandoned the state party after it refused at its 1892 convention to adopt a pro-silver platform.25 Thus, News owner Patterson was largely responsible for the creation of his paper’s 116-year competitor. Had he not bolted his party (to which he would return after the turn of the century), the Post would never have been needed by its founders. How the

Denver newspaper market would have consequently evolved—whether the News would have retained its edge until its competitors faded in the twentieth century, whether the

Times or Republican could have challenged it, or whether a new challenger would have appeared to capitalize on the tight competition between the News, Times, and Republican is unclear.

The first Post was backed by $50,000 in startup funds supplied by its Democratic founders, but it failed to serve its partisan function. Though Cleveland won the election nationally, Populist James Weaver walked away with Colorado’s electoral votes.26 Thus, the Post ceased production August 29, 1893, one year after it was first issued. Then, on

June 22, 1894, it was resurrected as the Evening Post, this time with $100,000 in capital, again sponsored by Democrats attempting to reunite a divided party in a state now home to Democratic and Republican parties both thoroughly fractured by populism.

The owners of the Evening Post were unable to clearly and correctly conceptualize the reader they wanted for their newspaper. A flag at the top-right of an

October 1895 issue, for example, appealed to Denver’s “workingmen” whose daily toils began early and who, therefore, had little use for a morning newspaper like the News. The content of the Post, however, focused not on topics of wide appeal to the city’s working

64 classes but rather those of Denver’s elite. The newspaper’s primary concern was, understandably, politics, and political coverage received wider play than any other topic.27 Scandal, violence, and crime—mainstays of the popular press and particularly the yellow journalism that arose in the middle of the decade—were present, and thus content proven to be of wide appeal was offered in the Post. Yet such topics were not fully capitalized on by the newspaper’s publishers. A September 1895 headline, for example, shouted that an African-American hotel porter had attacked the business’s owner before being arrested.28 Yet the story comprised only a few inches of one column of the newspaper. Beside it, a report of the financial condition of the Denver and Rio Grande railroad, a story of interest primarily to Denver’s moneyed class, was printed at nearly twice the length of the story of the attack.29 When reports of local sensation were printed, they were regularly underplayed compared with dispatches from elsewhere in the United

States or abroad.

Most glaring, however, was the newspaper’s bland appearance. The front page of the Evening Post was unadorned by illustrations and would not have looked out-of-place a century earlier. Even important front-page stories were organized in long, single columns, and stacks of headlines kept any single story from standing out from the page.

The result was a wall of gray that, when set beside the News and Republican, both of which featured cartoons on their fronts, appeared exceptionally formal. None of this stopped it from proclaiming, undoubtedly falsely, that it had the largest circulation of all newspapers in Denver in October 1895.30

It is doubtful that we will ever know with any certainty the circumstances under which Bonfils and Tammen met and agreed to jointly own and operate the Evening Post.

65 Bonfils’s version stems from the story of his supposed lottery winnings. Having rid himself of the Great Divide, Tammen read about Bonfils’s good fortune and got in touch with him, inviting him to invest his winnings in the purchase of a struggling Denver newspaper. In time, however, Bonfils’s account came into doubt. There were rumors that

Bonfils was lying, that he had been running the lottery rather than having won it, and that he might have been involved in other questionable activities while in Kansas City as well.

When Bonfils arrived in Denver in 1895, however, no one had any reason to doubt his story—yet.

In Gene Fowler’s Post history Timber Line, Fowler claims—with no proof—that

Tammen had heard of a lottery shark named Bonfils who was flush with cash, found him in a Chicago hotel room, and convinced him to put up the money for the Post. The two then strolled out of the hotel together, Tammen’s hand on Bonfils’s arm, into history.31

Post historian Bill Hosokawa comes short of endorsing Fowler’s version of events, but ranks it as far more credible than the innocuous tale Bonfils told.32 As Stern notes in his biography of Tammen, however, it is highly unlikely either Bonfils’s or Fowler’s account is true. Stern observes that the byline of a “FREDERICK BON.” appeared in a November

1894 article in Great Divide above a story with details Bonfils might have learned while hunting around his childhood home in Troy.33 While this doesn’t explain the precise circumstances in which they met or founded their partnership, it suggests that they knew each other well in advance of the Post’s being offered for sale in 1895, invalidating both

Bonfils’s dubious tale and Fowler’s cinematic one.

What is certain, however, is that Bonfils and Tammen entered into a partnership to purchase the foundering Evening Post. The purchase price was $12,500, posing a

66 nearly $90,000 loss to its Democratic owners.34 There was no written agreement between

Bonfils and Tammen as to who would manage the editorial and business aspects of the newspaper, nothing to dictate how the two would divide profits, and no clear indication as to how much of the purchase price each had put up.35 The two simply agreed that everything—ownership, duties, tribulations—would be split between them evenly, and on

October 28, 1895, they bought the Post.

The announcement of the sale appeared in the Post four days later inside the

November 1 issue:

New management and ownership—new entirely and in every respect—now control and direct The Post. . . .

The new managers propose to make The Post thoroughly and emphatically the people’s paper—a paper that shall first and always work and fight for the promotion of the people’s good and the advancement of their interests. It will be free from entanglements with political parties, corporations or special interests of any kind. Thus it will be free to do for the people and to be vigorously and unreservedly against whatever is against them. The new management ask the people to watch closely and see if the paper does not well demonstrate its loyalty to them.36

Its proclamations were much the same as those made in countless newspapers’ salutatories throughout the era. After all, few newspapers would admit to being beholden to political parties or other elites or not to champion the interests of the people. The difference was that Bonfils and Tammen meant what they said. Unlike the News and

Republican, the Post had no political objectives. Its only objective was to make money.

Changes to the Post came swiftly and affected nearly every aspect of the newspaper. Its attitude was the first to shift. November 2, the day after the announcement of the sale, a front-page article announced Tammen had filed for an injunction against the county clerk. Tammen claimed the clerk had chosen only Republican newspapers to print

67 the tickets for the upcoming election, which was “not only a plain violation of the law for party gain, but a public injustice” with “disregard of law and justice.”37 The old Post, despite having been a party organ, had seldom exercised so bold a voice.

Even more pronounced were the rapid changes brought to the newspaper’s stuffy appearance. By the end of the month, daily cartoons appeared, stretching three or four columns atop the Post’s front page. Over the course of the next year, those cartoons would target Denver politicians, police, and wealthy businesses as well as national figures, adopting and illustrating popular positions. In one early cartoon, men identified as working class by their wide-brimmed hats and work clothes walked the streets of

Denver, skewering “gold bugs”—the term used to describe supporters of using gold as currency to the detriment of Colorado’s silver mines—from the air.38 Another depicts

Lady Prosperity chained to a flagpole and restrained by Republican Party boss Mark

Hanna as presidential candidate William McKinley, supporter of the gold standard, approaches to beat her.39 Additionally, the Post began experimenting with different layouts before the end of the first year of Bonfils and Tammen’s ownership, running single stories across multiple columns above the fold on the front page. No longer would the Post fade into the background when set beside the News or another of Denver’s dailies. The new Post was a visually provocative one.

Bonfils and Tammen’s entry into the Denver newspaper field posed little cause for alarm among Patterson and the city’s other publishers. Patterson’s News was already contemporary in appearance and, like its longtime competitors, possessed a sufficiently large circulation to serve its needs. Patterson himself would likely have been too preoccupied on November 1 to bother reading the inside pages of the city’s least

68 successful daily newspaper. Two days earlier he had been charged with criminal libel on the complaint of William Evans, secretary of the Denver Tramway Company, which had been the target of an ongoing attack by Patterson’s News.40 The Republican, meanwhile, was busy accosting the Populist Patterson and the News in advance of the impending election and did not bother itself with the change of ownership at the Post.41

The Post Style

Before delving into an explanation of the characteristics that defined the Denver

Post’s style in its first several years under Bonfils and Tammen’s management, a brief review of the two-pronged business model of popular newspapers is appropriate. As discussed in this dissertation’s introduction, mass-market newspapers profit from two distinct products within the single package of the newspaper. Their articles, editorials, illustrations, and advertisements—that is, the content the printed paper contains— comprises a first product, which is sold to readers via subscription or often, in the era at hand, by newsies. A second product, marketed not to subscribers but to advertisers, is the attention of readers.42

To understand the Post’s approach to newspapering and its successes and failures, then, one must look both at its editorial content and advertising practices, as does the following section. After briefly explaining the approach taken by Bonfils and Tammen in managing their newspaper, an in-depth evaluation of its editorial content follows, placing the Post’s practices within the context both of its competitors in Denver and in the overall landscape of yellow journalism in America. Such an analysis makes clear Bonfils and

Tammen were not simply following the trend of yellow journalism epitomized by

Hearst’s New York Journal but rather were developing their own yellow style concurrent

69 with Hearst. Next, this section reviews the heavy-handed tactics Bonfils and Tammen used to intimidate Denver advertisers into buying space in the Post. Together, the Post’s yellow editorial and aggressive business practices, combined with the tight competition among the preexisting Denver dailies, explain its rapid rise, resulting in a newspaper market completely different from that which predated the purchase of the Post by Bonfils and Tammen.

Management

While few first-hand accounts of the management tactics used by Bonfils and

Tammen in their early years of Post ownership survive, interviews with Post staffers from the 1920s make clear the two owners had a tight-knit, almost brotherly working relationship in which the duties required to operate the newspaper were shared equally.

They didn’t split their roles, with one serving as editor and the other as business manager, as done in some newspaper partnerships. Although the voice of Bonfils may have been more pronounced in the newspaper as a result of his frequent (although unsigned) editorials, and despite Tammen’s experience on the business side gleaned from his development of the Great Divide’s circulation and advertising sales, each man had equal say in both the editorial and business operations of the newspaper.43 They discussed everything, with one walking into the other’s office, the door left open, to talk over decisions at length. They would sometimes argue, but not angrily. When Bonfils’s tempter flared, Tammen would sit with him and calm him down, sometimes even encouraging him to leave town for a few days while his emotions cooled. Bonfils listened to him.44 Tammen was a showman, while Bonfils was aloof.45 Tammen was flashy and a sharp dresser; Bonfils refused to take time to be measured for new suits, wearing the

70 same tired clothes until they bore holes.46 Tammen was generous and Bonfils stingy,

Tammen affable and Bonfils harsh.47 They complemented one another, and the result was a balanced—if sometimes self-contradictory—newspaper.

The Post was personal for them both, and each was deeply loyal to his employees.

They insisted on using first names in the office or, if that was too uncomfortable for an employee, simply asked to be called “Boss.”48 Tammen was known to walk around the newsroom, handing out dollar bills while joking that he wanted to fire his staff.49 He liked to be around his employees and would invite them into his office to chat in the evenings. Yet he understood their need for time away from their boss. He visited the

Denver Press Club Sunday mornings rather than afternoons because he didn’t want his reporters to feel inhibited by his presence. Like Tammen, Bonfils took an intensely personal interest in the day-to-day operations of the newspaper. In addition to writing editorials almost daily, he routinely wrote or rewrote headlines.50 He insisted on reviewing all photographs that appeared in the newspaper, considering them a crucial part of the overall product.51 As opposed to Tammen, Bonfils’s sharpness led to an autocratic rather than collegial relationship with his staff, but his employees still respected him.52

As a result, the two regularly put their newspaper before themselves, allowing its reputation to become their own. For the first several years of their ownership of the Post, they poured every dollar of profit earned by the Post back into it, Tammen surviving on the profits of his curio shop and Bonfils on real estate investments.53 Doing so allowed them to invest in talent, hiring the best reporters and illustrators from the News and

Republican as Hearst did from Joseph Pulitzer for his New York Journal.54 They did so while undercutting the News’s prices, charging between 14 percent and 40 percent less

71 for subscriptions.55 Meanwhile, they wholeheartedly adopted an any-publicity-is-good- publicity policy for their newspaper, damning their own reputations in the process. “Keep people talking about you,” Tammen was claimed to have said. “If they won’t talk good, let them talk bad.”56 As the editorial and advertising policies of the Post developed in its early years of management under Bonfils and Tammen, people certainly did talk—about both the newspaper and its owners—and little of what they had to say was positive.

Editorial

Soon after taking control of the Post in November 1895, Bonfils and Tammen transformed the content of the newspaper, infusing it with populist crusades; sensational headlines and leads; fiery, self-serving editorials; gimmicks, stunts, and contests; and a brand-new, twentieth-century appearance. Chief among these in appealing to the 1890s zeitgeist was the Post’s championing of causes that appealed to Denver’s white working class. Bonfils and Tammen began testing potential positions soon after buying the paper and within the first few years of ownership had launched prolonged attacks on Denver

“trusts” such as the Denver Union Water Company, Denver Tramway, sugar trust, coal trust, tobacco trust, railroad trust, and anyone else with money.57 Such campaigns frequently featured front-page cartoons personifying the target villainously; Post cartoonist A.W. Steele portrayed the Denver Tramway, for example, as a fat, selfish man with a smokestack for a head.58 Cartoons were accompanied by occasional front-page opinion pieces thinly veiled as news stories and regular editorials decrying perceived injustices to the people. Though the subjects of the Post’s ire varied from month to month, some of the newspaper’s enemies, including the Tramway, were the target of its populist rage for years.59

72 Despite their widespread appeal, however, antiestablishment campaigns would not always be the focus of the paper’s front page. They were supplemented with headlines and stories that outclassed the nascently sensational content of the pre-Bonfils and Tammen Post in extravagance. A single 1897 front page included the headlines “Boy

Drowned,” “Confessed,” “Leaden Hail” (in reference to fired bullets), “Falsely

Imprisoned,” “For Love” (in reference to a young woman who killed herself), “Saved a

Life,” “Slaughter,” “No Hope,” and “Murder.”60 The subheads of those stories were equally sensational in their explications of the stories’ contents, and the issue was typical of those published by the Post in the era.

Exemplary of the sensationalism of the time was the story of Louise Frost and

John Porter. It first appeared November 9, 1900, on the Post’s front page under the headline “A Child Brutally Murdered.” It presented what little information and ample speculation existed about the girl’s killing, which took place outside Limon, Colorado, seventy-seven miles southeast of Denver. The story said eleven-year-old Frost had been killed and her body mutilated and that a boy had seen an African-American “hurrying down the road about dark” away from the site of the murder.61

The November 9 article set off a two-week stretch during which each issue of the

Post included news, rumor, editorialization, and illustration of the Frost tragedy, with prominent front-page coverage on ten of those fourteen days. The ravine in which Frost was found dead and her home were both illustrated, as were the horse and empty buggy in which she had been riding, the horse having wandered home without the girl.62 That drawing appeared below a story that speculated that Frost had been killed out of revenge against her father, who had been a member in a posse chasing train robbers the summer

73 before.63 Then, the following day, the Post said the sheriff in charge of the investigation of Frost’s murder had determined John Porter, an African American said to have a troubled past who was under arrest in Denver, was guilty of the crime.

Though the evidence against Porter was circumstantial, one had to read through the Post’s condemnation of him in order to learn as much, and the story was framed in such a way as to condemn Porter from the outset:

“John Porter is the murderer of Louise Frost,” says Sheriff Freeman of Lincoln county [sic; the county that includes Limon], who has been working night and day on the case.

John Porter is in the city jail, a badly frightened negro. His father, Preston Porter, and his brother, Arthur Porter, are also in jail, but the sheriff will ask for the release of the other two men. He will take John Porter back to Hugo [the Lincoln County seat], and make an effort to land him in the jail at that place. It is thought the sheriff’s efforts in this respect will be useless, for angry mobs are waiting at Hugo and Limon ready to wreak vengeance on the murderer of Louise Frost.

The evidence against John Porter is circumstantial, and, the sheriff says, very damaging. Porter has been working on the section of the Union Pacific railroad at Limon.64

The Post didn’t miss an opportunity to sensationalize the story, up to and after the attempt to transfer Porter to the Lincoln County jail in Hugo. It counted down the days until the trip, confident that, in light of his confession, Porter’s guilt was “no longer a matter of speculation, but a fixed fact” and that the mob waiting for him in Limon, through which the train taking him to Hugo would have to pass, would lynch him. It only asked that the mob be humane in doing so.65 However, when its request for a humane death was denied and Porter was instead yanked from the train outside of Limon, chained to a post, and burned alive, the Post didn’t hesitate to print the day’s gruesome details.66

74 It would wring the story for an additional five days before letting the murder and subsequent lynching fade from its pages.

Other tactics, while emblematic of a yellowing style of journalism in the Post, were far less tragic, such as its use of contests, stunts, and gimmicks to attract readers. In

January 1896, for example, the Post asked readers to suggest a motto for the paper, offering $10 to the winner.67 Later, it offered weekly cash prizes for readers’ “oddest or most curious” photographs, which it printed.68 Such contests encouraged readers to see the Post as their own through participation. At the same time, the newspaper was home to the same kinds of gimmicks popularized by Pulitzer’s sensationalist and wildly successful New York World. In one such stunt, a Post reporter and two fellow passengers were sent up in a hot air balloon, setting off from Elitch’s Gardens in Denver on a trip that was to take them to New York.69 When the balloon crashed in the mountains about one hundred miles south of Denver, far off course, the Post managed to stretch the story across two pages.70 Following the cue of World stunt girl Nellie Bly, Bonfils and

Tammen hired Polly Pry, a woman reporter of their own, who began writing for the Post in 1898.71 And when Bonfils and Tammen sensed they could capitalize on the rabid populism of Denver’s citizens by undercutting the trusts it so loudly decried, it did so, resulting in projects such as the Post Coal Department, which promised subscribers coal at lower prices than those charged by the city’s coal companies.72 It was in launching its coal department that it first published an editorial under the heading “So The People May

Know,” the Post cry which came to symbolize the newspaper’s highly editorialized style.

The newspaper had become one of the masses, leaving behind the stodgy voice of the nineteenth century and becoming a mouthpiece for the public. Key to the newspaper’s

75 success was its focus on local content and its understanding of the interests of the average

Denverite and having something for virtually everyone inside its pages.73 Staffers such as

Jim Hale, who joined the Post in 1920 as a copyeditor and worked at the paper for thirty- two years, recalled that national news was sidelined throughout Bonfils’s ownership in favor of local and regional reporting and that Bonfils had an intuitive connection with the people walking on the street outside the Post’s newsroom:

F.G. had a—say a sixth sense—about news. He knew nothing about how to gather it, or how to put it together, the mechanics of the thing was absolutely boring to him, but he had that strange insight—inside the way of knowing what would arouse the people, and he believed above all that local news was what made people read the paper.74

At the same time, Bonfils had no qualms about tweaking a story to make it readable. He wouldn’t direct reporters to lie outright. He simply encouraged them to make what they wrote readable and not to let mere facts get in the way of a good story.75 If that meant making news, as in the case of the Post reporter’s wild hot air balloon ride, so be it. Or, if

Bonfils and Tammen could improve the prestige of the newspaper through the control of information, even better. In one case, they got word that a freight company planned to reduce express rates by 15 percent. The Post launched another of its crusades, this time demanding a rate reduction. When the company lowered rates, as it had planned to do, the Post accepted its laurels as the people’s champion.76 And if readers wanted something the newspaper didn’t already have, the Post would raid Denver’s other newspapers for the talent required to deliver it. When Bonfils and Tammen bought their paper, cartoonist

A.W. Steele was lampooning Denver’s leaders from a desk at the News. The Post owners poached him away, making his illustrations one of the defining features of their front page. Though Post reporters always complained of low pay, Bonfils and Tammen offered

76 enough to attract serious talent. Writers such as Damon Runyon, Courtney Ryley Cooper,

Gene Fowler, and George Creel spent time at the Post before earning national reputations.77

While the Post’s editorial style yellowed, its pages, too, began to take on a different hue. As mentioned previously, Bonfils and Tammen moved quickly to break up the monotony of the paper’s columns, interrupting its gray front-page columns, for instance, with large cartoons. They began placing small illustrations and pithy mottos on either side of the newspaper’s name in its flag, or top of the front page. Decorative borders were introduced to set off announcements and supplements to stories. New fonts topped the paper’s columns, and major headlines, such as those announcing the opening of the Spanish-American War, were run across all seven columns, with stories and headlines spread across two or three columns.78 Having being made commercially viable in the 1880s, halftone printing was gaining adoption among American newspapers, and by 1903 photos decorated many of the Post’s front pages.79 In short, the Post was taking on the appearance of a twentieth-century newspaper.80

At the same time, some of its visual elements were unique to turn-of-the- century newspapering. Decorative borders were frequently overused, and the paper often employed several fonts printed on a single page, giving the Post a cluttered, difficult-to-navigate front. Then, in 1899, Post printers began experimenting with color, first to highlight elements in cartoons or illustrations and later to amplify already loud headlines.81 Greens, blues, and oranges were tested before red was adopted as the color of the Post. By 1905, the newspaper’s

77 front was a spectacle of its own, with blood-red headlines shouting sensations atop stories so cluttered with borders, subheads in various fonts, and stair-stepped columns jumping from one to two columns wide and back that simply reading the paper was a challenge.82 Yet despite its drawbacks, one thing was for certain—the

Post grabbed the eye.

Advertising

If the editorial style of the Post under Bonfils and Tammen was yellow, its methods of compelling Denver businesses to advertise were black. While the Post drew in readers, increasing its circulation and drawing in advertisers who wanted the highest return on their advertising dollars, Bonfils and Tammen bullied Denver businesses reluctant to advertise in the Post into choosing it, instead of the News, as the place to run their ads.

Major metropolitan newspapers at the turn of the century competed for four types of advertising: legal, classified, local business, and national business. The first of these, legal, comprised a relatively small chunk of total advertising in the Post. For example, in

1924, the first year for which data were available, legal advertising made up a little more than 0.1 percent of the Post’s total advertising linage.83 Space purchased by national advertisers represented a larger piece of overall advertising, but a non-chain newspaper such as the Post could have exerted little pressure on national advertisers and relied on its circulation, as compared with other daily newspapers in the city, to attract advertisers.

Bonfils and Tammen had considerably greater control over the remaining two forms of advertising, classifieds and local business, and they used the leverage provided by their

78 editorial success to forcibly supplant the News as the most desirable medium for print advertising in Denver.

The Post owners showed how aggressive they would be in pursuing Denver advertisers in their response to an attempted power grab by the city’s advertisers themselves. According to a front-page Post editorial, the newspaper on January 4, 1898, received a letter demanding a 33 percent reduction in advertising rates. The letter was signed by Denver’s department stores—major advertisers such as Joslin Dry Goods,

Daniels and Fisher, Denver Dry Goods, and Golden Eagle, fourteen businesses in all.84 If their demand was not met, the companies threatened to boycott the newspaper. Similar demands were sent to the News, Republican, and Times.

Bonfils and Tammen’s response was swift and harsh. Three days after printing the notice, they launched a massive smear campaign against the field of Denver department stores, stirring the populist public by accusing the businesses of lawbreaking, the exploitation of young women, collusion with police, and “industrial slavery.”85 It reported counter-boycotts by unions of printers, upholsterers, horseshoers, and waiters the Post claimed were the victims of the businesses’ wrongdoing.86 From the list of boycotters, Bonfils and Tammen plucked stores such as the Golden Eagle for particular scrutiny, publishing a series of headlines decrying atrocities alongside stories that tried to stir the public against the store. One carrying the headline “An Incident: Arrogant and

Outrageous Treatment of a Shopgirl” claimed “popular indignation” against the Golden

Eagle and other department stores for episodes of employee abuse.87 The following day, another labeled the Golden Eagle “A Menace to Public Health” after a wheel of rotten

Limburger cheese was rolled from its storehouse.88 Letters of support from Denverites

79 and other newspapers cheered the Post in its counterattack and expanded the list of sins committed by the boycotters to include child labor, overcharging, monopolization, and economic despotism.89 The attacks continued until January 21, when the advertisements returned. The Post claimed victory, declaring that it had decisively proved that just as it could not control the prices of the businesses’ goods, “neither may the merchant dictate to the publisher the price at which he shall sell his advertising space.”90

To call the Post’s handling of the boycott a form of blackmail would be going too far. Though the headlines of its stories against the stores were sensationalized, the articles’ details may well have been true. However, the department store boycott wasn’t the only time Bonfils and Tammen used questionable tactics to force businesses to advertise in their newspaper. Post copy editor and city editor Jim Hale said Bonfils used the paper’s society pages to coerce Denver merchants. If a business refused to advertise in the Post or resisted a price increase, the wife of its owner would be dropped from its society pages. If her husband capitulated to the Post’s terms, his wife would reappear in print. “He was using the wives, the social climbers, as a means of getting into the pocket books of the husbands,” Hale said. “And it worked.”91

With local advertisers, those most important to a metropolitan daily, under control, Bonfils and Tammen could turn their attention to smaller fish. In their pursuit of classified advertising, which represented a lesser but significant part of the Post’s overall advertising linage, they used a tactic Tammen had successfully implemented at his Great

Divide and continued to be used over the course of the competition between the Post and

News. In the middle of the first decade of the 1900s, the Post regularly announced on its front page that it would give premiums to anyone who purchased a want ad in its Sunday

80 edition. While the announcements at the bottoms of Post front pages were small, their presence on the front page, displacing editorial content, represented an aggressive move.

In 1903 and 1904, readers were offered cloth-bound books in exchange for ads in the

Sunday issue.92 Advertisers in 1905 and 1906 were promised even more—glassware, silverware, candies, brass picture frames and images to fill them, and “surprise presents”—all in exchange for classified advertising. “Remember,” one announcement said, “results is [sic] what you always get in the Post. We print practically all the want business in the Rocky Mountains. There is a reason.”93

By the end of 1907, the Post owners were confident about their newspaper’s control over city advertising, and it showed. A prominent front-page self-advertisement, or “house ad,” laid out the position into which Bonfils and Tammen had pressed Denver advertisers:

It doesn’t make any difference whether you love or hate the proprietors of this newspaper or any other newspaper, advertising is business, not sentiment. . . .

The Post tells you that its circulation in Denver is greater than the combined circulation of the other three Denver papers. . . . We do this for your education and benefit so that you will know how to spend your money wisely and well.94

They were exaggerating—the Post couldn’t come close in 1907 to matching the combined circulation of all of its competitors.95 But the sentiment was certainly true. The Denver newspaper market had changed.

Consequence of Style

The manner in which Bonfils and Tammen managed the yellow voice and aggressive advertising tactics of the Post brought them into regular conflict with competing newspapers and prominent Denverites, damaging the owners’ reputations and,

81 at times, endangering their lives. Endorsement by the Post became, for Denver’s upper class, tantamount to association with the Devil himself. The newspaper’s owners knew as much. “If the Post is for you,” Tammen was remembered as saying, “why that’s the kiss of death.”96 Yet people bought the paper. Those who didn’t want to admit reading it, such as those in Denver’s wealthy neighborhoods, had it delivered to side entrances to be read in the confines of their homes, reserving the front door for delivery of the News or

Republican.97 But having been bullied into advertising in its pages and worrying that their company might be the next to be targeted, they had to subscribe to monitor its columns.

The tension between the early Post and the city climaxed in early 1900. The year before, Polly Pry had visited the state penitentiary in Cañon City, after which she and the

Post began lobbying for the release of one of its inmates, Alferd Packer, who had cannibalized his traveling party when stranded decades before in the Colorado mountains.98 The story proved a sensation, attracting conversation and a number of letters and editorials in the Post. Bonfils, Tammen, and Pry agitated for Packer’s release on the grounds that he had not murdered those he ate, although he had killed one in self-defense, and had only acted for his own survival.99 When W.W. Anderson, the lawyer the Post hired to represent Packer, conned the imprisoned Packer out of $25, an already grizzly case nearly turned much worse. Bonfils and Tammen confronted Anderson about his swindle in the Post’s offices and an argument ensued, which devolved into a fistfight, which led to Anderson either being thrown or scrambling out of the room, pulling a revolver from his pocket, turning around, and firing at close range. Bonfils was shot twice, taking a bullet to the chest and another to the neck, after which Anderson cornered

Tammen and shot him in the wrist and shoulder. Tammen was badly but non-critically

82 wounded. For a time, it was uncertain whether Bonfils would survive, but he eventually made a full recovery. Anderson was arrested, and a trial was scheduled.100

Yet despite the seemingly ironclad case against Anderson—the wounds and numerous witnesses in the Post offices—the trial resulted in a hung jury. The defense’s arguments that Bonfils and Tammen had intended to beat Anderson as a warning to

Denverites, or, in defense attorney Jon G. Taylor’s own words, “to beat him up until he understood what anyone would get who dared to oppose The Post in its sovereign desire,” seemed to some jurors likely enough to infuse them with reasonable doubt.101 A second trial against Anderson, this time only for assaulting Tammen, again resulted with a hung jury, ending amid rumors that Tammen had attempted to bribe jurors.102 The rumors proved correct. Following a third trial, Tammen pleaded guilty to bribery, and the charges against Anderson were dropped.103

The significance of the case was clear. If Bonfils and Tammen used their newspaper to bring yellow journalism to Denver, they could expect to face consequences, and not even the law (or its circumvention) could protect them. But if the risks of running a salacious newspaper were large, so too were the rewards. By the end of the Anderson trial, the Post, which Bonfils and Tammen had owned for only six years, was beginning to displace its competitors, who had been printing in Denver for far longer. In 1898, the year in which Denver’s department stores launched their boycott, the Post already boasted a circulation of 26,223, slightly higher than the News’s 25,606.104 The

Republican and Times claimed similar numbers. Thus, the stores might be excused for trying to force a 33 percent decrease in rates, for while three years earlier they had been

83 required to advertise in three Denver dailies to ensure they reached all readers, now they had to advertise in four.

The News and Post jockeyed for ownership of Denver’s top circulation for the next nine years, until, in 1907, the Post pulled ahead with a circulation of 52,693, more than three thousand copies higher than that of the News and double what the Post had printed in 1898.105 By then, the Times had surrendered its independence and been purchased by Patterson, who operated it as an evening complement to the News, while the

Republican was struggling to maintain the same levels of circulation growth as the remaining dailies. The combined output of the morning News and evening Times outshined the Post’s single evening edition, but as 1907 progressed, it became increasingly clear to readers and advertisers alike that the Post was the most important newspaper in town.

While the Post’s gains are impressive, it must be noted that many of the practices that defined its style—its crusading tone, sensationalism, and appearance—were present in the News during the Post’s rise and, to some degree, even before. Had the newspapers been without their flags, Denverites might have struggled to tell them apart. News headlines were every bit as large and loud, and the newspaper’s front page boasted a number of illustrations similar to that of the Post. Though historians have commented frequently on the chaotic layout of the Post and particularly its use of red headlines, the regular use of front-page color came to the News over a year before the Post.106 And the sensationalism of the News’s stories regularly rivaled those of its competitor. The Post beat the News in reporting Louise Frost’s murder, establishing its newsworthiness and launching a witch hunt. While the News reported the story the following morning, it did

84 not offer a follow-up story for two days. Once it committed to the story, however, its accounts were every bit as inflammatory as those of the Post. It devoted three entire front pages to the story, and when Porter was burned at the stake, the News illustrated his death.107 Further, when Denver’s department stores attempted to force a reduction in advertising rates in 1898, the News, like the Post, denounced the businesses as a “trust,” printed the comments of other Colorado newspapers against the stores, and, unlike the

Post, even enlisted the comments of religious leaders, who accused the stores of unethically employing children.108

But the use of religious voices was indicative of the largest distinction between the two newspapers. Patterson’s strongest condemnations of the department stores were couched in the words of others. When Bonfils and Tammen attacked, they did so directly, in the voice of the Post. While the News of the era can rightly be called yellow, it was not so to the same degree as the Post, which had a distinct voice of its own, spun seemingly small stories into sensations, and elbowed its way into the center of the Denver newspaper market. Additionally, newspaper directories suggest the management style of

Bonfils and Tammen, and perhaps the lack of management from Patterson at the News, was a major factor in the Post’s successful challenging of the News. The Post style developed by Bonfils and Tammen made the Post a competitive and ascendant paper.

However, its largest circulation boom didn’t begin until 1902, the year after Patterson began his term as a US senator. During that time, the Post’s owners were still pouring all of their newspaper’s profits back into the company, developing a stronger editorial product as its competitor was managed remotely. The News, meanwhile, tried to slow the

Post’s rise by cutting its own subscription rate to 10 percent below that of the Post.109

85 While doing so correlated with a rise in its own circulation, it failed to stop the skyrocketing Post.

The Post Becomes Dominant

By the time Bonfils publicly beat Patterson in December 1907, the relationship between the Post and News had become antagonistic. It had not always been so. Though the two frequently made circulation claims against one another in efforts to attract advertisers, and though the Post had made a habit of caricaturing Patterson in cartoons, the newspapers did not often lash out at each other.110 The Post was even supportive of

Patterson’s bid for senator, publishing editorials and illustrations to boost his candidacy.111 But any good will was gone by the time of the attack, destroyed by the rising competition between the newspapers. From its position outside the fray, the

Republican pointed out that Patterson had been ramping up his editorial attacks against

Bonfils and Tammen. Patterson was becoming bolder, the Republican said, in accusing

Bonfils in particular of blackmail and fraud.112 A physical climax to the sparring between the newspapers had been inevitable and was indicative of the kind of journalism they were peddling. The Republican lay blame for the violent and chaotic relationship between the Post and News at the feet of Denver’s citizens, who were reaping the “fruit of the tree of yellow journalism” grown through their patronage of the newspapers.

The seeds of the 1907 confrontation were a series of articles appearing in

Patterson’s Times and News in the days leading up to Christmas. Of particular offense was a front-page Christmas Eve article in the News accusing Bonfils of libeling and blackmailing a group of powerful Denver businessmen. The article claimed Bonfils had approached the men, demanded a controlling interest in a business venture they were

86 launching together, and, when his demand was refused, commenced an editorial assault against them.113 A photo of Bonfils ran alongside the article, and the story repeatedly claimed Bonfils used the alias “Wynn” without stating the name’s relevance. Bonfils responded to the article by beating Patterson as he walked to work the day after

Christmas.

The result was a circus trial in which the Post’s treatment of advertisers, far more than Bonfils’s conduct on December 26, was laid before the court. On December 27,

Bonfils was arrested in his office at the Post and charged with assault and battery, and arguments began the following day.114 It was clear from the outset that it wouldn’t be an ordinary trial. The courtroom was thick with reporters and Denverites who frequently disrupted the proceedings by applauding claims made against Bonfils and garnered warnings from the presiding judge.115 Those who couldn’t fit inside the courtroom itself spilled into the hallway and crowded around windows outside, trying to catch glimpses of the proceedings. Bonfils’s defense from the beginning was that Patterson had libeled him, justifying his attack on the News publisher. Thus, the course of the trial necessarily devolved into a test of Patterson’s claim that Bonfils was a blackmailer. Denverites reading the Post would know, without a doubt, that he had failed to prove this point, while News subscribers would be certain of the reverse. Each newspaper printed stenographic reports of the proceedings, and each accused the other of misrepresenting the case in their supposedly verbatim transcripts.

Clear from both accounts is that Patterson cited examples of Post crusades in which men who opted not to advertise in the Post found their character or their businesses under attack until they began advertising in the paper. Specifically, Patterson

87 claimed three men—Edward Monash, who ran The Fair department store; J.S. Appel, another Denver retailer; and a Mr. Spengel—had been victims of targeted Post blackmailing. In the Post’s account, Patterson utterly failed in making his case.

Describing Patterson as “writhing and twisting . . . his face alternately flushing and paling,” it said Patterson admitted he had only assumed blackmail had taken place.116 As framed in the News, however, Patterson’s testimony was straightforward and damning.

Though two of the three men he identified had not complained to him personally about being blackmailed, he said the patterns in the Post were clear.117 Further, he said Appel had come to him complaining specifically of blackmail. When outlining the case that had sparked Bonfils’s attack, Patterson said two men had come to the News claiming Bonfils was actively blackmailing them with his newspaper. When pressed, Patterson identified the men as two of those involved in the venture named in the December 24 News article.

One of those men later testified that he believed the Post’s criticism of the venture was retribution for Bonfils’s being blocked from obtaining a 50 percent interest in it.118 Later,

Appel testified he had been warned by the Post to advertise in the paper or he would see his business under attack in its pages. He refused, and the Post retaliated.119 Bonfils declined to testify in his own defense; the News claimed that was because he feared more details of his past, particularly rumors pertaining to alleged crimes in Kansas City and

Oklahoma, might be tested in court.120

On January 9, two weeks after Bonfils ambushed Patterson, the court found

Bonfils guilty, fined him a token fifty dollars plus court costs, and closed the case. It was only a partial victory for Patterson and his News. As both newspapers reported, the presiding judge stated that whether Bonfils had used his newspaper to blackmail Denver

88 businesses had no bearing on Bonfils’s guilt.121 If Patterson wanted to prove Bonfils a blackmailer by legal standards, he would have to do so in another court. However, circumstantial evidence was piling up. In addition to the Post’s 1898 attacks against

Denver department stores, Patterson had cited in the trial other specific cases in which

Post crusades had been launched against businesses not then advertising with the Post and had concluded once advertisements were placed. Two additional Denverites had testified in open court that Bonfils had blackmailed them for an interest in their business.

The charges remained accusations—the court wouldn’t pass judgment on their validity.

However, use of blackmail would help explain the Post’s rapid ascendance against similar but better-established competitors.

Patterson’s jubilation was short-lived. While Bonfils was infuriated by Patterson’s editorials, the Post itself had become too powerful to be shaken by anything printed in the

News. In 1906, the News had achieved its highest circulation ever, sitting at about 49,000 issues daily, and that number was steady through 1907.122 It would not remain so. In the six years that followed, the News’s circulation decreased by 47 percent, by 1913 falling to about 26,000. The Post, meanwhile, enjoyed strong growth through most of that period.

From 1901 through 1909, its circulation rose at an average rate of 11 percent each year.

Though its upward trajectory slipped from 1911 to 1914 in its first stagnation since 1901, the Post’s overall circulation in the first two decades of the twentieth century boomed.

When the News slid to 26,000 in 1913, the Post, despite being in a slump, had a daily circulation of more than 64,000. It was within only a few thousand copies of eclipsing the combined daily circulation of the rest of the Denver daily newspaper field. Starting in

89 1907 and continuing into the 1910s, the Denver Post dominated the local newspaper market in ways the News hadn’t since the 1860s.

As they rose to control the market, Bonfils and Tammen made incremental changes to the front page of their newspaper. They continued throughout the first decade of the twentieth century to use front page editorials and illustrations to attack Patterson, who was caricatured, depending on the political climate in Denver at the time, as either a

Democratic boss or a false Democrat.123 As time passed into the 1910s, front-page content remained consistent. Though World War I dominated headlines, stories lower on the page attended the same subjects that had won the Post readers twenty years earlier.

Slanted stories on local politics and “So the People May Know” editorials remained, and mainstays of sensation such as crime, scandal, suicide, distant tragedy, and death remained, such as a story that told of a woman who had guarded her children for fifty hours from gigantic rats in a slum in downtown Denver.124 And the Post was still busy creating news when reality proved insufficient. The headline declaring Woodrow Wilson had been reelected president was pushed below the fold by a “So the People May Know” editorial set in enormous type calling on Wilson to visit Denver to celebrate his victory.

“Mr. President,” the editorial said, “you must not decline. . . . Select the time that is most convenient for you to come and we will make our arrangements accordingly.”125

The greatest changes in the 1910s, then, came in the design of the front page, which became so convoluted that it was at times barely readable. For a time, the layout was actually simplified, with a single four- or five-column illustration appearing directly in the middle of the page, major stories running down the shoulder on either side, and lesser stories appearing below. Then, in a major shift, the space directly above the flag,

90 previously used to promote the paper and its inside stories, became home to the headline for the paper’s lead story. To connect the headline with its story, the flag, which traditionally ran across all eight columns of the front page, had to be shrunk on one side.

In time, the flag became associated not with the top of the page but merely with the top of the front-page illustration, often running only four columns wide, making it difficult for those unfamiliar with the paper to ascertain its name. Front-page editorials appeared in so-called “bastard” columns that ran in odd widths, counter to the prevailing eight- column style. Multiple hot-red headlines flew above the flag, topping skinny stories running down the flag’s sides. But Post’s readers weren’t put off by the paper’s chaotic appearance. Instead, the Post’s circulation soared.

The News proved utterly incapable of challenging the Post’s ascendance, prompting the first major change in the ownership of that newspaper in twenty years.

Though a politically motivated owner like Patterson might have benefitted from a competitive second-place newspaper, he had little use for one with a sinking circulation.

On October 23, 1913, the aging Patterson unloaded the News and Times onto John

Charles Shaffer, who already owned the Chicago Post and the “Star League,” a chain of three Indiana newspapers.126 Days after buying Patterson’s papers, Shaffer scooped up the flailing Republican as well, folding it into the Times.

Rather than continue chasing fans of the Post’s style, as Patterson had unsuccessfully done for the previous decade, Shaffer set out to differentiate his newspapers. Though he was far behind the Post in circulation, he was armed with experience from operating his Midwest newspapers, possession of the oldest newspaper in Colorado, and a sudden influx of readers for the evening Times. He attempted to

91 unlock the respectability inherent in the News’s age, then more than fifty years old.

Patterson hadn’t given up on the News’s screeching red headlines even though the Post had stolen them, opting instead to try to yell louder than the Post’s front page. Shaffer stripped the red headlines away, casting the News back into gray. While he stopped short of barring sob stories from the front page, he limited them, and he attempted to subjugate them to stories of greater impact. He introduced daily weather forecasts, first to the

News’s flag and later as a graphic element lower on the page. In short, Shaffer took a step toward modernization. His News refused to play the Post’s game, trying instead to attract readers through professional reporting and practical content.

He failed. Though the News dented the Post’s circulation in 1914, dragging the

Post down 5 percent while leaping 60 percent itself, its gains were almost entirely erased in the four years that followed.127 By 1919, the News had settled at a circulation of around

32,000, a number it would struggle to escape for several years. The Post, meanwhile, had burst upward to over 117,000, nearly four times the News.128 Shaffer’s virtuous path proved sufficient only to keep the News alive, not to seriously challenge the Post’s now complete domination.

Napoleon Alone

The Denver newspaper market in the early 1920s was one in which the Post was without peer. Shaffer’s morning News and evening Times remained newspapers for those who found the Post distasteful, and the papers found enough such readers to survive.

Trailing far behind was a small newspaper called the Express that, though printing only half as many copies as even the News, had stayed open in Denver since its founding in

1906.129

92 The greatest challenges the Post’s owners faced dealt not with competitors in

Denver but with forces back east. In Kansas City, Bonfils and Tammen struggled to turn the Kansas City Post, a second newspaper they had purchased in 1909, into a success.

After facing a circulation war with other Kansas City dailies, they surrendered in 1922 and sold that paper.130 That same year, allegations that Bonfils was a blackmailer reached national proportions as his role in the Teapot Dome affair became clear. The full details of that scandal are treated in detail elsewhere, and Hosokawa’s Thunder in the Rockies explores Bonfils’s role to such an extent than it need not be treated at length here.131

Testifying before a Senate committee, however, Bonfils admitted he had accepted money from Harry Sinclair, who had unfairly received a lucrative contract to lease oil fields in

Wyoming—oil fields that had been set aside as reserves for the US Navy. In exchange for the money, mention of Sinclair’s connection to the unfolding Teapot Dome scandal disappeared from the Post. Months of focused reporting on the topic abruptly ended. Yet, as in the past, establishing Bonfils a blackmailer to the letter of the law proved impossible. He had been hired to publicize the scandal by Jon Stack, one of the oilmen involved in Teapot Dome, who believed he had been bilked of one million dollars. The money Sinclair paid Bonfils was simply a cut of what seemed to be owed to Stack, and the information in the Post’s stories appeared factual. Thus, while ethically dubious,

Bonfils’s actions fell short of the legal definition of blackmail.132

Despite the challenges to their success, Bonfils and Tammen’s management of the

Post was largely responsible for the newspaper’s ascendance. The two shared in all aspects of managing the newspaper. But though they shared a vision for the Post and worked hard to make it strong, they allowed themselves to be drawn to new interests once

93 their paper became successful. This was particularly true of Tammen. As the Post’s place among Denver’s leading newspapers became apparent soon after the turn of the century,

Tammen allowed himself to be distracted from his business. He, unlike Bonfils, cultivated a social life, developing relationships with influential men and women of the era as well as Post employees.133 In 1903, he convinced Bonfils to purchase with Post earnings the bankrupt Sells Brothers circus, which he renamed the Sells-Floto circus and partially managed alongside his duties with the newspaper.134 While Tammen remained throughout his life an equal partner in the Post and an important moderator of Bonfils’s temper, Bonfils carried a heavier load in managing the day-to-day affairs of the paper.135

Thus, when Tammen died the morning of July 19, 1924, after months of failing health, Bonfils was prepared to manage the Post single-handedly despite the burden of the loss of his partner and friend.136 After Tammen’s death, Bonfils closed himself in his office, turning away Denverites who stopped by the Post offices to offer consolations, and cried.137 When he emerged from the shadow cast by Tammen’s death and took sole management of his newspaper, he stepped into a period of Post ownership that clouded the image of him as a brazen Denver blackmailer.

Some saw little change in Bonfils’s demeanor. Post employees said that, if anything, Bonfils grew even more contemptible without Tammen’s softening influence.

To them, the workplace was bordering on hostility. Those working in departments

Bonfils didn’t value or trust, such as the copydesk, could find themselves fired on a whim, with many personnel decisions made with little visible reflection. One day Bonfils noticed a crowd of six reporters milling around the newsroom in the middle of the day.

Taking it as a sign his staff had grown too large, he told his managing editor to cull six

94 reporters immediately.138 Bonfils had long believed himself a descendent of Napoleon

Bonaparte—now, ruling the Post alone, he seemed intent to prove it.139 Yet while

Bonfils’s harsh management style earned ire from many employees, they acknowledged his eye for news and the benefits of the era of “robust decision” under Bonfils’s solo leadership that extended the Post’s gains into the 1920s.140

Others sensed a softening in Bonfils’s behavior in the years after Tammen’s death. They admitted that he had rough edges. Anne O’Neill Sullivan, his secretary for ten years, acknowledged the “strict principles” he kept for himself and others.141 Arriving at the office at 8 each morning, he would dive into micromanaging all dimensions of the paper, changing headlines, dictating editorials, personally approving photographs, and often roughly criticizing his employees.142 He would continue until 6 each night.143 But he began easing his scandalizing of Denver’s most prominent citizens, capitulating in the late 1920s to professionalizing news values.144 And the changes weren’t limited to the paper’s editorial content. Sullivan claimed that when members of the Klu Klux Klan, a powerful force in Denver during the era, walked into the Post and tried to take out a full- page advertisement, Bonfils turned them down, citing the impact the advertisement would have on the community.145

The 1920s, then, complicate Bonfils’s portrait. “Everybody will tell you about his autocratic side,” Colorado historian and Post writer Caroline Bancroft said. “Everybody will tell you about his ambitious side. I don’t deny them. But he wasn’t the villain that everybody makes out. I don’t think he was any worse than any other robber baron around except he made a little bit more waves.”146 Perhaps this softer side of Bonfils was visible only to those closest to him. Sullivan sat just outside his office and developed a close

95 relationship with him. Bancroft possessed qualities that Bonfils told her he found crucial in a writer—not intelligence, which he thought was easy to find in people, but courage and honesty.147

Then again, by the time of Tammen’s death, Bonfils and his newspaper had developed such a reputation that no action was needed to coerce Denverites into cooperation. His previous penchant for physical violence and supposed blackmailing of

Denver businesses were sufficient to convince most that he was not to be opposed. Thus, by the 1920s, it was no longer important whether he had actually blackmailed anyone.

The possibility of being blackmailed and the belief that Bonfils was willing to use his

Post against enemies ensured compliance. Businesses feared advertising in the News, not wanting to risk retribution.148 Of course, given the small circulation to which the News clung, the consequences of withholding that advertising weren’t severe. The effect of

Bonfils’s reputation and the News’s weakness was clear. As one Post employee recalled,

Bonfils liked to include a passage in his editorials that stated “no business ever succeeds in Denver without advertising in The Denver Post. By golly, that was either a threat or a promise.”149

The Post commanded Denver businesses and readers, who capitulated to its demands either by choice or under threat. Rather than allowing the newspaper to coast on the success it had developed, however, Bonfils continued strengthening his product.

When Shaffer’s News made weather forecasts a staple of its front page, Bonfils followed suit. He pulled sports scores and commentary by syndicated columnist Arthur Brisbane onto the front page. He continued the Post’s tradition of creating news when Denver’s goings-on proved too dull, hosting spectacles and other events at the Post’s offices

96 downtown.150 He continued the Post’s tradition of offering premiums in exchange for

Sunday classified ads.151 And to make sure his reporters weren’t giving their colleagues at the News any slack, Bonfils kept track of the “score” between the News and Post. Each day, someone would go through both newspapers, marking the number of scoops each had gotten on the other. The practice, which took up to two hours each day to complete, ensured the Post stayed on top of its foundering competitor. Combined, such practices helped the Post absorb all 1920s circulation growth in Denver and kept the News down.

By 1927, the Post’s circulation was reaching just over 144,000. The News, meanwhile, marshaled only 31,000 readers a day.152

A Worthy Competitor

On February 14, 1926, Bonfils walked into Denver’s Brown Palace Hotel, a short six blocks from the Post’s downtown offices.153 Waiting for him was Roy Howard, whose company owned the struggling Denver Express. The two men were major figures in American journalism. Bonfils’s Post was known nationally as a successful sensationalist rag, and Bonfils himself had become notorious for his role in the Teapot

Dome scandal. Howard was known as the head of the powerful Scripps-Howard newspaper chain, which owned papers across the country and was among the handful of behemoth chains of the era. The two men had gathered to discuss the possibility of the sale of the Post to Scripps-Howard.

There were several reasons Howard thought the prospect was one worth exploring. First, his company’s founder, E.W. Scripps, had built his news empire by purchasing papers with few competitors, streamlining their operations, and living off the profits.154 Though it was larger than most of the company’s targets and, therefore, would

97 likely cost more to purchase, the Post was continuing to extend its seemingly insurmountable lead over its competitors, including the News. Also enticing Howard was word from Express staffers that Post employees were fed up with Bonfils’s management style. According to those at the Express, Bonfils had grown unbearable after Tammen’s death, not softened, as his secretary and pet reporters later claimed. Combined with

Bonfils’s rising age, there was reason to believe Scripps-Howard could steal the Denver market.

When Bonfils began to speak, however, Howard was forced to temper his hopes.

Bonfils confirmed that some aspects of the Post’s management were growing tiresome.

Particularly troubling were the inheritors of Tammen’s share of the paper. Tammen had willed a quarter of the Post to Denver’s Children’s Hospital, which wanted its shares liquidated into cash as soon as possible.155 But Bonfils told Howard that the paper was just beginning to realize its potential and that his years of hard work were paying off. He was also looking for ways to keep the newspaper within his family, which would allow him to retire. Unfortunately, he was struggling to find viable options. Though he had convinced a nephew to leave the army, change his last name to Bonfils, and begin learning the business side of the paper, Bonfils doubted the nephew’s ability to manage the Post’s editorial voice, which he said was most important to a newspaper. If Bonfils was going to pass on the paper to a successor, someone would have to prove themselves worthy to him, but he had not given up looking for such a person.

Still, Howard found reason to hold out hope. Bonfils said he had no interest in selling his paper to William Randolph Hearst, who commanded a chain that competed against Scripps-Howard. And though Howard had sensed it would be a poor idea to try to

98 talk money with Bonfils, he learned from Bonfils’s attorney that the Post was absurdly profitable. The lawyer told Howard the Post was making around $1.25 million in post-tax profits each year. The lawyer suggested a starting point in negotiating a purchase price might be $5 million.

The day after his meeting with Bonfils, Howard wrote Scripps-Howard attorney

Thomas Sidlo that while there was no immediate hope of buying the Post, he was confident Bonfils was thinking about selling and that when Bonfils made up his mind, he would do so suddenly. Sidlo agreed. He couldn’t bring himself to believe the Post was as profitable as was claimed—he had never heard of such high profits for a newspaper—but he said $5 million was a price worth pursuing.156 Scripps-Howard had been eyeing the

Post before Howard and Bonfils talked.157 Now, knowing how successful the paper was, the prospect was even more alluring.

But a deal failed to materialize. Perhaps Bonfils had simply been sniffing out

Scripps-Howard’s interests in Denver, or maybe he truly had been considering selling the

Post. If Howard had been correct in thinking Bonfils would quickly and decisively choose to sell or keep his newspaper, however, he had done so, and his decision hadn’t been the one Howard had hoped for. As the spring and summer months slipped by, it became clear Scripps-Howard would not buy the Post. But it couldn’t ignore Denver. It had to do something with the struggling Express. So Howard broke with E.W. Scripps’s time-tested business strategy of buying inexpensive papers unencumbered by competition and quietly building an audience of working-class readers without confronting bigger players.

He bought the Rocky Mountain News instead.

99

1 “Crowd Cheers Testimony in Bonfils Trial,” Rocky Mountain News, December

29, 1907.

2 N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual (Philadelphia: N.W. Ayer &

Son, 1907), 86; N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual (1902), 80.

3 Ibid., 85.

4 “Witnesses Denounce Bonfils for Attack,” Rocky Mountain News, December 27,

1907.

5 Ibid.

6 “Men Blackmailed by Post Named by Senator Patterson on Oath,” Rocky

Mountain News, December 29, 1907.

7 While stability was characteristic of leading papers in the market, the bottom of the pack was chaotic, with startups rapidly appearing and disappearing.

8 Figures from N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual (1896), 67–68, which would reflect the conditions reported by newspapers in 1895. In addition, the

German-language Colorado Journal was being published daily in Denver, as were the special-interest Hotel Bulletin and Live Stock Record.

9 The Times reported a circulation of 25,000 compared with the News’s 22,070.

However, the Times’s number was its Sunday circulation, which was likely considerably higher than its weekday circulation. For example, the News’s Sunday circulation was reported as 26,385, more than four thousand above than its weekday issuance. Assuming the Times’s numbers varied similarly, that paper’s weekday circulation would be roughly one thousand copies lower than that of the News.

100

10 Robert L. Perkin, The First Hundred Years: An Informal History of Denver and the Rocky Mountain News (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1959), 383–85. He eventually purchased the remaining one-third of the paper and became its sole owner.

11 As examples of Republican attacks against the News, see cartoons on the front pages of the October 28 and 29, 1895, issues of the Republican.

12 For location of News offices, see Perkin, The First Hundred Years, 379. For location of Tammen’s curio shop at 1516 Arapahoe St., see “Listings for H. H. Tammen from the Denver City Directories 1881 to 1901,” box 2, folder 2, MSS WH815, Tammen

Family Papers, Western History Collection, Denver Public Library, hereafter referred to as “Tammen Papers.”

13 Biographical information comes from Mort Stern, Looking for a People’s

Champion: A Search for the Real Harry Tammen (Denver: 1989). That book was commissioned by Tammen’s descendants, the Rippeys. As such, its characterizations of

Tammen are questionable, but it accurately condenses prior research on Tammen into a single volume.

14 Ibid., 10.

15 Ibid., 15; David Grant Hayden, “The Life and Times of Heye Heinrich (Harry)

Tammen,” box 2, folder 3, Tammen Papers.

16 Stern, Looking for a People’s Champion, 17.

17 A full work on Great Divide is provided in M. James Kedro, “Stanley Wood and the Great Divide: Rocky Mountain Literary Promotion in the Late Nineteenth

Century” (PhD diss., University of Denver, 1977).

101

18 N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual (1894), 68.

19 Carl Ubbelohde, Maxine Benson, and Duane A. Smith, A Colorado History, eighth ed. (Boulder: Pruett, 2001), 219.

20 Stern, Looking for a People’s Champion, 32, 38.

21 “Death of F.G. Bonfils Marks Passing of Last Prominent Figure in Personal

Journalism,” Rocky Mountain News, February 3, 1933.

22 Ibid.

23 Anne O’Neill Sullivan, interview with Bill Hosokawa, February 14, 1974, transcript, box 5, MSS 1147, Bill Hosokawa Collection, History Colorado, hereafter referred to as “Hosokawa Papers–HC.”

24 Lawrence Martin, So the People May Know (Denver: 1951), 7.

25 Wilbur Fisk Stone, History of Colorado, vol. 2 (Chicago: S.J. Clarke

Publishing, 1918), 18.

26 Thomas E. Cronin and Robert D. Loevy, Colorado Politics and Policy:

Governing a Purple State (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012), 278.

27 See, for example, the preponderance of political news in the July 13, 1895 issue of the Evening Post.

28 “A Brutal Assault,” Denver Evening Post, September 6, 1895.

29 “Condition of the Rio Grande,” Denver Evening Post, September 6, 1895.

30 Denver Evening Post, October 5, 1895.

31 Gene Fowler, Timber Line: A Story of Bonfils and Tammen (New York: Blue

Ribbon Books, 1933), 84–87.

102

32 Bill Hosokawa, Thunder in the Rockies: The Incredible Denver Post (New

York: William Morrow, 1976), 17–18.

33 Stern, Looking for a People’s Champion, 44.

34 Martin, So the People May Know, 5.

35 Anne O’Neill Sullivan, interview with Bill Hosokawa, February 14, 1974, transcript, box 5, Hosokawa Papers–HC, 11.

36 “The Denver Evening Post,” Denver Evening Post, November 1, 1895.

37 “A Political Fraud,” Denver Evening Post, November 2, 1895.

38 “Members of All Parties, Friends of Silver, Can Clean Out This Nest,” Denver

Evening Post, April 16, 1896.

39 “The Fate of Prosperity,” Denver Evening Post, August 24, 1896.

40 “Another Warning to the People,” Rocky Mountain News, October 31, 1895.

41 The Republican made no mention of the ownership transition at the Post. For examples of attacks on News, see “The News and Water Rates,” Denver Republican,

October 29, 1895; “The Heeler’s Art” (cartoon), Denver Republican, October 28, 1895.

42 Stephen Lacy and Todd F. Simon, The Economics and Regulation of United

States Newspapers (Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex, 1993), 42.

43 Sullivan, interview, February 14, 1974, 7–12.

44 Jim Hale, interview with Bill Hosokawa, March 29, 1974, transcript, box 5,

Hosokawa Papers–HC, 3b.

45 Sullivan, interview, February 14, 1974, 7.

46 Ibid., 4b.

103

47 Frank H. Ricketson, interview with Bill Hosokawa, unknown date, transcript, box 5, Hosokawa Papers–HC, 3–4.

48 Sullivan, interview, February 14, 1974, 21.

49 Hale, interview, March 29, 1974, 1–2.

50 Ibid., 1b.

51 Sullivan, interview, February 14, 1974, 20.

52 Ibid., 22.

53 Sources disagree about how long Bonfils and Tammen deferred salaries and dividends. Bonfils’s secretary Anne O’Neill Sullivan said seventeen years, while Stern claimed thirteen. Sullivan, interview, February 14, 1974, 3; Stern, Looking for a People’s

Champion, 78.

54 Sidney Kobre, The Yellow Press and Gilded Age Journalism (Florida State

University, 1964), 64.

55 N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual (1898), 73–74; N.W. Ayer &

Son’s American Newspaper Annual (1901), 79–80.

56 Sullivan, interview, February 14, 1974, 8b.

57 Six of these seven (all but the Denver Tramway) were depicted in a single cartoon: “Some People Who Are Mad Because the People Insist on Their Rights”

(cartoon), Denver Evening Post, May 22, 1897.

58 “But There Will Be Other Cold Snaps” (cartoon), Denver Evening Post,

December 4, 1897.

104

59 Years after the cartoon in the previous note targeting the Denver Tramway was published, Post cartoons were still going after the company. For example, see “Both

Tarred with the Same Stick!” (cartoon), Denver Post, March 12, 1905.

60 Denver Evening Post, May 22, 1897.

61 “A Child Brutally Murdered,” Denver Evening Post, November 9, 1900.

62 “Louise Frost, the Murdered Girl, Her Parents and the Scene of the Crime”

(illustration), Denver Evening Post, November 11, 1900.

63 “Was Louise Frost Murdered out of Revenge by Friends of Train Robbers?”

Denver Evening Post, November 11, 1900.

64 “Evidence Points to John Porter as the Limon Murderer,” Denver Evening Post,

November 12, 1900.

65 “Porter’s Crime and Its Punishment,” Denver Evening Post, November 15,

1900.

66 “Monument Will Mark Place of Porter’s Ghastly End,” Denver Evening Post,

November 17, 1900.

67 “The Post Catch-Phrase Contest,” Denver Evening Post, February 1, 1896.

68 “Denver Post’s Prize Photograph Contest,” Denver Post, June 10, 1901.

69 “Post Balloon Big Glory Viewed Yesterday Afternoon by Nearly Half a Million

People,” Denver Post, September 1, 1902.

70 “Terrible Battle with the Elements Results in the Defeat of the Aeronauts,”

Denver Post, September 2, 1902.

105

71 Polly Pry, “Polly Pry Visits Mr. Thomas and Talks of His Senatorial

Aspirations,” Denver Evening Post, August 13, 1898.

72 “So the People May Know,” Denver Evening Post, January 21, 1907.

73 Caroline Bancroft, interview with Bill Hosokawa, June 28, 1974, transcript, box

3 (listed as box 2 on finding aid), Hosokawa Papers–HC, 4.

74 Hale, interview, March 29, 1974, 9.

75 Ibid.

76 Ibid., 10.

77 Hosokawa, Thunder in the Rockies, 77.

78 “Call to Arms Sounded and Boys in Blue Are Marching to the Sea,” Denver

Evening Post, April 19, 1898.

79 Sharon M.W. Bass, “Graphic Arts: 1400–Present,” in The Age of Mass

Communication, ed. by Wm. David Sloan (Northport, Alabama: Vision Press, 2008),

240–43; Christoph Raetzsch, “‘Real Pictures of Current Events’: The Photographic

Legacy of Journalistic Objectivity,” Media History 21, no. 3 (2015): 300.

80 For example, Denver Post, May 21, 1903.

81 For example, Denver Post, December 17, 1899.

82 For example, Denver Post, October 19, 1905.

83 “Advertising Lineage—All Papers; Year: 1924,” lineage chart, box 2,

Hosokawa Papers–HC.

84 “The Post Boycotted,” Denver Evening Post, January 7, 1898.

85 “Horrors of Department Stores,” Denver Evening Post, January 10, 1898.

106

86 “They Are All Falling in Line,” Denver Evening Post, January 13, 1898.

87 “An Incident,” Denver Evening Post, January 11, 1898.

88 “A Menace to Public Health,” Denver Evening Post, January 12, 1898.

89 “How the People View It,” Denver Evening Post, January 13, 1898; “How the

Boycott is Viewed by the State Press,” Denver Evening Post, January 13, 1898.

90 “Some Reflections on the Late Unpleasantness,” Denver Evening Post, January

19, 1898.

91 Jim Hale, interview, March 29, 1974, 7b.

92 “A Better Selection,” Denver Post, September 2, 1903; “Avoid the Big

Crowds,” Denver Post, January 20, 1904.

93 “Your Particular Attention,” Denver Post, October 19, 1905; “The Busy

Days—Friday and Saturday,” Denver Post, August 11, 1905.

94 “It Doesn’t Make Any Difference,” Denver Post, December 19, 1907.

95 According to the 1908 American Newspaper Annual, the Post held a weekday circulation of 56,500 while the combined Republican, News, and Times claimed circulation was 123,519. Even if the Republican and Times provided Sunday figures, as the Times certainly did, the Post was still far from eclipsing its combined competitors.

N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual (1908), 84–85.

96 Sullivan, interview, February 14, 1974, 8b.

97 Bancroft, interview, June 28, 1974, 11b.

98 “Polly Pry Serves a Brief Term at Canon City,” Denver Evening Post, May 21,

1899.

107

99 “Polly Pry Makes an Eloquent Plea for Packer,” Denver Evening Post, June 4,

1899.

100 “W.W. Anderson Shoots Editors F.G. Bonfils and H.H. Tammen,” Denver

Republican, January 14, 1900; “Out of Danger,” Denver Evening Post, January 23, 1900;

“The Statement of the Prosecution and Statement of the Defense,” Denver Evening Post,

April 21, 1900.

101 “Locked Up for the Night,” Rocky Mountain News, April 28, 1900.

102 The entire front page and a large portion of the August 5, 1901, edition of the

Post were devoted to denying the allegations against Tammen. “A Conspiracy Which

Was Planned Before the Anderson Jury Was Selected and Executed After Its Discharge,”

Denver Post, August 5, 1901.

103 Hosokawa, Thunder in the Rockies, 105.

104 N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual (1898), 73–74.

105 N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual (1907), 84–86.

106 Color was in use on the front of the News as early as May 1898, whereas the

Post began using front page color in late 1899.

107 See November 15 through 17, 1900; “Awful Atonement of Preston Porter for

His Crime against Innocence” (illustration), Rocky Mountain News, November 17, 1900;

“Limon Lynching in Pictures” (illustration), Rocky Mountain News, November 18, 1900.

108 “A Statement to the Public,” Rocky Mountain News, January 10, 1898; “They

Are Injuring Denver,” Rocky Mountain News, January 14, 1898; “Pulpit Estimates,”

Rocky Mountain News, January 17, 1898.

108

109 N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual (1904), 81.

110 For example, “What Are the Wild Waves Saying, Sister?” (cartoon), Denver

Post, May 29, 1903.

111 “Mr. Patterson for United States Senator,” Denver Post, April 1, 1900; “Two

Good Reasons Why” (illustration), Denver Post, January 15, 1901.

112 “The Fruit of the Tree of Yellow Journalism,” Denver Republican, December

27, 1907.

113 “F.G. Bonfils Slanders Business Men Who Refuse to Be Bled,” Rocky

Mountain News, December 24, 1907.

114 “Bonfils Is Held for Assault,” Rocky Mountain News, December 28, 1907.

115 “Men Blackmailed by Post Named by Senator Patterson on Oath,” Rocky

Mountain News, December 29, 1907; “Patterson Admits He Had No Facts to Support His

Infamous Charges,” Denver Post, December 28, 1907.

116 “Patterson Admits that Malice, Not Justice, Inspired Charges,” Denver Post,

December 28, 1907.

117 “Men Blackmailed by Post Named by Senator Patterson on Oath.”

118 “Wahlgreen on Witness Stand Tells of Blackmail Methods Post Uses Against

Denver Business Men,” Rocky Mountain News, January 7, 1908.

119 “Bonfils Fears to Testify in Assault Case,” Rocky Mountain News, January 8,

1908.

120 Ibid.

109

121 “Bonfils of Denver Post Is Fined $50 and Costs for His Assault upon Senator

T.M. Patterson,” Rocky Mountain News, January 9, 1908; “Forceful Review of Facts in

Case,” Denver Post, January 8, 1908. While declaring Patterson’s accusations inconsequential to Bonfils’s guilt, the judge noted they could be accepted by the court as mitigating circumstances.

122 N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual (1906), 87; N.W. Ayer &

Son’s American Newspaper Annual (1907), 86.

123 “Isn’t This a Good Year for an Independent Ticket?” (cartoon), Denver Post,

September 16, 1906; “His Latest Howl—‘Save Bryan from Speer!!’—” (cartoon),

Denver Post, May 29, 1908.

124 “Mother Guards Babies 50 Hours from Huge Rats,” Denver Post, March 1,

1911.

125 “So the People May Know,” Denver Post, November 10, 1916.

126 Perkin, The First Hundred Years, 435–36.

127 N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual (1914), 102.

128 N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual (1919), 114–15.

129 N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual (1920), 114.

130 Hosokawa, Thunder in the Rockies, 120–33.

131 Ibid., 138–47; a focused chronicle of the role of Bonfils and earlier News publisher John Shaffer is provided in Barry Robert Wood, “Denver Newspaper

Publishers and Teapot Dome,” Essays and Monographs in Colorado History, no. 1

(1983): 25–37.

110

132 Ibid., 145.

133 Hayden, “The Life and Times of Heye Heinrich (Harry) Tammen,” Tammen

Papers, 16.

134 Hosokawa, Thunder in the Rockies, 37. Tammen named the circus after Otto

Floto, a Post sports editor whose name he liked.

135 Sullivan, interview, February 14, 1974, 9.

136 “Harry H. Tammen is Dead,” Denver Post, July 19, 1924.

137 Sullivan, interview, February 14, 1974, 12.

138 Chapin, interview, January 18, 1967, 26.

139 Hosokawa, Thunder in the Rockies, 51.

140 Hale, interview, March 29, 1974, 9, 1.

141 Sullivan, interview, February 14, 1974, 1b.

142 Ibid., 20, 22, 1b.

143 Hale, interview, March 29, 1974, 9b.

144 Chapin, interview, January 18, 1967, 23.

145 Sullivan, interview, February 14, 1974, 8.

146 Bancroft, interview, June 28, 1974, 10.

147 Ibid., 3.

148 Lorena Jones, interview with Bill Hosokawa, March 21, 1974, transcript, box

5, Hosokawa Papers–HC, 7.

149 Hale, interview, March 29, 1974, 6b.

111

150 See, for example, Brisbane column, sports brief, and announcement of Baby

Peggy event in October 24, 1924, edition of the Denver Post.

151 “Last Chance!” Denver Post, January 15, 1925.

152 N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual (1926), 136.

153 Letter from Roy W. Howard to Tom (Thomas Sidlo), February 15, 1926, folder 2, box 57, series 3.1, E.W. Scripps Papers, Alden Library, Ohio University.

154 Gerald J. Baldasty, E.W. Scripps and the Business of Newspapers (Chicago:

University of Illinois Press, 1999), 53–54, 87–88.

155 Ibid., 1.

156 Letter from Thomas L. Sidlo to Roy Howard, February 18, 1926, folder 2, box

57, series 3.1, E.W. Scripps Papers, Alden Library, Ohio University.

157 Letter from Roy W. Howard to G.B. Parker and W.W. Hawkins, February 2,

1926, folder 2, box 57, series 3.1, E.W. Scripps Papers, Alden Library, Ohio University,

2.

112 Chapter 3. Stagnation: 1926–1945

It was highly irregular for the Rocky Mountain News to feature a signed letter from Roy Howard, chairman of Scripps-Howard newspapers. Though his company had purchased the News in November 1926, Howard was responsible for overseeing a vast chain of newspapers. He hardly had time to write editorials for each one. But Howard had been in Denver for a week of one-on-one negotiations with F.G. Bonfils, owner of the rival Post. For five straight days, Howard and Bonfils had met in a room in the

Cosmopolitan Hotel, where Bonfils arrived promptly at 10 each morning and stayed until

5, the two pausing for two hours at noon so that Bonfils could travel home, alone, for lunch.1 Howard had a great deal to share with News readers about those meetings.2

Two years earlier, in 1926, Howard had stood before a mass of Denver businessmen in the city’s Chamber of Commerce and directly challenged Bonfils and his

Post. The speech amounted to a declaration of war. Howard had announced his Scripps-

Howard newspaper chain, which operated some two-dozen newspapers across the United

States, had bought the News and was going to use it to bring the mighty Post, and Bonfils with it, to its knees. Howard admitted it would be difficult but was sure his mighty chain, among the strongest newspaper companies in the country, was up to the task. “A challenger never looks as good as a champion,” he said, —“before the fight.”3

Now, in his November 1928 letter, Howard admitted the fight had been lost:

The plain truth of the matter, plus a sportsmanlike desire to give credit where credit is due, compels the frank admission that after having been afforded two years’ opportunity to judge of a result which had involved the employment of much ingenuity and the expenditure of several million dollars, an overwhelming majority of the people of Denver and the adjacent newspaper field continued their preference for the type of evening paper produced by F.G. Bonfils.4

113 Howard proceeded to outline the terms of peace that had been negotiated between himself and Bonfils. Their effect was clear. Despite much noise and flash, the cannonade

Howard had launched two years before had fallen wide of its mark. After two years of war, both Bonfils and Howard interpreted direct competition as too costly. The papers would no longer go head-to-head. Instead, to save millions of dollars a year, the two would collude to fix circulation rates and divide the Denver market evenly.

“We visualize the dawn of a new journalistic era for this community,” Howard wrote, “an era more in attunement with the spirit of modern American industry . . . eliminating wasteful and destructive competition and substituting therefore intelligent co- operation with a view to the most rapid advancement of the common good.”5

When Scripps-Howard purchased the Rocky Mountain News in late 1926, it did so hoping to unseat the Post as the leading newspaper in Denver. As the following chapter shows, one of the nation’s most powerful newspaper chains not only failed to seriously challenge the Post but struggled to make the News financially viable. Despite applying a number of strategies, including entering into a collusive agreement with the Post,

Scripps-Howard found itself facing nearly insurmountable challenges in Denver. Its leaders and those of the News claimed many of these were beyond their control.

Ultimately, however, mismanagement of the News, combined with strong, consistent leadership at the Post both during and after F.G. Bonfils’s time as publisher, contributed more than any other factor to the News’s Depression-era struggles. With time and focus, however, Scripps-Howard learned how the News could be made into at least a break-even proposition, especially when World War II presented a number of circumstances upon

114 which the newspaper was able to capitalize, not to pose a significant threat to the Post, but simply to survive.

Scripps-Howard Enters the Fray

The prospect of a major newspaper purchase in Denver came during a period of bullishness among Scripps-Howard’s leadership. When the company’s chief executive,

Roy Howard, met with Denver Post publisher F.G. Bonfils in February 1926 to consider buying that paper, his company was simultaneously pursuing purchases in Milwaukee,

New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, and Knoxville and was considering launching a tabloid in Philadelphia.6 Had Howard managed to negotiate the sale of the Denver Post to

Scripps-Howard, he would have secured a position to which his company was unaccustomed—not simply dominance, but near-monopoly, within a major metropolitan market. The Rocky Mountain News, the second-strongest newspaper in Denver in 1926, had only 19 percent the circulation of the leading Post.7 In light of a claimed annual Post profit of $1.25 million, Scripps-Howard executives did not balk at the $5 million figure suggested by Bonfils’s lawyer as a possible starting point for negotiations.8 But when the

Post deal failed to materialize for unknown reasons, Scripps-Howard continued seeking ways to expand its presence in Denver.

As E.W. Scripps expert Gerald J. Baldasty notes, the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain was forged of three links. First, Scripps pursued inexpensive newspapers and ran them on spartan budgets, keeping operating costs as low as possible by employing small staffs on low salaries. Second, his newspapers were written specifically with the working class in mind, a market segmentation strategy that provided him an audience even in competitive newspaper markets. Finally, he buoyed his cash-strapped properties with

115 high-quality content provided through wire services associated with his company.

Scripps’s vertically integrated empire controlled the United Press and Newspaper

Enterprise associations, which delivered valuable news and feature content to Scripps papers at a low cost.9

When the Post deal failed to crystalize, Howard’s attention fell on John Shaffer’s properties, the afternoon Denver Times and morning Rocky Mountain News. After initially pursuing only the Times, a deal was finalized November 22, 1926, in which both the Times and News would go to Scripps-Howard for $750,000.10 At first glance, the buy seems to fit Scripps’s modus operandi. Scripps-Howard could fold the resources of the

Denver Express, which it already operated in the city, into the newspapers, choosing the best and least expensive staff and equipment from the three operations and spreading them across the Times and News. Fast-growing Denver was home to a large working- class population, providing a potential readership.11 Finally, developing a strong newspaper in the city would provide a foothold for Scripps-Howard’s United Press wire service, dramatically decreasing the cost to carry news from the Rocky Mountain region to chain newspapers across the country—a justification that enticed Howard as much as any other.12

But in other highly significant ways, the purchase deviated from the Scripps model. The company was buying two newspapers, one morning and one afternoon, involving additional staff and, therefore, increased costs. Additionally, the Post had risen to prominence by appealing to the same working men and women whom Scripps-Howard typically pursued; if the News wanted them, it would have to take them from the Post.

116 Thus, in violation of the Scripps business model, the purchase of the News and Times threatened to draw Scripps-Howard into an expensive confrontation with the Post.

Howard was plainly aware of this danger—in fact, he encouraged open conflict.

When he stood before the assembly of Denver’s elite in the city’s Chamber of Commerce on November 26, 1926, and began to speak, he knew he was leading his company into all-out war against one of Denver’s wealthiest and most ruthless businessmen. He was repudiating the Scripps model of business, opting instead to purchase strong newspapers and strive for market domination, a tactic he and E.W.’s son Robert Scripps had been developing since the early 1920s.13 By November 1926, E.W. Scripps was dead. Howard was in charge, and he was going to make sure all eyes in the newspapering world were fixed on his new property by creating a spectacle. His declaration of war attacked Bonfils the man as much as the newspaper he controlled, relying on widely known accusations of impropriety to provoke the Post publisher:

We’re coming in here neither with a tin cup nor a lead pipe. We will live with and in this community and not on or off it. We are nobody’s big brother, wayward sister, or poor relation. You are probably not concerned with where we come from but we can assure you that whenever we go back we will be welcome. The Rocky Mountain News, conceived in high ideals and public spiritedness, was born to be a survivor. Our obligation to you is to give you newspapers that in news coverage, entertaining features and sound editorial policies are equal to any in the United States. . . . We come here simply as news merchants. We’re here to sell advertising and sell it at a rate profitable to business houses. But first we must produce a newspaper with news appeal that will result in a circulation to make that advertising effective. We will run no lottery. We seek no downfall of competition. We feel the field in Denver is favorable for clean competition of the sort that makes for news service of the highest type. . . . We have sense of humor enough to know that a challenger never looks as good as a champion—before the fight.14

117 War

The ensuing newspaper war escalated quickly and at great expense to both competitors. Scripps-Howard’s ownership of both the morning News and afternoon

Times, which was rebranded as the Evening News, posed a direct challenge to the Post, which also printed in the afternoon. To put the fight on equal footing, Bonfils responded to Howard’s speech by quickly putting into production a major morning newspaper of his own, the Morning Post.

The Denver field sufficiently saturated, Bonfils and Howard proceeded to attempt to steal readers from each other and boost their own circulations while waging a war of attrition. If either newspaper managed to spend enough money to exhaust the other’s resources, the winning newspaper would become the dominant one in Denver, claiming the resulting monopoly over the field and its advertising revenues. At the same time, in the event neither newspaper could score a definitive victory, the newspaper with the highest circulation at the time of a negotiated peace would likely begin immediately to reap the benefits of higher advertising rates as compared with its opponent and enjoy greater prospects for growth. Thus, both newspapers were highly motivated to pour vast sums of money into the fight in hopes of finishing on top, when costs could be reduced to profitable levels for the winner.

The newspapers competed on multiple fronts. The more colorful of these are well- documented in the accounts of Perkin and Hosokawa, including the alleged theft of newspapers from doorsteps by competitors, newsroom espionage, and rowdy staffs from morning and afternoon papers on each side of the fight being crammed into a crowded newsroom built only for one.15 The size of newspaper editions swelled, especially in the

118 early days of the fight. At the News, editor Edward Leech tacked on an extra six pages to the flagship morning paper while dropping its street price to match the Post at 2 cents.

Finding the right mix of content on those pages, however, was the trick. As the fight wore on, the superiority of the Post’s news content frustrated News managers such as Leech, who grew increasingly convinced his newspaper could not match its competitor’s coverage of Denver’s streets.16

Promotions at both the Post and News, designed to rapidly inflate circulation figures and advertising revenue, were as generous as they were frequent. In early 1927, the News offered a gallon of free gasoline to those placing classified ads. Though Howard immediately heralded the gasoline campaign as a success, it soon escalated as each newspaper tried to offer more gallons per ad than its opponent.17 At the promotion’s peak, readers could buy a two-line classified ad in either the Post or News, at a cost of roughly 45 cents, and take home five free gallons of gasoline.18 In another gambit, the

News installed mailboxes along rural roads and placed newspapers inside, simply giving newspapers away and claiming circulation increases.19

Additionally, both the Post and News used the wire and feature services to which they subscribed to entice readers. American newspapers of the era could contract with three main news brokers that collected and disseminated national and international news, allowing subscribing papers to publish distant news. These brokers were the Associated

Press, a cooperative, nonprofit alliance of newspapers across the country that was both the nation’s strongest and oldest wire service; the United Press Associations, a for-profit broker forged by E.W. Scripps from the remains of a handful of smaller wire services; and the weaker International News Service, a creation of William Randolph Hearst.20

119 Both the UP and INS were created in part because the Associated Press would not grant membership to newspapers in direct competition with other papers printing AP content.

Neither service matched the breadth of coverage offered by the AP, although the UP boasted hundreds of subscribing newspapers and was a major source of news for Scripps-

Howard papers. The closeness of the UP to Scripps-Howard and strength of the AP led to a shuffling of franchises between the News and Post. Scripps-Howard’s News dropped the morning Associated Press service in favor of its own United Press, leaving the AP franchise to be picked up by the new Morning Post.

For several months the News championed its United Press content in its flag atop page 1, gradually promoting it from a small line of text beneath the date to a framed box beside the newspaper’s name. By the summer of 1927, however, the News had abandoned the box in favor of an etching of Scripps-Howard’s emblematic lighthouse, choosing the strength of the parent company as a whole over the United Press alone. The Post, meanwhile, was even louder in celebrating its Associated Press subscriptions, proclaiming in bold, all-capital letters at the top of the front page, “THE POST IS THE

ONLY DENVER NEWSPAPER IN WHICH YOU GET ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEWS.” As indicated by the eventual discontinuation of the wire advertisement in its flag, the News benefitted most from the United Press in terms of initial product differentiation, cost savings, and corporate synergy, aiding the United Press through its reporting as much as benefitting from it. The Post, meanwhile, saw value in highlighting its Associated Press franchises throughout the circulation war, suggesting readers valued its content.

120 Despite the initial dominance of the Post in the field, Scripps-Howard’s efforts began yielding results. By spring 1927, a few short months after Howard’s declaration of war, the News’s circulation had increased 7 percent over the previous year.21 During the same period, the Evening News grew an astounding 84 percent in direct competition with the Post’s main product.22 Letters from Howard to those inside and outside the Scripps-

Howard organization spoke confidently about the changing tide in Denver, even in the face of occasional setbacks. When a businessman withdrew all his advertising from the

News in favor of the Post, Howard wrote him that “the rapidly changing complexion of the advertising situation in Denver reveals the new order of things” and promised he would have the man “lined up in the News in good time,” reminding him that Scripps-

Howard was pouring money into its product and that the Post would lose in the end.23 “I do not know what is gnawing on his vitals,” Howard wrote one of his managers in

Denver about the loss, but “we can afford to be good sports about it.”24 Major advertisers began increasing their buys in the News; its advertising director was so excited when one department store bought an equal amount in the News as the Post that he wrote Howard directly to celebrate.25 In May, Scripps-Howard executives wired their staff at the News to congratulate them on reaching their first circulation goal.26

Despite the progress being made, there were plenty of reasons to remain skeptical.

As Scripps-Howard money poured into the city—cash raised from the revenues of the chain’s other, profitable properties—the Post not only held its ground but managed a 7 percent circulation increase.27 And other Scripps-Howard papers saw what was happening in Denver and took it upon themselves to duplicate News tactics in their own cities. The result was a temporary abandonment of the austerity that characterized

121 Scripps-Howard as a whole. In one case, Howard chastised one newspaper, “apparently attempting to rotate in the orbit of the Denver NEWSpapers,” for giving away $1 of free groceries with every classified ad, labeling similar promotional practices being used by the chain’s papers as “so extreme and so unwarranted as to call for special conferences” between local managers and the executives in New York and Cincinatti.28 Even more troubling was that the advertising that did move from the Post to the News often soon flowed back. The News’s advertising manager suspected Bonfils was coercing Denver businesses as he had in the past to maintain control over the city’s advertising.29

The degree to which the Post’s continued growth in the face of Scripps-Howard’s attack posed a problem for the News depends largely on what, precisely, Howard’s intentions in Denver were. That he wanted the News to be profitable is assured, and he clearly stated in correspondence that the extension of the United Press Associations into

Colorado was a chief concern; both could be accomplished through circulation growth and retention and, subsequently, increased advertising revenue, ensuring profitability for the News and stability for United Press’s Denver bureau. But messages between Howard and other newspaper magnates suggest he never intended to supplant the Post as the dominant paper in Denver. In March 1927, he sent a telegram to William Randolph

Hearst updating him on the present situation in the city. “[The] situation has changed radically since we discussed [it] here [in] January,” he said. “Still think we can divide

[the] field in clean competition to [the] mutual advantage of [the] community and ourselves.”30 This suggests Howard had recently met with Hearst, who by then commanded a large chain of newspapers spanning the country, to discuss the prospect of

122 Hearst’s buying the Post from Bonfils, to be followed by a period of cooperation between

Hearst and Howard.

Around the same time, seemingly separate from Howard’s maneuverings, Bonfils entered into negotiations with the Gannett newspaper chain, then a young, small outfit controlling several New York and New Jersey newspapers. Talks seem to have begun no later than October 1927. F.W. Bonfils, the Post’s business manager and F.G.’s nephew, was in communication with Gannett general manager Frank E. Tripp about the Post’s mechanical setup, and Bonfils’s letters note Tripp personally visited the plant around that time.31 Within months, News editor Ed Leech was advising Howard in coded telegrams that sale of the Post from Bonfils to Gannett was likely and could happen in days and without warning.32 Scripps-Howard considered this far more than a passing rumor. Under

Leech’s direction, a series of articles and editorials were drafted detailing the prospective sale as though it had happened, including a biography of Gannett founder Frank E.

Gannett, a summary of the highs and lows of the Post under Bonfils, and an editorial declaring the transition meant the News had kept its pledge, made when the war began,

“to correct what we consider a sinister journalistic situation.”33

The News could be confident in the prospect of the sale because a source, possibly

Frank Gannett himself, was providing Howard with special insight into the alleged sale.

In May 1928, five months after Leech’s warning of an impending deal, Gannett wrote

Howard that Bonfils had backed out of an agreement to sell the Post.34 Crucially, he also expressed to Howard his regret that the collapse of the deal would hurt the News. “I am terribly disappointed, particularly on your account,” Gannett wrote. “In the meantime, I should like to see you in New York and discuss whether anything else can be done.”

123 When forwarding Gannett’s message to Leech, Howard guessed Bonfils had never been sincere about his desire to sell.35

Bonfils’s earnestness in the proposed sale cannot be known. What the above evidence does suggest, however, is that Scripps-Howard was not waging the war primarily to replace the Post as the dominant newspaper in Denver with its News. Instead, it desired to apply sufficient pressure to Bonfils to encourage regime change—the instatement of favorable management at the Post that would allow Scripps-Howard to extract reasonable but modest revenues from Denver while leaving a friendly owner in control of the leading newspaper in town. Howard had encouraged Hearst to bid on the

Post; when that failed, Gannett’s deal with Bonfils held promise for an agreement between that company and Scripps-Howard. Such a combination would have been characteristic for Scripps-Howard, which had pioneered early forms of noncompetitive agreements with strong newspapers in cities across the United States such as St. Louis and Cincinnati.36 In the heat of the ongoing war in Denver, however, such an agreement remained elusive.

This led both Bonfils and Scripps-Howard to continue pouring money into their respective efforts to sink one another’s newspapers. Yet as 1928 dragged on, the costs of the war were adding up without either side nearing victory against its opponent. Howard later estimated that his company sank as much as $3 million into the war, while Post business manager F.W. Bonfils claimed his newspaper had thrown $2 million against the

News.37 Precise losses are difficult to calculate, especially because the Post managed to maintain a profit throughout the fight, although well below pre-war levels.38

124 Regardless, both sides were tired. Though he had failed to broker deals with

Hearst or Gannett, Howard was hungry for a deal. His war of attrition and Bonfils’s unyielding counterattack made some kind of agreement desirable to both sides. As fall came and the stalemate continued, all that remained to be settled were the terms.

Détente

Subscribers of the Morning Post and Evening News were in for a rough surprise on Monday, November 5, 1928. Their newspapers were being discontinued.

Such was stipulated in what Bonfils and Howard called the publishers’ agreement, the official terms of peace negotiated in secret and announced in the November 5 issues of their respective newspapers.39 In the deal, the Morning Post was sold to Scripps-

Howard and the Evening News to Bonfils, and both newspapers were immediately discontinued. Bonfils was contractually guaranteed control over the afternoon field, with the News forbidden to publish an afternoon paper for three years, while Bonfils was similarly limited except on Sundays, when it was allowed a morning paper.40 The Post’s ability to publish Sunday mornings, in competition with the News, tilted the parts of the agreement visible to the public in the Post’s favor. The single-copy price for both the daily News and Post was raised from two cents to three, returning the News to its pre-war price while increasing the Post’s rate 50 percent from its previous level; Sunday prices were set flexibly at between five and ten cents. Finally, Bonfils agreed to transfer the

Post’s morning Associated Press franchise, which he had seized when Howard abandoned the AP in favor of his United Press but for which he no longer had any use, back to the News. Not printed in newspaper accounts was that Bonfils sweetened the deal by giving the News $250,000, the only cash to change hands as part of the deal.41

125 The late-1920s newspaper war and subsequent publishers’ agreement set the rules under which the Denver newspaper market would operate for decades. It grounded the

Post in its preferred afternoon spot while pressing Scripps-Howard and its News into the less desirable morning. More significantly, it molded the market into a duopoly, with one dominant newspaper, one subordinate paper, and zero room for competitors. At the turn of the century, Denver had been home to a handful of daily general-interest newspapers; just prior to Scripps-Howard’s entry into Denver, four dailies controlled by three publishers were in operation. When the dust settled in 1928, only the Post and Rocky

Mountain News remained. Figures reported shortly after the publishers’ agreement was signed show the Post managed to push its daily circulation to 162,723 during the war, an increase of 3 percent, while raising its Sunday circulation to 261,511, a 2.5 percent increase. The News, meanwhile, surged to 45,337 daily and 70,120 Sunday. While a far cry from the Post’s figures, the News’s circulation had been lifted 48 percent higher daily and more than 5 percent on Sunday—far outstripping the Post’s gains.

But the circulation increases on both sides had come at a high cost. The signing of the publishers’ agreement marked the beginning of a period of austerity at both newspapers in which budgets were immediately slashed to increase profitability and capitalize on monopolies or near-monopolies in their respective time slots. This process is seen most clearly on the News side thanks to correspondence between managers in

Denver and Scripps-Howard’s corporate offices in New York. Efforts were made to cut operational costs to the greatest degree possible without sacrificing editorial quality.42

Doing so would have provided a baseline expense level while retaining as large a circulation as possible.

126 Pursuit of corporate synergies by Scripps-Howard, however, drastically limited the degree to which News editor Ed Leech was able to make strategically sound cuts to his editorial budget. Within weeks of the signing of the publishers’ agreement, Leech sent notices to eight features syndicates notifying them the News was canceling or not renewing its contracts with them.43 Composing room costs were slashed. But some of

Leech’s largest editorial expenses of all were his paper’s United Press and Newspaper

Enterprise franchises, both of which were part of the larger Scripps-Howard concern, in addition to the reclaimed Associated Press franchise. The merger of the News and

Evening News left him paying with the profits of one newspaper what had previously been funded by two, and he was unable to arrange a reduction in these expenses. The

News, in effect, was subsidizing other Scripps-Howard services to give them access to the

Denver market. As a result, Leech had to make steep reductions to other parts of his budget, including a 45 percent cut in editorial payroll, leaving his newsroom seriously understaffed.44 He did so by firing reporters and retaining the best talent from both staffs.

At the Post, Bonfils similarly reduced editorial spending, but mostly by slashing salaries.45

Budget reductions and other factors led to a rapid decrease in the News’s circulation in the months after the signing of the publishers’ agreement. During some weeks the number of Sunday editions sold fell by up to one thousand copies while subscriptions to the daily edition similarly dropped at the start of each month.46 The

News’s budget had no room for wide-scale circulation promotions. Yet even if it had, local managers argued they would be ineffective, as reflected in the rapid circulation decline after the end of the war, and would have risked a resumption of hostilities with

127 the Post.47 Simultaneously, some major Denver advertisers seized on the News’s relatively weak position to attempt to guide its editorial and promotions policies, withholding advertising in response to contests, promotions, and editorial policies they disagreed with.48 Leech and his staff in Denver were generally able to fend off such bullying, but at the cost of attention that might have otherwise gone toward strengthening their product.49

Howard had a strong local manager in Denver. Edward Leech got his start in newspapering in the city as a paperboy for the Times before reporting for the Republican and, later, the Express.50 He rose to become editor of the Express. Later, after garnering the attention of Scripps-Howard’s management, Leech was sent to improve the company’s newspapers in Memphis and Birmingham. When Scripps-Howard bought the

News, Leech was returned to Denver. There, under Howard’s watchful eye, he led the

News’s assault against the Post. But more pressing matters pulled Howard’s attention from Denver. A month after signing the publishers’ agreement, Howard began curtailing his efforts in Denver in order to focus on righting the struggling New York Telegram, which the chain had purchased soon after it had the News.51 He told Leech the News editor could still rely on the support of the rest of the management in New York but that

Howard’s personal touch would no longer extend so far west. Two months later, Howard would pluck from Leech’s staff one of its key editorialists, Jack Foster, for the staff of the

Telegram.52 Scripps-Howard claimed a strict policy of local management, particularly on editorial matters; when powerful readers angry at the News’s editorial tone on any given issue petitioned Howard to intervene, he was quick to offer “a liberal education in what local autonomy means in the Scripps-Howard organization” and to defer to Leech.53 But

128 Howard’s liberally offered advice on all matters, not only editorial ones, had benefitted the staff in Denver. His shifting attention, then, came at the loss of the News just as Leech attempted to stem the post-agreement circulation spiral.

The management team at the Post, however, was in no position to capitalize on the News’s setbacks. Bonfils’s standing among his staff was questionable at best—some noted a softening in his character while others found him more autocratic and temperamental than ever, damaging his relationship with the Post staff.54 Intelligence flowing into Leech’s office suggested the latter. Furthermore, Denver was occasionally shaken by rumors about Bonfils’s health. The staff of the News suspected he might be suffering from some form of mental illness.55 In 1930, Leech told Howard medical specialists were treating Bonfils for an illness in his kidneys and had been doing so for at least a year, limiting his ability to get around.56 Bonfils’s apparent illness, along with his increasing age, drew him to spend more time away from the paper, leaving it in the hands of his managing editor, William Shepherd, whose editorial mind and work ethic were called into question by his contemporaries. One Post staffer recalled Shepherd’s tendency to work hard enough to keep himself on the boss’s good side, and little more, when given managerial responsibility. “Each Saturday night, F.G. would call in from his house at 9 o’clock to check with Shep on what was going on. And Shep would never leave the office until he got that call. After that call, he would take off and go home or . . . he would never appear in public, let’s say.”57 Shepherd was also criticized for failing to take responsibility for his mistakes, deflecting Bonfils’s ire onto subordinates.58

As the newspapers struggled to steady themselves in the years immediately after the truce, they routinely tested the boundaries of the publishers’ agreement. In most

129 cases, this involved violation of the agreement by the Post followed by efforts by Howard to “re-convert” Bonfils.59 The earliest consequence of the initial agreement, in addition to the end of open conflict, was a desire to expand its terms, not decrease them. Just eighteen days after the publishers’ agreement was announced, Bonfils arranged a meeting among himself, Shepherd, and Leech to establish points of editorial cooperation beyond the business matters to which they had earlier agreed. Namely, both newspapers agreed to rein in puff pieces, establishing policies “to eliminate free advertising for commercial interests, confining such publicity to matter of actual news value.”60 Among other items covered in the new agreement, boxing news was to be limited to fights of real news value rather than free promotion for Denver venues, discrimination to be used in separating charitable enterprises worthy of publicity from for-profit shows, and theater coverage limited to previews and reviews of shows, except in special circumstances. Such measures forced those seeking publicity to advertise, the idea being that as long as both newspapers held to the agreement, each would benefit. The Post and News kept to most tenets of both the publishers’ and editorial agreements.

But not all. At times the Post violated the spirit of the publishers’ agreement, such as when it ballooned the number of color comics in its Sunday edition only weeks after the truce took effect. Leech called foul, telling the Post’s circulation manager the move simply shifted recently ceased promotional tactics into the comic section and threatening to match the increase.61 In other cases, Leech warned Howard that Bonfils seemed close to throwing the agreements aside. In early 1929, he complained the Post was blacklisting socialites who placed announcements in the News, demanding from advertisers that the paper receive a larger percentage of their business than the News, and even telling the city

130 Elks Club the Post would ban its news unless it stopped allowing the News to sponsor some of its fundraisers.62 Later, Leech urged the New York office to take action against the Post’s delivering its paper to major cities around the state such as Colorado Springs in the morning in competition with the News. “They are making no effort at all to live up to the publishers’ agreement,” he wrote, “and their only observance of it has been to insist on the strict application of those provisions which are a handicap to us.”63

In time, Howard intervened. When a Post ad salesman claimed Denver businesses were “literally throwing money away” when advertising in newspapers smaller than the

Post, Howard wrote Bonfils that he was worried not about any damage done to the News but rather the “virtual certainty of such tactics resulting in retaliatory measures by our people,” which he wanted to avoid.64 Bonfils replied that the statement was not directed at the News, only Denver’s smallest papers.65 Another source of regular friction between the papers pertained to publishing radio schedules and information, which was strictly limited in the editorial agreement. The Post demanded a virtual blackout on information pertaining to radio, sensing it as a threat to newspaper advertising, and at one point delivered to the News a letter accusing it of breach of contract for cooperating with a radio station.66 It later withdrew the accusation. Bonfils’s commitment to a radio blackout was fleeting when inconvenient—after committing with the News not to broadcast election results through local radio stations, he did so.67 Generally, however, Bonfils insisted both papers abstain from broadcasting breaking news or even mentioning radio, the latter of which would have placed the News in violation of Scripps-Howard policy.

Howard wrote as much in a letter to Bonfils, explaining that though the day might come

131 when radio would need to be blocked from inclusion in his company’s papers, it had not yet arrived.68

The peace held into the early 1930s, but the affronts claimed by each side added up. Soon after Howard explained his company’s policy toward radio, Bonfils wrote complaining his Post was refusing to accept so-called circular inserts from advertisers while the News accepted them. Unable to reach an agreement with the News’s local management, he told Howard he had decided to “throw the thing wide open until such time as circulars could be eliminated completely.”69 Then, in a reprise of nineteenth- century yellow journalism tactics, Bonfils, apparently with the help of the News’s managing editor, staged a joint raid of the News staff with a Hearst representative, resulting in the shift of a handful of employees away from the News.70 Despite the insult, the peace held.

But the era of good feelings could not last forever. In summer 1932, the News negotiated an agreement with Denver’s department stores guaranteeing it a larger share of their advertising. The News business manager considered it the greatest advertising coup against the Post in twenty-five years.71 Any offense that move garnered at the Post was intensified three weeks later, when the News reprinted excerpts of a political speech that reflected poorly on Bonfils.

The Post publisher responded by filing a $200,000 libel suit against the News.

The Man from Missouri

Bonfils’s name had come up in comments made by Democratic Party state chairman Walter Walker, who was also publisher of the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel in western Colorado. On August 9, 1932, Walker had delivered a speech at Denver’s Brown

132 Palace Hotel denouncing a recent spate of intraparty bickering. He spoke harshly of his political rivals. But he outright condemned Bonfils for printing what Walker felt were unfair comments about Colorado Governor Billy Adams. Referring to Bonfils, Walker cried that eventually “some persecuted man will treat that rattlesnake as a rattlesnake should be treated” and said he would be remembered “as the vilest man who ever dealt in the newspaper business.”72 The article that appeared in the News the following morning attempted to treat the speech fairly, opening with coverage of the conflict in the

Democratic Party and even mentioning criticisms of the News put forth by the event’s speakers. But the passages against Bonfils were extensive, and the article appeared under the headline “POST IS ATTACKED IN DEMOCRATIC ROW.”73

Bonfils filed his $200,000 suit later in the month. In it, he named as defendants not only the News but specific people he wanted held accountable: Charles Lounsbury, who had replaced Ed Leech as News editor the year before; Roy Howard; and Robert

Scripps, who shared leadership of Scripps-Howard. Ostensibly, Bonfils was suing for libel, claiming the things Walker had said were not true and that the defendants were guilty for having reprinted the falsehoods in the News. The neutral reportage defense, which allows newspapers legally to reprint potentially libelous statements made by public figures, had not yet been established, leaving the News vulnerable—if anything Walker said had been factually false, resulted in damages, and was reprinted in the paper.74

Editor Lounsbury, however, doubted the case was truly inspired by Walker’s comments, believing the speech was simply grounds to attack the News for its recent agreement with

Denver department stores.75

133 Defending the News was Philip Van Cise, who was first hired by the newspaper to defend it from an accusation of libel filed earlier by Upton Sinclair.76 Van Cise immediately sought to seize the initiative from Bonfils. The same day he entered as counsel for the defense, he issued a subpoena for the deposition of Bonfils, forcing the publisher to either answer questions regarding his past on the record—which, given the misdeeds Bonfils was rumored to have committed, could be damning—or drop the case.77

At the same time, Van Cise instructed Lounsbury to provide him with any concrete information he possessed proving the things of which Denverites had long accused him.78

He also sent letters to sources in Kansas City and Oklahoma asking for information about

Bonfils’s past misdeeds.79

The dearth of information uncovered by Lounsbury and the distant sources nearly sank Van Cise’s strategy. He entered the deposition, held September 28, without the facts with which he had hoped to intimidate Bonfils. But Bonfils’s lawyer, Philip Hornbein, was unaware of this. Misinterpreting the situation, he allowed Van Cise to ask only ten simple questions before raising his first objection, and Bonfils avoided answering even trivial queries such as what his job as publisher of the Post entailed.80 In response, Van

Cise temporarily ended the deposition until a judge could consider Hornbein’s litany of objections.81 Thanks to Hornbein’s utter misreading of the strength of Van Cise’s case, the latter had time to prepare a stronger defense, now knowing Bonfils intended to carry the case forward.

The man commissioned to strengthen the case was Wallis Reef, an investigative reporter on the News’s staff. He was loaned without restriction to Van Cise to dig up dirt on Bonfils’s sordid past, which stretched from Denver to the Missouri River Valley. Just

134 four days after the deposition, Reef was 250 miles from Denver in Canadian, a town of two thousand in north Texas. It had long been rumored that Bonfils had sold unsuspecting buyers deeds to property in an imaginary nearby town called Oklahoma

City, Texas, tricking them into believing they were buying property in booming

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. In almost daily reports mailed back to Van Cise, Reef built the case against Bonfils, who had indeed defrauded hundreds of buyers. Reef visited the alleged town of Oklahoma City, which, while platted, never existed. One nearby resident told him the town’s only inhabitants “were coyotes, deer and prairie chickens. . . . There was never any attempt made by anyone to found or start a town.”82 Another old-timer told Reef he had witnessed a Russian man, his wife, and several children arrive at the

Canadian train depot with all their possessions, having spent everything traveling to

Oklahoma City to open a butcher’s shop. “When they found out they had been buncoed,”

Reef relayed to Van Cise, “the entire family wept and wailed at the depot. . . . They were destitute.”83 Combined with 762 deeds to Oklahoma City, Texas, property signed by

Bonfils, fifty-seven of which sold property that had already been deeded to other fooled buyers, the case assembled by Reef clearly showed Bonfils had committed fraud.84

Many of the rumors of Bonfils’s past floated to Denver from Kansas City. Reef took a meandering route in that direction, pausing long enough to probe other leads, such as another alleged fraud near the Oklahoma/Kansas border. In Alva, Oklahoma, he found a court petition alleging Bonfils had swindled the town out of roughly $40,000 by charging it $60,000 to construct a courthouse that allegedly could not have cost more than $20,000 to build. The case had ended in settlement.85 The real break, however, awaited in Kansas City, where Bonfils was said to have run a crooked lottery shortly

135 before arriving in Denver in the 1890s. In Kansas City, Reef tracked down Harry Lay, a barber who admitted to having played a crucial role in Bonfils’s lottery scheme. Shortly before the lottery’s drawing, Lay would appear in a town and purchase a ticket. Then, a few days after the drawing, he would return to the store and present a winning ticket given to him in advance by Bonfils. Word of the win would circulate, legitimizing the lottery.86 After decades of rumors about Bonfils’s involvement in a scam lottery, Reef had found the man who could prove the allegations true. To round out the case, he uncovered 1894 court proceedings in which Bonfils had pleaded guilty to running an illegal lottery in Kansas City as well as witnesses who claimed to have seen the inside of the office from which Bonfils operated the lottery.87 Complementing the lottery charge was a statement by the chairman of a Kansas City department store who claimed he had been blackmailed by Bonfils, who attacked his stores after the retailer stopped advertising in the Kansas City Post, which Bonfils and his partner, Harry Tammen, owned at the time. Reef documented the attacks in the pages of the paper. The blackmailing crusade had ended when the store’s advertising reappeared in the Post.88

Van Cise now had ammunition, and when the libel case’s judge ordered that the deposition be continued and that Bonfils answer Van Cise’s questions, the defense was prepared to lean hard on the plaintiff. But it did not need to. Hornbein again attempted to thwart the deposition through objections, and after Van Cise tried to establish the relevance of his questions by reading the allegedly libelous article into the record,

Hornbein and Bonfils walked out of the room.89 That same day, Van Cise filed a complaint against Bonfils for contempt in which he laid out the entire case against the publisher, citing forty-two separate allegations of wrongdoing, some only rumor, others

136 documented with evidence supplied from back east by Reef.90 A month later, Bonfils was found in contempt and ordered to pay a $25 fine, which he appealed to the Colorado

Supreme Court.91 Sensing Bonfils was attempting to stall the entire suit with his appeal, the high court being two years behind on its docket, Van Cise convinced the judge to split the appeal from the rest of the case, allowing the libel portion to move forward.92 Bonfils would have to submit to the deposition, this time before a judge in an open court of law.

On January 31, 1933, Bonfils would have to answer for his past, and unlike past incidents when rumored misdeeds were publicly aired, his wrongdoings now had the weight of

Reef’s investigation behind them.

But while Bonfils did not drop the case to protect himself, neither did he appear at the deposition. Hornbein claimed his client was ill, which Van Cise argued was a dodge, but the judge agreed to a delay.93 Two days later F.G. Bonfils was dead, falling to complications stemming from an ear infection and case of influenza.94

It was a sudden end to an extraordinary era of Denver journalism. For thirty-seven years Bonfils had dominated the market, rising to power by bullying advertisers, titillating readers, and outpacing competitors such as the News. He had physically and editorially assaulted his enemies, defrauded hundreds of people, swindled untold sums from unsuspecting gamblers, blackmailed business leaders—and built the most powerful newspaper between the Missouri River and the Sierra Nevada. He had died before the depravity of his past, the true story of how he had financed the purchase of the Post, could be placed before the public. But while Bonfils himself had died, the source of both his fortune and his lasting infamy—the Denver Post—lived on.

137 Surviving the Depression

But the paper faced a difficult road. Bonfils’s strong hand had held together a small coalition of shareholders, unified in support of his strong and successful management of the Post. William Shepherd, who rose to take Bonfils’s place, had a record of neither managerial ability nor strong relationships with the paper’s shareholders. After Bonfils’s death, those owners were chiefly the Bonfils family trust, which provided for Bonfils’s wife, Belle, and two daughters, Helen and May, with Helen granted control of the trust by her father’s will; Harry Tammen’s wife, Agnes Reid

Tammen; and the Denver Children’s Hospital, which had received roughly half of

Tammen’s share in the Post after his death in 1924. But the Bonfilses’ ownership block almost immediately fell into conflict over the terms of F.G.’s will, with May suing after receiving less than an equal share of her father’s wealth. The ensuing court battle would keep ultimate ownership of the Post in question for five years, fomenting dissention among its shareholders and weakening the organization as a whole.95

The chaos at the Post was visible from New York, where Howard recommitted his attention to Denver and the new opportunities provided in Bonfils’s wake. Prior to

Bonfils’s 1933 death, the News had faced discouraging prospects. Denver’s businesses were beginning to feel the full pressure of the deepening Great Depression, meaning they would be encouraged to limit advertising costs. To do so, they would likely put more money toward the Post, where they could rely on a larger readership, rather than spreading advertising between two newspapers. The most Howard hoped for was breaking even in Denver.96

138 But with Bonfils’s will contested and the Post’s management disorganized, opportunities arose for the News. Shortly after Bonfils’s death, Howard considered shifting the News back to the evening field, reopening the war at a time most opportune for Scripps-Howard.97 He floated the idea to a Denver businessman and friend, saying a shift might be possible if Denver’s department stores would make a firm commitment to guaranteeing the News at least the same amount of advertising they were placing in the

Post. The shift was never made. Later in the year, Howard considered acting on an option granted to him by Bonfils at the time the publishers’ agreement was signed that gave him the first opportunity to purchase the Post in the event Bonfils decided to sell it.98 Howard was interested in either executing the option himself or selling it to an interested third party. He was advised, however, that the option had expired with Bonfils.

Yet despite doubt it would be upheld if brought to court, Howard’s option proved surprisingly durable. Post shareholders began to consider honoring it as the struggles over control of their paper and Bonfils’s larger estate dragged on into 1934 and 1935. By

September 1935, Howard had conceptualized a radically different newspaper market in

Denver and was seeking partners with whom he could work to make his vision a reality.

He shared his plan with James Hammond, then owner of the Memphis Commercial

Appeal, with whom Scripps-Howard had an agreement protecting its own Memphis paper, the Press-Scimitar.99 Howard told Hammond he had come to expect that, within a few years, Scripps-Howard would own the Post. Howard then said if such came to pass, he would seek to “dispose of the morning to some other publisher with whom we could work in a manner to maintain editorial competition and at the same time eliminate destructive and, to the advertisers, expensive business competition,” similar to what

139 Hammond and Howard had accomplished in Memphis.100 In other words, Howard was offering to sell him the News and enter with him into a collusive agreement in which

Scripps-Howard, controlling the Post, would be on top. With grand plans in mind,

Howard waived away occasional offers to buy the News throughout the 1930s.101

The management of the Post appeared sufficiently weak to allow such a proposition to fester, and rumors of a sale to the News were rampant in the summer of

1935.102 Shepherd fancied himself an iteration of Bonfils and attempted to continue bullying Denver into supporting the Post.103 But he lacked Bonfils’s drive and infamy.

The result was a system of initially ineffectual management that brought on what one

Post staffer called “the years of hell and damnation” during which the paper “crawled into the dead and lived on the fat” stored during Bonfils’s long tenure.104 Such characterization exaggerates reality—the paper remained profitable throughout the era— but reflects the quality of Shepherd’s relationships with many at the Post. He did not get along well with the paper’s shareholders, including Harry Tammen’s widow, Agnes, and

Bonfils’s daughter, Helen.105 To Post shareholders hungry for cash, such as the beneficiaries of Harry Tammen’s estate, lean times inclined them to sell.

Helen, however, was determined to maintain local control of the paper. She alone among the small group of shareholders seems to have advocated for holding onto the paper after F.G.’s 1933 death.106 Later, when Howard felt he was nearing a deal in 1935, it was Helen’s obstinacy that stalled the sale long enough for Agnes Tammen to change her mind in favor of keeping the Post. The result was that by 1936, Howard’s deal was dead. The friction between Shepherd and the shareholders had eased.107 The paper remained wildly profitable.108 And both Helen Bonfils and Agnes Tammen, who together

140 held a controlling interest in the Post, had decided to maintain local ownership of their paper. Howard’s hopes of earth-shaking change in the Denver newspaper market had evaporated.

Scripps-Howard’s money could not buy instant superiority in Denver—at least not in the 1930s. But it still had the resources of a national newspaper chain and, if inclined, could seek to improve its position in the city. Thus, Howard had to decide whether to make another go of challenging the Post, either in an all-out offensive as in

1926 or some less-direct approach, or settling for the News’s highly subordinate position, the prospect of nothing greater than gradual progress, and the faint hope that some sort of noncompetitive agreement, perhaps even a joint operating agreement with shared production and advertising outfits, could fall in his lap down the road.109 He opted for the latter, convinced the Post’s position was too strong.

To Howard, everything about the Denver market seemed to be working against him. First, he was firm in a belief that the city’s advertisers were unwilling to give the

News a fair chance. Instead of seeing the News as an opportunity to advertise to a sizeable audience at a discounted rate and as a bulwark against the Post, Howard claimed Denver businesses played just as dirty as the Post itself. “For more than a decade, and at a loss of several millions of dollars over which we have never shed a tear, nor moaned a moan, we have furnished Denver business men with a defensive weapon and a buffer against newspaper monopoly,” he told one advertiser whom he considered a friend.110 In response to pressure from those same advertisers to dictate the News’s coverage of several recent events, he continued: “Denver was the last redoubt of the old time black- jack journalism. Maybe the city will achieve another record, that of being the last

141 important city in the United States where the merchants attempt to dictate the editorial policy of a newspaper. But I hope not.”111 By 1940, he admitted he had “no deep sentimental interest in Denver” and decried the city’s advertisers, who were “disinclined to give the paper a fair trial.”112

Furthermore, Howard’s team in Denver continued to feel hindered by the publishers’ agreement more than five years after its original expiration date. Although no formal announcement seems to have been made, both papers continued to abide by its terms, to lamentations by the News’s staff. When one of its editors, Charles McCabe, approached Shepherd to ask if he would have any problems with the News shifting the release of its first edition an hour earlier, the Post publisher not only refused but threatened to notify the Associated Press that the shift would be in violation of its rules.113 McCabe relayed the information to New York, complaining that Shepherd was demanding adherence to the publishers’ agreement while himself acting out of accord with it by coercing Denver businesses to limit their advertising in the News to a fraction of that in the Post.

But Howard refused to sanction open conflict with the Post. While he claimed he had “no intention of indulging in any back-seat driving as regards Denver,” maintaining a veneer of local management, he chastised News editors who confronted the Post editorially, saying that doing so had cost it dearly in the earlier war. “Of that galaxy of previous mistakes the most priceless jewel was our mistaken idea that we could get farther by tending to the Post’s business or by attacking the Post, than we could by attending to our own business and defending ourselves,” he wrote, claiming such failed tactics had cost Scripps-Howard $3 million in the war.114 He added that “the general

142 public has very little, if any, interest in fights between newspapers or between newspaper editors.” That was doubly the case in Denver, Howard said, where the Post had thrived in response to decades of attacks.

Howard was content, then, running the News only on the fringes of profitability because he felt the market was against his paper. This was true—to a point. But hindering his success as much as advertisers, the publishers’ agreement, or any aptitude of the Post was Howard’s own inability to develop effective local management in Denver. Nowhere is this more evident than the revolving door leading to the editor’s office. Edward Leech, the first editor of the News under Scripps-Howard management, was followed by Charles

Lounsbury, who commanded the newspaper from 1931 to 1935. Despite his four-year tenure, Lounsbury never earned Howard’s respect and was considered inferior by New

York’s executives. Howard routinely criticized his editorial judgment and the quality of his product.115 Lounsbury’s eventual departure ushered in an era of short-term editors that left the News devoid of leadership. Lounsbury was succeeded by Charles McCabe,

Forrest Davis, Aubrey Graves, and Walter Morrow, all of whom commanded the News for roughly a year before either quitting in favor of better opportunities elsewhere or being fired. McCabe was lured away by Hearst, who offered him the publisher position at the New York Mirror;116 Davis quit after clashing with Scripps-Howard policy and being restrained from vigorously advancing the News’s development;117 Graves, despite great promise, was deemed to need “seasoning” as an understudy at a stronger paper before being given a command of his own;118 and Morrow was pulled away to edit Scripps-

Howard’s Columbus Citizen.119 The degree to which Scripps-Howard could have intervened to steady Denver’s management varied, but it had power in each

143 circumstance; more money might have sated McCabe, more vigorous action Davis, and more patience Graves. Despite generally positive comments regarding each editor from both the Denver community and Howard himself, no strong action was taken to encourage continuity in leadership, leaving advertisers and incoming editors unsure about the News’s editorial position.120 A similar turnover characterized the paper’s business and advertising management.121 The quiet irony was that Howard had previously identified personnel as being among the most pivotal factors in the success of a newspaper, proclaiming “that men rather than methods and local opportunity have been the definite factor in any success attained” by Scripps-Howard.122 Now, even as it tried to improve the News’s standing in the Denver market and protect the paper from the effects of the

Depression, Scripps-Howard encouraged the News to struggle during the 1930s through its inability or unwillingness to address the paper’s managerial deficit.

Meanwhile, despite facing the same consequences of the economic crisis in

Denver, the Post managed to remain wildly profitable—more so, in fact, than under

Bonfils. Despite doubts others had carried regarding his leadership skills when he assumed control in 1933, Shepherd proved capable of wringing advertising dollars out of the city’s struggling businesses and finding a steady stream of new subscribers. In the final five years of Bonfils’s management, the Post maintained an average profit margin of about 29 percent, resulting in annual dividends of around $1.1 million, but daily circulation fell by 23,500, likely losing readers unable to afford the luxury of a newspaper in the deepening Depression.123 In comparison, Shepherd maintained in the 1930s and early 1940s an average profit margin of 35 percent, providing total annual dividends of about $1.8 million, and brought the Post’s daily circulation back up by 16,000.124 There

144 were no major changes to the Post during this time—Shepherd truly did try to continue the paper as if Bonfils were still in charge. But while the News was in a constant state of change, precipitated by the incessant flow of managers into and out of the organization, the Post did not suffer by its steady management, whether unimaginative or not.

Advertisers knew they could expect the same treatment they had for decades; readers knew what tone and content would adorn the Post’s pages; staffers knew their paper— and jobs—were stable. If the Post “lived on the fat” of Bonfils’s hard work during the years of Shepherd’s stewardship, there was plenty of fat to go around during an otherwise tight-belted period in Denver’s history.125

The News, meanwhile, had to have its fat shipped in from other Scripps-Howard newspapers. Advertisers responded to the Depression by committing more money to the newspaper with the larger audience and reducing their buys in the second-place News.

The News’s daily circulation fell off at roughly the same rate as the Post’s, decreasing from around 45,000 in 1929 to 36,000 in 1933, and like the Post, it would not recover to pre-Depression highs until the 1940s.126 Dwindling advertising and circulation revenues were met with editorial changes and experimentation. The paper’s newshole–the space reserved for news content rather than advertising–was cut to reflect the reduction in ad linage, resulting in an overall slimmer paper.127 Editorial and section-front pages were reduced and advertising was sometimes placed on them, unlike in previous years.

Meanwhile, both newspapers found themselves increasingly pressed by radio as a competitor for Denver’s advertising dollars. During his brief appointment as News editor,

McCabe complained the city’s radio stations were scooping him on stories in his own back yard, such as a 1935 airplane crash in which a senator died:

145 Every radio in Denver blatted it out before we even knew about it from our press services. Imagine our confusion when they began to call us to verify the report. You can also imagine how it makes you feel when you are paying more than $1,000 a week for press service and you find your radio stations, which, in Denver, are very definitely fighting for the same advertising dollar you are striving to get, beating you with your own news, and paying but a miserable amount per week for it. It just ain’t right.128

McCabe proposed Scripps-Howard purchase a large interest in a Denver radio station to hedge its advertising and editorial losses and to push back against the Post which, after

Bonfils’s death, had developed an interest in radio, particularly KOA, Denver’s so-called clear-channel station, named for its powerful signal having no nearby competition on the

AM radio band.129 Other advisors cautioned Howard similarly.130 Scripps-Howard did buy a small stake in a small Denver station, but it was controlled by other interests and was not integrated with the News in any meaningful way.131 McCabe, like other editors at the time, was not in his post long enough to oversee the development of a strong radio presence for the News in Denver.

The Post, meanwhile, was able to use its relationship with KOA as a weapon against the News. In April 1937, for example, a Post broadcast on the station claimed

Scripps-Howard had for weeks been negotiating the sale of the News to Kansas politician and publisher Henry J. Allen.132 By all accounts, there was no truth to the claim, although

Allen had been pressuring Howard to sell him the News for some two years.133 The Post quoted Arthur Caruth, an associate of Allen, as its source for the broadcast. The radio story was followed up with a print report in the next day’s Post. Aubrey Graves, then editor of the News, wanted to lash back at the Post in vigorous refutation of the rumor, particularly after seeing it repeated in print, but was convinced instead to print a story about the reorganization of the Denver Publishing Company, which Scripps-Howard

146 controlled and which published the News, to explain away the Post’s rumor without appearing defensive.134 But the rumor had circulated widely, adding even more uncertainty as to the News’s position in Denver.135 Howard was sufficiently concerned as to ask a A.B. Trott, a businessman and friend in the city, to intervene if he heard the rumor while about Denver.136 Eventually, the story was set straight where it had originated—over the airwaves. “Reports of the sale of The Rocky Mountain News had reporters and staff-members on the News in an uproar the other night,” one broadcast said. “The reports emanated from The Denver Post. You’d think . . . that the boys on The

News would be the first to know about it, if their paper had been sold.”137

As 1939 ended and brought a close to a difficult decade, the Denver newspaper market was drastically changed from ten years earlier. Bonfils was dead. The News was on its seventh editor, fourth business manager, and eighth advertising manager.138 Radio was increasingly challenging Denver newspapers as the primary medium for local and national advertising as well as breaking news. But in other ways, the newspapers were much the same as they had been before. The circulation growth that had stalled with the signing of the publishers’ agreement had failed to start, leaving the Post and News where they had been in the late 1920s. The Post still led the News in circulation by about the same margin it had before, and it remained profitable while the News struggled to break even.

That Scripps-Howard had failed to stabilize its Denver paper after more than ten years of peace with the Post was a source of increasing frustration. In summer 1937, a detailed review of the News was conducted by Walter Morrow (as a Scripps-Howard manager, prior to his brief tenure as News editor) to tease out the paper’s most significant

147 problems and identify ways to mitigate them.139 The final report was damning, claiming

“The Rocky Mountain News is at a low ebb of popularity” and calling it “an atrocity.”140

Despite Denver supposedly being hospitable to a morning paper, the News had lost prestige because of poor news coverage; it was read only for its features and as a way to fact-check the Post.141 To attract advertisers, the report claimed a circulation of no less than 50,000 was necessary, and it argued that could only be achieved if the paper’s content was strong enough to draw in new readers.142 Consistency in management was necessary; the staff was demoralized, unsure what each new editor expected of them.

The twenty-seven page report’s summary consisted of only four words that headlined Scripps-Howard’s failure in Denver, especially during the circulation war but after it as well, a lacking that could not be remedied by any amount of money diverted from its profitable properties to the News:

“The problem is editorial.”143

A New News

When Scripps-Howard executives gathered for a semi-annual meeting two years later in April 1940, they were disgusted to find their standing in Denver had not materially improved. Few expected the situation to change. It was therefore proposed that the News be sold or, if no buyer could be found, closed.144 Only one man was bold enough to argue for keeping the paper alive, declaring it “inconceivable that the only seven-day morning newspaper in the capital of Colorado had no place in the scheme of

Scripps-Howard.”145 George Parker, Scripps-Howard’s editor-in-chief, told the man that if he felt that way, he should go to Denver and find a way to fix the paper himself.

148 Over time, Scripps-Howard’s priorities are reflected in its allocation of personnel.

When Roy Howard diverted not only his attention but also the News’s talented young journalist Jack Foster to the New York Telegram after signing the publishers’ agreement,

Howard was signaling that New York was more important to the company than Denver.

Moves in 1940, then, suggest the News became a priority. Howard told Denver businessman and friend A.B. Trott he would send his son Jack Howard—president of

Scripps-Howard Radio and the man who declared the News worth saving—to improve the News if local advertisers would agree to increase their patronage to the paper.146

Trott’s response was forceful, personally convincing some of the city’s major businesses to support the paper.147 As a result, Jack Howard reported to Denver, assisting long-time editorialist and interim editor Lee Casey in steadying the News until a new editor could be found who could put an end to five years of incessant turnover. In November, the man chosen for the job arrived in Denver, returning there after twelve years learning about management at other Scripps-Howard newspapers. Thirty-four-year-old Jack Foster took control of the News.148

The attitude that greeted Foster in Denver was one of measured optimism. Trott’s advocacy among Denver advertisers had resulted in improved department store linage beginning in summer 1940, with the News regularly gaining local linage against the

Post.149 The News’s daily circulation had begun recovering from its Depression rut, still below where it had been at the end of the war with the Post, but improving.150 And it was gaining on the Post. The News had only 24 percent of the Post’s daily circulation in

1937.151 By 1940 it was nearing 27 percent, gaining an average 0.73 percent on its competitor each year.152 But the News still trailed far behind the Post in market share and

149 remained 8,000 below the necessary 50,000 daily circulation Scripps-Howard felt was necessary for the paper to appeal to advertisers in the long-term.153

Foster’s first year as editor in Denver, however, yielded results, often at the loss of the Post. The data are sparse, but Foster oversaw daily circulation growth in at least eight of his first twelve months leading the News.154 Advertising gains were even more promising. Figures reporting on nine of Foster’s first thirteen months in Denver show the

News outperformed the Post in advertising growth by a wide margin. While the Post firmly controlled classified advertising in the city, local advertising linage in the News grew in each month for which data are available, outpacing its competitor in eight of those nine months. In the crucial local retail month of December in 1940, just after Foster had arrived, the News claimed 24 percent of the advertising linage carried by Denver’s two major papers. In December 1941 that number improved to 27 percent, leaving the

News well behind the Post but indicating a strong single-year improvement.

That same month, the United States entered World War II, posing a direct threat to the News’s burgeoning turnaround. The most obvious result of the war was an increase in the demand of Denverites for information about the war, resulting in a bump in the circulation of both papers. The Post fared better than its competitor in this regard. The

News saw its daily circulation rise 8 percent in 1942 to 48,179 while the Post increased by 6 percent to 167,198. That smaller percent of increase, however, represented a jump of more than 9,000 readers each day compared with fewer than 4,000 for the News.155

While the News could celebrate its own gains, which brought it ever nearer its target of 50,000, the Post’s increase posed to it a problem. The war brought with it a range of problems to retailers, including decreased household spending, rationing, and

150 general economic and societal uncertainty. Advertising budgets were subsequently curtailed, leaving businesses seeking ways to make less advertising go further. The result was, as during the Depression, to divert advertising dollars from smaller papers toward larger ones, where circulations were higher and single ads could have greater impact. As

News business manager H.W. Hailey wrote to Scripps-Howard executives in New York,

Day after day our mail brings bulletins or letters from national (advertising) offices re: accounts that are breaking—it’s a One paper BUY across the board, except perhaps in NY or Washington. “Sorry”, says the letter, “but the Post is scheduled in Denver and there’s nothing we can do about it—it’s a largest total circulation “A” newspaper list in 40 cities—period”.

Well, if that type of thinking and action continues on into next year, there will be a lot of second papers in large markets and individual papers in secondary markets close their doors—for the duration and maybe forever.156

The war posed other challenges to Denver’s newspapers. Chief among these was the rationing of materials crucial to the production and delivery of papers. Fuel rationing, for example, forced both the News and Post to find other ways to get their papers on the doorsteps of subscribers. The News responded by cutting more than 80 percent of its motor routes around the city, pushing subscribers on the outskirts to accept slower mail delivery instead. A few affected customers canceled their subscriptions or shifted to the

Post, which was slower than the News to submit to fuel rationing.157 For circulation tasks that were not time-sensitive, such as picking up unsold papers, horses and wagons were purchased.158 A second shortage was in manpower. Dozens of newspaper men were called into the US armed services, and other men and women left their jobs in newspapering for higher-paying positions supporting the war effort.159 The News found it particularly difficult to find carriers—those unable to take wartime jobs were often ill equipped to brave Denver’s frigid winter mornings—and the Post operated its newsroom

151 with a skeleton staff.160 But the problems extended throughout the operation, straining news deadlines, delivery, and personnel alike.161

A third challenge posed by World War II was newsprint rationing, which wound up having a monumental effect on the Denver newspaper market. After eighty-three years as a broadsheet, the News reinvented itself as a tabloid. Identifying who came up with the idea for the shift is now impossible. In a failed 1940 pitch to Scripps-Howard’s executives in New York to get back his old job as editor, Aubrey Graves recommended such a change, specifically citing newsprint savings and product differentiation as draws to the format.162 However, while he may have been responsible for planting the seed of change, no further discussion of the idea in 1940 is evidenced. What is clear is that News business manager H.W. Hailey floated the idea to Jack Howard and Ray Huber, one of the recipients of Graves’s earlier letter, in February 1942. Hailey was told to deliver his pitch several more times to decision makers higher in the company hierarchy and eventually to Roy Howard himself. With the help of Jack Howard and Jack Foster, Hailey convinced Roy to give the new format a try.163 The day before the switch, a full-page advertisement in the News heralded the tabloid as “new,” “modern,” “exciting,” easier to hold and read, containing more pages and pictures, and, on Sundays, featuring Parade magazine—an inclusion made possible by savings on newsprint associated with the tabloid’s smaller size.164 On April 13, 1942, its front page adorned by only one headline, one photo, one “reefer” line (a blurb teasing a story inside), and a small note about the new format, the first tabloid issue of the News appeared on Denver doorsteps.

Accompanying the new format was a long-view approach to accepting advertising under the constraints of the ongoing newsprint shortage. As one observer noted, the Post

152 responded to the shortage by prioritizing advertisements over news, resulting in a smaller newshole.165 The News, meanwhile, allowed its newshole to grow disproportionately from the small amount of advertising it managed to attract, providing readers a great deal of news in a convenient-to-read format. Doing so departed from the News’s Depression- era tactic of growing and shrinking its newshole depending on the amount of advertising an issue carried. The tactic was a gamble, one that trusted readers would recognize and patronize a paper that contained higher quality news content in a more manageable package than the competition.

It paid off. A year after the switch was made, the News’s daily circulation had rocketed upward 12 percent, pushing above the targeted 50,000 mark for the first time in the newspaper’s history and beating the Post’s percentage increase four-fold.166 Coupled with rejuvenated editorial content, the News climbed to even stronger gains later in the decade.

As World War II dragged on and the News explored its new identity as a tabloid,

Shepherd and the Post trudged ahead as before. The stability that characterized both the transition to Shepherd’s tenure as publisher and his leadership throughout the Depression continued into the 1940s. In fact, the Post of 1945 was strikingly similar in appearance, tone, and even staff to that of the Bonfils era. Its front page was almost identical—red- colored headlines still shouted sensational headlines, the paper’s flag changed only minimally, the typefaces used were largely the same, photographs appeared in similar places, and the news and feature services to which the newspaper subscribed were still advertised in two lines spanning the very top of the page.167 Compared with the

153 dramatically contemporary-looking News, the Post, while still attracting readers, appeared better suited to the Progressive than the coming post-war era.

Despite his paper’s dated appearance, Shepherd continued producing results throughout World War II. The Post’s circulation increased by 26,600 between 1940 and

1944, and Shepherd scraped no less than $1 million worth of dividends from the paper each year by holding costs as low as possible while maintaining circulation growth and advertising control.168 But profit margins were falling; after reaching a high of 36.13 percent in 1936, they trailed off to 20.60 percent in 1944, their lowest since the circulation war with the News. Post reporters who had been on the staff for decades remained in the newsroom, their coworkers said, because it was less expensive to keep them on the payroll than to pension them.169 Meanwhile, able reporters were tough to come by—many of the most talented men had been pulled away to the war. If multiple local news stories broke simultaneously, the handful of reporters on hand—sometimes as few as two—were tasked with covering them alone.170

At the same time, not only was the News showing new signs of life, with rumors around Denver claiming it had turned a corner and was posting an annual profit of

$100,000, but another newspaper, to be published in the afternoon, was in the works.171

Its creator, Eugene Cervi, had worked at the Post for several years before becoming publicity director for the War Production Board in Denver. Cervi wanted the government to grant him more than one thousand tons of newsprint, in wartime, to found his newspaper specifically to challenge the Post’s dominance, which he said exercised “a practical monopoly in Denver which is unique in the newspaper industry.”172 Both the

Post and News took Cervi’s plan, which predicted a starting circulation of 25,000 in

154 direct competition with the Post, seriously.173 The News’s management wrote gleefully of the development to New York, predicting “the Post and the new publication might engage in a very active battle, which could leave us [the News] on the sidelines to continue our progress.”174

All of this—the waning profits, barren newsroom, ascendant News, and a new paper—contributed to a general feeling that the end of the war would bring some kind of change to the Post. It was not that change was needed. The Post was stable and in the black. But the newspaper was out of place, a relic of yellow journalism that found itself on the cusp of the atomic age. As one former Post reporter put it, “I don’t think there were any feelings there had to be a change; I think the feeling was that after the war was over this was going to be different.”175

1 “Correction—Page 732,” folder “1959 City File—Denver Rocky Mountain

News,” box 306, Roy Wilson Howard Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress,

Washington, D. C., hereafter referred to as “Howard Papers–LoC.”

2 Roy W. Howard, “Evening News and Morning Post to Suspend Today,” Rocky

Mountain News, November 5, 1928.

3 “Action, Not Promises, Is Policy of News, Says Roy W. Howard,” Rocky

Mountain News, November 27, 1926.

4 Howard, “Evening News and Morning Post to Suspend Today.”

5 Ibid.

155

6 Roy Howard to G.B. Parker and W.W. Hawkins, February 2, 1926, folder 2, box

57, series 3.1, E.W. Scripps Papers, Alden Library, Ohio University, referred to hereafter as “Scripps Papers.”

7 N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual and Directory (1927), 136.

8 Roy Howard to Thomas Sidlo, February 15, 1926, folder 2, box 57, series 3.1,

Scripps Papers; Thomas Sidlo to Roy Howard, February 18, 1926, folder 2, box 57, series

3.1, Scripps Papers.

9 Gerald J. Baldasty, E.W. Scripps and the Business of Newspapers (Chicago:

University of Illinois, 1999), 4–5.

10 H.E. Neave to Robert L. Perkin, August 19, 1958, folder “1958 City File—

Denver Rocky Mountain News,” box 300, Howard Papers–LoC.

11 Stephen J. Leonard and Thomas J. Noel, Denver: Mining Camp to Metropolis

(Niwot, Colorado: University Press of Colorado, 1990), 236.

12 Roy Howard to Aubrey Graves, February 15, 1937, folder “1937 City File

Denver Rocky Mountain News 765–873,” box 123, Howard Papers–LoC.

13 Edward E. Adams, “Market Subordination and Competition: A Historical

Analysis of Combinations, Consolidation, and Joint Operating Agreements through an

Examination of the E.W. Scripps Newspaper Chain, 1877–1993” (PhD diss., Ohio

University, 1993), 91.

14 “Action, Not Promises, Is Policy of News, Says Roy W. Howard,” Rocky

Mountain News, November 27, 1926.

156

15 Robert L. Perkin, The First Hundred Years: An Informal History of Denver and the Rocky Mountain News (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1959), 485–518; Bill

Hosokawa, Thunder in the Rockies: The Incredible Denver Post (New York: William

Morrow & Co., 1976), 120–35.

16 Ed Leech to G.B. Parker, May 29, 1928, folder “1928 City File Denver Leech,

Edward T. (2),” box 24, Howard Papers–LoC.

17 Roy Howard to “All Editors and Business Managers,” March 29, 1927, Roy W.

Howard Papers, Indiana University; Hosokawa, Thunder in the Rockies, 131–32.

18 Jim Hale, interview with Bill Hosokawa, March 29, 1974, transcript, box 5,

MSS 1147, Bill Hosokawa Collection, History Colorado, hereafter referred to as

Hosokawa Papers–HC, tape 19, page 12.

19 Ibid.

20 Richard Allen Schwarzlose, “The American Wire Services: A Study of Their

Development as a Social Institution” (PhD diss., University of Illinois, 1965), 16–104.

21 N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual and Directory (1927), 136;

N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual and Directory (1928), 136.

22 N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual and Directory (1927), 137;

N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual and Directory (1928), 135.

23 Roy Howard to Harry Nier, February 23, 1927, folder “1927 Cities Denver

Evening News,” Howard Papers–LoC.

24 Roy Howard to W.C. Bussing, February 23, 1927, folder “1927 Cities Denver

Evening News,” Howard Papers–LoC.

157

25 W.C. Bussing to Roy Howard, April 14, 1927, folder “1927 Cities Denver

Evening News,” Howard Papers–LoC.

26 Howard and Hawkins to Leech and Gillis, May 6, 1927, folder “1927 Cities

Denver Evening News,” Howard Papers–LoC.

27 N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual and Directory (1927), 136;

N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual and Directory (1928), 137.

28 Roy Howard to All Editors and Business Managers, March 28, 1927, Roy W.

Howard Papers, Indiana University, referred to hereafter as “Howard Papers–Indiana.”

29 W.C. Bussing to Roy Howard, April 14, 1927, folder “1927 Cities Denver

Evening News,” Howard Papers–LoC.

30 Roy Howard to William Randolph Hearst, March 21, 1927, Howard Papers–

Indiana.

31 F.W. Bonfils to F.E. Tripp, November 18, 1927, folder 19, box 16, MSS WH

1226, Edwin Palmer Hoyt Papers, Western History Collection, Denver Public Library, hereafter referred to as “Hoyt Papers.”

32 E.T. Leech to Roy W. Howard, January 12, 1928, folder “1928 City File

Denver Leech, Edward T.,” box 24, Howard Papers–LoC.

33 “Editorial,” folder “1928 City File Denver Leech, Edward T.,” box 24, Howard

Papers–LoC.

34 Howard refers to a “friend” who was keeping him abreast of the developing sale in Roy Howard to Ed T. Leech, January 28, 1988, folder “1928 City File Denver

158

Leech, Edward T.,” box 24, Howard Papers–LoC; Frank to Roy W. Howard, May 7,

1928, folder “1928 City File Denver Leech, Edward T.,” box 24, Howard Papers–LoC.

35 Roy Howard to Ed Leech, May 8, 1928, folder “1928 City File Denver Leech,

Edward T.,” box 24, Howard Papers–LoC.

36 Edward E. Adams, “Secret Combinations and Collusive Agreements: The

Scripps Newspaper Empire and the Early Roots of Joint Operating Agreements,”

Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 73, no. 1 (Spring 1996): 195–205.

37 Roy Howard to Charles McCabe, May 18, 1935, folder “1935 City File Denver

Rocky Mountain News,” box 100, Howard Papers–LoC; Perkin, The First Hundred

Years, 515.

38 Hosokawa, Thunder in the Rockies, 134.

39 “Important Announcement,” Denver Post, November 5, 1928; Howard,

“Evening News and Morning Post to Suspend Today.”

40 With written consent from the other publisher, either newspaper was allowed to publish at a time otherwise forbidden by the agreement.

41 Hosokawa, Thunder in the Rockies, 133–34.

42 J.L. Cauthorn to W.G. Chandler, January 3, 1929, folder “1929 City File

Denver Rocky Mountain News,” box 34, Howard Papers–LoC.

43 E.T. Leech to W.W. Hawkins, November 26, 1928, folder “1928 City File

Denver Leech, Edward T. (2),” box 24, Howard Papers–LoC.

44 Ibid.

159

45 Ed Leech to W.W. Hawkins, February 22, 1929, folder “1929 City File Denver

Leech, E.T. (carbons),” box 34, Howard papers–LoC.

46 J.L. Cauthorn to W.G. Chandler, January 3, 1929, folder “1929 City File

Denver Rocky Mountain News,” box 34, Howard Papers–LoC.

47 J.L. Cauthorn to Ray A. Huber, April 2, 1929, folder “1929 City File Denver

Rocky Mountain News,” box 34, Howard Papers–LoC.

48 E.T. Leech to Roy W. Howard, December 20, 1928, folder “1928 City File

Denver Leech, Edward T.,” box 24, Howard Papers–LoC.

49 E.T. Leech to W.G. Chandler, January 22, 1929, folder “1929 City File Denver

Leech, E.T. (carbons),” box 34, Howard Papers–LoC.

50 Perkin, The First Hundred Years, 491.

51 Roy Howard to Ed Leech, December 24, 1928, folder “1928 City File Denver

Leech, Edward T.,” box 24, Howard Papers–LoC.

52 Roy Howard to Edward Leech, February 4, 1929, folder “1929 City File

Denver Leech, E.T. (carbons),” box 34, Howard Papers–LoC.

53 Roy Howard to Ed Leech, July 25, 1928, folder “1928 City File Denver Leech,

Edward T.,” box 24, Howard Papers–LoC; Roy Howard to Ben Lindsey, October 14,

1927, folder “1927 Cities Denver General,” box 13, Howard Papers–LoC.

54 On Bonfils’s temperament in the 1920s, see Caroline Bancroft, interview with

Bill Hosokawa, June 28, 1974, transcript, box 3 (listed as box 2 on finding aid), Bill

Hosokawa Papers–HC; Anne O’Neill Sullivan, interview with Bill Hosokawa, February

160

14, 1974, transcript, box 5, MSS 1147, Hosokawa Papers–HC, 1b; Hale, interview,

March 29, 1974, 3b.

55 Ed Leech to Roy Howard, January 2, 1927, folder “1928 City File Denver

Leech, Edward T,” box 24, Howard Papers–LoC.

56 Ed Leech to Roy Howard, July 24, 1930, folder “1930 City File Denver Leech,

Edward T.,” box 42, Howard Papers–LoC.

57 Hale, interview, March 29, 1974, tape 19, page 10.

58 Ibid., tape 24, page 1.

59 Ed Leech to W.W. Hawkins, February 22, 1929, folder “1929 City File Denver

Leech, E.T. (carbons),” box 34, Howard Papers–LoC.

60 Editorial memorandum, November 23, 1928, folder “1928 City File Denver

Leech, Edward T. (2),” box 24, Howard Papers–LoC, underlining printed in original.

61 Ed Leech to Roy Howard, November 26, 1928, folder “1928 City File Denver

Leech, Edward T.,” box 24, Howard Papers–LoC.

62 Ed Leech to W.W. Hawkins, February 22, 1929, folder “1929 City File Denver

Leech, E.T. (carbons),” box 34, Howard Papers–LoC.

63 Ed Leech to W.W. Hawkins, July 24, 1929, folder “1929 City File Denver

Leech, E.T,” box 34, Howard Papers–LoC.

64 Roy Howard to F.G. Bonfils, December 31, 1930, folder “1930 City File

Denver General,” box 42, Howard Papers–LoC.

65 Frederick G. Bonfils to Roy Howard, January 9, 1931, folder “1931 City File

Denver General,” box 51, Howard Papers–LoC.

161

66 Ed Leech to W.W. Hawkins, August 17, 1929, folder “1929 City File Denver

Leech, E.T. (carbons),” box 34, Howard Papers–LoC.

67 Ed Leech to Roy Howard, February 4, 1931, folder “1931 City File Denver

Rocky Mt. News,” box 51, Howard Papers–LoC.

68 Roy Howard to Frederick Bonfils, February 7, 1931, Howard Papers–Indiana.

69 F.G. Bonfils to Roy Howard, March 13, 1931, folder “1931 City File Denver

General,” 51, Howard Papers–LoC.

70 Ed Leech to John Sorrells, April 25, 1931, folder “1931 City File Denver

Rocky Mt. News,” box 51, Howard Papers–LoC.

71 M.F. Riblett to W.G. Chandler, August 3, 1932, folder “1932 City File Denver

Rocky Mountain News,” box 62, Howard Papers–LoC.

72 “Post is Attacked in Democratic Row,” Rocky Mountain News, August 10,

1932.

73 Ibid.

74 Kyu Ho Youm, “Recent Rulings Weaken Neutral Reportage Defense,”

Newspaper Research Journal 27, no. 1 (Winter 2006): 58.

75 Charles Lounsbury to Robert Scripps and Roy Howard, August 26, 1932, folder

“1932 City File Denver Rocky Mountain News,” box 64, Howard Papers–LoC.

76 Ed Leech to T.L. Sidlo, June 19, 1929, folder “1929 City File Denver Leech,

E.T. (carbons),” box 34, Howard Papers–LoC.

77 “Entry of Appearance,” The Denver Publishing Company, a corporation, Roy

W. Howard, Robert P. Scripps and Charles E. Lounsbury vs. Frederick G. Bonfils (3d

162

Div. Col. Sept. 12, 1932), WH1085, box 18, Bill Hosokawa Papers, Western History

Collection, Denver Public Library, referred to hereafter as Hosokawa Papers–DPL;

“Notice,” Bonfils, Hosokawa Papers; Philip Van Cise to Thomas L. Sidlo, November 18,

1932, Howard Papers–Indiana.

78 Philip Van Cise to Charles E. Lounsbury, September 12, 1932, Hosokawa

Papers–DPL.

79 Philip Van Cise to Merle D. Smith, September 9, 1932, Hosokawa Papers–

DPL; Philip Van Cise to Henry N. Ess, September 19, 1932, Hosokawa Papers–DPL.

80 “Deposition of Plaintiff,” Bonfils, 2 (Sept. 28, 1932), Hosokawa Papers–DPL.

81 Ibid., 28.

82 Report No. 3, October 4, 1932, boxes 4 and 5, WH1075, Wallis Melvin Reef

Papers, Western History Collection, Denver Public Library, 1. Collection referred to hereafter as “Reef Papers.”

83 Report No. 15, October 16, 1932, Reef Papers, 2.

84 Report No. 13, October 16, 1932, Reef Papers; Report No. 10, October 12,

1932, Reef Papers.

85 Report No. 25, October 27, 1932, Reef Papers.

86 Report No. 31, November 3, 1932, Reef Papers.

87 Report No. 42, November 15, 1932, Reef Papers, 1; Report No. 46, November

19, 1932, Reef Papers, 1.

163

88 Report No. 61, December 12, 1932, Reef Papers, 3–5; Report No. 62,

December 13, 1932, Reef Papers, 2–3; Report No. 63, December 14, 1932, Reef Papers,

2.

89 “Deposition of Plaintiff,” Bonfils, 4 (Nov. 15, 1932), Hosokawa Papers–DPL.

90 “Petition for Citation of Contempt,” Bonfils, (Nov. 15, 1932), Hosokawa

Papers–DPL.

91 Philip S. Van Cise to Thomas L. Sidlo, December 16, 1932, Hosokawa Papers–

DPL; Philip S. Van Cise to Thomas L. Sidlo, December 19, 1932, Hosokawa Papers–

DPL.

92 Philip S. Van Cise to Thomas L. Sidlo, January 18, 1933, Hosokawa Papers–

DPL.

93 “Bonfils Too Ill to Take Stand,” Rocky Mountain News, February 1, 1933.

94 Frederick G. Bonfils Dies after Dramatic Fight for Life; Funeral Tomorrow,”

Rocky Mountain News, February 3, 1933. A doctor cited the cause of Bonfils’s death as toxic encephalitis, a swelling of the brain likely stemming from Bonfils’s case of the flu.

95 Charles Lounsbury to Roy Howard, July 14, 1933, folder “1933 City File

Denver Rocky Mountain News,” box 77, Howard Papers–LoC; Hosokawa, Thunder in the Rockies, 178.

96 Roy Howard to Robert Scripps, February 22, 1933, Howard Papers–Indiana.

97 Ibid.

98 Memo to Roy Howard, attached to E.C. Sharer to Roy Howard, December 5,

1933, folder “1933 City File Denver General,” box 77, Howard Papers–LoC.

164

99 Roy Howard to James Hammond, September 3, 1935, Howard Papers–Indiana.

100 Ibid.

101 Winfield S. Tarbell to Roy W. Howard, September 27, 1933, folder “1933 City

File Denver General,” box 77, Howard Papers–LoC; Dinna Bell to Roy Howard, July 1,

1936, folder “1936 City File Denver General,” box 111, Howard Papers–LoC.

102 Charles McCabe to Roy W. Howard, June 12, 1935, folder “1935 City File

Denver Rocky Mountain News,” box 100, Howard Papers–LoC.

103 Roy Howard to Robert Scripps, February 22, 1933, Howard Papers–Indiana.

104 Hale, interview, March 19, 1974, 1.

105 Claude K. Boettcher to Roy Howard, August 24, 1936, folder “1936 City File

Denver,” box 111, Howard Papers–LoC.

106 Charles Lounsbury to Roy Howard, July 14, 1933, folder “1933 City File

Denver Rocky Mountain News,” box 77, Howard Papers–LoC.

107 Claude K. Boettcher to Roy Howard, August 24, 1936, folder “1936 City File

Denver,” box 111, Howard Papers–LoC.

108 Hosokawa, Thunder in the Rockies, 186.

109 Roy Howard to A.B. Trott, April 22, 1940, folder “1940 City File Denver

General,” box 161, Howard Papers–LoC, 2.

110 A.B. (Fred) Trott to Roy Howard, October 6, 1937, folder “1937 City File

Denver General,” box 123, Howard Papers–LoC, 4.

111 Ibid., 5.

165

112 Roy Howard to A.B. Trott, April 22, 1940, folder “1940 City File Denver

General,” box 161, Howard Papers–LoC, 1.

113 Charles McCabe to W.G. Chandler, June 20, 1935, folder “1935 City File

Denver Rocky Mountain News,” box 100, Howard Papers–LoC. The proposed shift would have had the News releasing its first edition at 7:30 p.m. instead of 8:45 or 9.

114 Roy Howard to Charles McCabe, May 18, 1935, folder “1935 City File Denver

Rocky Mountain News,” box 100, Howard Papers–LoC.

115 Roy Howard to Robert Scripps, February 22, 1933, Howard Papers–Indiana;

Roy Howard to Charles Lounsbury, January 5, 1932, folder “1932 City File Denver

Rocky Mountain News,” box 64, Howard Papers–LoC; Roy Howard to Charles

Lounsbury, December 15, 1932, folder “1932 City File Denver Rocky Mountain News,” box 64, Howard Papers–LoC; Roy Howard to Charles Lounsbury, January 18, 1934, folder “1934 City File Denver Rocky Mountain News,” box 89, Howard Papers–LoC.

116 Perkin, The First Hundred Years, 541.

117 Pepperday to W.W. Hawkins, February 10, 1937, folder “1937 City File

Denver Rocky Mountain News,” box 123, Howard Papers–LoC.

118 Walter Morrow to John Sorrells, August 14, 1937, folder “1937 City File

Denver Rocky Mountain News,” box 123, Howard Papers–LoC; Walter Morrow to John

Sorrells, January 6, 1938, folder “1938 City File Denver Denver News,” box 137,

Howard Papers–LoC.

119 Perkin, The First Hundred Years, 545.

166

120 Aubrey Graves to John Sorrells, May 22, 1937, folder “1937 City File Denver

Rocky Mountain,” box 123, Howard Papers–LoC.

121 Fred Livingston to J.L. Cauthorn, March 18, 1940, folder “1940 City File

Denver Denver [sic] News,” box 161, Howard Papers–LoC.

122 Roy Howard to G.B. Parker and W.W. Hawkins, February 2, 1926, folder 2, box 57, series 3.1, Scripps Papers.

123 N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual and Directory (1930), 132;

Memo, May 12, 1934, folder “1934 City File Denver Rocky Mountain News,” box 89,

Howard Papers–LoC; Hosokawa, Thunder in the Rockies, 186.

124 N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual and Directory (1934), 136;

Memo, May 12, 1934, folder “1934 City File Denver Rocky Mountain News,” box 89,

Howard Papers–LoC; Hosokawa, Thunder in the Rockies, 186.

125 Hale, interview, March 19, 1974, 1.

126 N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual and Directory (1930), 132;

Memo, May 12, 1934, folder “1934 City File Denver Rocky Mountain News,” box 89,

Howard Papers–LoC.

127 Roy Howard to Charles Lounsbury and Merritt Riblett, April 5, 1933, folder

“1933 City File Denver Rocky Mountain News,” box 77, Howard Papers–LoC.

128 Charles McCabe to Karl Bickel, May 15, 1935, folder “1935 City File Denver

Rocky Mountain News,” box 100, Howard Papers–LoC, 3.

129 Ibid.

167

130 James Hammond to Roy Howard, May 13, 1934, folder “1934 City File

Denver Rocky Mountain News,” box 89, Howard Papers–LoC.

131 H. Hailey to Mortimer Watters, May 1, 1944, folder “1944 City File Denver

Denver Rocky Mountain News,” box 199, Howard Papers–LoC.

132 Aubrey Graves to John Sorrells, April 24, 1937, folder “1937 City File Denver

Rocky Mountain News,” box 123, Howard Papers–LoC.

133 Roy Howard to A.B. Trott, April 24, 1937, “1937 City File Denver General,” box 123, Howard Papers–LoC.

134 T. M. Pepperday to William Hawkins, April 26, 1937, folder “1937 City File

Denver Rocky Mountain News,” box 123, Howard Papers–LoC.

135 Aubrey Graves to Roy Howard, April 27, 1937, folder “1937 City File Denver

Rocky Mountain News,” box 123, Howard Papers–LoC.

136 Roy Howard to A.B. Trott, April 24, 1937, folder “1937 City File Denver

General,” box 123, Howard Papers–LoC.

137 Aubrey Graves to Roy Howard, April 27, 1937, folder “1937 City File Denver

Rocky Mountain News,” box 123, Howard Papers–LoC.

138 Fred Livingston to J.L. Cauthorn, March 18, 1940, folder “1940 City File

Denver Denver [sic] News,” box 161, Howard Papers–LoC.

139 Walter Morrow to John Sorrells, August 14, 1937, folder “1937 City File

Denver Rocky Mountain News,” box 123, Howard Papers–LoC.

140 Ibid., 7.

168

141 Ibid., 3. In the 1920s, Howard had identified the high-quality feature content

Scripps-Howard supplied to the News as a factor in reducing the editorial quality of other papers in the chain. It is likely that, in the midst of budgetary pressures, the Depression- era News was similarly overly reliant on wire feature content. See Edward Adams,

“Market Subordination and Competition,” 87.

142 Ibid., 4.

143 Ibid., 21.

144 Jack Howard to Delbert Willis, March 17, 1978, folder “Scripps Story,” box 2,

WH2129, Rocky Mountain News Collection, Western History Collection, Denver Public

Library.

145 Ibid.

146 Roy Howard to A.B. Trott, April 22, 1940, folder “1940 City File Denver

General,” box 161, Howard Papers–LoC.

147 Alan Houser to Roy Howard, July 19, 1940, folder “1940 City File Denver

Denver News,” box 161, Howard Papers–LoC.

148 Perkin, The First Hundred Years, 553.

149 Alan Houser to Ray Huber, Nov. 9, 1940, folder “1940 City File Denver

Denver News,” box 161, Howard Papers–LoC; “A Definite Swing to the Rocky

Mountain News,” memo, August 1940, folder “1940 City File Denver Denver [sic]

News,” box 161, Howard Papers–LoC.

150 N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual and Directory (1930), 132;

N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual and Directory (1941), 124.

169

151 N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual and Directory (1937), 118.

152 N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual and Directory (1941), 124.

153 Walter Morrow to John Sorrells, August 14, 1937, folder “1937 City File

Denver Rocky Mountain News,” box 123, Howard Papers–LoC, 4.

154 Compiled from available monthly analyses and comparative advertising statements from George Burns and H.W. Hailey to R.A. Huber, 1941, folder “1941 City

File Denver News,” box 174, Howard Papers–LoC.

155 N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual and Directory (1943), 124–

25.

156 H.W. Hailey to R.A. Huber, October 1, 1942, folder “1942 City File Denver

News,” box 182, Howard Papers–LoC. Emphasis in original.

157 H.W. Hailey to R.A. Huber, November 4, 1942, folder “1942 City File Denver

News,” box 182, Howard Papers–LoC.

158 H.W. Hailey to R.A. Huber, June 4, 1942, folder “1942 City File Denver

News,” box 182, Howard Papers–LoC.

159 H.W. Hailey to R.A. Huber, December 4, 1942, folder “1942 City File Denver

News,” box 182, Howard Papers–LoC.

160 Ibid; Leverett Chapin, interview with Mort Stern, January 18, 1967, transcript, box 1, folder 40, MSS WH478, Leverett A. Chapin Papers, Western History Collection,

Denver Public Library, 9.

161 H.W. Hailey to R.A. Huber, September 3, 1942, folder “1942 City File Denver

News,” box 182, Howard Papers–LoC.

170

162 Aubrey Graves to John Sorrells and Ray Huber, January 21, 1940, folder

“1940 City File Denver Denver News,” box 161, Howard Papers–LoC.

163 Jack Howard to Delbert Willis, March 17, 1978, folder “Scripps Story,” box 2,

WH2129, Rocky Mountain News Collection, Western History Collection, Denver Public

Library.

164 Advertisment, Rocky Mountain News, April 12, 1942.

165 Eugene Cervi to Clem, November 27, 1944, folder 119, box 3, WH919,

Eugene Cervi Papers, Western History Collection, Denver Public Library, referred to hereafter as “Cervi Papers.”

166 N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual and Directory (1944), 122.

167 See, as examples, the issues of January 7, 1933, and December 23, 1945.

168 Al Birch to Gene Fowler, May 17, 1946, folder 3, box 2, MS 252, Gene

Fowler Collection, University of Colorado, Boulder; N.W. Ayer & Son’s American

Newspaper Annual and Directory (1941), 124; N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper

Annual and Directory (1944), 122; Hosokawa, Thunder in the Rockies, 186.

169 Al Birch to Gene Fowler, May 2, 1945, folder 3, box 2, MS 252, Gene Fowler

Collection, University of Colorado, Boulder.

170 Chapin, interview, January 18, 1967, 9.

171 Eugene Cervi to Clem, November 27, 1944, folder 119, box 3, Cervi Papers.

172 Transcript, War Production Board, Appeal by Sundance Publishing Co.,

Denver, Colorado, July 15, 1944, folder 122, box 3, Cervi Papers.

173 Eugene Cervi to Barney, December 15, 1943, folder 117, box 3, Cervi Papers.

171

174 H.W. Hailey to R.A. Huber, May 17, 1944, folder “1944 City File Denver

Denver Rocky Mountain News,” box 199, Howard Papers–LoC.

175 Chapin, interview, January 18, 1967, 9.

172 Chapter 4. Profit: 1946–1970

One evening in May 1960, as the spring sun settled on the mountains west of

Denver, Ray Campbell’s phone rang. One of three directors on the Denver Post’s board and trustee to nearly a quarter of the company’s stock, Campbell wielded power within the organization that was matched only by its chief stockholder, Helen Bonfils, and its editor and publisher, Edwin Palmer Hoyt. On the other end of the line was a powerful

Denver businessman who had just returned from a business trip to learn that, for the first time in the newspaper’s sixty-seven-year history, the Post’s local ownership was threatened. Campbell confirmed the rumor and agreed that, for the sake of the Post and

Denver alike, no one from outside the community should be allowed to buy even a minority stake in the paper.1

To Campbell, the call was a lifeline thrown to him in increasingly choppy seas.

The threat of a hostile takeover of a sizeable chunk of Post stock by the Newhouse newspaper chain had grown serious after that company’s brokers began trying to buy a 20 percent interest in the Post. Campbell was shocked to find Hoyt, the man who had supposedly saved the newspaper from obsolescence when he was hired as publisher in

1946, was prepared to surrender to the takeover despite being opposed to it.2 At the same time, the Newhouse chain seemed hell-bent on seizing a portion of the Post, no matter how small, even as Helen Bonfils told the chain’s operatives that she would under no circumstances allow them to capture any portion of the stock she controlled so long as she lived.3

The phone call ended with both the caller and Campbell in agreement that great lengths should be taken by all able parties to block Newhouse or any other company from

173 seizing Post stock. After all, Campbell pointed out, Denverites were already captive to

“one chain gang newspaper and . . . [were] entitled to one locally owned and edited paper.”4 The caller vowed to ring up Roger Knight Jr., the president of the bank in control, as trustee, of the stock under attack by Newhouse, and convince him to protect the stock from being purchased. To sell the stock, Campbell and the caller agreed,

“would be a great tragedy and disservice” to the community.5

But as he hung up the phone, Campbell knew it would be difficult to keep

Newhouse out. For the first time since William Byers hauled his press to the gold camps in 1859, control of the region’s newspaper market by an independently owned newspaper was threatened.

The Newhouse assault was only one of a series of significant changes to Denver journalism to occur between 1946 and 1970. It was during those years that Hoyt, the man who succeeded William Shepherd as editor and publisher of the Post, attempted to make a respectable newspaper out of the disreputable sheet made so powerful—and profitable—by F.G. Bonfils and Harry Tammen in the opening decades of the twentieth century. As this chapter will show, Hoyt was successful in his quest to improve the reputation of the Post, earning for it national esteem for its commitment to objectivity and, in particular, its stand against McCarthyism. Hoyt’s obsession over the image of the newspaper, however, was concurrent with a stream of challenges to his authority and the stability of the Post, including resistance to change from the paper’s owners, hostile unions, expanding organizational bureaucracy, advertising encroachment by television, and an attempted hostile takeover that would outlive Hoyt’s time as publisher. As a result, despite the many things he did to prepare the Post to compete in the second half of

174 the twentieth century, Hoyt failed during his tenure to produce for the paper the same degree of prosperity it had enjoyed under the leadership of Tammen, Bonfils, and

Shepherd, with the paper often seeming to compete as much with itself as with its competitors in the Denver market.

Meanwhile, the Rocky Mountain News began to flourish. Building on the successes of its own leader, editor Jack Foster, in the early 1940s, the News boomed as it hadn’t since Bonfils and Tammen entered the market. Scripps-Howard had purchased the paper in 1926 and suffered with it through a costly war against the Post as well as the

Great Depression. The era covered by this chapter, then, brought Scripps-Howard a long- awaited period of profitability for the paper. After decades as a red-numbered failure on the chain’s budget reports, the News had become what Scripps-Howard executive Roy

Howard called a “dream-come-true.”6 While the News could not escape the 1950s and

1960s without facing challenges of its own, including substantial cost increases and constant pressure from the Post to grow or face obsolescence, the era was one in which the News made significant gains against its competitor and pushed the Denver daily newspaper market toward competitive duopoly.

Changing of the Guard

It is unclear whether William Shepherd, who had served as publisher of the Post since F.G. Bonfils’s 1933 death, voluntarily retired or was forced out of that position in

1946. Contemporary letters written by Post director Ray Campbell to a prospective successor to Shepherd claim the publisher notified the board in late 1945 or the opening days of 1946 that he wanted to retire.7 As News editor Jack Foster understood things, however, Campbell and Helen Bonfils forced out Shepherd to make room for a reformer

175 who could prepare the Post to operate in a postwar mediascape, cutting out the “dry rot” and making the Post “a better citizen in the community and a more widely respected newspaper.”8

In Thunder in the Rockies, Bill Hosokawa states that Shepherd notified the Post’s board of directors on January 3, 1946, that he intended to retire, having suffered a heart attack one week earlier.9 But there is much to suggest Bonfils and Campbell were planning for change well before Shepherd’s retirement. Shepherd’s eventual successor said the Post directors were actively seeking a change because Shepherd, while having stayed true to F.G. Bonfils’s management methods, had failed to maintain the newspaper.

“There hadn’t been any improvements,” the replacement later said in an interview. “The presses were just barely holding together; the building wasn’t adequate; the help was very underpaid because of the wage freeze; and the paper was being milked.”10 The only change made during Shepherd’s thirteen-year tenure had been to replace the Post building’s second-level flooring. Despite his stinginess, Shepherd had allowed net profits to slip from a high of 36 percent when he took control in 1933 to a lackluster 22 percent.11 Further suggesting the board was actively pursuing change is that on January 5, only two days after Shepherd’s supposed announcement that he intended to retire,

Campbell wrote a letter offering the job to the editor and publisher of the Portland

Oregonian, having already “investigated many newspaper men” and deciding the letter’s recipient was the best fit for the job.12

The Oregonian editor and publisher was Palmer Hoyt, who had worked at that newspaper with limited interruption since 1923. After rising through the ranks and assuming leadership of the Oregonian in 1939, Hoyt transformed what had become a

176 static, dull newspaper set in outmoded ways into one characterized by a tight, objective editorial style and a clean, modern appearance.13 Apart from a brief appointment at a different Oregon newspaper in the early 1920s, his only substantial absence from the

Oregonian was a six-month stint as director of the domestic branch of the Office of War

Information in 1943.14 Hoyt attracted attention while in Washington by pulling his OWI division within the confines of its budget and by insisting on a policy of providing the

American press with plain, uncensored war news and trusting reporters and editors to responsibly convey that information to the public.15

Once initial contact was made, Hoyt and the Post directors wasted no time. By the end of January, the Post had formally offered a five-year contract, which Hoyt promptly signed, and Hoyt served notice of his resignation to the board of the Oregonian. Initially

Campbell and the Post directors intended to hold off on making a public announcement as to the management change until February 20, when the new publisher was to assume control, so that he would be on-hand to address any kind of “unfavorable reaction” on the part of the Post staff to the departure of Shepherd, but Hoyt insisted that he be allowed to stay in Portland and be with his longtime community until news of his move broke.16

When Hoyt arrived in town in late February and began making changes, his effect on the Post was immediately visible. “He has moved in and definitely improved The

Post,” News editor Foster wrote to his higher-ups in the Scripps-Howard chain, adding the News was “in for much tougher editorial competition than [it had] had in Denver for three or four years.”17 Shepherd, meanwhile, was cast out from the Post. “Shep, despite his money. . . . wanders about the better bars, goes to the office for maybe an hour once a week, and is treated condescendingly by the very men who once fawned on him,” one

177 longtime Denver journalist observed.18 Shepherd’s policies—which had been taken directly from F.G. Bonfils’s own management style—were rapidly abandoned in favor of

Hoyt’s vision of the future.19 The Post was reinventing itself.

It did so in the midst of a postwar boom that transformed Denver in the eyes of the nation from a mountain backwater to a modern American metropolis. As Stephen

Leonard and Thomas Noel write in their history of the city, “World War II triggered a tremendous transformation in Denver. Massive federal spending, an influx of newcomers, and a pent-up demand for new cars and new housing unavailable during the war led to a boom that changed a drowsy provincial city into a sprawling metropolis.”20 A new class of city leaders capitalized on the new energy to spur growth and development, resulting in an infusion of business and cash in the late 1940s and throughout the ’50s and ’60s.

The rush of people and money brought to Denver by World War II was accompanied by a jump in the daily circulations of both the Post and the News. But the increases were not equal. While the Post managed from 1942 to 1946 to increase its daily circulation by 16 percent to 194,099, the News grew by an impressive 67 percent to

80,415.21 This represented an improvement by the News from a circulation only 29 percent as large as that of the Post to one 41 percent as large. While it remained by far the subordinate newspaper in the market, the News under the leadership of editor Jack Foster was finding ways to command a greater share of national advertising.22 Thus, Hoyt assumed control of the profitable but outdated Post just as Denver was blossoming onto the national stage and the News was beginning to make competitive headway.

178 “Who in Hell Does He Think He Is?”23

Hoyt inherited a Post in disrepair both editorially and mechanically. Changes to the former were instated immediately. When Hoyt arrived in Denver, the Post’s front page was characterized by the same visual assault that had characterized the paper for decades: red-colored headlines adorned sensationalized stories; headlines and copy twisted around the paper’s floating nameplate and small, scattered photos; and a tangled mass of stories routinely jumped from page 1 into interior pages after only a few paragraphs, much to the inconvenience of the reader.24 Routine stories were bloated by unnecessary information and a blend of opinion and fact that left readers unsure where the truth ended and the reporter’s own thoughts began. It was a spectacle, just as its designer, F.G. Bonfils, had intended it to be when he created it decades before. But it was a newspaper of an obsolete era.

The Post and its newsroom were transformed almost overnight. Jumps from the front page were eliminated and the arrangement of stories and use of type simplified.

Photographs received greater play. In a word, the Post was made to look respectable.25

The most significant changes, however, were made not to the paper’s appearance but to its content. The stripping of opinion from news stories was made a top priority. One memo proclaimed the “number one basic rule and guide in news reporting has been and will continue to be objectivity and complete divorcement of the writer’s opinion from the story.”26 Opinion was not outright banned—Hoyt recognized that certain stories, including sports and interpretive stories, benefitted from a degree of editorial latitude on the part of the writer.27 But the distinction had to be made clear to readers. “It is not opinion itself that is dangerous,” he said in a speech given a few years after assuming

179 leadership of the Post, “but the presentation of opinion unlabeled or unidentified as such.”28 To this end, in May 1946 Hoyt reinstated the Post’s editorial page, which had vanished decades earlier when the paper’s front page became the preferred home of

Bonfils’s editorial crusades.29 That change, along with a shift toward detailed coverage of local news, was received with praise from Colorado’s journalism community and worried glances from the News.

Hoyt’s efforts were encapsulated by his rebranding of the Post as the “Voice of the Rocky Mountain Empire,” a span of territory stretching from New Mexico to

Montana and from Kansas to Utah. He proclaimed dominion over this empire in the inaugural editorial on the Post’s reborn editorial page and made it a cornerstone of both his editorial policy and managerial philosophy.30 The mountain states, Hoyt insisted, deserved greater representation before the nation as a whole, representing “an economic empire of untold wealth and of vast importance to the United States and to the world.”31

To this end, a team of more than 200 freelance reporters was recruited to report from the distant provinces of the empire, while major cities such as Albuquerque received their own Post bureaus.32 The result of such wide-reaching and expensive changes, Hoyt claimed, was a radical transformation of the public perception of the Post that extended far beyond Denver itself. He called this prestige, which was measured by the frequency and tone of reporting on the Post by national publications such as the New York Times and Time magazine and which would pay off through an increase in national advertising.33 Through the prestige of the Post, Hoyt thought, both the newspaper and

Denver itself could rise to national prominence.

180 To run an empire, however, an emperor must have sufficient infrastructure. For the Post, this meant possession of modern, efficient presses that could reliably produce as many as 400,000 copies for Sunday morning delivery without requiring an army of expensive press workers to operate them. Such a plant did not exist in Denver when Hoyt arrived in 1946. Indeed, he demurred when offered the job by the Post’s directors, among other reasons, because he could not imagine trying to produce a newspaper with the

Post’s antiquated plant, which had last been updated in 1907.34 Recognizing the dire need for modernization, the directors invited Hoyt to build one.

Planning for the new facilities began soon after Hoyt’s arrival in Denver. In July, even before a home for a new Post plant had been found, Hoyt negotiated a contract by which the newspaper would purchase brand new Goss Headliner presses and other printing equipment to be delivered in early 1949 at a cost of nearly $1 million.35

Ultimately, ballooning labor costs at the plant and contract language that favored the manufacturer forced the Post to reduce the number of presses for the plant while paying more—almost $1.25 million in total. In December 1946, the Post secured the purchase of two buildings covering half a city block on the corner of Fifteenth and California streets at a cost of about $600,000. After a series of delays and complications necessitating the demolition of one of the existing buildings and the construction of a new facility, the modernized Post opened to great fanfare in May 1950. A daylong celebration hosted by the newspaper drew attention to the updated machinery and large downtown property.

But as one News manager observed, the party and its accompanying coverage in the pages of the Post seemed to promote Hoyt nearly as much as the newspaper itself.36

181 This did not escape the attention to the Post’s directors, who stopped short of chastising Hoyt but noted that Denverites had identified what they thought to be uncouth self-celebration on the publisher’s part, and they cautioned Hoyt to avoid unnecessarily drawing attention to himself.37 Of far greater concern to the directors, though, was the ultimate cost of the new facility—$7 million rather than the expected $3 million or $4 million—and declining profits throughout the period of modernization.38

Hoyt’s shiny newspaper plant would be of little value without paper on which to print the news of his Rocky Mountain empire. In the midst of a nationwide newsprint shortage that developed during but outlived World War II, the threat of running short on paper was real. Extending the Post’s coverage to include news from throughout the region and a larger bundle of national and international news required the newspaper to consistently butt against the maximum amount of newsprint its distributor would deliver.

Hoyt combated newsprint scarcity in his early years not by trimming the Post’s newshole but by finding, by whatever means necessary, the newsprint necessary to produce a paper of the quality he saw necessary to attaining prestige for the Post. He flew to San

Francisco and petitioned the Post’s newsprint supplier for more, arguing that, as the leading newspaper in a “dynamic city,” the Post needed more paper than in the past.39

When even the extra he managed to finagle was insufficient, he picked up smaller quantities of newsprint wherever he could find them and shifted some of the paper’s sections onto types of paper that were more readily available. He also supported speculative ventures attempting to found paper mills, pledging cash and future purchases to help them attract investors.40 In the long term, however, the price of newsprint, which steadily grew throughout the period, became a far greater concern than scarcity.

182 The most difficult problem facing the publisher in his early years was his standing among the Post’s employees, who were unsure whether to embrace or rebel against him.

Post director Campbell had initially worried some elements of the newspaper’s staff might react negatively to Shepherd’s replacement.41 Campbell’s fears proved unfounded, and he wrote Hoyt a few weeks before the publisher’s arrival in Denver than the staff’s reaction to Hoyt’s hiring was “very favorable.”42 When Hoyt arrived and began making changes, that positivity only grew stronger. “You’d be amazed at the changes in our office, under our new Boss, Palmer Hoyt,” one Post journalist wrote an old-timer who had left the paper years earlier. “From an organization that was utterly dead, and in which every single person hated to come to work each morning, we have snapped far back into a realm of enthusiasm, pep, good-nature and general joy in life.”43 Such statements undoubtedly were bolstered by the promise of progress Hoyt’s changes brought to a sleepy newsroom accustomed to uncritical austerity. Others would have appreciated

Hoyt’s commitments to objective, local journalism. Perhaps most influential of all, however, were the raises Hoyt began handing out to underpaid employees whom the publisher wanted to stay with the Post rather than leave for richer pastures on the coasts.44

Hoyt’s honeymoon was short lived. Gradually, the journalists who had welcomed his brand of modern journalism turned against him, largely as a result of Hoyt’s own staffing decisions. The seeds of discontent were sown in late May 1946, only weeks after

Hoyt’s arrival, when the publisher began hiring his old staff from the Oregonian to fill positions at the Post. The Portlanders began arriving in Denver in early June, and divisions between Shepherd’s surviving staff and Hoyt’s imports quickly devolved into

183 open hostility.45 Longtime employees who resisted Hoyt’s changes found themselves ushered out the back door, “half-quit and half-fired,” cast out as relics of a kind of journalism left by most major metropolitan newspapers in the 1910s or ’20s.46 A former

Post reporter comforted one of the replaced employees by predicting Hoyt’s only lasting reputation in Denver would be a negative one, tarnished by so poorly treating the paper’s old guard. “Who in hell does he think he is?” the reporter wrote.47

In time, opposition to Hoyt coalesced in the Post unit of the American Newspaper

Guild, the union that represented the editorial staffs of Denver’s newspapers. When Hoyt arrived in Denver, the Post unit was only nine years old, one year younger than that of the News.48 In 1947, during the first routine renegotiation of the Post’s contract with its

Guild unit since Hoyt’s start as publisher, relations between the union and management weakened when Guild leaders attempted—and failed—to hold a strike vote.49 In the months after the eventual contract renewal, which was adopted without significant opposition, Guild leaders accused Hoyt’s managers of cleaning some of their members from the Post staff without cause and of trying to compel others to spy on the union.50

Some Guild members accused the union’s leadership of inappropriate behavior and placed fault in them rather than hostility on the part of Hoyt, one arguing that while the leaders were acting, “no doubt, in the name of lofty unionism,” they had “materially hindered the editorial progress of The Denver Post.”51 There is evidence, however, that

Hoyt’s management team shared the blame for the spiraling relationship. A member of his Portlanders advised Hoyt that the Post’s editorial ranks had been substantially improved by the resignation of eight Guild members “whose loyalty to The Post and to their jobs could be challenged; all were Guild supporters, to the point that the Guild won

184 their attention and support ahead of their employers and jobs.”52 Cumulatively, his negative early interactions with the Guild resulted in a persistently poor relationship with the Post’s unions.

If the Post’s editorial progress were to be significantly interrupted as a result of

Hoyt’s conflict with his employees, it would come at the risk of allowing competitors unencumbered by such distractions to attack the Post’s dominance in the Denver media field. The News was able to capitalize on this opportunity. Between 1946 and 1950, it managed to increase its daily circulation substantially, jumping from publishing 41 percent as many daily copies as the Post to 57 percent. Commanding such a significant share of Denver’s daily circulation strengthened the News’s ability to attract advertisers, forcing Hoyt and his Post into a defensive posture.

At one point in 1949, News business manager H.W. Hailey reported that the Post was so alarmed by News advertising gains that Hoyt himself was calling Denver department stores and persuading them that his paper’s saturation in the market made advertising in it exclusively enough to capture the city’s customers.53 Hailey was concerned, but noted that only a couple of businesses had been persuaded by Hoyt’s appeals, and in the context of the competitive history between the Post and News, the salience of Hoyt’s arguments in the postwar Denver news market is doubtful. The same claim had been made during the advertising pinches of the Depression and World War II, when the News had commanded a much smaller share of the Post’s circulation, without materially damaging the competitive position of the News.54 With a strengthening economy and booming News in the late 1940s, it is no wonder more businesses did not bite on Hoyt’s claims and shift a greater share of their advertising to the Post.

185 As a result, the Post had to resort to other means of persuasion. These included pressuring amusement advertisers such as Denver’s theaters by cutting the amount of free publicity they received in the Post if they insisted on advertising in the News, and giving extra play to businesses advertising heavily in the Post.55 However, despite such realities,

The Nation wondered in 1946 whether the News could survive a seemingly resurgent

Post given its massive resources and the energy provided to it by Hoyt:

Denverites have always had to choose between the Post and the morning Scripps- Howard Rocky Mountain News, a much decenter and quieter paper than the Post, with a circulation, perhaps for that reason, about one-third as large. Some observers give the new Post two years to absorb the News and thus add Denver to the list of monopoly newspaper towns. Certainly Roy Howard will have to loosen his purse-strings to keep up with the aggressive administration and enlarged budget of the Post today.56

While it remained preoccupied with its Denver daily rival, the Post was less concerned with other prospective print competitors. Eugene Cervi, who had attempted unsuccessfully to launch a third Denver daily newspaper even during the newsprint shortages of World War II, had managed to establish a weekly business newsletter and, in

1949, began publishing a formal weekly business newspaper called Cervi’s Rocky

Mountain Journal. The Post was less concerned with the potential competition Cervi represented than the persistently hostile attitude Cervi took toward the Post.57 During these first years in Denver, Hoyt was also dismissive of the competition posed by the daily newspapers sold alongside the Post in the expanses of his empire, including those in

Colorado, surrendering all other cities in the state except Colorado Springs to other publishers.58

What could not be so easily dismissed were radio and, to a much greater degree, television, which the Post perceived as direct threats to their advertising dominance in

186 Denver. After two decades of fretting about the growing popularity of radio, the Post by

1950 had contented itself to using the AM airwaves as a publicity tool rather than trying to capture and control them as Post properties.59 The paper produced hourly newscasts for Denver’s KMYR and made such programs available to members of the Columbine radio network, and it jointly produced a twice-daily newscast for KOA, the clear-channel station whose 50,000-watt signal blanketed the Rockies and could be heard at night several states distant. Post reporters appeared frequently on other local shows and hosted entertainment programs. Meanwhile, although the paper had resigned itself to the fact that radio had seized a part of the advertising and editorial market in Denver, it grew increasingly concerned in the late 1940s and 1950s about the advertising potential of television. One Post study noted that television was slow in expanding to Denver, which gave the paper time to develop a strategy.60 But the Post passed up this opportunity by failing to recognize its potential as an editorial competitor, focusing instead on television’s infantile first attempts at news reporting. The study dismissed television as a platform for transmitting news, concluding the editorial role of the newspaper was safe and that, if anything, TV would drive newspapers to improve their content and provide more interpretive reporting. But it warned that TV threatened to steal more of the Post’s advertising, as radio was believed to have done. If the News continued to grow stronger, the cumulative competitive pressures could threaten the Post’s long-term strength.

“Its Old Presses Roar Like the Torrents of Spring”61

In light of the News’s increasing strength, the significance of the decision by the

Post’s directors to pause their extraction of the company’s wealth through the issuance of dividends and instead dump the paper’s profits into improvements under the direction of

187 Hoyt becomes clear. Despite the limitations of his managerial abilities and the challenges thrust upon him by Denver’s competitive situation, Hoyt’s program of modernization seemed necessary to contain a resurgent News and ensure the Post’s long-term viability.

It is clear that as a result of stable, positive management, the News in the 1940s, ’50s, and

’60s posed a much greater threat to the Post than it had with the full financial armaments of the Scripps-Howard chain following Roy Howard’s 1926 declaration of war.

The initial reaction by Scripps-Howard and the News to the announcement of

Shepherd’s retirement and Hoyt’s appointment as editor and publisher of the Post was hopeful. Even before Hoyt arrived in Denver, Roy Howard wrote to congratulate him and encourage cooperation between the Post and News. “There is plenty of room and opportunity in the city for both papers to develop and prosper,” Howard wrote. “Happily, you will be under no obligation to keep alive the old feuds, some of which were so deeply ingrained in good old Bill Shepherd’s system that he could never quite forget them.”62

News business manager Hailey predicted an easing of competition and an era of cooperation in which the two newspapers would work collaboratively in advertising and negotiations with Denver’s newspaper unions.63

That optimism was already fading by the end of February, shortly after Hoyt assumed control of the Post, as a result of the changes Hoyt was making and weaknesses at the News and within the Scripps-Howard chain as a whole. Of immediate concern to

News editor Jack Foster was the reinvigorated editorial tone of the new Post, particularly its emphasis on local news, which Foster considered one of his paper’s greatest strengths.

Hoyt was “trying to localize the paper, develop a friendly attitude toward the community and state, play a part in the local scene—all of which we have been doing ever since we

188 were established on our present basis,” he reported to one Scripps-Howard manager.64

The Post was giving photos greater play and, a few months into Hoyt’s management, reinstated its editorial page. In total, Hoyt’s changes assaulted the various ways Foster differentiated his subordinated newspaper from the Post. In a market devoid of product differentiation, the dominant newspaper, given its greater resources and control of advertisers, would have a significant advantage.

Foster feared Hoyt would direct his resources at squashing the News. He was particularly worried that the Post’s editorial staff, which found itself flush under Hoyt’s regime, would so dominate Denver and Colorado news reporting as to drive readers away from the News. Altogether, Foster had thirty-five people on his editorial payroll, including a pensioner, a part-time secretary, and twelve reporters. The Post, on the other hand, had around thirty-five well-paid reporters alone, plus the various editors and regional correspondents reporting from the far reaches of the Post empire. Despite the

Post being an afternoon paper, Hoyt operated his newsroom on a twenty-four-hour basis.

When news broke in distant quarters of the region, Hoyt shucked out cash, hiring private airplanes to shuttle his reporters to and from Denver. “In short,” Foster worried, “Palmer

Hoyt[,] with all his facilities and bankroll, which seems to be unlimited, is trying to take away from us the position we have fought so hard over these years to gain.”65

But the News’s tribulations were not all the result of Hoyt’s program of Post improvement. They stemmed from defects at all levels of the organization, including

Scripps-Howard’s wire content. The overreliance of editors throughout the chain, including Jack Foster at the News, on Washington columnists rather than local news reporting was exposed in the aftermath of the 1948 presidential election between Harry

189 Truman and Thomas Dewey. Following the predictions of pollsters and thinking the

American public was as enthusiastic about Dewey as its editors were, Scripps-Howard’s editorials assumed Dewey’s election was assured months ahead of the election, and news coverage of the campaign was accordingly weak.66 In accordance with what other researchers of Scripps-Howard history have observed, Foster alleged the chain and its papers allowed inexpensive wire content to replace strong local reporting, and he vowed changes at the News as a result of the election.67

Other problems were present at the local level. Foremost among these was that while Hoyt was constantly making changes to improve the content of his Post, the News was hindered by its competitive subordination and Scripps-Howard’s budgetary restrictions from matching those improvements. Four years after Hoyt’s arrival, the

News’s Hailey worried that his paper’s rapid circulation gains would soon fall off unless he and Foster were allowed to increase the paper’s newshole.68 Such problems mirrored the fact that Hoyt was in the process of modernizing the Post’s plant and dramatically increasing that paper’s printing quality and capacity. The new plant and resources of the

Post had such far-reaching consequences as to create a shortage of press operators in the city, restricting the number of pages the News could print on a shift and, consequently, limiting advertising space and profitability.69 If it failed to match the Post’s improvements immediately, the News risked falling so far behind its competitor as to become irrelevant.

But despite all these limitations, the News under Foster’s leadership was able to defend its progress in the market more forcefully than at any other time since the Post had first challenged it in the 1890s. Most importantly, it had the financial backing of

190 Scripps-Howard, which, following the News’s gains in the early 1940s, had renewed faith in the paper’s potential. It would not come near to expending the kinds of resources it had in the circulation war of 1926 through 1928, during which it sank millions into an abortive effort to improve the News’s standing against the Post. But, given the News’s trending success, such expenditures were unnecessary. After Hoyt’s arrival, Foster secured from Scripps-Howard a temporary increase of $250 a week to his editorial budget, with which he was able to add a new local column, another copy editor, and two more feature writers to his roster.70

Such were simple, tangible additions that directly improved what Foster saw to be the core strength of his newspaper—and, aside from its tabloid format, the foremost way it differentiated itself from the Post—which were lighthearted, emotional articles Foster called “reading stories.” Such pieces were scattered throughout each issue of the News, at least one to a page, to serve as a counterbalance to the paper’s hard news. Foster measured the success of an issue of the News by reading his paper each morning. “The first thing I do is leaf through it and . . . count the number of stories I consider reader stoppers. If we have a lot of these, we generally believe that we have a pretty good paper.

If we have only a few, then we have not followed our formula.”71 Combined with cutting routine news stories as short as possible, often running them as news briefs, and keeping a “sparkle” of “lightness and humor” in leads and stories, Foster’s fun, Denver-centric

News successfully sought to be an alternative to the stodgy, imperial Post.

Additionally, both Foster and his Scripps-Howard managers not only recognized the risk of falling behind the Post’s rate of improvement but made major changes of their own to stay abreast of the competitive situation. When the Post began work on its new

191 home, the News began looking for new quarters of its own, although this took time on the paper’s limited budget and in a booming downtown. Foster hoped to purchase the old

Post building, replete with presses, but its bid on the building served only to help the Post command a better price from another buyer—one not in direct competition with the company.72 It would take years for the News’s managers to secure a site, clear it, and construct a new building and plant, and they did not have the blank check afforded to

Hoyt by the Post’s owners. But, to avoid obsolescence, they had no choice but to pursue modernization, constructing facilities of their own that opened in May 1952.73

News revenues continued improving, giving Foster and Hailey the ammunition they needed to successfully petition Scripps-Howard to sign off on improvements and instate a long-term plan for growth. The bottom line improved as the paper began specializing in particular kinds of content and advertising. For example, the News developed a niche for amusement advertising, drawing in the very same theaters the Post was attempting to manipulate with preferential treatment. Previously, amusement advertisers such as theaters had given the News only about 25 percent of their local advertising, allotting the other 75 percent to the Post. By 1949, sensing the quality of the

News’s entertainment sections, they began breaking from this formula, indicating the paper was at least on par with if not superior to the Post in its amusement coverage. The

News’s strength came from doing precisely the opposite of the Post; rather than giving preferential coverage to shows put on by heavy advertisers and ignoring others, the News based its coverage on news value, drawing the attention of readers and, as a consequence, advertisers.74

192 One Post salesman was sufficiently alarmed by the shift in favor of the News as to interrogate a Denver amusement advertiser for more than an hour. The advertiser explained that the News just seemed to him to be a better paper for his advertising dollar.

Its circulation was shooting upward. It remained tightly focused on local news, whereas the Post paid too much attention to international affairs, and the News had a larger newshole. The advertiser liked the tabloid format. And he wanted to keep the News in

Scripps-Howard hands, fearing that if it fell to another chain, advertising rates might increase.75 Thus, the News found ways to attract readers through relevant, engaging content, leading to ever-increasing circulations and a greater share of the city’s advertising—all while Hoyt was struggling to spark a renaissance at the Post.

Return on Investment

On February 19, 1951, five years after assuming control of the Post, Palmer Hoyt received a letter from Ray Campbell on behalf of himself and Helen Bonfils offering an evaluation of Hoyt’s performance as editor and as publisher.76 He might have guessed he would receive such a letter. His initial contract was for five years of work, and his expensive program of improvements was cutting into the Post’s bottom line.77 In terms of

Hoyt’s service as editor, Campbell nitpicked on several points, particularly on the size of his editorial staff and insistence on establishing a small Washington bureau the directors thought was a waste of money, but was generally satisfied. Campbell especially appreciated Hoyt’s transformation of the paper’s editorial tone, noting “the Post’s reputation for unbiased, unprejudiced and objective coverage of the news has been greatly enhanced in the last five years.”78

193 However, Campbell’s praise evaporated as he turned to consider Hoyt’s performance as a publisher. After acknowledging the various challenges Hoyt had to cope with during the five years, including skyrocketing newsprint and wage expenses,

Campbell pointed to the metric which alone determined Hoyt’s success as a publisher: the Post’s profit ratio. In 1946, Hoyt’s first year in Denver, this ratio was 26 percent, representing $1.8 million that could be dispersed to shareholders as dividends and used to improve the Post.79 The ratio had fallen to 7.5 percent in 1950, yielding almost $1 million less in net profit. It hadn’t escaped Campbell’s attention that this dip had come even as the News was growing substantially; between 1945 and 1950, the News’s daily circulation had grown by 121 percent compared with 20 percent at the Post, and advertising linage in the News had increased by 232 percent compared with 90 percent at the Post.80 In conclusion, Campbell told Hoyt that he was welcome to stay on at the Post but only if he accepted greater oversight from Campbell and Bonfils:

As trustees, the two of us cannot escape, and we do not desire to escape, our ultimate responsibility for whatever happens to the Paper. Because of the conditions outlined above, and especially the continuing and alarming decline of its financial security, we are compelled to place certain limitations upon the authority of the Editor and Publisher, and participate ourselves in the decisions importantly affecting its fate.81

Hoyt replied in an amicably toned letter that he appreciated the feedback and was instating a tight budgeting system in an attempt to curb expenses. But he rejected the comparisons to the News, rightly arguing that the paper’s saturation in the market would make correspondent growth extremely difficult given the rate of increase of the region’s population.82 He ultimately accepted the demand by Campbell and Bonfils for greater oversight and signed a new contract.

194 The evaluation was less an auspicious start to 1951 than a predictable conclusion of five years of growing pains that modernized the Post and made possible a decade a growth and leadership for the paper. Indeed, the 1950s saw both Hoyt and Foster, his counterpart at the News, exert considerable influence in Denver and on the national stage and extract millions of dollars from advertisers and readers for their owners.

To do so, however, the managers of the Post and News had to contend with what was becoming a serious problem: skyrocketing expenses. The extent of this problem is reflected in Hoyt’s annual reports to the shareholders of the Post, which illustrate that two big expenses—newsprint and wages—were rapidly increasing and, because of their importance to the production of the newspaper, could not be cut to such a degree as to protect profits. Between 1931 and 1951, wages to Post employees had increased by 250 percent, with major increases to editorial (318 percent), national advertising (310 percent), and mail room (420 percent) staff expenses.83 During the same period, the paper’s income had increased, but at a much lower rate, advancing by 138 percent.

Newsprint costs had risen at an even more dramatic pace. In the early 1930s, newsprint had been available for as little as $45 dollars a ton. Twenty years later, the Post found itself shelling out $136 a ton, an increase of more than 300 percent. Combined, newsprint and wages came to represent a little more than seven-tenths of all Post expenses.84 Such drastic spikes in those items, therefore, had the potential to break the newspaper’s budget.

At the News, Foster’s managers struggled to accurately forecast expenses resulting from unpredictable increases in the cost of newsprint.85 In early 1957, a newsprint price increase threw the News’s budget for that month off by several thousand dollars.86 Three months later, when an annual spring circulation bump was delayed by

195 bad weather, the paper found its monthly expenses were $20,000 less than projected— savings resulting from using less paper.87

By the end of the decade, the two newspapers were being forced by newsprint price inflation to alter their competitive model. Previously, both had operated on the assumption that a newspaper was most profitable when it maintained as high a sustained circulation as possible. This led them to keep sale prices low for readers in an effort to drive up their circulations and, in turn, command higher advertising rates. But a policy of endless circulation growth was no longer viable in the 1940s and ’50s. In the 1940s, as a result of wartime rationing, the Post had found its circulation artificially capped by newsprint scarcity.88 Once restrictions were lifted, Hoyt attempted to get as much newsprint as possible in order to push circulations higher.89 But by the late 1950s, Hoyt was warning the Post’s directors that pursuing ever-higher circulations no longer made financial sense. Instead, the paper must “operate in a framework of practical economies,” limiting circulation growth as necessary to hold down expenses by raising the price of the newspaper.90

As he shifted the Post’s circulation model from unlimited to managed growth,

Hoyt looked to increase efficiency in terms of both newsprint use and personnel. He switched to lighter newsprint, enabling the Post to print 6 percent more pages with 5 percent less paper.91 He slashed hours; in a single year, he limited hours to such an extent as to effectively cut forty-six jobs from the payroll at a savings of a quarter-million dollars. Then, in 1959, he began pursuing a plan to simultaneously address newsprint use and personnel expenses by demolishing a building adjacent to the Post and installing in it

196 machines that would automate numerous production tasks. The estimated cost of the improvements was $650,000, with annual savings of $170,000 expected in return.92

Meanwhile, the News was struggling to take advantage of the Post’s shift to managed circulation growth. By pushing the Post to restrain growth, the price of newsprint effectively suppressed the efficiency of scale economies from which the Post, as the dominant newspaper, most benefitted. But the News, without vigorous funding from Scripps-Howard, was suppressed by a tight budget. Indeed, having cut jobs and limited expenses wherever possible, News managers were growing frustrated that they couldn’t bring their budgets in line with the chain’s expectations.93 Payroll limits and newsprint budgets kept the News from hiring additional circulation agents who might have helped the paper capitalize on the Post’s new approach to circulation.94

Such limitations did not stop the News from enjoying a newfound prosperity that contrasted starkly with the dark, unprofitable days of the Depression. Some years during the 1950s saw the News net more than $250,000 in profits, and by the end of the decade its managers were nearing their targeted profit margin of 5 percent.95 While it was certainly not as profitable as other newspapers, including the Post, the News was making enough money to satisfy Scripps-Howard’s executives. In a letter, Roy Howard thanked editor Foster and his business manager in the 1940s and early 1950s, H.W. Hailey, for turning an embarrassment into a profit. “You converted into a dream-come-true what for a number of years had been the pet nightmare of Scripps-Howard and the very personal nightmare of one RWH [Roy Howard],” he wrote.96

Their accomplishments had come by complementing their program of expense reductions at the News with a series of price hikes calculated to maintain a pace of

197 measured circulation growth (allowing the paper to maintain and raise advertising rates) while wringing greater profits from the sale of each copy of the paper. Identifying the right time and size of each price increase proved tricky, and incorrect predictions occasionally reverberated through the paper’s budgets for months. After raising prices in

1956, Hailey’s replacement as News business manager, B.W. Lewis, observed a year later that the paper’s circulation remained thousands of copies below where it had been before the rate hike.97 He noted the News, considered a luxury purchase as a second paper in many households, likely could not raise prices with the same freedom of the more necessary Post. However, that did not stop the News from again boosting prices in 1959, when it felt it had fully shaken off the circulation damage inflicted by the price increase three years earlier.98

At the Post, price increases were a central tenet of Hoyt’s strategy for overcoming surging expenses. His upbraiding in 1951 taught him to pay greater attention to the profitability of the paper and, in particular, to insulate the directors from future reductions. Three months after receiving their letter, Hoyt told Campbell and Bonfils he would take steps to protect dividends, fearful that dissatisfied stockholders might sell their holdings and imperil the future of the company if their checks were reduced to cover expense increases.99 Meanwhile, Campbell gave Hoyt a specific profit margin to pursue:

20 to 25 percent, before tax, roughly double the goal of the News.100 To reach that target in the face of rising expenses required significant rate hikes, and the Post began balancing circulation levels with newsprint costs by instituting measured price increases.

Raising prices early in the 1950s had a clear effect on the Post’s circulation, resulting in a dip of several thousand copies even as concurrent hikes at the News left that paper’s

198 circulation relatively unaffected.101 But circulation drops at the Post were offset by modest increases in net revenue, justifying the rate increases to Hoyt and the directors.102

Furthermore, market research conducted by the Post suggested the paper’s readers were increasingly willing to accept price hikes.103

Managing its circulation by raising prices was no magic bullet. Hoyt complemented increases in the 1950s with a system of tight cost controls, personnel limitations, and machinery improvements that increased the Post plant’s degree of automation. The program successfully halted the collapse of the paper’s net revenues that characterized Hoyt’s first five years as publisher. While the Post was far short of

Campbell’s desired profit margin in 1959, it was netting post-tax revenues of 5.3 percent, on par with newspapers such as the Cincinnati Enquirer and Los Angeles Times-

Mirror.104

The changes made by Hoyt and Foster at the tops of their newspapers were possible only because their editorial and advertising staffs were competing vigorously for the attention of Denver’s readers and businesses. On the advertising front, the two papers took distinctly different tacks resulting from their respective positions in the market. As the dominant newspaper, the Post attempted to use its larger share of the city’s advertising business and its technological resources to attract advertisers. When modernizing the Post’s plant in the 1940s, Hoyt had convinced the paper’s board to buy presses that could handle color.105 In the 1950s, he cashed in on his investment, offering businesses color advertising in large quantities, attempting to make the Post known for the quantity of color ads in its pages. The paper’s advertising agents found a receptive market. By 1959, Hoyt boasted that his newspaper was eleventh in the nation in terms of

199 color advertising and was moving up in the rankings.106 An even stronger weapon wielded by the Post was a bulk advertising discount first introduced in March 1958. The

Post’s bulk rates gave advertisers who purchased large amounts of space in the paper major discounts, with the largest local buyers paying 32 cents per advertising line against

50 cents paid to advertisers not receiving any discount.107 The discount targeted the fattest advertising accounts in the city: its department stores, from which the paper expected to pick up millions of additional lines of advertising as a result of the policy’s introduction.

The News, meanwhile, used its second-place standing to its advantage. Rather than attempt to match the Post’s bulk discount strategy, the News kept all of its rates as low as possible while living up to Scripps-Howard’s revenue expectations. The largest retailers in Denver could reach much of the city by advertising in the Post at a cost of 32 cents per line or, by advertising in the News, pay only 21 cents per line in exchange for an audience about 40 percent smaller. Hoyt criticized the News’s reliance on cheap rates to his directors, calling the paper “a more dangerous competitor because of its cheap advertising rates rather than because of its worth or integrity as a newspaper.”108

But the News was far from a tabloid rag devoid of editorial value. Indeed, under the leadership of their editors, both the News and Post distinguished themselves during the period through leadership on local and national issues and by specializing in certain kinds of content that differentiated the two newspapers from one another. Some of this content came from beyond the papers’ own editorial staffs, such as the News’s addition of

American Weekly, a national newspaper supplement inserted into the Sunday News.109

American Weekly was added to the News to great fanfare—the addition was announced

200 with a headline that covered most of the top half of the News’s front page, with an accompanying story stealing the rest of the page—and represented the most significant promotion the paper had launched since becoming a tabloid in 1942.110 Readers appreciated the addition, although not enough so to offset circulation dips resulting from price increases.111

More significant were the market niches the News’s editorial staff created for itself by producing content that appealed to its readers. Sensing the imperialism of Hoyt’s charge to become the voice of a Rocky Mountain empire, Foster developed his newspaper as the voice of the average Denverite. As the Post assumed responsibility for the serious day-to-day occurrences of the regional empire, nation, and world, the News refused to take itself so seriously. It would print the news, but, short on reporters, opted to emphasize “softer” topics, to great success. The Post lamented that the News continued to excel in its amusement coverage, particularly in terms of stories on movies and

Hollywood.112 Columns written about Colorado’s history by Foster, who was derided by the Post as “the foreigner” (despite its own editor and publisher having come from outside the state as well), gave the News a more local feel than the stodgy Post.113 As a result of its overall editorial tone, the paper appealed to a different readership than did the

Post and was especially preferred by women. “The News is a more friendly paper, somehow,” a waitress questioned by the Post said.114

While its entertaining content was its prime product, the News was frequently strong in its news coverage and editorial positions. These two were combined in Foster’s campaign to elect and, subsequently, to report on Dwight Eisenhower. While it would be frivolous to attempt to determine the degree to which Jack Foster helped Eisenhower win

201 the 1952 US presidential election nationally and in Colorado, his efforts undoubtedly contributed to Eisenhower’s overwhelming success. Foster was well ahead of Scripps-

Howard as a whole in supporting Eisenhower, urging in January 1952 that other editors in the chain as well as Roy Howard throw their support behind the eventual nominee.115

When summer came and Scripps-Howard had yet to make an endorsement, Foster spurred Howard in a strongly worded telegram. “Why not act now? . . . I am tired of being hobbled by caution and waiting to fire.”116 Eleven days later and almost a month before the Republication national convention, the chain did so.117

After Eisenhower’s election, Foster was perfectly positioned to serve as Scripps-

Howard’s ambassador to the president, who frequently summered in Colorado, and

Foster was often tasked with reporting to the chain’s editors with information gleaned from his conversations with the president. Less than a year after Eisenhower’s election,

Howard sent Foster to investigate the president’s attitude toward the chain.118 Foster responded favorably, noting that the president was a vociferous reader of the News and that the newspaper’s reporters were scooping those from the Post in covering the

Summer White House near Denver.119 Later conversations between Foster and

Eisenhower would be summarized in long letters sent to Scripps-Howard executives and subsequently redistributed to editors across the country.120 Following their interactions in

Eisenhower’s early presidency, Foster and the president developed a friendship that extended to Washington.

Meanwhile, Hoyt was making his own impression on American politics, but rather than influencing opinion by directing a sprawling newspaper chain’s editorial voice, he elevated his own newspaper to the national stage. This process began in 1946

202 with his crusade to divorce fact from opinion in the Post’s reporting and to draw attention to the Rocky Mountain region. But Hoyt was highly concerned with the prestige of his newspaper—its standing among the nation’s largest and most esteemed dailies and magazines—and he strove to attract national attention to the Post by making it look and read like a New York newspaper. Such efforts sometimes ran afoul of the desires of readers and even the Post’s board of directors. Hoyt battled for months in 1951 to establish and maintain a Washington bureau, pointing to papers such as the Chicago

Tribune, New York Herald Tribune, and Baltimore Sun and arguing that the prestige of the paper depended on its presence in the capital. After a protracted fight with the Post’s directors, he was given permission to pay for a single full-time Washington reporter.121

Hoyt’s strong editorial voice at key moments in US history did, indeed, raise the

Post’s prestige and earn the paper a spot among the nation’s leading newspapers. Of these, the most significant was his crusade against Joseph McCarthy, which began in

1953 when he issued a two-page memo to the Post’s editorial staff instructing it to adopt,

“in view of the mounting tide of mccarthyism,” a higher standard of scrutiny toward

“reckless or impulsive public officials.”122 Subsequent speeches and editorials decrying

McCarthy’s dubious crusade against alleged Communist infiltrations received widespread attention and republication as well as both admiration and condemnation from readers.

Hoyt maintained the fight into September 1954, as public sentiment was swinging hard against McCarthy, with a successful series of articles and editorials criticizing discrimination against schoolteachers accused by unnamed informants of Communist activity.123 While Hoyt was certainly not as quick as some editors to turn on McCarthy after the senator’s rise to fame in 1950, the impact of Hoyt’s eventual criticism was

203 significant. In Joe McCarthy and the Press, author Edwin R. Bayley notes Hoyt’s memo on objectivity was particularly impactful, it having “circulated in virtually ever[y] newspaper office in the country. . . . It stands as one of the milestones in the evolution from purely ‘straight’ reporting to interpretive reporting.”124 The memo barred reporters from merely parroting public officials like McCarthy without considering the truth of what was said—a form of uncritical and misleading objectivity—instead making them responsible for contextualizing information for readers. Lackadaisical reporting had ushered McCarthy and other Red-baiters into power.125 Through his memo, Hoyt signaled that a shift toward interpretive reporting was necessary to stop deceivers like

McCarthy from manipulating the public through the press.

Hoyt succeeded in carrying the Post to new heights. But his philosophy of empire led the paper away from the kind of profitable specialization experienced by the News.

Instead, the content of the ever-growing Post lacked cohesion, trying to be the best of everything and largely failing to excel at anything. Throughout the 1950s, studies recommended the paper improve its women’s content, society page, Washington coverage, entertainment news, automotive news, outdoors content, business section, and teen content, often attempting to outdo the News on any topic that the smaller paper was finding success covering. But a 1959 in-house study found little editorial content in the

Post to be excited about. “I would say The Post performs its standard functions promptly and well,” the researcher reported. But Hoyt’s pet projects such as the Washington bureau were identified as wastes of money. Worst of all, the report criticized the Post’s coverage of its empire, from the suburbs to the hinterlands, as “confused, irregular, [and] without clear objectives.”126

204 Though the Post was bloated and unfocused, its growing page count alone was enough to pressure the News. By the end of the decade, News managers were struggling to find ways to sell their small, tightly focused tabloid when it sat on newsstands beside the fat, news-filled Post. “There’s nothing wrong with our Sunday editorial product,” business manager Lewis wrote. “It’s good. It only suffers by contrast with the mighty

Denver Post. . . . Our product is just a good light-weight against a heavy, and not as good a ‘value’ in volume for three nickels as theirs is for four.”127

The Carrot

By the time he first offered to buy Denver Post in 1956, S.I. Newhouse had already built a newspaper chain that spanned the country.128 A poster child for the promise of the American dream, Newhouse was born into an immigrant family of meager means. Gradually, as a result of his relentless drive and business acumen, Newhouse in the 1910s and 1920s built a newspaper apprenticeship into a small chain of dailies in

New York and New Jersey. His properties proved profitable as a result of his attention to the business and advertising operations of his papers and ruthless subversion of unions, particularly the American Newspaper Guild. As his empire grew, Newhouse took advantage of tax loopholes, his own subsequent capital holdings, and the promise to family owners of local editorial autonomy to amass a chain as large and profitable as

Scripps-Howard, picking up such newspapers as the Syracuse Post-Standard,

Birmingham News, St. Louis Globe-Democrat, and, to Hoyt’s chagrin, in 1950 the

Portland Oregonian.

Among Newhouse’s favorite tactics for securing newspapers was injecting himself into family disputes and stirring dissent among shareholders.129 The Denver Post

205 of the 1960s would prove a perfect target for such an approach. Helen Bonfils, who controlled the largest block of Post stock, had long feuded with her sister, May Bonfils

Stanton, who herself owned roughly 16 percent of the paper.130 As a consequence of the trusts created after the deaths of Post founders Harry Tammen and F.G. Bonfils, the bulk of the remaining stock was held in trusts that were legally bound to pursue reasonable profits for their beneficiaries, counted among which was Denver’s Children’s Hospital.

Newhouse had, in the 1950s, begun throwing down previously unthinkable sums of money for his acquisitions, including his $19 million purchase of the Birmingham News.

If he made such a large offer to the Post, the trusts would be on legally tenuous ground to turn him down—if, for some reason, they wanted to do so. Thus, Newhouse’s decision to add the Post to his growing collection of newspapers is a landmark in the history of

Denver journalism and, as it would bridge his newspaper chain from coast to coast, a significant turn in American journalism.

In his biography of Newhouse, Richard Meeker suggests animus between Helen and May was the prime factor in drawing the media baron’s attention to the Post.131

Angry over a series of perceived indignities about her published in the paper in 1959 and looking to exact revenge on Hoyt and Helen, May is said to have sought out Newhouse.

Hoyt’s professional papers housed in the Western History Collection of Denver Public

Library suggest otherwise. A document signed by Hoyt states Newhouse had made offers on the Post through an agent acting on his behalf beginning in 1955, the most striking proposal being to buy the paper outright in 1956 for $30 million.132 There is no indication

Newhouse attempted to use the rift between Helen and May to facilitate a sale at that point. Nor was Newhouse directly manipulating family politics when his agents sent a

206 letter in 1959 to Hoyt urging him to facilitate a sale, suggesting doing so would be in the best interests of the Post:

Knowing the age factor of those currently owning the controlling interest in the POST, and the lack of a second male generation, it would seem that at some not too distant date the problem of adequate protection of the POST in the years that lie ahead, would be best served if ownership was put in the hands of a strong newspaper organization, and that this step be taken before the death of those now in control so they could participate in the selection.133

To Hoyt, the “problem of adequate protection” was imposed not by some future provocateur but by Newhouse himself. Hoyt had warned the directors years before that the Post risked falling victim to Newhouse specifically or chain ownership generally if it did not make ongoing investments in its facilities.134 Thus, when Newhouse’s agents began meeting in April 1960 with representatives for May Bonfils Stanton’s holdings and the Denver United States National Bank, which served as trustee to two of the largest blocks of Post stock, Hoyt, Campbell, and Helen Bonfils sensed the future of the Post— and the status quo in the Denver newspaper market from which it benefitted—was immediately threatened.135

Newhouse’s agents, who were quietly meeting with representatives from the various blocks of stock controlled from in and out of Denver, were enthusiastic about

Newhouse’s prospects for seizing control of the paper. May Bonfils Stanton seemed eager to unload her stock, and agents reported the Denver United States National Bank and parties connected to the Tammen trust, of which Campbell was a trustee, were also interested in selling. Campbell, however, was opposed, and Helen Bonfils seemed hostile to Newhouse. Indeed, as Newhouse increasingly directed his resources toward securing the purchase of Post stock in May 1960, Helen stated to one of his agents in no uncertain

207 terms that she would never sell her personal stock so long as she lived and that the various blocks on which she exerted influence would also not sell. In all, she claimed to control 45 percent of the Post’s total stock. Yet some of Newhouse’s agents were confident the blocks outside Bonfils’s direct control could be purchased, providing

Newhouse with a 55 percent controlling interest in the paper.136

In reality, Newhouse’s agents were poorly mistaken in their assessment of the blocks beyond Helen’s influence. The Newhouse interests were including in their 55 percent the Tammen block, over which Campbell exerted nearly complete control and which represented 19 percent of the total ownership of the Post. In the face of vigorous opposition from both Campbell and Bonfils, Newhouse soon came to understand majority control was not something that could be bought outright. But he persisted, confident he could force the Post’s obstinate controllers to give up the fight if he secured enough stock to entitle him a director’s seat on the paper’s three-person board.

That he could buy May’s shares was never in doubt—the only question was how much doing so would cost. Late in May, the two parties agreed to a purchase price of

$240 per share for 14,724 shares at a total cost to Newhouse of $3.5 million.137 At that price, the total value of the Post could be estimated at $22.5 million. One of Newhouse’s agents in Denver suggested the next step would be to secure the 21 percent interest held by the Children’s Hospital and controlled by Denver United States National Bank, which would pressure Campbell to sell the block he controlled or risk legal challenge as trustee for refusing sale against the best interests of its beneficiaries.138

But capturing the stock controlled by the bank proved extremely difficult as a result of efforts by Campbell, Bonfils, and Hoyt to shield it from purchase by Newhouse.

208 As Newhouse offered the bank increasingly large sums of money, Campbell and Bonfils persuaded the block’s trustees to enter into an informal pact in which all three parties pledged not to sell their shares, protecting the bank from the possibility of becoming a minority stockholder of a Newhouse newspaper.139 Meanwhile, Bonfils began investigating options by which the block could be purchased by friendly interests.140

Then, in June, the anti-Newhouse group changed tactics. Instead of assembling a group of allied investors to buy the block, the Post would buy the stock and return it to the paper’s treasury. On June 8, at the Post’s routine summer board meeting, the directors voted to allow Hoyt to immediately purchase, on behalf of the paper, the Children’s

Hospital block at an estimated cost of $240 per share.141 Negotiations with the bank pushed that price to $260 per share, for a total cost to the Post of $5.1 million, with $1 million due at the time of purchase and an additional $800,000 within thirty days thereafter.142 The Post board approved the purchase on July 8, and the sale was soon finalized.

In the days leading to the deal’s consummation, Newhouse’s agents in Denver urged him to contact the bank with a higher offer than the Post, which, as time would show, he undoubtedly would have paid. But Newhouse’s goal was ownership of the Post, not the particular block at issue, and so he stayed out of the fray, publicly, for the time being, to avoid any appearance of hostility toward the Post’s directors.143 He and his agents would remain quiet regarding the Post for the several years, sending only a proxy to the annual board meetings and, when asked, informing those who inquired that he had no interest in selling his share of the paper.144 At great expense, Campbell, Bonfils, and

209 Hoyt had managed to contain Newhouse’s attempted takeover to only 16 percent of the company, short of what was necessary to place a director on the board.

But they could not chase him away entirely. Newhouse was content to collect dividends and silently observe the paper’s operations—at least until a more opportune moment to strike presented itself.

Too Many Cooks

Identifying the boundaries of a newspaper’s market is difficult. In the 1980s, John

Busterna reviewed the characteristics of newspaper economics and case law regarding the scope of daily newspaper markets and concluded such markets should be defined very narrowly.145 Geographically, daily newspapers compete only with other daily newspapers in the county or counties from which they obtain the majority of their circulation and retail advertising linage. Furthermore, daily newspapers do not compete with nondaily newspapers, television stations, or radio broadcasters. The market in which Denver’s daily newspapers operated, by this definition, consisted in the 1960s of two competitors: the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News.

Hoyt and the managers of the Post viewed the market in which they operated differently. While its core advertising and circulation interests were decidedly local in

Denver, Hoyt’s imagined empire stretched for hundreds of miles, transcending state lines.

Within that empire, especially in Denver and its suburbs, Hoyt sensed competitors everywhere. The tight editorial and financial focus of the News limited its competitive attention primarily to the Post. But Hoyt competed not only against the News but also weekly newspapers published in the communities surrounding the city. He increasingly

210 sensed he was competing with radio and television for Denver’s advertisers. And, by late in the decade, Hoyt was told the Post was even competing against itself.

During Hoyt’s first years in Denver, television had not been perceived as a significant threat to the city’s newspapers. A Post analysis determined that as a competitor in news, television was laughable, stating, “Television cannot play to all audiences at once and therefore sticks to a moronic level . . . which provides about as much mental stimulation and satisfaction as does the pitch of an amateur sidewalk clown.”146 The report did, however, warn to guard against any shift among the Post’s advertisers toward television. In 1953, Hoyt waived off even this possibility in an outright dismissal of television’s potential as a competitor to newspapers:

I see no threat to newspapers in the advent of television. It is virtually impossible for television to enter into competition with newspapers in the presentation of news because of the difficulties of picturization. Of course, there is always the commentator reading a news report. This, however, is hardly so exciting that it becomes a necessary part of the life of any person who is genuinely interested in news and its background. . . .

It is true that in the case of television, some economic threat is apparent in the division of advertising funds particularly on the national levels. However, it is equally true that television has been tried in many merchandising efforts and has been found wanting.147

Such an attitude had persisted at the Post throughout most of the 1950s. One exception to this policy was represented in a Post analysis that acknowledged television was affecting both public perception and newspaper advertising budgets.148 But, generally, the Post’s main concern related to television was a desire to get into the game with a station of its own. Early in the decade, the Post had been in conversations with the

National Broadcasting Corporation to launch an NBC television affiliate in Denver.149

The plan fell through, a direct victim of Hoyt’s modernization program at the Post. In a

211 May 1951 letter to Ray Campbell and Helen Bonfils written only a few months after the directors had warned him to limit spending, Hoyt urged that the directors consider getting into television. But he admitted they could not at that time, as the paper had yet to contain spiking newsprint and labor expenses, recover from cost of the new facility and planned future purchases, and secure a satisfactory rate of dividends for shareholders, all of which were considered prerequisites for a move into television.150

Nine years later, in 1960, Hoyt put a positive spin on the inability of the Post to get into TV. “It is perhaps fortunate that The Denver Post does not have a TV station,” he wrote, “and is thus dependent on the development of the newspaper itself, for the solid financial profits so necessary to our future as a newspaper, and our future as members of

The Post’s staff.”151 Despite his rose-tinted reflection, however, Hoyt could not ignore in the 1960s the encroachment of television and radio on the Post’s advertising and, increasingly, editorial content.

A July 1959 Post memo by Robert Lucas, who had followed Hoyt from the

Oregonian to Denver to join the paper’s upper ranks, provides a direct counterpoint to

Hoyt’s dismissal of broadcast news, explaining that radio, gradually shifting from its low- brow roots, had grown into a mature editorial medium and that broadcasting was capable of competing with newspapers on news:

I’ve been rising early this summer and have been listening to the interminable newscasts (while shaving) or on the way to work. Hell, I know what’s in the paper, or largely what’s in it, before I get to work! And we don’t deliver that damned paper until 5 o’clock in the afternoon. And people may not read it until 7 or 8. Meanwhile, the newscasts roll on and the picture box is squawking with news (and, often, OUR still news pics). And I wonder, “God! What an expenditure of time, energy, brains and money to be SO LATE with things in which people may, after all, have only a casual interest.”152

212 Part of the problem was the Post’s afternoon position, which placed it at a disadvantage to broadcasters and the News on stories that broke after its midday deadline. Another issue was newspapers’ reliance on wire services, which Hoyt criticized for playing into the hands of television for news from outside the region. He complained to representatives of the Associated Press and United Press International that their sports coverage was shallow and neglected to provide anything for readers they could not get in greater detail on television. “TV offers us both a challenge and an opportunity,” he wrote,

“and we are dependent upon you to make the most of both, unless we are to be forced to write our own damned story from a TV box in the city room.”153 He was similarly critical of the Associated Press for discontinuing its program of carrying transcripts of presidential press conferences.154 Ultimately, however, the main problem facing both the

Post and News was that the American public was shifting its preferences away from newspapers toward radio and television. One study cited in a 1963 Post memo showed 29 percent of one survey’s participants turned to television for the fairest, most unbiased news, only 2 percent fewer than those who preferred newspapers.155 Newspapers were identified in the survey as by far the favored medium for news, but when it came to breaking news, both radio and television were well ahead.

Most striking of all, key Post managers were unsure the quality of the content in their newspaper was sufficient to stave off the threat posed by broadcasting. By 1961,

Denver had four commercial and one educational television stations as well as nineteen radio stations.156 Analyses stated plainly that papers needed to offer something unique that broadcasters could not match—deep reporting and innovative features that broadcasters had neither the time to air nor resources to produce.157 But the best

213 compliment one Post manager could summon was that the paper’s coverage was

“spotty,” quick and effective regarding breaking news but lackluster on most other counts.158

While scholars and lawyers might have excluded broadcasters as in-market competitors to the Post, the paper’s managers clearly did not, and the challenges they sensed coming from broadcasters were significant. At the same time, a growing assortment of suburban weeklies was beginning to encroach on territory staked out by the

Post as its own. Hoyt’s Post fought them in 1961 by launching weekly zoned editions of the Post, each targeting communities immediately outlying Denver.159 They were not an immediate success. After an initial period of profitability, the zoned editions were for a time printed at a loss before proving viable in the long term.160 But by 1964, the threat posed by suburban papers forced the Post to consider issuing zoned editions in more communities or with greater regularity.161

While Hoyt and others at the Post were highly focused on the competitive threats posed by the proliferation of broadcasters and local weeklies in and around Denver, its greatest competitor of all, the Rocky Mountain News, was left unmolested. Indeed, the documents consulted for this dissertation indicate the Post largely ignored the News during the 1960s, a period when the strength of the second-place paper was reaching all- time highs. When the News was mentioned, it was generally either in the context of competition generally in the same breath as other newspapers, television stations, and radio broadcasters, or as a noncompetitor.162 The result was confusion about the News’s competitive strength. Newhouse’s agents, who were new to the Denver market and learning as much as they could from the Post’s annual stockholders meetings, provided

214 their boss after one June gathering a gross misinterpretation of the state of competition in

Denver:

Hoyt thinks that the Post is in the most competitive situation in the United States since it competes with the News, Cervi’s Journal (a business weekly), many throwaways, nineteen radio stations, and several TV channels including one which is non-commercial. The Herald Tribune and others might dispute that Denver is the most competitive situation in the country. I am under the impression that the News runs on a very tight budget, which prevents it from being a really strong competitor.163

It was true that the News was a financially tight organization, but the paper’s year- over-year circulation growth clearly shows the News was doing better than merely surviving. In 1946, the year Hoyt arrived to assume control of the Post, the News boasted a daily circulation of 80,415, a figure only 41 percent as large as that of the Post.164

Twenty years later, the News’s daily circulation was 194,560, 76 percent the size of the

Post’s. The News’s daily circulation increased by 142 percent during the period, while the Post’s increased only 32 percent.165 To expect the larger Post, which had greater saturation in the market, to grow at the same rate as the News would be unrealistic. But so great a discrepancy is a clear indication that the Post’s competitive neglect and the

News’s tight budgeting and editorial focus significantly reduced the dominance of the

Post. By 1970, the Denver daily newspaper market was a competitive duopoly, with no single newspaper in an overwhelmingly advantaged position against all competitors.

Although the Post was apathetic toward the News, there was one other competitor that was causing it trouble—the Post itself. By the late 1960s, the Post had become so bloated that its various departments were struggling to avoid keeping off one another’s toes. The paper published, at the same time, multiple in-house supplemental tabloids and magazines, including Empire, its flagship supplement, to which it devoted talented

215 writers and editors. Various short-lived sections were started and discontinued, while improvement programs were launched to work on the paper’s business, sports, society, real estate, and other sections. A task force was created to identify and rectify future problems and to critique the various products. Meanwhile, the amount of content placed before readers grew larger and larger. By 1966, Sunday issues ran with as many as 358 pages.166 As a consequence, content began blurring together and improvement projects struggled to yield results. A year after the task force was created, its head complained that many of the group’s greatest ideas were not being acted upon.167 Editorial departments overlapped, sometimes narrowly avoiding publishing duplicated content in the various products associated with the Sunday Post.168 Hoyt’s paper, by attempting to do everything as the leading paper in town, was falling behind.

The Stick

As the competitive situation in Denver drifted away from Post dominance during the 1960s, Newhouse kept a careful eye on the newspaper, waiting for an opportunity to seize control. Meanwhile, Helen Bonfils, with the assistance of Hoyt and Campbell, continued shifting Post stock in such a way as to shield the paper from future attempts at a hostile takeover.

First, the paper instituted a program by which the Children’s Hospital stock block it had purchased in 1960 was made available to the Post’s employees. The employee stock option was introduced to the paper’s unions in November 1961 and was modeled after a similar trust already in place at the Milwaukee Journal. Union representatives were unsure whether to embrace the plan, which Hoyt billed during his presentation as a maneuver to ensure independent management of the paper.169 But vocal opposition to the

216 plan by Newhouse’s agents must have given the unions comfort, given the long history of overt and sometimes violent conflict between union workers and the managers of

Newhouse papers across the country.170 Post employees came to embrace the employee trust; by 1969, 6,459 shares had been purchased at a cost of $130 per share, only half the price for which they were purchased.171 Bonfils offset the difference by contributing

1,600 of her own shares to the employee pool.172 In all, the effort to use Post employees to shield stock from Newhouse had by 1969 cost the paper and Bonfils almost $840,000.

With the Children’s Hospital block seemingly safe in the hands of employees and away from Newhouse, Bonfils turned to secure her own holdings. In June 1963, Bonfils’s attorney, Donald Seawell, informed a Newhouse representative that Bonfils’s stock holdings, which comprised 43 percent of all Post stock, had been willed to a newly created Helen G. Bonfils Foundation, where they would be protected from Newhouse after her death.173 Then, in 1966, Bonfils entered into a pact with the trustees of the remaining stock blocks that said none of the signatories would sell to any outside party unless the holdings of all three signatories were included in the sale.174 If effected, the agreement ensured no sale would be made without Bonfils’s blessing.

But new cracks were forming in Bonfils’s firewall against Newhouse. Campbell eventually stepped down as trustee of the Tammen block, turning control over to the

Denver United States National Bank. Meanwhile, the block’s beneficiaries had been greatly troubled by declining dividends, and their attorney had since 1961 been intimating to Newhouse’s agents that if dividends were not improved, a lawsuit to force the sale of the block would be forthcoming.175 By June 1966, only weeks after Bonfils secured the pact between her and the banks and in direct response to that agreement and

21 7 rumblings that Bonfils might be preparing to buy the Tammen block outright, the beneficiaries’ lawyer insisted that any such sale be opened to all bidders and that the highest offer be accepted.176 Four days later Newhouse telegraphed the bank that he would pay $450 per share for the Tammen block.177 But, as a result of a mishap on the part of Western Union, the telegram never arrived.178 Instead, that same day, Helen

Bonfils bought the block for $300 a share.179 As a result, the stock she owned outright, when combined with the stock held or issued by the Post for the employee stock ownership trust, equaled 55 percent of all Post stock, barring Newhouse from majority ownership.

What seemed to be the final defeat of Newhouse was, in reality, his first opportunity in five years to actualize his takeover. The sale of the Tammen block to

Bonfils pushed its beneficiaries to sue Denver United States National Bank for unlawfully selling the shares at a rate lower than what it knew other buyers might pay, thus acting negligently as trustee. That case, Rippey v. Denver United States National

Bank, was tried in the US District Court of Colorado in July and August 1967. It resulted in a resounding victory for the beneficiaries, who were granted damages in the amount of

$2.7 million, the difference between the price paid by Bonfils and the offer Newhouse would have made if given the opportunity by the bank.180 But it did nothing to benefit

Newhouse. Had the court ordered a public option of the stock to determine its market value, Newhouse could have purchased the stock and thus increased his holdings to 35 percent, earning him a seat on the Post’s board.181 But such was not the case.

Thus, a year later in 1968, Newhouse sued to force the Post to sell the stock it had bought in 1960, alleging that Post resources had been used illegitimately by Bonfils and

218 others at the paper for their own interests rather than those of the company, particularly in their creation of the Post’s employee stock trust. The Newhouse lawsuit resulted in a flurry of claims and counterclaims, including a suit filed by the Post against Newhouse for antitrust violations in the operation of his media chain, all of which were ultimately dismissed.182 But Newhouse’s attack on the stock was successful. In August 1970, the judge in Herald Company v. Bonfils ruled that the stock held in the Post treasury and that issued to employees through their trust be sold in a public auction.

It was clear that, if unchecked, the decision would open the door to Newhouse capturing the stock and a directorship on the Post board. An appeal was filed in October

1970 and a stay on the stock sale granted in November.183 But regardless of the ultimate outcome of the case, Newhouse’s assault was having an immediate effect on the Post.

The paper was spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on legal fees.184 The morale of its employees suffered.185 And the Post’s managers were sufficiently distracted by the threat posed by Newhouse that they were blind to the growing strength of the Rocky

Mountain News.

Two Newspaper Town

When Palmer Hoyt arrived in Denver in 1946, he assumed control of a Post that was indisputably the dominant newspaper in the region. Though the organization had, during the management of William Shepherd, lost much of its former luster, it had more than twice the circulation of the News, editorial dominance, and wild profitability. The

News was growing stronger under the editorship of Jack Foster, but it still lagged far behind the Post.

219 Hoyt retired from the Post on December 31, 1970, after almost twenty-five years as editor and publisher.186 His previous contract, which expired on that date, had not been renewed by the newspaper’s directors.187 The Post he left behind had surrendered its massive advantage over the News in terms of both its editorial content and circulation, leaving it vulnerable to an attack on its advertisers in the future. Newsprint and personnel expenses remained exorbitant. The past decade’s profits had been abysmal compared with those of the Bonfils and Shepherd years.188 The paper had failed to invest in television, having been blocked from doing so by a company treasure chest drained by expensive construction and machinery. To top it all off, seventy-seven years of independent ownership hung in the balance, threatening to fall to Newhouse if the Post’s appeal failed.

Most published accounts of Hoyt’s tenure cast him in a favorable light—but most were written by employees who worked closely with him and were willing to emphasize his editorial leadership and the benefits of his modernization program while overlooking his failings.189 How, then, are we to understand Palmer Hoyt in the context of the competition between the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News?

The need for the changes Hoyt instated during his early years at the Post is clear.

The positive trend in the News’s performance in the early 1940s suggests that had the

Post failed to modernize when it did, the News likely would have gained even more ground on its competitor during the 1950s and 1960s. But it is also plain that the scope of

Hoyt’s changes was so expensive as to limit the ability of the paper to make important investments, such as the purchase of a large interest in a Denver television station, and

220 continue paying large dividends, which created dissent among the shareholders that could be manipulated by Newhouse for his own interests.

An uninventive argument in favor of Hoyt’s modernization program—and the one typically provided by Hoyt himself—was that the changes would cause short-term pain but lead to the long-term viability of the company. This, in retrospect, is shown to be untrue. The profitability of the Post cascaded during Hoyt’s early years before leveling out well below previous levels, while the stability of the paper’s ownership grew more perilous at the modernized Post due precisely to the costs of modernization. The influence of newsprint and personnel costs cannot be overlooked; however, the same forces affected the News, which grew stronger. Both newspapers managed their circulations to enhance their profitability. But while the News raised prices while keeping a neatly focused newspaper, the Post inflated without excelling in any particular editorial department.

The Post’s breadth of coverage, however, should not be discounted as a shortcoming. The scope of the Post’s reporting, when combined with Hoyt’s emphasis on hard news and interpretive journalism, was a long-term strategy that sought to establish the paper as the authoritative voice of Denver and the region, the indisputable—and indispensable—paper of record. Ultimately, Hoyt’s strategy was successful, expanding the Post’s prestige even during the paper’s toils in the 1970s and 1980s and putting it in a strong position for the head-on battle with the News that was to come in the 1990s. The strengths of Hoyt’s editorial strategy are even more evident when compared to the approach of Foster, who focused on lighter “reader stories” that sought to charm rather than impress subscribers. Such divergent editorial strategies did much to set the two

221 newspapers apart. The approaches of Hoyt and Foster attracted different kinds of readers and, subsequently, forced advertisers to purchase space in both newspapers rather than only one in order to reach most Denver readers.

In many ways, Hoyt’s management can be remembered as a time of improvement and growth. But in terms of the paper’s competition with the News, it is clear Hoyt was sufficiently distracted by various problems, many thrust upon him but many others of his own creation, that the News was allowed to quietly position itself only slightly behind the

Post. What remained to be seen, then, was how the News would capitalize on its position in the years to come.

1 E. Ray Campbell to Palmer Hoyt, May 11, 1960, folder 17, box 23, WH 1226,

Edwin Palmer Hoyt Papers, Western History Collection, Denver Public Library, hereafter referred to as “Hoyt Papers.”

2 E. Ray Campbell, memorandum, May 11, 1960, folder 17, box 23, Hoyt Papers.

3 Charles Goldman to S.I. Newhouse, May 11, 1960, box 1, MSS 1147, Bill

Hosokawa Collection, History Colorado, hereafter referred to as Hosokawa Papers–HC.

4 E. Ray Campbell to Palmer Hoyt, May 11, 1960, folder 17, box 23, Hoyt Papers.

5 Ibid.

6 Roy Howard to Bill Hailey, December 29, 1956, folder “1953 City File—

Denver Rocky Mountain News,” box 268, Roy Wilson Howard Papers, Manuscript

Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., hereafter referred to as “Howard

Papers–LoC.”

222

7 E. Ray Campbell to Palmer Hoyt, January 5, 1946, folder 22, box 7, Hoyt

Papers.

8 Jack Foster to George W. Parker, February 26, 1946, folder “1946 City File—

Denver—Denver Rocky Mountain News,” box 213, Howard Papers–LoC.

9 Bill Hosokawa, Thunder in the Rockies: The Incredible Denver Post (New York:

William Morrow, 1976), 198–99.

10 Palmer Hoyt, interview with Mort Stern, January 21, 1967, folder 15, box 29,

Hoyt Papers.

11 Hosokawa, Thunder in the Rockies, 186.

12 The job offer was contingent on a favorable interview. E. Ray Campbell to

Palmer Hoyt, January 5, 1946, folder 22, box 7, Hoyt Papers.

13 Mort Stern, “Palmer Hoyt and the Denver Post: A Field Study of

Organizational Change in the Mass Media of Communication” (PhD diss., University of

Denver, 1969), 139–51.

14 “Biography of Palmer Hoyt,” folder 15, box 9, Hoyt Papers.

15 Stern, “Palmer Hoyt and the Denver Post,” 161–65.

16 E. Ray Campbell to Palmer Hoyt, February 2, 1946, folder 22, box 7, Hoyt

Papers; Palmer Hoyt to E. Ray Campbell, January 31, 1946, folder 22, box 7, Hoyt

Papers.

17 Jack Foster to George W. Parker, February 26, 1946, folder “1946 City File—

Denver—Denver Rocky Mountain News,” box 213, Howard Papers–LoC.

223

18 Lee [likely Casey] to Gene Fowler, folder 14, box 1, MS 252, Gene Fowler

Collection, University of Colorado, Boulder, hereafter referred to as “Fowler Papers.”

19 Al Birch to Gene Fowler, May 17, 1946, folder 3, box 2, Fowler Papers.

20 Stephen J. Leonard and Thomas J. Noel, Denver: Mining Camp to Metropolis

(Niwot, Colorado: University Press of Colorado, 1990), 235.

21 N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual and Directory (Philadelphia:

N.W. Ayer & Son, 1943), 124–25; N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual and

Directory (1947), 126–27.

22 “Analysis of Lorenzen & Thompson Organization,” folder 28, box 10, Hoyt

Papers.

23 Gene Fowler to Frances Wayne, December 16, 1946, folder 6, box 6, Fowler

Papers.

24 See, for example, the February 20, 1944, issue of the Denver Post.

25 Jack Foster to George W. Parker, February 26, 1946, folder “1946 City File—

Denver—Denver Rocky Mountain News,” box 213, Howard Papers–LoC.

26 Ed Dooley to Palmer Hoyt, March 30, 1950, folder 7, box 12, Hoyt Papers.

27 “Memo––Re: Editorial opinions in news stories,” folder 7, box 12, Hoyt Papers.

28 Palmer Hoyt, speech given at William Jewell College, November 10, 1950, folder 7, box 12, Hoyt Papers, 6.

29 Untitled memo “stern—edit,” folder 20, box 29, Hoyt Papers, 5.

30 William H. Hornby, Voice of Empire: A Centennial Sketch of the Denver Post

(Colorado Historical Society, 1992), 35–36.

224

31 Quoted in Hornby, Voice of Empire, 36.

32 Ed Dooley to Palmer Hoyt, 1949, folder 25, box 10, Hoyt Papers, 4.

33 Palmer Hoyt to the board of directors, February 21, 1951, folder 19, box 29,

Hoyt Papers, 14.

34 Stern, “Palmer Hoyt and the Denver Post,” 225; Hornby, Voice of Empire, 32.

35 Hosokawa, Thunder in the Rockies, 277–88.

36 H.W. Hailey to Roy Howard, May 17, 1950, folder “1951 City File—Denver—

General, box 255, Howard Papers–LoC.

37 E. Ray Campbell to Palmer Hoyt, February 19, 1951, folder 20, box 26, Hoyt

Papers, 2.

38 Hosokawa, Thunder in the Rockies, 280; E. Ray Campbell to Palmer Hoyt,

February 19, 1951, folder 20, box 26, Hoyt Papers, 5.

39 Palmer Hoyt, interview with Mort Stern, January 21, 1967, folder 15, box 29,

Hoyt Papers, 9.

40 Contract between Denver Post and Wilson, Gerard, and Wolloy, April 1947, folder 25, box 10, Hoyt Papers; Paul R. Gibson to Palmer Hoyt, April 7, 1967, folder 21, box 25, Hoyt Papers.

41 E. Ray Campbell to Palmer Hoyt, February 2, 1946, folder 22, box 7, Hoyt

Papers, 4.

42 E. Roy Campbell to Palmer Hoyt, February 5, 1946, folder 22, box 7, Hoyt

Papers.

43 Al Birch to Gene Fowler, May 17, 1946, folder 3, box 2, Fowler Papers.

225

44 Palmer Hoyt, interview with Mort Stern, January 21, 1967, folder 15, box 29,

Hoyt Papers, 6.

45 Charles Buxton to Palmer Hoyt, May 27, 1946, folder 15, box 7, Hoyt Papers;

Elvon L. Howe, “Ep and Helen: 1947–1952,” June 25, 1980, M11–3, Western History

Collection, Denver Public Library, 25–26.

46 Al Birch to Gene Fowler, November 9, 1948, folder 3, box 2, Fowler Papers.

47 Gene Fowler to Frances Wayne, December 16, 1946, folder 6, box 6, Fowler

Papers.

48 Bill Miller, “The Denver Guild and How It Started,” Byline, 1957: 12–14, 72–

75.

49 Denver Post Unit of the American Newspaper Guild to Fellow Guildsmen,

October 18, 1948, folder 20, box 4, Hoyt Papers.

50 Ibid.; Elvon L. Howe to Guildsmen of the Denver Post Unit, November 6,

1948, folder 20, box 4, Hoyt Papers.

51 Elvon L. Howe to Paul Deutschmann, January 12, 1950, folder 28, box 18,

Hoyt Papers, 4.

52 Ed Dooley to Palmer Hoyt, 1949, folder 25, box 10, Hoyt Papers, 5–6.

53 H.W. Hailey to Mark Ferree, February 17, 1949, Howard Papers, 3.

54 H.W. Hailey to R.A. Huber, October 1, 1942, folder “1942 City File Denver

News,” box 182, Howard Papers–LoC.

55 Palmer Hoyt to Ed Dooley, November 3, 1949, folder 24, box 11, Hoyt Papers.

226

56 Hailey mailed a transcript of the article (Roscoe Fleming, “Revolution in

Denver,” The Nation, June 26, 1946) to a Scripps-Howard manager in New York, who figured his boss “would get a kick out of it.” H.W. Hailey to R.A. Huber, July 24, 1946, folder “1946 City File—Denver—Denver Rocky Mountain News,” box 213, Howard

Papers–LoC.

57 “It Is Refreshingly Different,” Daily Sentinel, September 26, 1949, folder 6, box 34, Hoyt Papers; Fred to Ep, December 31, 1948, folder 12, box 8, Hoyt Papers.

58 Palmer Hoyt to Preston Walker, January 25, 1950, folder 6, box 34, Hoyt

Papers.

59 “Denver Post Promotions and Public Relations,” folder 32, box 10, Hoyt

Papers, 8–10.

60 “The Sunday Post,” [probably written by Elvon Howe], folder 28, box 16, Hoyt

Papers, 7–14.

61 Jack W. Foster, speech given before the journalism clinic in Memphis, folder

24, box 3, M 077, Jack Foster Papers, Denver University, hereafter referred to as “Foster

Papers.”

62 Roy Howard to Palmer Hoyt, February 13, 1946, folder “1946 City File—

Denver—General,” box 213, Howard Papers–LoC.

63 H.W. Hailey to Roy Howard, February 16, 1946, folder “1946 City File—

Denver—Denver Rocky Mountain News,” box 213, Howard Papers–LoC.

64 Jack Foster to George W. Parker, February 26, 1946, folder “1946 City File—

Denver—Denver Rocky Mountain News,” box 213, Howard Papers–LoC.

227

65 Jack Foster to John Sorrells, April 23, 1946, folder “1946 City File—Denver—

Denver Rocky Mountain News,” box 213, Howard Papers–LoC.

66 Speech given by Jack Foster, “Our Newspaper in the Changing Future: An

Introduction,” September 18, 1963, folder 8, box 2, Foster Papers.

67 Jack Foster to John T. O’Rourke, November 9, 1948, folder “1948 City File—

Denver—Denver Rocky Mt. News,” box 230, Howard Papers–LoC. It must be noted that others, including editors at the Post, felt they, too, had failed in their reporting of the

1948 presidential election. See, for example, [Elvon Howe], “The Sunday Post,” folder

28, box 16, Hoyt Papers, 5; Edward E. Adams, “Market Subordination and Competition:

A Historical Analysis of Combinations, Consolidation, and Joint Operating Agreements through an Examination of the E.W. Scripps Newspaper Chain, 1877–1993” (PhD diss.,

Ohio University, 1993), 87.

68 H.W. Hailey to Mark Ferree, October 4, 1950, folder “1950 City File—

Denver—Denver Rocky Mt. News,” box 246, Howard Papers–LoC.

69 H.W. Hailey to Mark Ferree, November 7, 1950, folder “1950 City File—

Denver—Denver Rocky Mt. News,” box 246, Howard Papers–LoC.

70 Jack Foster to John Sorrells, April 23, 1946, folder “1946 City File—Denver—

Denver Rocky Mountain News,” box 213, Howard Papers–LoC.

71 Jack Foster to Jack R. Howard, March 7, 1949, (second page dated March 18), folder “1949 City File—Denver—Rocky Mountain News,” box 238, Howard Papers–

LoC.

228

72 H.W. Hailey to Roy Howard, September 28, 1948, folder “1948 City File—

Denver—Denver Rocky Mt. News,” box 230, Howard Papers–LoC.

73 Robert L. Perkin, The First Hundred Years: An Informal History of Denver and the Rocky Mountain News (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1959), 587.

74 Jack Foster to Jack R. Howard, August 24, 1949, folder “1949 City File—

Denver—Rocky Mountain News,” box 238, Howard Papers–LoC.

75 Sam to Chuck Buxton, February 18, 1948, folder 32, box 16, Hoyt Papers.

76 [E. Ray Campbell] to Palmer Hoyt, February 19, 1951, folder 20, box 26, Hoyt

Papers. The copy of the letter preserved in Hoyt’s personal papers does not identify its sender, but Hosokawa notes on page 298 of Thunder in the Rockies that it was E. Ray

Campbell on behalf of himself and Helen Bonfils.

77 Hosokawa, Thunder in the Rockies, 302; [E. Ray Campbell] to Palmer Hoyt,

February 19, 1951, folder 20, box 26, Hoyt Papers, 5.

78 Ibid., 1.

79 Ibid., 5.

80 Ibid., 7.

81 Ibid., 10.

82 Palmer Hoyt to E. Ray Campbell and Helen Bonfils, March 21, 1951, folder 20, box 26, Hoyt Papers, 6.

83 [Palmer Hoyt] to Helen Bonfils and E. Ray Campbell, May 28, 1951, folder 19, box 29, Hoyt Papers.

84 “Preliminary Figures,” box 1, Hosokawa Papers–HC.

229

85 B.W. Lewis to Mark Ferree, February 6, 1957, folder “1957 City File—

Denver—Denver Rocky Mountain News,” box 295, Howard Papers–LoC.

86 B.W. Lewis to Mark Ferree, February 6, 1957, folder “1957 City File—

Denver—Denver Rocky Mountain News,” box 295, Howard Papers–LoC.

87 B.W. Lewis to Mark Ferree, May 6, 1957, folder “1957 City File—Denver—

Denver Rocky Mountain News,” box 295, Howard Papers–LoC.

88 Charles R. Buxton to Palmer Hoyt, November 23, 1951, folder 28, box 16,

Hoyt Papers, 2.

89 Palmer Hoyt, interview with Mort Stern, January 21, 1967, folder 15, box 29,

Hoyt Papers, 9.

90 Palmer Hoyt to the board of directors of the Post, June 10, 1959, folder 21, box

10, Hoyt Papers, 1.

91 Ibid., 7.

92 Charles R. Buxton to Palmer Hoyt, October 26, 1959, folder 17, box 23, Hoyt

Papers.

93 B.W. Lewis to Mark Ferree, September 6, 1957, folder “1957 City File—

Denver—Denver Rocky Mountain News ,” box 295, Howard Papers–LoC, 4.

94 B.W. Lewis to Mark Ferree, April 5, 1957, folder “1957 City File—Denver—

Denver Rocky Mountain News,” box 295, Howard Papers–LoC, 3.

95 B.W. Lewis to Mark Ferree, January 7, 1959, folder “1959 City File—Denver

Rocky Mountain News,” box 306, Howard Papers–LoC; B.W. Lewis to Mark Ferree,

230

July 6, 1959, folder “1959 City File—Denver Rocky Mountain News,” box 306, Howard

Papers–LoC.

96 Roy Howard to H.W. Hailey, December 29, 1956, folder “1956 City File—

Denver General,” box 289, Howard Papers–LoC.

97 B.W. Lewis to Mark Ferree, September 6, 1957, folder “1957 City File—

Denver—Denver Rocky Mountain News,” box 295, Howard Papers–LoC.

98 B.W. Lewis to Mark Ferree, March 5, 1959, folder “1959 City File—Denver

Rocky Mountain News,” box 306, Howard Papers–LoC.

99 Palmer Hoyt to Helen Bonfils and E. Ray Campbell, May 28, 1951, folder 19, box 29, Hoyt Papers.

100 [E. Ray Campbell] to Palmer Hoyt, March 19, 1951, folder 21, box 10, Hoyt

Papers, 6.

101 H.W. Hailey to W.W. Hawkins, October 5, 1951, folder “1951 City File—

Denver—Denver Rocky Mtn. News,” box 255, Howard Papers–LoC.

102 Palmer Hoyt to Helen Bonfils and E. Ray Campbell, February 20, 1952, folder

19, box 29, Hoyt Papers; Palmer Hoyt to the board of directors of the Post, February 18,

1953, folder 19, box 29, Hoyt Papers; Palmer Hoyt to the stockholders of the Post, June

8, 1955, folder 20, box 29, Hoyt Papers.

103 “Back in the year 1957 . . .” folder 13, box 9, Hoyt Papers.

104 Palmer Hoyt to the stockholders of the Post (“The Denver Post did well in

1959”), folder 20, box 29, Hoyt Papers.

231

105 Palmer Hoyt to the board of directors of the Post, June 10, 1959, folder 21, box

10, Hoyt Papers, 5.

106 Ibid.

107 “Denver Post Lowers Rate to Big Stores,” Editor & Publisher, January 25,

1958, 15.

108 Palmer Hoyt to the board of directors of the Post, June 10, 1959, folder 21, box

10, Hoyt Papers, 6.

109 Jack Foster and H.W. Hailey to News employees, July 24, 1956, folder “1956

City File—Denver Rocky Mountain News,” box 289, Howard Papers–LoC.

110 “Ernest V. Heyn Comes to Town,” Rocky Mountain News, August 3, 1956;

B.W. Lewis to Mark Ferree, September 6, 1957, folder “1957 City File—Denver—

Denver Rocky Mountain News,” box 295, Howard Papers–LoC.

111 Ibid.

112 Elvon Howe, “Tab Cosmo, continued,” folder 28, box 16, Hoyt Papers, 6.

113 [Elvon Howe], “The Sunday Post,” folder 28, box 16, Hoyt Papers, 3.

114 Ibid., 2.

115 Jack Foster to Roy Howard, January 24, 1952, folder 2, box 1, Foster Papers.

116 Jack Foster to Roy Howard and Jack Howard, June 6, 1952, folder “1952 City

File—Denver Rocky Mountain News,” box 262, Howard Papers–LoC.

117 “Scripps-Howard Backs Eisenhower,” New York Times, June 17, 1952.

118 Roy Howard to Jack Foster, August 20, 1953, folder 1, box 1, Foster Papers.

119 Jack Foster to Roy Howard, August 26, 1953, folder 1, box 1, Foster Papers.

232

120 Jack Foster to Jack Howard, September 8, 1954, folder 1, box 1, Foster Papers;

Jack Howard to Scripps-Howard newspapers editors, September 18, 1954, folder 1, box

1, Foster Papers.

121 [Palmer Hoyt], “It is my considered conclusion,” folder 20, box 26, Hoyt

Papers.

122 Palmer Hoyt to Ed Dooley, February 5, 1953, folder 29, box 20, Hoyt Papers.

123 See, for example, “Are Faceless Police Tolerable?” September 19, 1954, folder

3, box 13, Hoyt Papers.

124 Edwin R. Bayley, Joe McCarthy and the Press (Madison: University of

Wisconsin, 1981), 145.

125 Ibid., 215.

126 Robert W. Lucas, “Memo of Comment on the Denver Post,” July 24, 1959, folder 36, box 18, MSS WH1085, Bill Hosokawa Papers, Western History Collection,

Denver Public Library, referred to hereafter as Hosokawa Papers–DPL.

127 B.W. Lewis to Mark Ferree, July 6, 1959, folder “1959 City File—Denver

Rocky Mountain News,” box 306, Howard Papers–LoC, 3.

128 Details in this sketch of S.I. Newhouse were gathered from Richard H.

Meeker, Newspaperman: S.I. Newhouse and the Business of News (New Haven and New

York: Ticknor & Fields, 1983).

129 Ibid., 202.

130 “The Denver Post, Inc., List of Stockholders,” June 11, 1958, box 1,

Hosokawa Papers–HC.

233

131 Meeker, Newspaperman, 204.

132 Palmer Hoyt, “In 1956, as I recall . . .”, May 3, 1960, folder 17, box 23, Hoyt

Papers.

133 Herbert Moloney to Palmer Hoyt, February 4, 1959, folder 16, box 23, Hoyt

Papers.

134 Palmer Hoyt to Helen Bonfils and E. Ray Campbell, February 20, 1952, folder

19, box 29, Hoyt Papers.

135 Keith Anderson to Allen Kandler, April 15, 1960, box 1, Hosokawa Papers–

HC.

136 Allen Kandler to Charles Goldman, April 15, 1960, box 1, Hosokawa Papers–

HC.

137 Purchase agreement between Samuel I. Newhouse and May Bonfils Stanton, the First National Bank of Denver, and Charles E. Stanton, May 27, 1960, box 1,

Hosokawa Papers–HC.

138 [Likely Keith Anderson] to S.I. Newhouse, May 31, 1960, box 1, Hosokawa

Papers–HC.

139 “Memorandum of Conference,” May 19, 1960, folder 17, box 23, Hoyt Papers.

140 Keith Anderson to S.I. Newhouse, May 27, 1960, box 1, Hosokawa Papers–

HC.

141 Minutes of the Post board of directors meeting, June 8, 1960, folder 17, box

23, Hoyt Papers.

234

142 Memorandum of meeting among Stewart Cosgriff, E. Ray Campbell, Palmer

Hoyt, and Charles R. Buxton, July 7, 1960, folder 17, box 23, Hoyt Papers.

143 C.G. [Charles Goldman], memorandum, July 7, 1960, box 1, Hosokawa

Papers–HC.

144 Keith Anderson to Charles Goldman, June 13, 1962, box 1, Hosokawa Papers–

HC; S.I. Newhouse to Charles Rosenbaum, May 28, 1962, box 1, Hosokawa Papers–HC.

145 John C. Busterna, “Concentration and the Industrial Organization Model,” in

Press Concentration and Monopoly, ed. Robert G. Picard, James P. Winter, Maxwell E.

McCombs, and Stephen Lacy (Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex, 1988), 40–42.

146 [Elvon Howe], “The Sunday Post,” folder 28, box 16, Hoyt Papers, 7–14.

Emphasis in original.

147 Palmer Hoyt, transcript of speech delivered to the University of Kansas school of journalism, February 11, 1953, folder 24, box 20, Hoyt Papers, 2.

148 Elvon Howe, “TAB COSMO, continued,” May 14, 1952, folder 28, box 16,

Hoyt Papers.

149 Memorandum of meeting among Palmer Hoyt, E. Ray Campbell, and Gains,

August 17, 1951, folder 22, box 7, Hoyt Papers.

150 Palmer Hoyt to Helen Bonfils and E. Ray Campbell, May 28, 1951, folder 19, box 29, Hoyt Papers, 2.

151 Palmer Hoyt to William Hosokawa, November 30, 1960, folder 39, box 16,

Hoyt Papers.

235

152 Robert W. Lucas, “Memo of Comment on the Denver Post,” July 24, 1959, folder 36, box 18, Hosokawa Papers–DPL, 10.

153 Palmer Hoyt to Alan Gould, August 12, 1958, folder 12, box 5, Hoyt Papers, 2.

154 Palmer Hoyt to Frank J. Starzel, March 27, 1961, folder 12, box 5, Hoyt

Papers.

155 “Content,” May 3, 1963, folder 31, box 10, Hoyt Papers.

156 Palmer Hoyt to the stockholders of the Post, June 14, 1961, folder 20, box 29,

Hoyt Papers.

157 Robert W. Lucas, “Memo of Comment on the Denver Post,” July 24, 1959, folder 36, box 18, Hosokawa Papers–DPL.

158 Bill Hosokawa to Palmer Hoyt, folder 25, box 23, Hoyt Papers, 2.

159 Palmer Hoyt to the stockholders of the Post, June 14, 1961, folder 20, box 29,

Hoyt Papers, 5.

160 Palmer Hoyt to Helen Bonfils and E. Ray Campbell, June 12, 1963, folder 34, box 10, Hoyt Papers, 3.

161 W.H. Hornby to Palmer Hoyt, November 27, 1964, folder 25, box 23, Hoyt

Papers; Palmer Hoyt to the board of directors of the Post, June 9, 1965, folder 21, box 29,

Hoyt Papers, 6.

162 Palmer Hoyt to Saul Haas, November 11, 1966, folder 29, box 15, Hoyt

Papers.

163 [Keith Anderson] to Charles Sabin, June 21, 1965, box 1, Hosokawa Papers–

HC, 2.

236

164 N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual and Directory (1947), 126–

27.

165 N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual and Directory (1967), 151.

166 Keith Anderson to Charles Sabin, June 8, 1966, box 1, Hosokawa Papers–HC.

167 Bill Hosokawa to Palmer Hoyt, August 25, 1967, folder 23, box 30, Hoyt

Papers.

168 Bill Hosokawa to task force members, folder 23, box 30, Hoyt Papers.

169 Paul C. Lewis to Alberg G. Van Boxel, November 22, 1961, folder 4, box 2, series 2, Denver Typographical Union #49 Papers, University of Colorado, Boulder.

170 The Post-Standard Company to the stockholders of the Post, November 29,

1961, folder 17, box 23, Hoyt Papers; for examples of labor conflicts at Newhouse papers, see Meeker, Newspaperman, 77–87, 101–6, 190–97.

171 Palmer Hoyt to the stockholders of the Post, June 11, 1969, folder 21, box 29,

Hoyt Papers, 5.

172 The Post-Standard Company to the stockholders of the Post, November 29,

1961, folder 17, box 23, Hoyt Papers; difference indicated also in figures of stock holdings before and after 1961.

173 Donald R. Seawell to Allen Kandler, June 27, 1963, box 1, Hosokawa Papers–

HC.

174 Agreement among Helen G. Bonfils, Denver United States National Bank, and

First National Bank of Kansas City, Missouri, June 7, 1966, box 1, Hosokawa Papers–

HC.

237

175 Charles Goldman to S.I. Newhouse, April 11, 1961, box 1, Hosokawa Papers–

HC.

176 Samuel S. Sherman to Denver United States National Bank, June 17, 1966,

Hosokawa Papers–HC.

177 Draft of telegram from S.I. Newhouse, June 22, 1966, Hosokawa Papers–HC.

178 Arch Metzner to Charles Goldman, June 23, 1966, Hosokawa Papers–HC. An investigation by a third party determined the loss of the telegram was accidental and not the result of subterfuge. See Fred W. Albertson to Charles Sabin, August 23, 1966, box 1,

Hosokawa Papers–HC.

179 J.A. Moore to Warren Young and Earl Moore, July 29, 1966; “Helen Bonfils

Buys Denver Post Stock,” New York Times, June 28, 1966.

180 Rippey v. Denver United States National Bank, 273 F. Supp. 718 (D. Colo.

1967).

181 “Memorandum re Denver Post Directors,” April 17, 1961, box 1, Hosokawa

Papers–HC.

182 Herald Company v. Bonfils, 315 F. Supp. 497 (D. Colo. 1970).

183 “Appeal Notice Filed in Post Stock Offer,” Denver Post, October 22, 1970;

“Stay Ruled in Auction of Post Stock,” Denver Post, November 6, 1970.

184 Palmer Hoyt to the stockholders of the Post, June 11, 1969, folder 21, box 10,

Hoyt Papers, 6.

185 Palmer Hoyt, interview with Mort Stern, January 21, 1967, folder 15, box 29,

Hoyt Papers, 17.

238

186 Foster retired at the end of 1970 as well. “Biographical Historical,” Collection

Overview, M 077, Jack Foster Papers, Denver University.

187 Hosokawa, Thunder in the Rockies, 412.

188 Palmer Hoyt to the Post’s stockholders, June 12, 1968, folder 23, box 10, Hoyt

Papers.

189 Such is so of Hosokawa (Thunder in the Rockies), Stern (“Palmer Hoyt and the

Denver Post”), and Hornby (Voice of Empire).

239 Chapter 5. Transposition: 1971–1987

In 1987, Denver was a much different city than it had been when Palmer Hoyt and

Jack Foster were last leading their newspapers seventeen years earlier. The city’s years of steady postwar growth had given way to an oil boom that swelled throughout the 1970s.

Denver’s downtown had blossomed, with towers jutting into a skyline previously unblemished by so many tall buildings.1 An effort was under way to build a state-of-the art international airport west of the city to replace aging Stapleton Airport, which, despite being crowded by suburbs and highways, ushered millions of business travelers and tourists in and out of the city.2 A new cultural venue, the generously funded Denver

Center for the Performing Arts, sprawled across four city blocks and attracted world-class talent.3 The city and its suburbs were becoming increasingly diverse; the number of white

Denver residents, historically an overwhelming majority, fell by 17 percent to 72 percent between 1970 and 1990, and almost universally white suburbs such as Aurora and

Lakewood experienced similar demographic shifts of between 6 and 15 percent.4 The city was becoming culturally, racially, and economically diverse. It was gradually shaking off the sleepy, geographically isolated character that had persisted through previous eras and becoming the cosmopolitan center it is today.

But the 1970s and 1980s were not all sunshine—not by a long shot. The boom that financed the revitalization of downtown Denver crashed in the mid-1980s when the state’s leading industries, along with the price of oil, collapsed. Brand new skyscrapers stood vacant.5 The sky into which they cut, so recently a brilliant blue above the Front

Range of the Rocky Mountains, was now frequently tinted brown, clouded with smog churned out by a mix of industrial emissions, wood-burning stoves, and an army of

240 commuters buzzing between the city proper and its sprawling suburbs, which were growing rapidly and racing one another to annex nearby unincorporated land.6 In places, the land itself was poisoned—citizens of the era grew increasingly concerned that Rocky

Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant, situated sixteen miles upwind of Denver, was irradiating residents of some metro area communities.7

On top of such problems, it seemed increasingly possible by 1987 that Denver was not capable of supporting two daily newspapers. In the midst of a local economic slump and the ongoing disappearance of competing newspapers in American cities, pessimism about the fate of Denver’s papers extended to their editors. “Absent some fundamental change in the economy, by the mid-1990s, I don’t see two papers operating here unless one becomes decidedly different, and I don’t know what that could be,”

David Hall, editor of the Denver Post, told a journalist for a 1987 article in Denver

Magazine.8 His counterpart at the Rocky Mountain News, Ralph Looney, agreed, calling the prospects for ongoing competition “doubtful.” But eighty years after the Post had displaced the News as the dominant paper in Denver, the tables had again turned. Alan

Prendergast, the author of the Denver Magazine article, noted, “As the duel in Denver enters its crucial rounds, the Post appears to be the logical candidate for extinction.”9 He wrote:

Who will ultimately win Denver’s newspaper war? Given the tabloid’s performance over tha [sic] past seven years, the smart money is on the News. Of course, back in 1980 the smart money was on the Post to win in a blowout—and the smart money was wrong. That’s the trouble with newspaper wars; you never know who’s going to end up eating their words.10

The following chapter charts the competition between the Post and News from

January 1971, shortly after Palmer Hoyt and Jack Foster retired from their respective

241 newspapers, until September 1987, when ownership of the Post changed hands for the second time in a decade. It begins by chronicling the conclusion of the battle between the

Post and S.I. Newhouse—a fight that, despite the vigor with which it was waged, ended with little excitement, its champion, Helen Bonfils, having died before seeing its completion. The chapter then observes the complete reversal of fortunes of the two newspapers during the 1970s: the News, building on roughly twenty-five years of growth relative to the Post during Foster’s editorship, supplanted the Post as the strongest newspaper in Denver and came, perhaps, within one or two key decisions of definitively ending the city’s newspaper war; the Post, following seventy-five years of Bonfils ownership, failed to gainfully withstand a period of neglect similar to that of the

Shepherd years. The Post had long been a local and independently owned alternative to

Scripps-Howard’s News. But under weak management during the 1970s, the Post saw its profits drained away for other purposes and its competitor grow under the leadership of a successful, if troubled, editor. Consequently, the Post passed into the hands of the Los

Angeles-based Times Mirror Company and out of local, private ownership. But as the following will detail, the best wishes, seemingly bottomless pockets, and strongest managerial decisions of publicly owned Times Mirror utterly failed, in the midst of

Denver’s economic bust of the 1980s, to reverse the Post’s fortunes, largely as a result of a handful of key missteps. As a result, Times Mirror found itself unable to justify its presence in Denver to its public shareholders, forcing it to sell the property. Thus, just as

Scripps-Howard failed to convert its energy and treasure into progress for the Rocky

Mountain News in the years after the Denver Post’s ascendance in the 1920s, so too did the Times Mirror fall short upon its arrival in Denver in the 1980s.

242 Empire in Decline

When Palmer Hoyt retired from the Denver Post in December 1970, he left a newspaper still at risk of a hostile takeover. The paper was in the process of appealing a court decision granting newspaper magnate S.I. Newhouse the ability to bid on a block of

Post stock large enough to earn himself a place on the newspaper’s board of directors— something the paper’s chief owner, Helen Bonfils, was loath to allow.11 The Post would have to settle this ownership question before it could turn its attention toward strengthening its competitive standing against the insurgent News, which was closing the circulation gap between the two papers with each passing year.

Before the paper could do so, the matriarch Bonfils died June 7, 1972.12 Her death had no immediate impact on the ownership of the Post, as her 43 percent of the paper’s stock had been placed into the Helen G. Bonfils Foundation to shield it from

Newhouse and other out-of-towners, but her death marked a major milestone in the newspaper’s history and, indeed, in the history of Denver.13 For the first time since F.G.

Bonfils surreptitiously arrived in Denver in 1895 to assume control, with partner Harry

Tammen, of an almost worthless Post, no Bonfils owned stock in the newspaper.

Yet as the months that followed Bonfils’s death would prove, Newhouse’s stake in the Post would not last much longer, either. In January 1972, Arthur J. Goldberg, previously a justice of the US Supreme Court and ambassador to the United Nations, argued the Post’s case before the Tenth US Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, asserting the future of independent, locally owned newspapers was imperiled by the lower district court’s decision ordering a public auction of Post stock.14 In December 1972, more than two years after the lower court ordered the auction, the appeals court voided that

243 command, affirming the Post employee stock trust and frustrating Newhouse’s takeover.15 Finally, in August 1973, Newhouse abandoned his eighteen-year fight for ownership of the newspaper, selling his stake to the F.G. Bonfils Foundation.16 His shares sold for roughly $4.8 million—34 percent more than the price he paid May Bonfils and

First National Bank of Denver for the stock in 1967.

At long last, local ownership of the Post was assured. But it was not the same newspaper it had been in the 1950s, when Newhouse began his pursuit of the Post in earnest. Neither was the News.

Around the beginning of the Hoyt era in 1946, the Post held a daily newspaper circulation of 194,099, having grown 24 percent in the previous decade.17 The News, meanwhile, trailed with a daily circulation of only 80,415, but it was gaining momentum under the tenure of Foster, who oversaw improvements that helped elevate the paper’s circulation by 115 percent in the preceding decade. The two newspapers were then separated by 114,000 copies, with the News comprising less than half the Post’s circulation. In 1973, with both Hoyt and Foster retired, the discrepancy between the two newspapers’ circulations had grown narrower. Both had experienced significant growth, but the News had posted far superior numbers than the Post.18 Having expanded its daily circulation by 32 percent, the Post in 1973 sat at 256,439. During the same period, the

News skyrocketed 167 percent to 214,490, within striking distance of a competitor that recently seemed in a league of its own. In this context, the time leading from Hoyt’s departure—and the years of stagnation that followed—reveal a Denver Post quickly losing ground in the Denver newspaper market.

244 Leading the Post through this 1970s slump was Donald Seawell, who ascended to the presidency of the newspaper’s board of directors after Helen Bonfils’s death. Seawell had taken a back door into the world of newspapering, one opened entirely as a result of his proximity to Bonfils. Seawell, a lawyer, and Bonfils first met in the 1950s, brought together by their involvement in the New York theater scene.19 The two were soon jointly producing plays on Broadway and in London. Late in that decade, Bonfils asked him to be her legal representative not only in her personal affairs but also her dealings with the

Post. Over time, Seawell’s involvement with the newspaper grew. By the mid-1960s, he was devoting half of his time to the management of the paper and, after Bonfils’s death, he became president and publisher of the Post.20

In Seawell’s estimation, Bonfils had treasured none of her possessions and interests, including her deep passion for the theater, more than the Post:

Helen was a woman of deep emotions and her relationship to the Post, to the employees, was always the most important thing in her life. Theatre was very important, her church was, her charities, the hospitals—clinics—but above all, the most important thing to her was to preserve the Post, to keep it from the hands of people like Newhouse, to insure [sic] its independence and local control.21

To Bonfils, carrying on the Post was more than a business proposition. It provided journalistic value to the community, having served Denverites for decades. It memorialized the achievements of her father, F.G. Bonfils. And it had at various times provided substantial financial support to charitable organizations in the city, as during the decades when one of its chief shareholders had been Denver’s Children’s Hospital. The latter had caused the Post considerable consternation, as when the newspaper’s presses had gone unimproved for decades in order to buoy dividends, jeopardizing its long-term strength.

245 Both the Helen G. Bonfils and F.G. Bonfils foundations were also charitable organizations, and, as had the Post, control of the two fell to Seawell after Bonfils’s death. But, unlike Bonfils, it is unlikely anyone would have claimed Seawell’s first passion was the Post. As president, he oversaw a system by which the profits accrued by the two Bonfils foundations from their ownership in the Post were poured into the

Denver Center for the Performing Arts, a massive arts complex conceived of by Seawell in 1974.22 He did not ignore the newspaper in favor of the flashy new DCPA—he was quoted in one Post article as saying, “Nothing that I have done in my entire life was more fun than running a newspaper. . . . I took a great deal of pride in keeping The Denver Post alive as an independent, objective voice—while still making money.”23 But like earlier charity owners of the paper, Seawell had every reason to emphasize the Post’s profitability for the benefit of the Bonfils foundations, ultimately to the detriment of the paper’s independence.

Meanwhile, the staff and management of the News in the 1970s were tightly focused on capitalizing on their momentum against a stagnating Post, both in terms of editorial content and production facilities. Generally, the News benefitted from strong editorial leadership throughout the decade. After Jack Foster’s retirement in 1970, the top editorial title at the paper was taken up by Vincent Dwyer, a man with a rich understanding of the competitive situation between the papers. After getting his start at the News in 1934, Dwyer swapped newspapers to spend seven years at the Post before returning, after a brief departure from Denver journalism, to the News for twenty-three years prior to assuming the duties of News editor.24 He held the top job for four years

246 before retiring and passing control on to Michael Howard, the young grandson of the same Roy Howard who had brought the News under Scripps-Howard control in 1926.25

The two editors brought very different perspectives to the job—Dwyer a lifetime of experience in the Denver market, Howard a youthful energy and the influence of two generations of Scripps-Howard executives before him. But they shared a singular understanding of the News’s editorial role in Denver. Unlike the ambitious Post, which in the 1970s continued past-publisher Palmer Hoyt’s conception of the paper as the voice of a Rocky Mountain empire, the News focused solely on Denver and the states of immediate interest to the city’s readers. “We don’t try to cover the Rocky Mountain west,” Dwyer said. “What we try to cover is Colorado and Wyoming, which is plenty, believe me, with our manpower and what we get.”26 After assuming control of the paper,

Howard similarly limited the breadth of the News’s coverage, arguing it would be impossible to strive to be the city’s paper of record with such limited resources and instead leaving that role for the Post.27

The Post, meanwhile, clung adamantly to its national aspirations, attempting not only to comprehensively report on Denver’s goings-on but also to simultaneously cover and deliver a paper to a thirteen-state Rocky Mountain empire while providing an array of national and international news. As one Post editor recalled, this broad scope of interest, which had increased the paper’s prestige during earlier decades, had by the

1970s become a liability.28 Post advertisers had little interest in reaching readers in

Montana or South Dakota. Denver department stores, for instance, wanted customers to walk into their Denver stores and make purchases. The News, with its tight focus on

Denver, was able to more effectively target readers who could do so.

247 Meanwhile, the dynamism of the News’s editorial team drew in an ever-larger audience for those advertisers. Howard’s tenure as News editor earned for the paper a reputation for intrepid reporting under the leadership of an energetic, hands-on editor.29

He added to the paper’s roster some of Denver’s most esteemed journalists, drawing in sports reporter Woody Paige and longtime editorialist Gene Amole while luring talented writers from the Post.30 Howard worked with reporters to find interesting news angles suited to his paper’s off-the-cuff, tabloid style, dispatching them to cover Denver with zeal previously unseen.31 Such was particularly true during Howard’s early years at the

News in the mid-1970s.32 In time, however, Howard’s positive influence on the newsroom was diminished by a cocaine addiction that dramatically affected his ability to lead.33

Limitations resulting from Howard’s battle with addiction were offset by News gains on a different front: plant automation. The 1970s saw a shift at the paper to cold- press printing technologies that dramatically increased the efficiency of its production plant, reducing staffing requirements and, as a result, saving money. Such equipment upgrades came as the Post’s plant, which had been constructed at great expense thirty years before, grew antiquated, providing the News an edge. Improvements that so substantially affected the paper’s staffing needs did not come without opposition from the

News’s press operators. One Saturday, the cold-type plates for the day’s advertisements disappeared before the paper went to press, stolen by disgruntled employees.34 As a result, the paper was printed and distributed with large blank spaces designating who had paid for the space but without advertisements. Larry Strutton, who was then a machinist

248 at the News and would later become publisher of the paper, remembered the aftermath of the incident, a tense meeting led by News business manager Ed Estlow:

He came up and called a meeting with all the employees, and, of course, the union leaders [union employees having been suspected of stealing the advertisements] were there, and he said, “Let me tell you what you guys almost did. You were within hours of this paper not being in business anymore. Look around and see who else you’re putting out of business, and then start thinking about how you’re going to feed your family and make your house payments and all kinds of stuff.” And he said, “This automation is going to happen, and it’s going to happen with you or without you.”35

Strutton recalled the theft as the worst of the problems stemming from the rapid pace of automation. Steps were later taken to protect the plant from sabotage, including restricting access to the room in which press typesetters and computers were kept. But with each advancement in automation came additional resistance—as well as additional financial gains for the News against a stagnant Post.

The result of the News’s insurgence and Post’s torpidity was, at the close of the decade, clear to see. When the Hoyt/Foster era ended in 1970, the Post had led the News in daily circulation by about 53,000 copies.36 By 1980, the News had taken the daily circulation lead, although barely, besting the Post by about 4,600 copies.37 During the same period, the News had reduced the Sunday circulation gap by 57 percent, bringing it down to 59,000 copies. As one later Post editor remarked, the Post during the 1970s, lacking modern equipment, failed in its quest to be the voice of the Rocky Mountain empire even as the News did everything right.38 Equally damaging as its antiquated presses was its obsolescent position as an afternoon newspaper in a two-paper town. As the US economy shifted toward white-collar work and away from manufacturing, the pace of American life, and especially leisure time, moved into the morning.39 Newspaper

249 readers wanted news on their breakfast tables so they could use it at the office, and television and radio pressed newspapers to get all the news from the previous day and night on doorsteps as early as possible. As a result, the value of an afternoon newspaper like the Post decreased during the latter part of the twentieth century.

Post publisher Seawell was well aware of his paper’s problems. He knew his newspaper’s future was doubtful without updates to its plant and a shift into the morning field.40 Both were expensive propositions, and Seawell was not willing to make such investments. Instead, he opted to put the paper on the sale block.

Times Mirror Enters the Fray

Reflecting on his decision to sell the paper, Seawell had few regrets. While he said the paper was still making money in 1980 when it sold, its long-term profitability was growing increasingly doubtful, mostly as a result of its position as an afternoon newspaper.41 Numerous potential buyers were interested in the paper, allowing Seawell to be selective in choosing a new owner. Ultimately, he settled on the Times Mirror

Company, owner of the Los Angeles Times and several other newspapers across the

United States. Before finalizing a sale, Seawell insisted that Times Mirror commit to converting the Post to a morning newspaper and building for it a new printing plant.42

Times Mirror agreed—to have neglected to do either would have doomed the Post from the start—and offered $95 million. Seawell accepted, with the sale announced to the public on October 22, 1980.43

The sale was a momentous one, both for Denver and Times Mirror. For Denver, it marked the first time in the city’s one-hundred-twenty-two-year history that it was not home to a locally owned and independent daily newspaper. Although Scripps-Howard’s

250 business model allowed the News to operate almost entirely autonomously in terms of its editorial decision-making, the newspaper was ultimately beholden to the chain’s executives in Cincinnati, and decisions made locally reflected this. The same would now be true of the Post, which would be accountable to managers in Los Angeles. For publicly owned Times Mirror, the sale opened shareholders to considerable risk.

Denver’s prospects were bright—its oil, technology, and tourism economies were booming—and locals were hopeful the good times would continue.44 Times Mirror president Robert Erburu said at the time of the sale that he hoped his company might use its Dallas Times Herald as a model for success in Denver. But newspaper industry analysts questioned the decision to buy an afternoon newspaper with aging equipment in such a competitive market, the same challenge Times Mirror had accepted in Dallas.45

In the late 1970s, Times Mirror had launched a concerted effort at its Times

Herald to displace the Dallas Morning News as the top newspaper in that city. To do so, it had hired Lee Guittar to lead the transition of the Times Herald from afternoon to morning newspaper and relied on managing editor Will Jarrett to help freshen the paper’s editorial content. After successfully shifting to the morning field in Dallas, Times Mirror tapped Guittar and Jarrett to repeat their success in Denver, naming the former as Post publisher and Jarrett as editor.46 Soon Tim Kelly, deputy managing editor at the Times

Herald, would be added to the roster as Post managing editor.47

The sale and new managers were met with mixed reaction by Post employees, but the atmosphere was generally positive. The staff’s expectations of Times Mirror, with its deep pockets and strong reputation, were high.48 Good feelings between the staff and management continued after Guittar and Jarrett arrived and said no one was going to be

251 fired during the transition. Such cuts would have been out of step with a corporate culture generally unwilling to take such aggressive actions at newly acquired papers. But it was also against Times Mirror’s intentions in Denver. As Jarrett would later remember, the company had bought the paper confident it could shift it into the morning field, displace the News, and win the war.49 Doing so would require both the new blood Times Mirror would bring to the paper and the insight held by the old-timers.

Despite assurances of job security, however, it was made clear that the existing staff would have to prove their worth. The new management team moved immediately to strengthen the Post’s editorial product by warning the newsroom to immediately improve. In one case, the incoming graphics editor insisted that the paper’s photographers bring him their portfolios, not to choose people to fire but to compare their work to Times

Mirror’s expectations. Photographer Dave Buresh, who had twenty-seven years of esteemed experience, was told the quality of his work did not even qualify him for the job he held.50 Like others at the Post, Buresh chose to improve, studying from the talent imported to the paper by Times Mirror, and quickly became a stronger photographer.51

But not everyone was so willing to change. Inevitably, culture clashes developed among the staff as the editors brought new staff into the newsroom who were not well received.

Guittar and Jarrett had high expectations of their employees and began instating changes immediately, and they resented those who resisted.52 Rather than fire entrenched staffers outright, the two alienated particularly troublesome employees until they quit.53

Financially, the Guittar/Jarrett regime was highly successful. By Guittar’s estimation, the Post lost about $1 million in 1980, the year in which Times Mirror bought the paper.54 The following year, the first in which Times Mirror had full control of the

252 paper, the Post made $4 million, followed by about $500,000 in recession-laden, oil-bust

1982 and $6 million in 1983. Considering the challenges facing the newspaper, Guittar and Times Mirror were satisfied with those numbers and felt well positioned against the competing News.

Meanwhile, certain editorial departments at the Post began making great strides, finding spaces in which they could compete with the News. In the 1980s, the most successful of these was likely the Post sports section. The paper hired away sports columnist Woody Paige from the News and spent lavishly to entertain prospective additions to the newsroom and encourage other talented writers to join the paper.55 The improved content on the sports pages received notice both inside Denver and out. An early coup for Times Mirror came in 1982 when the Post received the award for best

Sunday sports section from the Associated Press Sports Editors, a contest that judged the

Post against every major newspaper in the country.56 Editor Jarrett and managing editor

Kelly were elated, considering the award proof the changes Times Mirror was bringing to

Denver were materially improving the paper. In 1984, the Post sent a delegation of roughly a dozen reporters to the Los Angeles Olympics, testing an experimental tabloid sports section that survived throughout Times Mirror’s ownership of the paper.

The Post’s sports gains incited responses from other newspapers, and Post reporters perceived jealousy toward the quality of their sports section even from papers within the Times Mirror family. After the Post won the APSE sports section award, its newsroom became convinced the Los Angeles Times was trying to undermine its successes through actions such as violating company policy against internal talent poaching by hiring away Post reporter Rick Reilly, who would eventually go on to write

253 for Sports Illustrated.57 Meanwhile, the News felt directly challenged by the Post’s improvements and newsroom raids and responded with an expansion of its own sports section. By 1986, Sunday football sections at the two papers had grown so large they had to be preprinted to avoid overwhelming press output capacities.58 Editorially, the sports section became the front line of competition between the papers. This made sense, given fan attention to the perennial success of the National Football League’s Denver Broncos after drafting quarterback John Elway in 1983, as well as the resurgence of University of

Colorado football during the 1982 through 1994 era of coach Bill McCartney, which culminated in the 1990 national championship.

But the competition spilled into the paper’s news sections as well, at times falling onto shaky ethical grounds. In the course of investigating a series on Denver police officers moonlighting when off duty, a Post reporter uncovered relationships between narcotics agents and Michael Howard, the former News editor. In time, the story expanded into an award-winning crusade against a system in which city and state officials helped influential Denverites avoid prosecution for drug offenses, with Howard playing the starring role as a powerful cocaine addict.59 But as multiple Post reporters later attested, the series, which ran in 1982, became a proxy through which the Post could bloody the reputation of the News. Many felt the series’ drug abuse angle was legitimate and that its focus on Howard merely went to excess, used as an opportunity to land a few cheap shots on the News. Others condemned the Howard articles outright for tearing down Howard and the News in what was, at its core, a story about drug addiction.60

While the Post was in the black and seeing improvements to its editorial product, there were signs that Times Mirror and its management team in Denver did not fully

254 understand the city or its newspapers. Publisher Guittar, fresh from his time at the Dallas

Times Herald, mistook Denver for Dallas. Years after his time at the Post, Guittar commented that rather than aspiring to be a culturally savvy, eastward-looking cosmopolitan city, as he had perceived Dallas to be, Denver in the 1980s was a thoroughly and happily independent, rugged, western city.61 This mistake led the management team to nudge the paper’s editorial content in a direction that ignored local news preferences in favor of the kinds of stories that might be found in other Times

Mirror papers, such as the Los Angeles Times.62 Upon arriving in Denver, editor Jarrett found Seawell’s Post to be too national and international in its content.63 But by misreading the city, the Times Mirror team found itself locked into a strikingly similar editorial strategy. Editors featured long wire stories focused on international topics of limited interest to Denver readers.64 To make room on the front page, local stories were bumped inside. As a consequence, the paper lacked the community character present in the News.

Indeed, Times Mirror managers seemed to have had little understanding of the strengths of the News when they took over control of the Post. Upon reflection, Guittar said there was no way his team could have predicted the News’s momentum.65 However, publicly accessible circulation figures clearly show that the News experienced daily circulation growth every year during the decade before Times Mirror purchased the Post.

It had enjoyed an average annual rate of growth in its daily circulation of 3 percent compared with less than 1 percent at the Post, bringing the paper into daily circulation parity by the time Times Mirror finalized its purchase. Sunday improvements were equally impressive.

255 Compounding the problems caused by the Post management team’s misreading of

Denver and the competition between their paper and the News was the mishandling of the long-awaited transition from afternoon to morning. The shift began in summer 1982 with the introduction of a morning edition of the Post offered in addition to the traditional afternoon edition, and the change was completed the following year when the afternoon paper was discontinued.66 In the years that followed, the shift to morning and its consequences would lead tens of thousands of subscribers to abandon the paper.

The core problem was another key misperception by Guittar and Jarrett. Analyses of the Post’s circulation base suggested readers of the afternoon paper were the sorts of people who would likely prefer a morning paper. Post readers tended to hold white-collar jobs and have time to read the newspaper in the morning.67 As such, Guittar and Jarrett believed the transition would likely be well received and that they would not have to do much to convert their readership to the morning.68 Feeling pressure to make the transition as soon as possible, they decided to begin the transition with little preparation in the paper’s plant or in coordinating with its various departments.69 The results were disastrous.

The change went fine in the newsroom, which already prioritized the ebb and flow of the day’s news above the paper’s print time.70 But in the Post’s plant and on its delivery docks, resistance to the shift and a lack of machinery delayed the arrival of the paper on subscribers’ doorsteps. The city editor at the time, Neil Westergaard, recalled:

You had all the people, the circulation and the pressmen, everybody else, who, prior to that time, they were working pretty much a day shift. They’d come in early morning and they’d be done by the later afternoon, after the final edition rolled off. Well, the whole thing was turned upside down when they were working from 9 o’clock at night until 6 in the morning. It was a very, very

256 difficult transition. In fact, there were concerted efforts by some of those production crews to make this go as badly as they possibly could in the hopes that management would change their mind and go back to afternoon distribution. They never did that. But we had serious delivery problems that were really not solved until probably about five years later.71

The instatement of a new circulation and subscription model further alienated readers.72

Previously, the Post had operated on the “little merchant” delivery model, in which legions of child newspaper carriers were responsible for picking up newspapers from delivery points throughout the city, delivering them to houses in their neighborhoods, and managing their own subscription lists and payments. Along with the shift to morning came a shift to a centralized subscription system and a preference for adult carriers.73 The change left many Denver children out of jobs, disrupted the connection Post child carriers had with their subscribers, and alienated parents and readers alike. But the adults and remaining child deliverers, now supposed to be working in the early hours of the morning, failed to deliver the paper on time, leading to widespread delivery delays. In the meantime, around 25,000 innocuous but false newspaper subscriptions—a consequence of the so-called little merchants handling subscriptions—were dropped from the Post’s circulation. Cancellations from newspaperless subscribers, angry parents, and better record keeping combined to put a massive strain on the paper’s circulation figures.

In 1983, Times Mirror recalled both Guittar and Jarrett from Denver, returning them to the Dallas Times Herald.74 The two left having addressed substantial problems that, if not attended, would likely have shortened the Post’s lifespan. The Denver Post, which, except for a brief time during the height of its competition with the News in the

1920s, had always been an afternoon paper, was now available in the morning. The shift to the morning had not been particularly expensive, and the Post would finish 1983

257 having made an estimated $6 million in profit.75 The paper’s newsroom had been infused with the energy of new reporters attracted by Times Mirror’s resources, and parts of the

Post’s editorial product were benefitting as a result.

But the Post’s gains made during the few years under Guittar and Jarrett were offset by serious problems the new management team had themselves introduced. They had misjudged the character of the city and, despite sensing the need for more local content in the paper, perpetuated the Post’s fixation on national and international news.

Although they had addressed the urgent need to move the paper into the morning field, they had handled the transition in a way that angered and inconvenienced carriers, leading to delivery disruptions and, consequently, cancellations. As a result, after reaching a record-high daily circulation of 276,000 in 1981, the Post shed 7 percent of its daily circulation in 1982 and 5 percent more in 1983, falling by 33,000 copies.76 Yes, the

Post had shifted to the morning. But if carriers would not deliver the paper on time, the benefits of the change would remain only theoretical.

“They Let Us Up”77

Tasked with cleaning up the damage wrought by Times Mirror’s first management team in Denver were Richard Schlosberg and David Hall. Schlosberg, who assumed the duties of publisher in July 1983, came to the Post after having been president of newspaper operations for San Antonio-based Harte-Hanks Communications, which then owned a chain of twenty-eight daily newspapers.78 Joining Schlosberg the following year was Hall, who previously had been assistant managing editor of the

Chicago Daily News and Chicago Sun-Times and managing editor of the St. Paul

(Minnesota) Pioneer Press and St. Paul Dispatch.79 Managing editor Tim Kelly stepped

258 in to lead the Post as acting editor during the gap between Jarrett’s departure and Hall’s arrival.80

If Guittar and Jarrett were Times Mirror’s transition team, responsible for preparing the Post for the future, Schlosberg and Hall were to stabilize the paper and put it on the road to growth, healing the paper and its staff after the disruptive shift to morning.81 Given the circulation trend of the paper, doing so would be no simple task, its daily product off by 23,000 copies since Times Mirror’s purchase of the paper.82 Such was far from an all-out circulation spiral, which could spell doom for the paper, but demanded immediate attention.

Schlosberg and Hall would find ways to stem the Post’s losses, but the greatest force preventing a circulation spiral was not anything done by its managers but rather their contemporaries at the News. Key individuals at both papers identified two crucial decisions made by News managers that, if handled differently, could have killed the

Denver Post before the end of the 1980s.83 The first was an attempt to convert that paper’s plant to flexographic presses. Flexographic, or flexo, printing boasted smudge- proof, water-based ink, bright colors, simple presses, and low waste, and was boosted by some at Scripps-Howard.84 The chain would eventually test flexo at a third of its print sites, and its experiment at the News made the newspaper the first major metropolitan daily to try it.85 The project encountered complications, and the News’s expensive flexo presses would be replaced by offset presses only a few years later.86 Michael Howard estimated that the costly failure interrupted what had previously been a steady march by the News toward definitively ending the Post. “If the News hadn’t had problems with its last press line, this might have all been over in 1984 or 1985,” Howard said.87

259 Perhaps distracted by problems such as its flailing flexo experiment, the News failed to convert on what was ultimately its greatest moment of strength against the Post in the history of the competition between the two newspapers. As the Post’s circulation tumbled, the News’s surged upward, eclipsing its competitor in both Sunday and daily circulation in 1983 for the first time. In that year, the News commanded a 72,000 lead in daily circulation, putting it 13 percent ahead of the Post, and squeaked out a 12,000 copy lead on Sundays.88 The Post was entering a downward trend after years of stagnation, while the News was riding on decades of nearly constant growth. Post editor Hall reckoned that if the News had chosen at any point during its time commanding both the daily and Sunday circulation lead to raise its rates, it would have killed the Post.89 Doing so would have pressed advertisers to stop spreading their ad purchases across the two newspapers and instead buy only in the stronger paper—at that time, the News. The effects of any hike would have been intensified in the presence of any future economic downturn for Denver. The Post circulation slide would have turned into a circulation spiral, pushing away additional advertisers, and leading to the newspaper’s rapid demise.

But the News made no such move, content with its growth rate and distracted by matters such as its flexo experiment.

Meanwhile, Schlosberg and Hall stumbled upon a monumental opportunity to close the door against a death-blow rate hike by the News. In the mid 1980s, they entered into negotiations with United Cable, which provided cable television service to Denver- area residents. Rather than produce its own TV listings guide for its customers, United

Cable was interested in contracting with the Post to publish and distribute one as a section in the paper’s Sunday edition. In return, United’s customers would be added as

260 subscribers to the Sunday Post, padding the paper’s Sunday circulation with tens of thousands of new readers highly desirable to advertisers.

It was a huge opportunity for a newspaper in desperate need of a break. But signing on would come at great cost to the Post. The newspaper would have to buy more newsprint, hire more carriers, and even change the Sunday edition’s price to conform to circulation rules set by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, the official record-keepers to whom advertisers turned for honest numbers.90 Guittar later remarked that plans for a deal with United had begun during his tenure as publisher but that he had passed on them because of the cost, convinced there must be a better way to grow circulation.91 But the

Post was trailing only in daily circulation during Guittar’s time as publisher. Schlosberg was down in both daily and Sunday circulation, leaving the paper vulnerable to a rate attack by the News. Thus, on March 31, 1985, the Post debuted TV/Cable Week, the

Sunday insert that followed from the paper’s deal with United.92

The deal was tremendously expensive for the Post. Editor Hall and others estimated the cost $5 million—annually.93 Such put an enormous strain on the paper’s finances, and the Post increasingly became a money drain for Times Mirror.94 But it also won back for the Post a lead on Sunday, almost overnight. Adding United’s subscribers helped the newspaper’s Sunday circulation jump 59,000, or 17 percent, giving it a

42,000-copy lead over the News.95 That allowed the Post to show advertisers that it remained a leading newspaper in the city on the most important newspaper day of the week, which, as a consequence of advertisers’ desire to hit the broadest audience possible, the feature-filled Sunday issue had become. The chance for the News to aggressively raise rates evaporated. Michael Howard called the United Cable contract a

261 watershed moment for the Post.96 Hall identified it as a critical, strategic move by the newspaper to focus on holding Sunday that saved the Post from extinction.97

Retaking the Sunday lead saved the Post from the threat of immediate closure, but

Colorado’s economy stopped the newspaper from converting its circulation boost into growth. Oil shale trapped on Colorado’s Western Slope as well as free oil beneath the region’s surface had attracted energy companies to Denver and the state during and after the 1970s oil crisis.98 At the same time, Colorado had welcomed companies from a variety of growing industries, including technology and tourism.99 In each case, newcomers had created growth not only through hiring, construction, and investment directly related to their own businesses, but also by prompting spin-off jobs to provide the various goods and services needed by the newcomers’ employees. The result was an era of economic prosperity in the 1970s that many predicted would last long into the future.

The first warning signs that Denver and Colorado might be in for an economically disastrous 1980s came with falling oil prices in 1981 and 1982, prompting Exxon, which had invested nearly $1 billion in a massive oil shale extraction venture on the Western

Slope, to abruptly terminate that project. The state weathered this initial downturn without serious economic distress, but the oil bust damaged Colorado’s ability to withstand subsequent hits later in the decade.100 A second downturn struck the state’s technology, tourist, and defense sectors—three key industries in a weakly diversified economy—particularly hard. These were followed late in the decade by the failures of crucial banking institutions including Silverado Savings and Loan, Key Savings, and

Columbia Savings in the wake of a nationwide savings and loan crisis. Just as companies

262 had spurred spin-off jobs when times were good, so too did their bankruptcies result in ripples throughout the state’s economy. Resurgent oil prices late in the decade helped the state stave off a depression, but the confluence of economic stresses on Colorado’s key industries resulted in waves of closures and bankruptcies and years of poor business for surviving firms.101

Colorado’s financial woes directly impacted the bottom lines of Denver’s daily newspapers, especially when major advertisers folded. Such was the case when The

Denver Dry Goods Co., a twelve-location department store that had been in the city since the nineteenth century, was sold in 1986 to an out-of-state competitor, resulting in the closure of most of its outlets.102 “The Denver,” as it was known, had previously comprised a large proportion of the newspapers’ advertising, and its closure presented a financial emergency to the struggling Post. “The closing of The Denver—which is symbolically important; it’s our number-one advertiser—just reflects the kind of thing going on in Denver right now,” Post publisher Schlosberg told a reporter at the Denver

Business Journal. “We’re not going to, what I call ‘tweak,’ the expenses; we’re going to have massive surgery on the expenses.”103

By 1987, the Post was simultaneously feeling the pressure of various financial drains as well as editorial pressure from the News. It was bankrolling its expensive

United Cable television guide at a cost of millions each year. It was just completing the first stages of the press modernization project it had promised as a condition of its purchase seven years earlier, spending $56 million on presses and facilities that were becoming operational.104 Combined with the troubled local economy and absent

263 significant gains in circulation or market share, the Post was increasingly looking like a liability to Times Mirror as the paper’s bottom line remained in the red.105

The latter point was particularly important to a publicly owned company such as

Times Mirror. When the Post had been owned by F.G. or Helen Bonfils and their contemporaries, the profitability of the paper was not a necessary condition of ownership.

Just as owners could choose during times of high profitability to forsake editorial quality and infrastructure improvements to boost profits higher, so too could they choose to tap profits or reserves to update presses, finance large, qualified newsrooms, or otherwise spend money to strengthen the newspaper. If they desired, they could operate a newspaper at a loss indefinitely as a pet project, so long as they supplied it with enough of their own money to keep the lights on. Public companies, on the other hand, have a fiduciary responsibility to operate in a way that is responsible to their stakeholders, both to financially benefit those holding stock, who expect a healthy return on their investment, as well as the companies themselves, which benefit from higher stock prices and levels of investment. For publicly held newspaper chains in the 1980s, sound operation increasingly meant that individual properties should consistently make profits—or be cut.106 In the wake of the success of companies such as Gannett, which went public in 1967 and subsequently earned significant profits for its shareholders, public newspapers were driven in the 1980s to focus on short-term profits to appease investors.107

In this context, the multi-year failure of the Post to perform made its continued ownership difficult for Times Mirror to defend. In June 1986, the company had sold its

Dallas Times Herald—the newspaper in a competitive, oil-rich market that Guittar and

264 Jarrett had turned into a morning paper before arriving in Denver to do the same with the

Post—to William Dean Singleton, head of the privately held MediaNews Group newspaper chain.108 Sold after only a few months of unprofitability, the Times Herald was unloaded as part of what Times Mirror chairman Robert Erburu called a strategy “to strengthen our return on the assets,” reflecting doubt on the long-term profitability of a newspaper that trailed its competitor in circulation.109

So desperate were local managers to make the Post profitable that a serious study was made of converting the newspaper into a tabloid in order to directly confront the

News in terms of what many felt was its greatest advantage—the tabloid’s easy-to-read size and format. Market research conducted by the Post suggested that while changing to a tabloid would do little to boost the Post’s circulation, it could decrease the circulation of the News by as much as 30,000 readers a day. The move had the endorsement of influential members of the Post staff and, as time would tell, Michael Howard, who later said an earlier shift to the morning field and adoption of the tabloid format were the only things that could save the Post.110 Others at the Post, however, thought it would have been suicidal for a weaker newspaper to try to steal the identity of a stronger one.111 With a price tag of $1 million and with ad revenues smaller per-page in tabloids compared to broadsheets, the Post opted against the change.112

But to make the Post profitable, something had to give. In May 1987, the newspaper announced it would offer buyouts to as many as two hundred employees, representing roughly 12 percent of the newspaper’s staff, and that the company might be forced to lay off workers if it could not save enough money through voluntary staff reductions.113 At the same time, the paper had shed sixty-two employees through attrition

265 over the preceding year.114 The exact financial standing of the Post at the time of the announcement is unclear, with Denver Business Journal reporters estimating the paper had lost $3.7 million in the first quarter of 1987 alone.115 At the same time, publisher

Schlosberg pointed to Times Mirror’s $56 million investment in the Post’s new printing plant as proof that the company was committed to staying in Denver.

Post editor Hall later insisted the buyouts were an earnest effort by the paper’s managers to make it financially viable.116 But he acknowledged another infusion of cash from Times Mirror would have been necessary to give the Post the strength to challenge the News in the economically fragile Denver newspaper market. Given the amount of money already dumped into the Post without yielding results, such was unthinkable.

Looking for a way out—any way out—Times Mirror officials approached Scripps-

Howard to see if there was any interest of drawing the two newspapers into a joint operating agreement.117 But Scripps-Howard—riding high on its recent success in Denver and confident that, for the first time in its sixty years owning the News, victory was within reach—declined. The Post was sliding toward death. Unless someone looking for an uphill battle in a competitive, economically troubled market stepped in to buy and somehow save the paper soon, the Rocky Mountain News would win the war.

Ultimately, while the staff reductions failed to make the Post palatable to Times

Mirror’s stakeholders, they did help it attract potential buyers. In September, only four months after announcing the job cuts, Times Mirror cut its losses and exited the market.

But not before finding a buyer. An ascendant newspaper tycoon with a reputation for buying trailing newspapers in competitive markets, stripping their budgets to the bone without regard for editorial quality, and letting them sink or swim, happened to be on a

266 buying spree.118 And, as it happened, he had always wanted to own a Denver newspaper.119 In the face of an ascendant News, Dean Singleton was the last chance to save the Denver Post.

Scripps-Howard ‘26 vs. Times Mirror ‘80

Before concluding the chapter and moving into the next era of competition between the papers, it is worthwhile to contrast Times Mirror’s 1980 appearance in

Denver with Scripps-Howard’s 1926 purchase of the News. On the surface, Times

Mirror’s seven-year foray into the Denver newspaper field seems to mirror the blusterous moves of Scripps-Howard fifty-four years earlier. Both companies appeared assured they could make a major impact on the market. Both spent massive sums of money attempting to buy their way to dominance. Both periods of competition ended with the onset of difficult economic circumstances. And both companies, at first glance, seemed to have failed in their aspirations. Ultimately, a clean comparison between the two periods of competition is impossible, as they occurred within different eras of American journalism history and are considered in this research using different types of primary documents.

However, the data available are sufficient to show that while both companies likely misinterpreted their chances for success in Denver, their strategies, failings, and the outcomes of their competitive struggles were vastly different.

In the first place, there is little question that Times Mirror purchased the Post intending to use its financial, managerial, and editorial resources to reverse the paper’s circulation slide, retake the circulation lead, and win the battle against the News. Editor

Will Jarrett said as much, noting that his team made decisions on the assumption that the

Post would ultimately end up on top.120 On the contrary, as noted in chapter 3, Scripps-

267 Howard’s ambitions likely stopped short of market dominance, with Roy Howard intending merely to force F.G. Bonfils to accept a collusive agreement that assured the

News profitability. Thus, the newspapers were purchased with significantly different aspirations on the parts of their chain owners.

Second, Scripps-Howard was eager to meet the Post on its own turf. Rather than collapsing its weaker evening newspaper into the morning News, it maintained two newspapers so as to compete directly against its opponent’s strongest product. In the

1980s, the equivalent would have been for the Post not only to move into the morning field, as it did, but also to have converted to a tabloid, taking away the News’s defining feature. Doing so would have come at great expense to Times Mirror, which would have had to suffer decreased ad revenue resulting from the smaller tabloid page as well as the cost of refitting its plant to allow mass tabloid production. It was unwilling to do so.

Finally, and most importantly, Scripps-Howard was, in the 1920s, a privately held company, free to take money from its dozens of newspapers across the United States and dump it into the fight in Denver. It could wage total war, committing resources to the

News at massive cost in the hopes of forcing concessions or submission from the Post, even if doing so damaged the company as a whole. At the 1920s Post, F.G. Bonfils had no way of knowing how long or to what excesses Scripps-Howard would continue the fight, which may have contributed to his entering into a collusive agreement and assuring the News a place in the market. Times Mirror enjoyed no such luxury. True, it could direct its vast resources at the Post after its purchase. But it could only maintain ownership so long as it appeared reasonable to expect eventual success—and so long as the patience of Times Mirror shareholders lasted. After six years in Denver, there was no

268 indication that Times Mirror’s tactics would be successful. Consequently, Times Mirror chairman Erburu said the company could no longer justify investment in the Post to its shareholders, leading it to sell.121

In summary, despite apparent similarities between the two eras, they were quite distinct. Privately held Scripps-Howard had a relatively modest goal and the means to pursue it indefinitely. Times Mirror wanted control of the Denver market but was both unwilling and unable to expend the resources necessary to achieve what, in the face of the

News’s new-found strength, was a lofty goal. As a result, the Scripps-Howard of the

1920s managed to find for itself a long-term position in Denver, whereas Times Mirror was forced to retreat after only six fraught years of competition.

1 Stephen J. Leonard and Thomas J. Noel, Denver: Mining Camp to Metropolis

(Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1990), 407–27.

2 Ibid., 437.

3 Ibid., 464.

4 “Table 6. Colorado – Race and Hispanic Origin for Selected Large Cities and

Other Places: Earliest Census to 1990,” Census.gov, PDF accessed November 13, 2017, https://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0076/COtab.pdf.

5 B. Drummond Ayres Jr., “City, Fighting Back, Puts Emphasis Downtown,” New

York Times, March 13, 1995.

6 Thomas J. Knudson, “In Denver, Brown Skies Stir Health, Job Fears,” New York

Times, April 12, 1987; Leonard and Noel, Denver, 342.

7 Leonard and Noel, Denver, 320.

269

8 Alan Prendergast, “The Great Denver Newspaper War Revisited,” Denver

Magazine, July 1987, 58–64.

9 Ibid., 60.

10 Ibid., 64.

11 “Appeal Notice Filed in Post Stock Offer,” Denver Post, October 22, 1970;

“Stay Ruled in Auction of Post Stock,” Denver Post, November 6, 1970.

12 “Helen G. Bonfils Dead at 82; Chairman of The Denver Post,” New York

Times, June 7, 1972.

13 Donald R. Seawell to Allen Kandler, June 27, 1963, box 1, Bill Hosokawa

Collection, MSS 1147, History Colorado, hereafter referred to as “Hosokawa Papers–

HC.”

14 Fred Gillies, “Appeals Court Hears Debate,” Denver Post, January 25, 1972.

15 Fred Gillies, “Appeals Court Orders Post Stock Suit Dismissed,” Denver Post,

December 31, 1972.

16 “Newhouse Sells Denver Post Stock,” Denver Post, August 28, 1973.

17 N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual and Directory (Philadelphia:

N.W. Ayer & Son, 1947), 126–27; N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual and

Directory (1937), 118.

18 Ayer Directory of Publications (Philadelphia: Ayer Press, 1973), 191–92.

19 Donald R. Seawell, interview with Bill Hosokawa, August 5, 1974, Hosokawa

Papers–HC, 1.

20 Ibid., 2.

270

21 Ibid., 4–5

22 Ibid., 6b.

23 John Moore and William Porter, “Donald Seawell, Denver Cultural and Civic

Visionary, Dies at 103,” Denver Post, September 30, 2015, accessed November 14, 2017, http://www.denverpost.com/2015/09/30/donald-seawell-denver-cultural-and-civic- visionary-dies-at-103/.

24 Vincent M. Dwyer, interview with David McComb, October 15, 1974, MSS

3002, History Colorado, 4–14.

25 “Who began working for the Rocky . . .” Orlando Sentinel, October 7, 1987, accessed November 19, 2017, http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1987-10-

07/news/0150200098_1_access-to-court-dwyer-rocky.

26 Dwyer, interview, 18–19.

27 Michael Howard, interview fragment, folder 11, box 1, Sue O’Brien Papers:

“The Denver Newspaper War, 1980–1998,” MSS 2628, History Colorado, hereafter referred to as “O’Brien Papers,” 14.

28 Tim Kelly, interview fragment, folder 15, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 20.

29 Ibid.

30 Chuck Green, “A Belated Tribute to Mike Howard,” Denver Post, July 12,

1992.

31 Sheue, interview fragment, folder 11, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 4.

32 Larry Strutton, interview with Ken Ward, October 21, 2017, 7. Transcript available from researcher upon request.

271

33 Jack Taylor, “Police Captain Will Testify on Howard,” Denver Post, June 6,

1982.

34 Strutton, interview, 4.

35 Ibid., 5.

36 Ayer Directory Publications (1971), 152–53.

37 Ayer Directory of Publications (Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania: Ayer Press,

1981), 203.

38 David Hall, interview fragment, folder 15, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 8.

39 Conrad C. Fink, Strategic Newspaper Management (Boston: Allyn and Bacon,

1996), 5.

40 Interview of Don Seawell by Sue O’Brien, folder 16, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 1.

41 Ibid., 1.

42 Ibid.

43 Deirdre Carmody, “Sale of Denver Post for $95 Million Set,” New York Times,

October 23, 1980.

44 Ibid.

45 Ibid.

46 Jonathan Friendly, “2 Papers in Dallas in a ‘Free-for-All,’” New York Times,

July 12, 1981.

47 “Denver Post Names New Managing Editor,” United Press International,

August 7, 1981, folder 19, box 4, O’Brien Papers.

48 Carol Green, interview fragment, folder 11, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 8.

272

49 Will Jarrett, interview fragment, folder 11, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 6.

50 Dave Buresh, interview fragment, folder 11, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 7.

51 Rich Clarkson, interview fragment, folder 11, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 7.

52 Carl Miller, interview fragment, folder 11, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 6.

53 Dick Kreck, interview fragment, folder 11, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 8.

54 Lee Guittar, interview fragment, folder 11, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 17.

55 Tom Patterson, interview fragment, folder 2, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 7.

56 Ibid; for year, Lisa Benenson, “Rocky Mountain Low,” NewsInc, May 1990,

31.

57 Ibid., 7.

58 Tom Patterson, interview fragment, folder 2, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 8.

59 Jack Taylor, “U.S. Attorney Probing Howard-Narcotic Ties, Denver Post, April

23, 1982; for examples of later stories, see Jack Taylor, “Police Captain Will Testify on

Howard,” Denver Post, June 6, 1982; Jack Taylor, “Policeman’s Relationships With Two

Addicts Traced,” Denver Post, newspaper clipping, folder “Robert L. Crider, Denver,” box 2, Steven G. Garnass Collection, MSS 2090, History Colorado. Central to the Post’s reporting was the release of the transcripts of Howard’s conversations with Post reporters, which were printed in the June 29, 1982, edition of the Post.

60 Interview fragments, folder 11, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 1–5.

61 Lee Guittar, interview fragment, folder 11, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 15.

62 Ibid.; Rich Clarkson, interview fragment, folder 11, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 15;

Carol Green, interview fragment, folder 11, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 15.

273

63 Will Jarrett, interview fragment, folder 11, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 5.

64 Joe Bullard, interview fragment, folder 11, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 13.

65 Lee Guittar, interview fragment, folder 11, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 17.

66 Charles Kaiser, Tessa Namuth, and Jeff B. Copeland, “Losing the Two-Front

War,” Newsweek, December 26, 1983; Neil Westergaard, interview with Ken Ward,

October 20, 2017, 2. Transcript available from researcher upon request.

67 Lee Guittar, interview fragment, folder 11, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 10.

68 Ibid.; Will Jarrett, interview fragment, folder 11, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 10.

69 Donald Hunt, interview fragment, folder 11, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 11; Tim

Kelly, interview fragment, folder 11, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 10; Donald Seawell, interview fragment, folder 11, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 10.

70 Westergaard, interview, 3.

71 Ibid., 2–3.

72 Donald Hunt, interview fragment, folder 11, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 11.

73 Ibid.

74 “New Publisher Named at The Post,” newspaper clipping, June 9, 1983, folder

19, box 4, O’Brien Papers; “Post Executive Gets Dallas Job,” Denver Post, December 10,

1983.

75 Lee Guittar, interview fragment, folder 11, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 17.

76 Ayer Directory of Publications (1982), 205; Ayer Directory of Publications

(1983), 207; IMS ’84 Ayer Directory of Publications (Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania: IMS

Press, 1984), 213.

274

77 Kirk MacDonald, quote in interview fragment, folder 15, box 1, O’Brien

Papers, 10.

78 “New Publisher Named at the Post,” newspaper clipping, June 9, 1983, folder

19, box 4, O’Brien Papers.

79 “Veteran Editor David Hall Named DePauw’s First Pulliam Professor,”

DePauw University, July 3, 2001, accessed November 24, 2017, https://www.depauw.edu/news-media/latest-news/details/11559.

80 “Post Executive Gets Dallas Job,” Denver Post, December 10, 1983.

81 Carl Miller, interview fragment, folder 15, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 4.

82 Ayer Directory of Publications (1981), 203; IMS ’84 Ayer Directory of

Publications (1984), 213.

83 Michael Howard, quote in interview fragment, page 3 of interview notes beginning with interview of Donald Seawell, folder 16, box 1, O’Brien Papers; David

Hall, interview fragment, folder 15, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 10.

84 Jim Rosenberg, “Flexography in Evansville,” Editor & Publisher 127, no. 3

(January 15, 1994): 36.

85 Jim Rosenberg, “End Nears for Large Letterpress,” Editor & Publisher 134, no.

25 (June 18, 2001): 26.

86 Rosenberg, “Flexography in Evansville.”

87 Michael Howard, quote in interview fragment, page 3 of interview notes beginning with interview of Donald Seawell, folder 16, box 1, O’Brien Papers.

88 IMS ’84 Ayer Directory of Publications (1984), 213.

275

89 David Hall, interview fragment, folder 15, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 10.

90 Vern Mallinen, interview fragment, folder 15, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 11.

91 Lee Guittar, interview fragment, folder 15, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 11.

92 David Hall, “To Our Readers,” Denver Post, March 31, 1985.

93 David Hall, interview fragment, folder 15, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 10; Vern

Mallinen, interview fragment, folder 15, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 11.

94 Tim Kelly, interview fragment, folder 15, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 19.

95 IMS ’85 Ayer Directory of Publications (1985), 215–16; IMS ’86 Ayer

Directory of Publications (1986), 217–18.

96 Michael Howard, interview fragment, folder 15, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 11.

97 David Hall, interview fragment, folder 15, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 10.

98 Leonard and Noel, Denver, 407–27.

99 Carl Abbott, Stephen J. Leonard, and Thomas J. Noel, Colorado: A History of the Centennial State, fifth edition (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2013), 397–

420.

100 Leonard and Noel, Denver, 423–24.

101 Ibid., 425.

102 “Historical Note,” finding aid, Denver Dry Goods Company, MSS 02636,

History Colorado.

103 John Head, “Post Calls Proposed Staff Cuts ‘Voluntary,’” Denver Business

Journal, May 11, 1987.

276

104 “Circulation: Post Up, News Down,” memo, March 1986, folder 21, box 2,

O’Brien Papers; Prendergast, “The Great Denver Newspaper War Revisited,” 64.

105 Tim Kelly, interview fragment, folder 15, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 19.

106 Philip Meyer, The Vanishing Newspaper: Saving Journalism in the

Information Age (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2004), 174–200.

107 Ibid., 181.

108 Geraldine Fabrikant, “Newspaper to Be Sold in Dallas,” New York Times, June

27, 1986.

109 Ibid.

110 Joe Bullard, interview fragment, folder 15, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 14; Tony

Campbell, interview fragment, folder 15, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 14; Tim Kelly, interview fragment, folder 11, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 12; Michael Howard, interview fragment, folder 15, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 16.

111 Gil Spencer, interview fragment, folder 15, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 14;

Calhoun, interview fragment, folder 15, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 14.

112 Joe Bullard, interview fragment, folder 15, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 14.

113 United Press International wire story, May 20, 1987, folder 6, box 1, O’Brien

Papers; John Head, “Post Calls Proposed Staff Cuts ‘Voluntary.’”

114 Ibid.

115 Ibid. Post editor Hall disputed the figure, claiming “some revenue growth,” but did not provide a figure of his own.

116 David Hall, interview fragment, folder 15, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 8.

277

117 Key individuals interviewed during the course of this research who were close to those involved in the joint operating agreement offer stated that the offer was made by

Times Mirror and refused by Scripps Howard. Those individuals are Strutton, who worked closely with then-Times Mirror chairman Robert Erburu and then-chairman of

E.W. Scripps Larry Leser, and John Temple, later publisher of the News. Larry Strutton, interview with Ken Ward, December 19, 2017; John Temple, interview with Ken Ward,

October 22, 2017, 27. See also “Owners of the Denver Post Once Asked Scripps for

JOA,” Denver Business Journal, May 19, 2000.

118 Ellen J. Bartlett, “America’s Newest Media Mogul,” Boston Globe, 1987, newspaper clipping, folder 19, box 4, O’Brien Papers.

119 William Dean Singleton, interview with Ken Ward, October 27, 2017, 2.

Transcript available from researcher upon request.

120 Will Jarrett, interview fragment, folder 11, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 6.

121 “Newspaper Marketplace Shrinking,” newspaper clipping, September 20,

1987, folder 19, box 4, O’Brien Papers.

278 Chapter 6. War: 1987–1999

Dean Singleton had long been enamored with the Denver Post. He first read it as a boy during summer family vacations from his native Texas to Grand Lake, Colorado.

There, in a sleepy tourist town sixty miles northwest of Denver, Singleton developed what he called a love affair with both the state of Colorado and the Hoyt-era Post.1

It took Singleton two decades to bring himself into a position in which he could not merely work at the newspaper but own it outright. The path was not a smooth one, and it cost his reputation greatly. He started in newspapering at fourteen, beginning in the mailroom of a small, twice-weekly paper and then jumping among jobs at various Texas newspapers, including a stint as a news editor at the Dallas Morning News.2 Singleton broke into newspaper ownership when he was twenty-one, building a small chain of weekly Texas papers with a partner in the 1970s. After being booted as publisher of the

Fort Worth Press during an abortive effort to restart that paper after it folded in 1975, he sold his chain and headed east to acquire newspapers for Joseph L. Allbritton, another

Texas news magnate. It was in this capacity that Singleton first earned a shadowy reputation, a direct result of Allbritton’s strategy of buying failing newspapers and making severe budgetary cuts by whatever means necessary—including widespread layoffs and quickly finding permanent replacements for union workers who reacted to cuts with strikes—to make the papers profitable.3

In 1983, Singleton quit working for Allbritton, partnering with Richard Scudder to begin buying newspapers under companies such as MediaNews Group with capital of their own and investments from larger companies including Media General. He first broke into the high echelons of media ownership in 1986 with his purchase of the Dallas

279 Times Herald, the struggling newspaper that the Times Mirror Company was eager to unload. By that time, Singleton had amassed a collection of thirty-five newspapers, all purchased in the three previous years.

The Times Herald buy gave Singleton national attention, a second-place major metropolitan daily, and his first potential cash cow—if he could somehow turn the paper around. It also gave him a relationship with Times Mirror chairman Robert Erburu.

Already in his earliest conversations with Erburu related to the Times Herald deal,

Singleton said he would be happy to buy the Denver Post if Times Mirror was ever interested in selling it.4 Singleton remembered Erburu was confident Times Mirror was on track to win the war against the Rocky Mountain News and, as such, denied the company would ever be interested in selling the paper. But he said he would keep

Singleton’s offer in mind and let him know if the company’s position on Denver ever changed.5

It was only a little over a year after Erburu’s rebuff that he called Singleton and invited him to visit as soon as possible.6 The two met soon thereafter for dinner in

Erburu’s Los Angeles office. After they had gotten through their salads, Erburu passed

Singleton a book. “I promised you I would call you if we ever sold the Denver Post,”

Singleton remembered him saying, “and I never thought that would happen. But we have decided to sell the Denver Post, and you’re the first call I’m making.”7 He asked

Singleton to go back to his hotel room and look over the book, which was filled with information about the state of the struggling Post. The following day, Erburu revealed to

Singleton that his management team in Denver had recommended that the Post convert to a tabloid to attack the News’s core strength. Erburu thought surrendering the Post’s own

280 advantage, its broadsheet format, was a terrible idea and decided he would either replace his managers in Denver or unload the paper outright. Within weeks of their meeting,

Singleton’s dream had come true. On September 14, 1987, the sale of the Denver Post from Times Mirror to Singleton’s MediaNews was publicly announced.8

The following chapter details the period of competition between the Post and

News beginning with the sale of the former to Dean Singleton and proceeds through years of vigorous competition in the late 1980s and 1990s that defined the eventual state of competition in the 2000s and, in many ways, sealed the News’s eventual fate. It begins by investigating the period immediately following Singleton’s purchase of the Post, including the state of the paper he bought and the moves he and his managers made to stem the paper’s losses and turn it toward growth. Despite a contentious start that was sometimes marked by outright hostility from Post employees, Singleton’s cost-cutting business approach, coupled with a focus on local news and improved newspaper delivery, quickly returned the paper to formidable competition with the News. By 1993 the Post was seizing the market’s momentum, forcing the News and Scripps to redirect talent and resources toward protecting their recent gains in Denver.9 Some of these moves were of immediate benefit to the News, such as bringing in a talented journalist from one of the chain’s most innovative newspapers who would help guide the News into the twenty-first century. But other changes suggested the newspaper’s newfound success was waning and that Scripps, which became defensive of its advertising and circulation holdings in

Denver to the detriment of the rest of the state, was losing ground. In its later pages, the chapter turns to detailing the greatest Denver newspaper battle since Scripps entered the city in 1926. In this last campaign, both newspapers suicidally pursued unsustainably

281 high circulations, selling copies for a penny a piece and racing down a path that could end only in the reorientation of the entire Denver newspaper market. The chapter concludes with the first gesture toward peace—the offering of a joint operating agreement, which would formally end the century-long war between the Denver Post and

Rocky Mountain News.

Breaking the Fever

When Times Mirror introduced Dean Singleton and his partners to the Post’s staff as the paper’s new owners, they were met with shock.10 One employee remembered a pall over the staff, which felt that Times Mirror had given up both on them and on Denver as a two-newspaper town.11 Particularly depressing was that Times Mirror had not only sold the paper but that the buyer was Singleton, someone with a lingering reputation as a hatchet man willing to sacrifice the editorial integrity of his newspapers in favor of higher profits. The news left the Post’s managers speechless and uncertain of their paper’s future in the city. Almost overnight, the Post’s employees flipped from believing their newspaper was the more respectable and stable daily in Denver to feeling like underdogs, weighed down by Singleton’s reputation.12

Singleton, meanwhile, was riding high on what he thought was the bargain purchase of a prestigious, promising newspaper in which he had long been interested.

The terms of the sale were extremely favorable to him. They required that Singleton and his partners pay $25 million upfront while leaving an additional $70 million to be paid later, making the total purchase price $95 million—the same amount Times Mirror had given for the paper seven years earlier.13 But while Times Mirror had purchased an overweight, lackadaisical, poorly equipped afternoon Post, Singleton received a morning

282 newspaper with a brand-new printing plant that had recently shed excess employees from its newsroom. For a brash, young company that had purchased the Times Herald one year earlier and the Houston Post, another second-place newspaper, only days before the deal in Denver was announced, the opportunity was almost too good to be true.14 “The idea was simply, this newspaper’s going downhill fast unless somebody fixes it. . . . If we’re not taking a lot of financial risk, and we can fix it, it ought to be positioned pretty well in the long run,” MediaFirst executive Jody Lodovic remembered.15 While his company did not have the massive resources of Times Mirror, it was also free of its lumbering corporate structure—as well as its reluctance to push employees down in the process of pulling the newspaper up. “It’s a corporate bureaucracy, a public company,” Lodovic said of Times Mirror. “They weren’t as hands-on as we thought we would be in terms of really digging in, cutting costs, and competing better.”16

The Post, then, had prospects for growth under the new ownership. But to realize such success, Singleton would have to overcome the damage to the paper incurred during seven years of Times Mirror ownership. In particular, Singleton remembered, the previous owners had left him with two major obstacles.17 First, Times Mirror had bought the Post fully intending to develop it into a high-quality newspaper, but they were ignorant about the needs of its readers. “They were looking at it as a big metro newspaper when they should have been looking at it as a local newspaper,” Singleton remembered,

“and they never quite caught on.”18 As a result, Times Mirror missed opportunities to appeal to readers through strong coverage of local news, and it abandoned eighty-five years of deep civic involvement by the Post, which, under the Bonfilses and Seawell, had included hosting community events and projects and financially supporting the Denver

283 Center for the Performing Arts, Children’s Hospital, and a range of smaller causes. A second series of problems left for Singleton to address were the lingering damages caused by the Post’s transition from an afternoon to a morning newspaper. The need to switch to the morning was not at issue—Singleton agreed doing so had been crucial. But the abruptness of the shift, and in particular Times Mirror’s failure to get the newspaper’s carriers on board before switching schedules, had resulted in delivery disruptions that persisted when Singleton assumed control of the paper six years later. Other problems resulted from ongoing ignorance of the conditions of the Post’s distribution network.

Singleton was shocked to find, upon taking over the paper, that its coin-operated newspaper machines were on the opposite side of the street as those of the News. Those of the News were on the side of the street on which bus-riders caught the bus headed toward downtown in the morning. The Post boxes had been on the correct side, the evening side, positioned to catch riders as they headed back home. But such was no longer the case. The result was an advantage, which Singleton estimated was worth thousands of newspapers a day, to the News for grabbing single-copy street sales.19

Consequently, both the circulation and ad share of the Post had nosedived. The newspaper shed 15 percent of its daily circulation during its seven years under Times

Mirror ownership, all of those losses following the shift to the morning field.20 Lower circulations drew advertisers away from the Post and toward the News. Singleton said that while the Post maintained an advertising lead on Sunday, it controlled only a 36 percent share of daily advertising, leaving it increasingly strapped for resources with which to ward off the insurgent News.21

284 Chosen to fix these problems as publisher was a man with a reputation every bit as notorious as Singleton’s: Maurice “Moe” Hickey. Before joining the Post, Hickey had spent twenty-four years working for Gannett.22 The various executive roles he had filled at the company included president of its western region, which gave him insight into

Gannett’s Fort Collins Coloradoan some sixty miles north of Denver, and as one of the planners behind USA Today, which launched in 1982. Immediately before his appointment at the Post, Hickey had headed the Detroit News, which had increased its circulation lead by 35,000 copies against its rival, Knight-Ridder’s Free Press, during his eighteen months as publisher. It was hoped that he could repeat his success in Denver.

Upon being awarded the position, Hickey vowed to bring stability to a Post that, during the preceding decade, had been hindered by poor decision making and managerial uncertainty.23

Hickey’s first task in Denver was to stem the flow of readers abandoning the Post because of its ongoing delivery failures. He was helped in this by Steve Hesse, who was lured to Denver from his job as Gannett’s corporate circulation director.24 Before actually making the changes necessary to do so, Hickey and Hesse set out to convince the public that the problems had been fixed, guaranteeing subscribers 6 a.m. delivery or their money back only months after having taken control of the paper. The claim was pushed to

Denverites through a massive advertising campaign, and it was successful in convincing potential readers that the years of unreliable delivery of the Post were over. Singleton later admitted the claim of perfected delivery was premature.25 Regardless, with readers willing to reconsider subscribing to the Post, Hickey and Hesse directed their attention to actually making changes to improve delivery. Foremost among them was finishing the

285 work Times Mirror had started six years earlier by culling child carriers from the paper’s ranks.26 The duty of managing subscriptions was departmentalized away from carriers, delivery tasks were systematized, and adult carriers were hired who were considered more reliable and, most importantly, available earlier in the morning, allowing papers to arrive on time.

The changes were highly effective. While official circulation figures are not available for the Post from 1988 through 1990, observers at all levels of the organization including Singleton himself credit Hickey and Hesse’s program as rapidly turning the paper’s delivery around.27 Within a year, the Post was able to live up to its promise to reliably put newspapers on the doorsteps of subscribers in the early morning.28

Furthermore, when the changes were complete, the Post had completely shifted management of its subscriptions away from carriers to a centralized department that, with subscribers logged in a central database, would later enable the newspaper to draw in new advertisers.

The changes ushered in by Hickey extended beyond delivery. Among the most consequential was securing massive concessions from the Post’s unions, which the paper’s management felt stood in the way of long-term financial viability. Only two weeks after announcing his purchase of the paper, Singleton told members of the Post’s chapter of the Newspaper Guild, the union covering reporters and editors, that unless they agreed to cancel a scheduled 4 percent raise and accept a wage freeze, a planned fifty newsroom layoffs would double to one hundred.29 Singleton considered the move only one part of a larger process of cooperation and compromise between management and the paper’s unions. “We sat down with the unions and opened our books and said, ‘Hey,

286 guys, we can’t continue to do this, we’ve got to get rid of eight million of costs immediately because we’ve got to put this thing in the black,’” he said. “We shared our financials with them—something the News would never do—and worked with the unions and got our costs down.”30 But Guild members balked at Singleton’s demand.31 When the question was put before a group of about 150 Guild members, only three voted to accept the freeze. It wasn’t until December, after Hickey’s arrival, that Guild members felt compelled to forgo their raises in exchange for limiting layoffs to thirty.32

Having dealt with the Guild, Hickey methodically secured concessions from the paper’s other major unions. Within a year of his arrival, he had successfully frozen wages and offered buyouts for all but one, the Post’s mailers’ union, which rejected demands from management to accept wage cuts of nearly 50 percent. Instead, the mailers’ union struck back with a public relations blitz that included a candle-lit protest on the porch of

Hickey’s home.33 The mailers’ contract would remain unsettled until Hickey left the paper.34

The mailers weren’t the only ones who found reasons to dislike Hickey. Indeed, the publisher failed to inspire a staff that was too afraid of crossing him to flourish. He was notorious for his temper, which flared both within the walls of the Post’s offices and in public, and many of his subordinates found him difficult to get along with.35 He fired managers rapidly—one news article counted eight top managers sacked in six months, resulting in a half-million dollars in severance being paid out.36 Employees strongly disagreed with many of the changes he instated, such as his USA Today approach to Page

One photos, running them small on the assumption that, since they were in color, they

287 had more visual impact and didn’t have to be as big as black and white photos.37 But to oppose Hickey was to risk one’s job, so the changes went unchallenged.38

Despite Hickey’s unpopularity, many of his changes worked for the Post. What the paper needed most was not a comfortable staff, which it had during the years of

Times Mirror’s failed ownership, but happy readers. “He treated employees like dirt and his customers like diamonds,” one employee said. “But by treating customers like diamonds, you can survive. You can’t survive without an audience. The next guy can turn around the employees.”39 The task before Singleton, then, was deciding when the time had come to end Hickey’s tyrannical but effective reign:

If I went to the Denver Post again all over again, I’d hire Moe all over again. For the first two years. But Moe is an executive who spent twenty-six years fixing problems. . . . Having spent twenty-six years fixing problems, sometimes Moe had a hard time deciding when to quit fixing. Moe fixed a lot of problems, but the Denver Post, after he finished fixing some problems, it needed some stability. And it needed some leadership abilities. And things needed to calm down.40

Hickey resigned October 26, 1989, pushed out of the Post as a result of “philosophical differences” between Singleton and himself, leaving him free to pursue other interests in

Colorado in retirement. At the Post, Hickey’s departure ushered in a brief period characterized by precisely the kind of calm Singleton had hoped for.41

But Hickey’s ejection did not result in a change in Singleton’s core strategy in

Denver. It merely meant that the budget had been pulled within the bounds Singleton felt would allow the Post to keep its lights on, that delivery was back on track, and that the paper could begin building on its one remaining advantage against the News: its Sunday circulation and advertising lead. The Post led the News by 60,000 copies on Sunday, a gap roughly equivalent to the Post’s pickup from the earlier United Cable deal, and the

288 Sunday circulation lead helped the paper secure a larger share of Sunday advertising, which Singleton estimated at 60 percent against the News’s 40 percent.42 On the advertising front, the Post’s job was to convince its lucrative Sunday advertisers to expand their efforts into the weekday and Saturday issues of the paper. It did so by offering Sunday advertisers massive discounts on advertising the other six days of the week. Despite the appearance of deep price cuts, any purchases of weekday advertising provided entirely new revenue for the Post, which only gained paid ad linage. At the same time, the newspaper was able to demonstrate to advertisers the value of its readers in ways the News could not. The Post’s centralized subscription database allowed the

Post to show advertisers what kinds of people subscribed to the newspaper, demonstrating it had a slightly more white-collar readership base than its competitor.

This appealed to Denver’s department stores, which were eager to advertise to those readers who had more spending money. Figures provided by Singleton suggest the Post was able to swap places with the News in terms of department store advertising share, moving from controlling only 40 percent to 60 percent within only a few years of

Singleton’s purchase.43

Curing the Disease

By the early 1990s, the gleam of MediaNews’s promising buying spree, in which it had picked up not only the Denver Post but also the Dallas Times Herald and Houston

Post, was beginning to tarnish. Singleton’s vision for Dallas disintegrated soon after he purchased the Denver Post. Having assumed too much debt while rapidly acquiring newspapers in the late 1980s, Singleton was forced to shed some of his company’s liabilities.44 The sacrificial cow was the Times Herald, which Singleton sold in 1988 to

289 business partner John Buzzetta at an estimated price of $140 million, netting Singleton

$30 million more than he had paid for the paper two years earlier.45 Buzzetta’s ownership of the newspaper was similarly short-lived. As a result of a high debt load, decreasing competitiveness against the Morning News, and the refusal of that paper to enter into a joint operating agreement, the Times Herald ceased publication December 9, 1991, after being sold to the Morning News’s parent company for a paltry $55 million.46 Meanwhile, the Houston Post was falling short of expectations as well. Singleton said he had paid

$150 million to the Toronto Sun group, from whom he bought the newspaper, with $50 million pledged as a conditional note. In 1990 the note was converted to a warrant granting Toronto Sun a 49 percent interest in the paper—an indication the Houston Post was struggling to live up to its debt obligations.47

But despite the struggles at MediaNews’s other properties, Singleton and others within the company denied ever considering dumping the Denver Post because out of the second-place newspapers purchased in the 1980s, it was the newspaper in Denver that inspired the most confidence. “We took three longshots with Houston, Dallas, and

Denver,” Lodovic said, “and Denver was by far the easiest one to fix because it had a better franchise than Houston or Dallas. . . . If there was one we thought we could win more than the others, it was Denver.”48 And there was good reason to be bullish on the

Post’s prospects. The tough work done by Times Mirror and relentless cutting by Hickey quickly yielded results, pushing the paper into the black within months of MediaNews’s purchase of the paper.49

Meanwhile, consequential decisions were being made at the Rocky Mountain

News as well as its parent company, E.W. Scripps.50 Chief among these was a move by

290 the E.W. Scripps Company to sell a portion of its stock publicly, which it did on June 29,

1988.51 Ostensibly, the decision to make part of the company public was designed to help pay off some of the concern’s debts while allowing Scripps’s heirs, who controlled most of the company, to cash in on their stake without selling the entire company.52 In relation to Denver, however, the effect of the move was to expose the company to public scrutiny and accountability, forcing it to share details about its newspaper holdings and profitability and to make business decisions in the best interest of its public shareholders rather than catering to the desires only of the company’s heirs. Public filings would generally lump the chain’s newspapers together, reporting combined profits and losses rather than the financial condition of individual properties. Such benefitted newspapers within the chain that performed below industry expectations of profits ranging from 12 to

30 percent, depending on the competitiveness of an individual market—newspapers like the Rocky Mountain News.53 But even ambiguous accounting could not mask from the public that the News was a financial burden on a risk-averse company, or, as one contemporary reporter put it, “an aberration” for a company that steered clear of competitive markets.54

On the ground at the News, Scripps had become sufficiently concerned about the paper’s competitive position to shake up its staff in Denver. The News created a new title of publisher, becoming the only newspaper in the chain with that position, and tapped

Baltimore Sun president Larry Strutton to fill the role. Strutton had previously worked in production at the News for seventeen years before leaving to work at the Detroit Free

Press and as Times Mirror’s vice president of operations, making him primarily responsible for designing the newspaper plant that company had built during its

291 ownership of the Denver Post.55 At the News, Strutton would have control over both business and editorial operations, bridging a divide that had previously been almost sacred within the chain.

Among Strutton’s top priorities—and one of the reasons he had been chosen as publisher—was modernizing the News’s obsolescent newspaper plant.56 He had considerable experience in that department, having run the paper’s presses in the 1960s and 1970s and having overseen the development of other plants, such as those of the Los

Angeles Times and Denver Post, in the 1980s. His experience in Los Angeles would weigh particularly heavy on his choices for Denver. Working then for Times Mirror,

Strutton had lobbied hard for the purchase of expensive offset Rockwell Goss presses capable of printing in full color, sensing the direction of the industry in the wake of heavy-color papers such as USA Today.57 Now at the News, he saw high-quality color as a potential selling point to national advertisers who might otherwise be leery of advertising in a tabloid, and by using color freely, unlike Hickey had during his time at the Post, Strutton thought high-quality color would help distinguish the News in Denver as well.58

Strutton also decided in designing his new plant to definitively kill the News’s foray into flexographic printing. “We were in a position that we had to buy more presses, so the question was, do you buy more flexo, or do you change?” he said. “We made the decision to change.”59 That choice was based on observations at the News that flexo required expensive upkeep to replace rapidly wearing press rollers. The decision to abandon flexo at the paper was an expensive one, and supporters of the press process accused Strutton of ending its hopes of widespread adoption by major metropolitan

292 newspapers. Replacing the entire plant rather than just the non-flexo presses pushed the project’s total cost to $150 million, and the plant’s depreciation over the following years would weigh heavily on the News’s bottom line. But others within Scripps supported the move to replace flexo presses with a plant full of state-of-the-art Rockwell Goss offset presses—the same style of unit Strutton had bought for the Los Angeles Times the decade before.60

While Strutton made rapid changes to the News’s plant to improve its appearance and compete directly with the Post on color, his newsroom sagged under the leadership of editor James Ambrose, who assumed control of editorial content in 1989. Ambrose was considered by Strutton and others to be a hands-off editor, at times almost absentee, and he did not have strong relationships with his reporters. John Temple, who in 1992 joined the News as Ambrose’s metro editor, described his boss as an “introvert and an intellectual,” a strong editorialist but someone who butted heads with other managers and failed to garner the trust of his newsroom.61 Under the early years of his leadership, areas of coverage crucial to holding the Post at bay and extending the News’s gains— particularly coverage of Denver itself—suffered.

The Post, having been shaken from its unfortunate 1980s, fixed its editorial sights firmly on Denver and attempted to capitalize on the News’s torpor. Replacing Hickey as publisher was Donald Hunt, an executive within MediaNews who had previously filled in as publisher of the Houston Post. Earlier, Hunt had cofounded and helped manage the

Toronto Sun, a newspaper described by the News as “a jazzy, sensational tabloid newspaper” best known for featuring nearly nude “sunshine girls” on the paper’s third page.62 When he took control of the paper, Hunt immediately moved to introduce even

293 bolder use of color and stronger opinion writing, and, above all, to attract younger readers by breaking away from the Post’s traditional stodgy tone and pursuing fresher, less formulaic stories.63

Hired to implement this new editorial style was F. Gilman Spencer, a hands-on editor who had edited the New York Daily News for the previous five years.64 Both coming from backgrounds in tabloid journalism, Spencer and Hall brought a lively, local focus to a newspaper that had previously differentiated itself editorially from the competition largely through its aloofness. As Neil Westergaard, a Post reporter and editor who would be elevated to executive editor in the 1990s, said, Spencer “brought a tabloid editor’s kind of mindset. Gil didn’t have much appreciation for these big thumb-sucking policy stories. I think the Post caught up with the Rocky in terms of its liveliness.”65 At the same time, Spencer worked to heal a newsroom so recently shaken by Hickey’s heavy-handed management. He forged relationships with reporters that improved the newspaper’s culture and fostered loyalty—a kind of spark the News struggled to generate.66

Even apparent victories for the News were sometimes turned into rallies for the

Post. Such was the case when the News managed to tear from the Post the contract to run

Jim Davis’s “Garfield” comic strip in Denver. Despite being franchised by Scripps’s

United Feature Syndicate, the Post had run the strip since it was first syndicated. In a show of force, the News in 1988 outbid the Post and brought Garfield to its pages for the first time.67 But when the News advertised its coup with a rooftop advertisement atop its building featuring a giant Garfield and Odie, Post employees, who had so recently escaped from under Hickey’s heel, found a way to strike back. Two agents disguised in

294 overalls and carrying a ladder and toolbox and two others carrying a giant wrapped gift made their way through the News building and onto the roof, placing the gift in Odie’s mouth. Once unwrapped, the gift was revealed to be a copy of the Post, bearing a “Merry

Xmas” headline.68 It was a prank—something meaningless to either paper’s bottom line—but Westergaard remembered it being a big moment for a newsroom that was shaking off a dark decade. “That was sort of the beginning of the Post coming out of its funk that had resulted from freezing salaries and Singleton coming in and Moe Hickey,” he said.69

The real boon for the Post, however, came in 1993, when Times Mirror renegotiated the debt owed to it for the Post by Singleton and his partners. The terms of the sale had required the buyers to pay only $25 million of the total $95 million sale price upfront, with the remainder due beginning five years after the sale, in 1992. But the terms allowed for the value of the unpaid amount to be adjusted depending on the value of the

Post in 1992. The result was Times Mirror agreeing to accept a payment of $28 million in

1992 and of $15 million in 1994 to settle the account, resulting in a debt reduction of $27 million.70 Thus, at the same time the News was encumbering itself with the cost of a brand new printing plant, the Post found itself walking much lighter.

It comes as no surprise, then, that Singleton remembered 1993 as the point at which he was confident the Post would win the war against the News. As he told a Post reporter around that time,

It’s interesting to see what’s happened in four and a half years. They’ve gone from a healthy operating profit to a sizable operating loss and are now facing having to cover interest and depreciation on a $150 million new plant where four and a half years ago the roles were reversed. Now they’ve got to get eaten by the analysts every quarter for the next ten years. And we don’t. . . . When we got

295 there they had a very entrenched, solid management team that had taken them to new heights in the competitive battle. And they ditched all of this and brought in a bunch of newcomers and now they’ve got a new team that’s trying to learn how to operate with each other. Four and a half years ago, we had a new team that was trying to operate with each other battling an entrenched team. Now you’ve got this new team from the publisher on down trying to compete with an entrenched team. In many respects, the roles have reversed.71

Singleton was overstating the direness of the News’s position—it still had the support of

Scripps in managing the expenses of its new plant, and the relationship between management and the News’s newsroom was far better than that of Hickey’s Post. But the initiative had swung decidedly behind the Post. If it intended to stay atop the market, the

News would have to start swinging harder.

Fight for Denver

As the Post grew financially stable and the News modernized its printing plant, the battle for editorial dominance grew fierce, particularly with regard to covering

Denver. Sensing Spencer and the Post were pulling ahead in city reporting, Ambrose began searching for someone to anchor the News’s metro coverage. The person he found for the job was John Temple, city editor at Scripps’s nearby Albuquerque (New Mexico)

Tribune.

Temple’s years at the Tribune provided him with a competitive model and editorial perspective that would prove invaluable during this time at the News. The

Tribune was an afternoon newspaper, forcing its reporters to move very quickly on news that broke in the morning and to find fresh, exclusive angles on stories already reported by the morning paper in order to provide its readers with unique coverage.72 The result was a heavy emphasis on deep, enterprise stories rather than routine reporting. Such stories were supported by an inseparable relationship between visual journalists and

296 reporters that allowed photojournalists unusual freedom to influence the direction of stories, leading to an increased sense of immediacy and impact.73 All of this occurred within the confines of a Scripps-owned JOA newspaper that did not publish a Sunday edition and trailed in daily circulation with a mere 42,000 copies—all of which challenged the Tribune’s newsroom to create innovative content that attracted readers or risk extinction.

When Temple arrived in Denver in August 1992, News employees were suffering from the effects of the Post’s rebirth.74 While the News would soon be able to benefit from the advantages brought by its new presses, the market’s momentum was firmly behind their competitor. For all the News’s successes in the 1980s, it was still considered by some, including reporters at other Scripps newspapers, to be a paper with only mediocre reporting.75 Part of that stemmed from a depressed newsroom culture resulting from weak bonds between the paper’s top editors and its reporters, who had talent but lacked the supportive environment necessary to produce content to the best of their abilities.76

Temple’s appearance at the News as metro editor did not immediately cure the paper’s culture. But his editorial influence certainly made an impact on the News’s content through improved and innovative local news coverage, giving energy to a newsroom in need of a push. This was demonstrated most forcefully with the publication of “Deadly Games: Teens, Guns and Violence in the Suburbs,” a three-part series that ran in May 1993. Originally, News editor Ambrose had been working on a major project to demonstrate the color capabilities provided by the newspaper’s Estlow printing plant, which had become fully operational in fall 1992.77 When Ambrose’s project fell through,

297 Temple stepped forward to offer “Deadly Games,” a series he had been developing for several months with News reporter Romel Hernandez and photojournalist Dean Krakel, to fill its place. The series explored a recent increase in gun violence among teenagers in and around Denver, putting Hernandez and Krakel on the streets to document the permeation of guns into kids’ lives.78 But rather than present the three-part series as three long pieces, stories were told as short, individual scenes accompanied by strong, large photographs. “It was more of an assemblage,” Temple remembered, “a little bit more impressionistic, with just sort of a simple lead-in. It was very different than anything the paper had ever done—and people liked it.”79

The series demonstrated that Temple would be a powerful influence at the News and that the highly visual, investigative, and ambitious approach to metro reporting he had picked up in Albuquerque, when combined with the resources of the News, would directly challenge the Post’s growing editorial strength. This energy would swell in 1994 with the arrival of Robert Burdick as managing editor and, in 1995, with Burdick’s promotion to editor and Temple to managing editor.80 Temple said Burdick fostered a stronger relationship between the News’s editors and reporters. Further, Burdick formalized the editorial strategy of the newspaper in three points, an approach that guided its newsroom from the mid-1990s onward.81 First, the News would be characterized by close attention to the basics of journalism—deep knowledge by reporters of their beats, strong and accurate headlines, and so on—and rewarding reporters for honing these core concepts to perfection. Second, the paper had personality, both through a general editorial style that was highly visual, approachable, and relatable and through specific columnists and reporters whose writing styles had personalities of their own. Finally, the News

298 focused on “enterprise with an edge,” featuring expansive stories that provided readers with something completely different from even the best routine reporting. As Temple explained it, “enterprise with an edge meant, tell people stuff that they wake up in the morning and they go, ‘Oh, shit!’ or, ‘We’ve got to do something about this,’ or, ‘I can’t believe that’s happening,’ or, ‘How could that be?’ or, ‘What an asshole!’ or, you know, right? ‘That’s wrong!’ Get people talking about the things that really matter in the community.”82 The strategy worked. At the Post, executive editor Westergaard, who assumed the top editorial position at the paper after Spencer’s retirement in 1993, observed that Temple and others at the News were capturing the same sort of spark that had led to a resurgent Post.83

What followed was a situation in which both newsrooms perceived themselves to be the underdogs and, consequently, fought to prove themselves. At the Post, reporters who had considered theirs the superior newspaper even through Times Mirror’s struggles in the 1980s were so shaken by its sale to Singleton and by Hickey’s two despotic years as to feel themselves the upstarts, challenged to prove they could withstand the budget cuts and staff reductions and still produce the city’s best paper.84 Meanwhile, the News, apart from its previous fifteen years of high daily circulation figures, had always been the underdog, and its newsroom was rebounding from years of editorial stagnation.

As both newsrooms fought to assert themselves, the pressure to get an edge on the competition grew. Journalists reporting from Denver police stations knew to check the bottom of the stack of the day’s police reports because rivals were known to bury the most important crimes of the past twenty-four hours.85 Lynn Bartels, who was called in to report crime for the News from the Albuquerque Tribune a year after Temple arrived in

299 Denver, threw News deliveries that had only made it partway up the sidewalk onto porches while walking her dog in the morning. Errant copies of the Post were left where they lay.86 In some instances, this competitive pressure actually hindered innovative reporting, with journalists at both papers afraid to pursue unique stories for fear of missing bread-and-butter news that their counterparts would catch.87 Rather than branch out and look for new angles, then, reporters would sometimes chase one another on the same stories. But generally, the competition was a strong motivator to do better—to find an advantage, to get the story first and tell it better. “I’d lie there in bed and wait for the thump-thump of the newspaper to land, you know, and then you go out, and you’re like,

‘Oh, God,’ you know, or, ‘Oh, great, we beat them,’” Bartels said. “It was just so intense.”88

The fight for editorial supremacy existed in the context of a larger metropolitan media ecosystem, and reporters had to remain cognizant of other news organizations, which constantly competed for eyes and advertisers. Strong local television broadcasters only accelerated the local news cycle, although managers at the Post and News disagreed on the extent to which TV competed with their newspapers for advertising.89 Other media were less menacing to the newspapers. Both papers, for example, paid attention to weekly suburban newspapers, although they did not feel immediately pressured by them.

Similarly, both the News and Post kept an eye on the potential of the Internet as a competitor and a tool, but neither was threatened by it. It was in the mid-1990s that both papers began developing the systems on which their web presences would be built. The

News proudly announced in March 1996 the launch of Rocky Mountain News Online, a website that would feature, among other things, events listings, travel information, online

300 classifieds, and the writings of venerable News columnist Gene Amole.90 Only a few months earlier, the Post had launched its own first website, a digital version of Empire magazine, which the paper was attempting to resurrect after the original had been discontinued by Times Mirror a decade before.91 That site, which went live in November

1995 and was updated only once each week, published most of the content included in the print version and was considered by its creators to be a prime way to distribute the magazine’s long-form content while linking, for the first time, to other relevant information that was available elsewhere online.92 From that initial web product, the Post developed what would become Denver Post Online, or DPO. Westergaard noted that there was not, during his years at the Post, a unified vision of what the website would become. Post employees had little idea what an influence the Internet would be on the industry or how it would affect the company’s finances. Instead, the Post would adapt, organically, to the web. “DPO—it began the vehicle to start to build on and eventually get into breaking news and everything else,” Westergaard said. “We didn’t start with a fully conceived product. This was new stuff.”93

In the meantime, the battle for print subscribers continued. But despite the News’s strengthening editorial content, the Post’s momentum, supported by its own reporting and marketing success, earned for that paper much greater rewards. Between 1993 and 1996, the News’s daily circulation actually shrank by about 40,000 copies, partially as a result of the restructuring of its own delivery systems as had been done at the Post a few years earlier, against an increase of about 63,000 copies for the Post.94 During the same period, the Post recaptured the Sunday circulation lead, which was claimed by a small margin by the News during the early 1990s. Other measurements, such as readership studies that

301 accounted for individual readers rather than copies sold, similarly showed losses for the

News in the mid-1990s.95 To maintain even parity with the Post, the newspaper would have to act quickly to stem this decline.

Value of an Empire

To understand how to best do so, managers at the News looked, in part, to another newspaper war that had ended only a few years earlier. In 1991, the Arkansas Democrat won its fight for dominion over the Little Rock market when the Arkansas Gazette ceased publication as an independent newspaper.96 In a twist of fate, it was Hickey who, having been rehired briefly by Gannett, which then owned the Gazette, as publisher, announced the closure to that paper’s employees.97 On at least four occasions between 1996 and

1998, the Little Rock newspaper war was discussed by managers of the News in an effort to sniff out lessons for success in Denver.98 In making comparisons between the two newspapers, the News identified most with the Gazette while viewing the Post as most like the winning Democrat, not because they feared they would ultimately lose in Denver but because they saw much in the Democrat’s approach that mirrored actions taken by

Singleton’s Post.

Scripps and the News took several lessons away from such discussions. For one, they noted that the winning Democrat had expanded its newshole, filling the paper with local and sports news.99 They observed that the Democrat had managed to keep its costs relatively low (considering it was fighting a heated circulation war) while offering deep advertising discounts.100 They saw that the Democrat had successfully billed itself to many Little Rock readers as the “down-home” Arkansas newspaper fighting against the outsider chain, Gannett.101 But in 1996, one lesson would come to resonate more loudly

302 than the rest: comments by Gazette executives that, if they were to fight the war again, they would tighten their focus on winning Little Rock and worry less about covering the rest of Arkansas.102

This helps explain why, in January 1996, the News announced that it would no longer be delivered outside of a thirteen-county region covering Colorado’s central and northern Front Range.103 The paper’s content was to focus specifically on the six counties comprising the Denver metro area, where the News held both a daily and Sunday circulation lead. The goal would be to save money otherwise spent hauling newspapers to the fifty-one Colorado counties and four states that would no longer receive deliveries of the News, freeing up funds with which to challenge the Post.104 The amount of money in play was substantial, as much as thirty dollars per month for each of the roughly thirty thousand out-of-area subscribers cut.105 At the same time, the primary target of the

News’s advertisers—Denver-area consumers—would continue to be fully served by the paper. In making the shift to focus only on Denver, a strategy the News dubbed Front

Range Plus, the newspaper was gambling that advertisers and readers would perceive the change positively.

They did not. Executives at both the News and Post later considered the move an unqualified failure. Singleton, who benefitted most from Front Range Plus, called it an

“unforced error,” an unrealistic belief on behalf of some at the News that they could reap the financial benefits of limiting their circulation to Denver without signaling weakness to advertisers.106 Strutton remembered resisting pressure to limit the paper’s scope until, eventually, the decision was forced on him by executives at Scripps.107 He identified

Front Range Plus as single-handedly placing the Post back in the lead, not only in terms

303 of circulation, as pulling out of most of Colorado reduced the News’s daily circulation enough to threaten its lead, but also in terms of a vague but all-important quality over which previous publishers and editors had obsessed: prestige. The Post continued covering all of Colorado and billing itself as the voice of the Rocky Mountain empire, the mantra of former publisher Palmer Hoyt, who was centrally concerned with public perception of his newspaper’s stature. What the News learned after the introduction of

Front Range Plus was that advertisers did not care that the News led in the Denver metro area as must as they did that the Post led generally. To many, especially national advertisers who were unfamiliar with conditions in the market other than gross circulation figures, it was the lead itself that mattered.108

As the News attempted to save money by scaling back its readership, Singleton was putting practices in place at the Post to cut costs in other ways. In March 1996,

MediaFirst began experimenting with a size reduction that would result in the Post being one inch narrower in an effort to fight ballooning newsprint prices.109 The change was put into place in July, making the Post the first major metro paper to shrink its web (the width of the roll of paper on which the newspaper was printed) from fifty-four to fifty inches.110 Ryan McKibben, who had succeeded Hunt as Post publisher in 1993, heralded the change as one that would make the paper easier for readers to hold.111 News columnist

Gene Amole mocked the smaller Post as a “not-quite-so-broad broadsheet.”112 Greg

Moody, entertainment reporter at Denver’s CBS affiliate, joked on the air, “All the news that fits we print, and there ain’t much in there.”113 Turning the Post sideways, he said that the News was actually the bigger newspaper.

304 With the savings in newsprint resulting from the change, Singleton could afford to laugh with them. When his newspaper shrank, it came at no cost whatsoever—the Post was still able to charge advertisers the same rate because it hadn’t eliminated any inches from the bottom of the page. Instead, it had simply squeezed the width of each column on the page. And although he was joking when he made it, Moody’s observation regarding the size of the Post in comparison to the News underscored a second major benefit to the

Post from the shift. “It saved us a lot of newsprint,” Singleton said, “but it actually made us a better read for those Rocky subscribers who liked the tabloid.”114 The narrower page did make the newspaper easier to handle, a core advantage of the News to its readers.

Thus, the Post found itself saving a great deal of money that could then be directed toward competing with the News. In the process, it had attacked the News’s greatest advantage, its tabloid format. All of this took place only months after the News had declared it was focused on Denver, to the detriment of its circulation and prestige.

Penny War

Whatever shortcomings brought by the intense competition between the papers— reporters chasing each other, stories sometimes running before being thoroughly vetted, and so on—Denver newspaper readers ultimately benefitted. Delivery service was reliable. Advertising of high value to readers, such as careers classifieds and automotive ads, was plentiful. Fat newspapers were chocked full of good local stories printed in rich color. And it was all available at absurdly low costs to readers. Single copies of Denver’s

Sunday newspapers were sold for fifty cents in 1997, making the city the last place in the country selling so cheaply.115 Subscribers paid even less. Area residents could subscribe to either paper for roughly eight cents per copy at an annual rate of only thirty dollars.116

305 Attempting to steal the circulation lead from one another, the Post and News fell into a tit-for-tat in which one would drop its promotional subscription prices, prompting the other to match it, in turn spurring one of the papers to decrease its price even further.

News publisher Strutton explained that to do otherwise would have endangered the viability of his paper. “You had to compete with them, and they were selling that cheap, so we matched the prices. . . . The Post wants dark on prices. We’re giving midnight.”117

As Singleton remembers, the darkest of the price war began in fall 1997, just as the Post’s daily circulation was surging ahead of the News for the first time since 1980.118

Word began trickling into the Post that the News was offering deeply discounted subscriptions to Boulder County residents. The deal was not advertised. Singleton’s information suggested News marketers were reaching directly out to individual prospective subscribers by phone. For $3.12 a year—or one penny a day—Boulder

County residents could get the News delivered to their homes six days a week.119

It was an unthinkable price, one better suited to the penny press newspaper era of the nineteenth century than the waning years of the twentieth century. The promotion was orchestrated in such a way as to quietly and quickly capture thousands of new subscriptions, and by offering it as a six-day-a-week subscription rather than seven, the

News could avoid running afoul of circulation rules that would have forced it to offer the penny price to all subscribers. It was a direct, aggressive response to the Post’s recent circulation leaps. The Post, initially suspecting the promotion to be a short-term push limited to Boulder County, chose not to match the offer. To do so would have risked all- out war of a kind not seen since Scripps charged into Denver in 1926.

306 But the promotion was neither temporary nor isolated. Singleton remembers being told that it was eventually expanded to Jefferson County, and then other areas around

Denver, until by summer 1998, residents throughout most of the market could nab penny subscriptions to the News. Growing alarmed but still refraining from matching the promotion, Singleton called Alan Horton, senior vice president of Scripps’s newspaper division. “You know,” Singleton remembered telling Horton on the phone, “I haven’t said anything to you, but you started selling papers for a penny in one county and we let it go, and you sold them in another and we let it go, and you sold them in another and we let it go, and now you’re getting most of the market. I think selling newspapers for a penny a day is kind of ridiculous. If you continue to do it, we’re going to have to match you.”120 Horton demurred, not wanting to discuss pricing and risk running afoul of antitrust law. Fine, Singleton said, but he threatened to match the price if the News didn’t pull back within a couple of weeks.

A couple of weeks later, when the News was still running its penny-a-day promotion, the Post launched its own penny promotion. But unlike the News’s quiet operation, the Post marketed its deal on television and radio and through a direct mail campaign. The war was on. And it quickly expanded to circus-like proportions. One

News reporter remembered driving down a highway in rural northeastern Colorado and passing a billboard advertising penny subscriptions to the Post to readers potentially hundreds of miles from Denver.121 Within the city, tables were set up in front of grocery stores to push subscriptions on shoppers.122 Hawkers were handed stacks of newspapers and paid to stand in the medians of busy intersections selling individual copies. By 1999, one area telephone company was offering to block subscription solicitations as a part of a

307 new anti-telemarketing service. Area residents overwhelmed by telephone offers flooded the Colorado attorney general’s office with complaints, and newspaper and magazine solicitations became the top consumer grievance in the state.123

For the Post and News, the penny war had two immediate effects. The first was the propulsion of circulations to unprecedented heights. By 1999 the News had successfully recaptured the daily circulation lead, pushing it 19 percent higher in a single year to 396,000.124 The Post, while falling short of its competitor’s meteoric growth, posted an impressive 10 percent daily circulation increase of its own. Sunday rates of increase were similar. Combined, more than one million newspapers were distributed by the two newspapers each Sunday. A second effect of the war was its impact on the bottom line of both newspapers. Strutton remembered that at the News, “it just took revenue away from the picture.”125 Whatever money came into the paper was funneled into trying to finance the war.

Circulation, however, was only a means to capture advertising, and the two newspapers fought vigorously to best each other’s offers to advertisers and control market share. Each paper had an aptitude for particular types of advertising. The News, for example, had a lock on automotive advertising throughout its fight with the Post, and it held a lead with local advertisers, giving a degree of credence to the paper’s Front

Range Plus strategy.126 The Post, meanwhile, was stronger with national advertisers, and, largely because of its consistent circulation lead on Sunday, led in careers and real estate.127 Ultimately, neither paper was successful in stealing the core advertising markets of its competitor, despite their best efforts. But in the midst of the ongoing battle, which by mid-1999 had become a war of attrition, such was not the goal. In such an expensive

308 fight, a newspaper would be victorious if it covered its own costs while paring away enough of its rival’s core advertising business to make continuing the war untenable.128

So desperate was the News to get an edge against the Post on advertising that it formally changed the name of the paper from the Rocky Mountain News to the Denver

Rocky Mountain News. An editorial announcing the change by John Temple, who had become News editor after Burdick was promoted to the paper’s president and general manager, downplayed the change, saying that the newspaper had really always been the

Denver Rocky Mountain News in its coverage and commitment to the city, and he wrote that the paper was just tweaking its name to reflect that reality.129 In light of Front Range

Plus and the paper’s reduction of its coverage area, this was certainly truer than in the past. But the change was actually a calculated move to clarify to national advertisers that the newspaper served Denver. The News had long struggled to match the Post’s performance on national advertising, and managers such as Strutton thought part of the problem was that ad-placers in New York City and other distant locales did not know the

Rocky Mountain News was in Denver.130 Others, like Singleton, dismissed such claims:

The Rocky Mountain News was the oldest newspaper in Colorado. It had been a tabloid since 1942. Everybody in the country knew that there was a Rocky Mountain News. I think the reason that it got hurt in share was because it was a tabloid and had half the number of billable inches on a page than the Post had. A lot of national advertisers, actually some major advertisers, major retail, just didn’t produce tabloid pages. So I think the tabloid size was a big advantage for readers, but it was a disadvantage for advertisers.131

While the newspapers pursued higher circulations to entice advertisers, placed ads could, in turn, solicit circulation increases, especially with regard to the Sunday editions.

News reporter Lynn Bartels remembered routinely being hounded by friends for early access to the bulldog edition of the paper, which was the earliest printing of the Sunday

309 paper and appeared on Saturday. It lacked much of the editorial content later editions of the Sunday paper would feature, such as the weekend’s breaking news and some news features. Instead, it included content prepared further in advance, such as the lifestyle and opinion sections, as well as some sports news. But the reason the bulldog edition was so highly prized was its bearers had the earliest access to that Sunday’s careers, apartments, and automotive classifieds, giving them the jump on competitors for jobs, rentals, and cars.132

Overture

In retrospect, the progression of competition beginning with Singleton’s purchase of the Post, crescendoing through the editorial efforts and product improvements at both papers in the early and mid-1990s, and climaxing in the penny war ensured radical change in the Denver newspaper market. By mid-1999, there was no clear path back to normalcy. Neither the Post nor the News had an accurate picture of the other’s finances— as far as the News knew, for example, the Post was nearing the end of its line, although it could, possibly, be weathering the battle well. Such uncertainty incentivized both newspapers, which had invested then-untold millions in the penny war, to press on until the other failed. For one newspaper to unilaterally decide to stop offering penny subscriptions would signal weakness to the other, spurring that paper not to follow suit but rather to redouble its efforts to conclusively kill off its opponent. Representatives from one newspaper could not safely approach their counterparts at the other to negotiate an end to the fight, as to do so would risk provoking the US Department of Justice’s ire for price fixing. One way to negotiate such a cease fire while remaining undeniably within the bounds of the law would be to do so within the context of entering into a joint

310 operating agreement. But that, just like the failure of one of the newspapers as a result of the financial burden of the penny war, would be a profound reorganization of the Denver newspaper market.

Thus, once the penny war began in earnest with Singleton’s decision to match the

News’s deep discounting program, the status quo in Denver was certain to be upset. The only question was which of three possible scenarios would become reality. First, Scripps, a public company pinched by the twin budgetary expenses of waging a penny war and depreciating a $150 million newspaper plant, could find a buyer for the Rocky Mountain

News, possibly an outsider or, alternatively, the Denver Post itself. As his newspaper’s bottom line stabilized in the early 1990s, Singleton envisioned such a scenario playing out specifically because the News, if faced with extended financial trouble, would be pressured as a public company to bail on Denver, just as had the Times Mirror Post in the late 1980s.133 In a second scenario, MediaFirst and its partners in owning the Post, who, due to their corporate structure, were unable to siphon profits from other properties as could Scripps, might expend their resources in Denver and be forced to find a buyer for the Denver Post, again, possibly to an outsider but very possibly to Scripps. One final scenario would see one of the two newspapers pressured to the brink of financial exigency but short of the point requiring sale, allowing it to offer a joint operating agreement with terms favorable to the other newspaper. By August 1999, the battle for the Denver newspaper market had reached its breaking point. After a year of open penny- paper warfare and, for the News, closer to two years of penny sales, the bottom lines of both newspapers were in a freefall.

311 For the few years before, Singleton and E.W. Scripps CEO William Burleigh had met in New York during the summer for dinner and to chat, not about anything specific, but as colleagues in American newspapering. In the midst the ongoing fight in Denver, the two sat down together at Marchi’s, an Italian restaurant in Midtown Manhattan, on

August 17, 1999, uncorking a bottle of wine and settling into a six-course meal.134 The evening passed uneventfully until, around the arrival of the third course, the conversation took a turn that would completely change Denver journalism.

Across the table, Burleigh asked Singleton, “Have you ever thought about a

JOA?”135

1 William Dean Singleton, interview with Ken Ward, October 27, 2017, 2.

Transcript available from researcher upon request.

2 Ibid.; Alex S. Jones, “Busting Into the Big Leagues,” New York Times,

September 20, 1987.

3 Ibid.

4 Singleton, interview, 2–3.

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid.

8 Geraldine Fabrikant, “Texan Is Buying His 29th Daily, the Denver Post,” New

York Times, September 15, 1987; Haya El Nasser, “Media Mogul Adds Denver to

Empire,” USA Today, September 15, 1987.

312

9 From this point on, this dissertation refers to the newspaper chain previously referred to as Scripps-Howard as the E.W. Scripps Company or simply Scripps.

According to E.W. Scripps Company representatives in telephone conversations with the author, the name of the firm, including its newspaper chain, was always formally the

E.W. Scripps Company. Scripps-Howard, was only a trade name used in reference to the company’s newspapers. Company representatives could not, however, be more specific as to when the company stopped generally referring to its papers as Scripps-Howard.

After consulting newspaper articles and business documents, the researcher finds that such as shift seems to have happened sometime around the era covered in this chapter.

10 Carl Miller, interview fragment, folder 17, box 1, Sue O’Brien Papers: “The

Denver Newspaper War, 1980–1998,” MSS 2628, History Colorado, hereafter referred to as “O’Brien Papers,” 1.

11 Carol Green, interview fragment, folder 17, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 1.

12 Neil Westergaard, interview with Ken Ward, October 20, 2017, 7. Transcript available from researcher upon request.

13 Singleton, interview, 11; Deirdre Carmody, “Sale of Denver Post for $95

Million Set,” New York Times, October 23, 1980.

14 Alex S. Jones, “Houston Post to Be Sold to Fast-Growing Chain,” New York

Times, September 11, 1987.

15 Jody Lodovic, interview with Ken Ward, October 20, 2017, 2. Transcript available from researcher upon request.

16 Ibid.

313

17 Singleton, interview, 3–5.

18 Ibid.

19 Ibid.

20 Ayer Directory of Publications (Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania: IMS Press, 1980),

200; Gale Directory of Publications (Detroit: Gale Research, 1987), 213.

21 Singleton, interview, 3–4.

22 Berny Morson, “Post Names Editor-Publisher,” Rocky Mountain News, October

23, 1987; Henry Dubroff, “Moe Hickey Named Editor and Publisher of the Denver Post,”

Denver Post, October 23, 1987.

23 Dubroff, “Moe Hickey Named Editor and Publisher of the Denver Post,”

October 23, 1987.

24 Singleton, interview, 5–6.

25 Ibid.

26 Steve Hesse, interview fragment, folder 17, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 7.

27 The primary source of circulation figures for this research is the Ayer newspaper directory, known by various names throughout its history, including the Gale

Directory of Publications in its later years. The Post did not update its numbers in these directories for these years, making direction comparison impossible.

28 Singleton, interview, 5–6.

29 “Future Owner of Denver Post Threatens Layoffs, Pay Freeze,” Rocky

Mountain News, September 29, 1987.

30 Singleton, interview, 9.

314

31 “Wage Freeze Rejected at Post,” Rocky Mountain News, October 1, 1987.

32 Tamara Jones, “Denver Post Workers OK Pay Cut, Freeze,” Denver Post,

December 9, 1987.

33 “Pay Cut Protested,” Denver Post, November 24, 1988.

34 Lisa Benenson, “Rocky Mountain Low,” NewsInc, May 1990, 34.

35 Tony Campbell, interview fragment, folder 17, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 3;

“Publish and Perish,” Westword, July 6, 1988.

36 Benenson, “Rocky Mountain Low,” 34.

37 Bates, interview fragment, folder 17, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 11; Donald Hunt, interview fragment, folder 17, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 12.

38 Donald Hunt, interview fragment, folder 17, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 12.

39 Carol Green, interview fragment, folder 17, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 14.

40 William Dean Singleton, interview with Sue O’Brien, folder 17, box 1, O’Brien

Papers, 3. Distinguished from other Singleton interview in short citations by inclusion of

“with Sue O’Brien.”

41 Don Knox, “Hickey Out as Post Publisher,” Rocky Mountain News, October 27,

1989; Neil Westergaard to Ken Ward, January 6, 2018; quote by Tony Campbell, interview fragment, folder 17, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 3; Lisa Benenson, “Rocky

Mountain Low,” 34.

42 Gale Directory of Publications (1987), 213; Singleton, interview, 5.

43 Ibid., 6.

44 Singleton, interview with Sue O’Brien, 1.

315

45 “Dallas Times Herald Sale,” New York Times, June 8, 1988.

46 Alex S. Jones, “Last Day for Dallas Times Herald,” New York Times,

December 9, 1991.

47 Tim Fleck, Michael Berryhill, and Jim Simmon, “Post Mortem,” Houston

Press, April 27, 1995.

48 Lodovic, interview, 7.

49 Singleton, interview, 9.

50 E.W. Scripps Company was the parent company that controlled Scripps-

Howard Inc., the corporation’s publishing arm and the company immediately above the

Rocky Mountain News. Alex S. Jones, “Stock Sale Allows Glimpse of E.W. Scripps,”

New York Times, June 27, 1988.

51 “History,” E.W. Scripps Company, accessed December 14, 2017, http://scripps.com/company/history.

52 Jones, “Stock Sale.”

53 Conrad C. Fink, Strategic Newspaper Management (Needham Heights,

Massachusetts: Allyn & Bacon, 1996), 17.

54 Jones, “Stock Sale.”

55 “Scripps Names New Publisher,” Rocky Mountain News, July 19, 1990; Larry

Strutton, interview with Ken Ward, October 21, 2017, 20. Transcript available from researcher upon request.

56 Strutton, interview, 20.

57 Ibid., 19.

316

58 Ibid., 20.

59 Larry Strutton, interview with Ken Ward, December 19, 2017.

60 Ibid.

61 John Temple, interview with Ken Ward, October 22, 2017, 12. Transcript available from researcher upon request.

62 Don Knox, “Hickey Out as Post Publisher,” Rocky Mountain News, October 27,

1989; Henry Dubroff, “Veteran Newspaperman Named Publisher of Denver Post,”

Denver Post, October 27, 1989; Kate Bulkley, “Hunt Aims to Make Post User-Friendly

Paper,” Denver Business Journal, November 13, 1989.

63 Bulkley, “Hunt Aims to Make Post User-Friendly Paper.”

64 Adriel Bettelheim, “Former N. Y. Daily News Chief Named Editor of the

Post,” Denver Post, November 30, 1989.

65 Westergaard, interview, 6.

66 Ibid., 6–7.

67 “Garfield is Moving to News,” Rocky Mountain News, November 6, 1988; figures in the research notes of Sue O’Brien state the News offered an unprecedented bid of $62,554 to publish the comic for one year, outbidding the Post by almost $47,000.

“Garfield,” interview fragment, folder 17, box 1, O’Brien Papers, 13.

68 “Competition: Garfield, Scoops,” Denver Post, February 26, 2009.

69 Westergaard, interview, 10.

70 Singleton, interview, 9–11.

71 Singleton, interview with Sue O’Brien, 4.

317

72 Temple, interview, 3–4.

73 Ibid., 4–5.

74 “News Names Three to Key Positions,” Rocky Mountain News, August 30,

1992.

75 Lynn Bartels, interview with Ken Ward, October 20, 2017, 2. Transcript available from researcher upon request.

76 Temple, Interview, 12, 14.

77 Keith Dubay, “News Puts Fifth New Press On Line,” Rocky Mountain News,

September 27, 1992; Temple, interview, 6–7.

78 Romel Hernandez, “The Series,” Rocky Mountain News, May 23, 1993.

79 Temple, interview, 6–7.

80 “Veteran Journalist Robert Burdick Named News Editor,” Rocky Mountain

News, July 14, 1995.

81 Temple, interview, 14–15.

82 Ibid.

83 Westergaard, interview, 7.

84 Ibid.

85 Bartels, interview, 2.

86 Ibid., 8.

87 Ibid., 5.

88 Ibid., 3.

318

89 News publisher Strutton saw TV and newspapers as competing for advertisers, while MediaNews CFO Lodovic argued the kind of advertising common on each medium made them sufficiently different to remove them from direct competition. Strutton, interview, 21–22; Lodovic, interview, 10.

90 “News Goes on the Internet,” Rocky Mountain News, March 4, 1996.

91 “Magazine Going Online,” Denver Post, November 5, 1995.

92 Westergaard, interview, 8–9.

93 Ibid., 10.

94 Gale Directory of Publications and Broadcast Media (Detroit: Gale Research,

1994), 292, 294–95; Gale Directory of Publications and Broadcast Media (1997), 288,

290; Singleton, interview, October 27, 2017, 7.

95 Scarborough Custom Research, “Management Summary Report:

Denver/Boulder Market Study,” April–June 1998, folder “Scarborough Custom Study—

1998,” box 9, Rocky Mountain News Collection, WH 2129, Western History Collection,

Denver Public Library, hereafter referred to as “Rocky Mountain News Papers,” A1.

96 For an in-depth discussion of the battle between the Gazette and Democrat and the closure of the former, see Donna Lampkin Stephens, If It Ain’t Broke, Break It: How

Corporate Journalism Killed the Arkansas Gazette (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas

Press, 2015).

97 Ibid., 196.

98 Gaylor Whiting, memo to Larry Strutton titled “Little Rock Newspaper War,”

June 26, 1995, folder “RMN—Little Rock Newspaper War,” box 19, Rocky Mountain

319

News Papers; “Strategic Planning Meeting,” May 30, 1996, folder “Strategic Planning,” box 2, Rocky Mountain News Papers; Bob Burdick, memo to Larry Strutton titled

“Suburbs,” November 5, 1996, folder “RMN—Suburbs,” box 17, Rocky Mountain News

Papers; Max Suiter, memo to executive staff from Larry Strutton, October 12, 1998, folder “RMN—Little Rock Newspaper War,” box 19, Rocky Mountain News Papers. In an interview with the researcher, Strutton said he could not remember looking to the

Little Rock newspaper war for comparison with the situation in Denver. Strutton, interview, 20.

99 “Suburbs,” November 5, 1996, 2.

100 Max Suiter, memo, October 12, 1998, 3.

101 Gaylor Whiting, June 26, 1995, 1.

102 Ibid., 2.

103 “News Plans Focus on Front Range,” Rocky Mountain News, January 3, 1996.

Single copies were also available in Colorado Springs and Aspen, outside the thirteen- county area.

104 Alicia C. Shepard and Suzan Revah, “Post Seeks a New General as Rocky

Retreats,” American Journalism Review, March 1996, 12–13.

105 Brad Smith, “Denver’s Newspaper War,” Denver Business Journal, June 22,

1997.

106 Singleton, interview, 8, 11.

107 Strutton, interview, 11.

108 Ibid.

320

109 Brad Smith, “Post Experimenting with Narrower Pages,” Denver Business

Journal, March 15–21, 1996.

110 “Letter from the Publisher,” Denver Post, July 22, 1996.

111 “People,” Denver Post, March 21, 1993.

112 Gene Amole, “Water Sure Isn’t Denver’s Darling,” July 25, 1996.

113 Broadcast transcript, KCNC Channel 4, 4:44 p.m., July 22, 1996, box 3, Rocky

Mountain News Papers.

114 Singleton, interview, 9.

115 Smith, “Denver’s Newspaper War.”

116 Ibid.

117 Strutton, interview, 10.

118 Ayer Directory of Publications (1981), 203; Gale Directory of Publications and Broadcast Media (1998), 268, 270.

119 Singleton, interview, 11–13.

120 Ibid.

121 Bartels, interview, 12.

122 Westergaard, interview, 17–18.

123 “Off Limits,” Westword, March 11, 1999.

124 Gale Directory of Publications and Broadcast Media (1999), 253, 255; Gale

Directory of Publications and Broadcast Media (2000), 253, 255.

125 Strutton, interview, 12.

126 Singleton, interview, 6.

321

127 Ibid.

128 Temple, interview, 8.

129 “News Announces Executive Changes,” Rocky Mountain News, April 28,

1998; John Temple, “From the Editor,” Rocky Mountain News, October 21, 1988.

130 Strutton, interview, 11–12.

131 Singleton, interview, 4.

132 Bartels, interview, 9.

133 Singleton, interview with Sue O’Brien, 1.

134 Singleton, interview, 13–14; William Burleigh, interview with Ken Ward,

February 15, 2018. Burleigh confirmed the dinner and that he and Singleton discussed entering into a JOA, although he did not remember having had earlier one-on-one dinners with Singleton.

135 Ibid.

322 Chapter 7. Decay: 2000–2009

The commencement of JOA talks between the Rocky Mountain News and Denver

Post marked the beginning of the end of the competition between the two newspapers.

This chapter charts the course navigated by the papers during the near-decade between summer 1999 and spring 2009. After reviewing the process by which the proposed JOA was negotiated and the terms of that agreement, which favored one party as a result of the financial underperformance of the other, the chapter documents how the JOA was proffered by the parent companies of the two papers, evaluated by the US Justice

Department, and, ultimately, approved. It then briefly explores the implementation of the

JOA and public reaction to its consequences—including higher prices—and draws attention to problems that were already beginning to cloud the News’s future. Following a review of the brief golden age of the JOA, during which both newspapers continued waging a vigorous editorial battle and their parent companies earned massive profits, the chapter turns to the long financial slide experienced by the Post and News symptomatic of the then-accelerating decline of the US newspaper industry. It concludes by exploring the brief, final battle between the papers for ultimate survival in Denver, the bittersweet victory of the Post, and the final days of the Rocky Mountain News.

This chapter, which concludes this dissertation’s narrative of the competition between the Post and News, does not attempt to provide a blow-by-blow account of the death of the News, nor does it delve deeply into the impact the paper’s closure had on its employees or Denver as a whole. That substantive task is left for other historical works, and much of that story has already been told in the pages of the final edition of the News.1

Furthermore, while of both relevance and interest to this work, it is not central to the

323 story of the competition between the two papers. Instead, the closure of the paper is here described in balance with the overall story of the history of the Post and News during the years between the onset of JOA negotiations and the closure of the News. The chapter does, however, spend more space reviewing the story of the News’s final year than the situation at the Post, a natural consequence of both the gravity of events at the News during the era and the character of the sources available for inclusion in this work.

“Life is Better Than Death”2

The decision to pursue a joint operating agreement with the Denver Post was well in keeping with Scripps’s century-old strategy toward newspaper competition. When

E.W. Scripps began building his newspaper empire in 1878, he did so largely by buying struggling newspapers and operating them on bare-bones budgets, an approach that often left him with subordinate newspapers.3 He coped with his weak competitive position by forming collusive agreements with stronger newspapers that ensured him a market for his products.4 This practice continued at Scripps-Howard after Scripps ceased day-to-day management of the chain, as exemplified by the collusive agreement negotiated by Roy

Howard in 1928 between the Rocky Mountain News and the Post.5

Five years later in 1933, Scripps-Howard was party to the formation of the first joint operating agreement in the United States, agreeing to mutually conduct all non- editorial functions of the newspaper, including jointly setting rates, operating one newspaper plant, and so on, between its Albuquerque Tribune and the rival Albuquerque

Journal.6 Sensing this agreement would likely set a precedent for future agreements and eager to dissuade the US Justice Department from branding joint operating agreements as in violation of federal antitrust laws, Roy Howard carefully excluded all editorial

324 operations from the Albuquerque arrangement, leaving both newsrooms independent of one another and suggesting to the public and government that JOAs did not decrease the editorial diversity of the communities in which they operated.

Howard’s high hopes for the future of JOAs were realized. Three more were formed in the 1930s, followed by four more in the 1940s and eight in the 1950s.7 These

JOAs were entered into without any action on the part of the US government that would have suggested its agencies thought such agreements were in violation of the law. That changed in 1965, when the Justice Department moved to block the renewal of a JOA between two Tucson newspapers, citing as violations of antitrust law such actions as price fixing, negotiating printing times (guaranteeing exclusive markets for each paper), and profit pooling. The case worked its way through the courts until 1969, when the US

Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s decision finding the Tucson JOA illegal. But newspaper owners had already begun lobbying for special protection for JOAs from

Congress, and in July 1970, the Newspaper Preservation Act was signed into law with the rationale that the anticompetitive practices inherent to JOA’s were offset by “the public interest of maintaining a newspaper press editorially and reportorially independent and competitive in all parts of the United States.”8 Opponents criticized JOAs for failing to produce any real editorial diversity in communities despite the presence of two newspapers and for doing little to prevent weak newspapers from eventually succumbing to market forces and dying.9

JOAs proliferated after the passage of the Newspaper Preservation Act, and by the late 1970s twenty-eight cities had JOA newspapers.10 The only consistent feature of all

JOAs was their insistence on editorial independence and inclusion of some degree of

325 cooperation on business matters such as revenue pooling, rate setting, printing schedules and so on. In other matters, the terms of JOAs varied widely. For example, the Columbus,

Ohio, JOA, which was managed by the Columbus Dispatch on behalf of both that paper and Scripps-Howard’s smaller Columbus Citizen-Journal, allocated roughly 75 percent of the venture’s profits to the Dispatch and was subject to renewal every twenty-five years until it was allowed to expire, without a single renewal, in 1985.11 The JOA joining the

Detroit Free Press with the Detroit News, meanwhile, which remains in place as of the publication of this dissertation, is maintained by a separate firm, the Detroit Newspaper

Agency, splits profits fifty-fifty between the two papers, and is scheduled to last until

2088.12 By the time the Detroit JOA was established in 1988, however, JOAs were already in decline. Among the first permanently discontinued or ended JOAs were those of Anchorage, Alaska, which was dissolved in 1979 after only five years of operation; St.

Louis, which was dissolved in 1984, leading to the closure of the St. Louis Globe-

Democrat two years later; and Columbus, Ohio, which was allowed to expire in 1985, leading to the closure of the Citizen-Journal. Even as a handful of new JOAs were created in the early 1990s, including agreements in York, Pennsylvania, and Las Vegas,

Nevada, JOAs were falling out of favor. By the end of the century, only thirteen JOAs remained in operation.13

JOAs were a favorite tool of Scripps-Howard for maintaining the profitability of its newspapers. By 1980, the Rocky Mountain News was the only Scripps-Howard paper not party to a JOA.14 There had been few times in the Denver market during which the creation of a JOA made sense. Before the 1980s, the News had been so subordinate to the

Post as to make a JOA unfavorable for the latter paper. By the late 1980s, the situation

326 had so rapidly changed that the News was sufficiently confident in its lead as to turn down a JOA in hopes of soon having the lucrative Denver market to itself.15 Thus, it was not until the Post and News were decimated by the penny war of the late 1990s that both newspapers were in a position in which a JOA seemed the best available option.

Singleton agreed during his August 1999 dinner with E.W. Scripps CEO William

Burleigh that it would be a good idea for the Post and News to consider a JOA. Attorneys for the two newspapers started scouting the boundaries of a potential agreement while withholding the finances of both papers. At the News, where publisher Strutton knew of no specific plan to enter into a JOA, the terms needed for a successful agreement were clear. Strutton remembers telling his superiors two things were needed: to print a Sunday newspaper if it was decided that only one paper would print on Sunday and to control the management of the JOA.16 Meanwhile, as months passed by, Singleton grew suspicious that his counterparts at Scripps were dragging preliminary talks out in an effort to gain the upper hand in Denver and leverage during JOA negotiations.17

Then, in December, representatives from the Post and Scripps met in New York to hammer out the details of the agreement. Before they could talk about specifics, however, the two papers shared details about their finances. Up to that point, Scripps had obscured the financial standing of the News by reporting the finances of its newspapers jointly in its Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Similarly, the Post, as a private company, had shielded its finances from view. Singleton had reason to believe the

News was in financial trouble, as Burleigh had said during their August dinner together that the News could be considered a “failing newspaper,” as required of at least one of the prospective partners by the Newspaper Preservation Act. But Scripps had no such insight

327 into its competitor and, consequently, little idea what its bargaining position would be opposite the Post.

When the books were opened, it became immediately clear that the two papers were not on equal footing. Precisely how bad the 1990s had been financially for the News depends on what one factors into the calculation of net income. From Scripps’s perspective, the decade had been a disastrous one. Its accounting showed the newspaper had lost money every year as far back as 1990, with the best year being 1997, during which the News lost $2.9 million.18 In all, the News lost $123.4 million from 1990 to

1999. When fees sent from the News to Scripps to cover management expenses, a share of the cost of Scripps’s Washington bureau, and similar costs were removed, the picture improved, but not enough to make the paper remotely profitable, leaving it with a $81.4 million loss. Driving the News’s losses was the depreciation of the printing plant it had built in the early 1990s. But even with this expense removed, the News lost an estimated

$2.6 million when management expenses were included.19

At the same time the News was struggling financially, the Post was not only surviving, but thriving. The Post did not disclose specific figures regarding its profitability during the 1990s in the JOA application of the News and Post, and the filing stated only that “the Post is profitable, even in the thick of its circulation price war with the News.”20 Rough figures provided by Singleton for this research support this claim.

According to Singleton, the Post had never had a loss year and, to the contrary, had consistently increased its annual net profits from the time he took control of the newspaper in 1987 until 1997, when the paper netted $44 million in profit.21 Using the most optimistic numbers, which exclude both intracorporate charges from Scripps as well

328 as depreciation and which do not accurately reflect the overall financial success of the newspaper, the News could be considered to have profited $39.4 million throughout the

1990s—less than the Post did in a single year. And as the News’s budget snapped in 1999 under the weight of the penny war, diving into the red even using the most generous accounting, the Post was still pulling in millions in profits.22

But the picture was not universally bleak for the News. Indeed, while it had incurred enormous losses from the depreciation of its printing plant and the penny war, those developments had led its circulation to skyrocket. After sliding during most of the mid- and late 1990s, partially as a result of its Front Range Plus program, the News’s circulation jumped by 19 percent daily and 17 percent on Sunday in 1999. The Post had made gains as well, but it picked up only about half of the new subscribers as its rival. In this respect, then, the penny war had served its purpose. The News had recaptured the daily circulation lead and was within grasp of the Sunday lead as well, which it had lost five years earlier.23

The News was also finding success on the advertising front, fueled by discounted advertising rates that, in theory, could draw advertisers away from the Post and, combined with the paper’s boosted circulation, lead the market to trend in favor of the

News. In 1999, the News controlled 53 percent of the total advertising market share, buoyed by a 55 percent share of Denver’s classified advertising.24 After trailing the Post by 2 percent in 1997, the News had taken a lead in retail advertising as well, and while it continued to struggle to appeal to national advertisers, it had improved its position by 3 percent, commanding 46.5 percent of national advertising.

329 The changes made at the News in the 1990s—Front Range Plus and the focus on

Denver, the penny war, and so on—were working. In many ways, the paper had once again seized the momentum of the market. But in the absence of a sudden breakdown of resolve by Singleton and the Post, handing over a quick victory and monopoly control of

Denver, the News’s program was unsustainable, particularly for a publicly held company with a newspaper division that was 7 percent less profitable as a result of the News’s losses.25

Thus, it was Scripps that approached the Post interested in a JOA, the News that assumed the designation of failing newspaper in JOA filings, and the Post that would receive the most favorable terms in the proposed agreement, either through a profit split that leaned toward the Post or a cash payment from Scripps to even out the discrepancy in profitability. The two parties chose the latter, with Scripps agreeing to pay the Post

$60 million in exchange for an equal share of the profits of the JOA.26 Even more costly for the News was a tenet of the JOA allowing only the Post to publish on Sunday, leaving the News to publish alone on Saturday as a broadsheet.27 The Post had definitively held the Sunday lead since 1995, having controlled it before 1990 as well. The parties decided that it would be most advantageous to hand the Sunday franchise exclusively to the newspaper that was strongest on that day. It was a move that would have enormous ramifications in the years that followed.

The remaining terms of what became the fifty-one page agreement outlined a joint vision for the Denver newspaper market in the twenty-first century. It asserted the News was in “probable danger of financial failure,” a requirement of the Newspaper

Preservation Act. To avoid this failure, the two newspapers would capitalize a separate

330 newspaper management company, the Denver Newspaper Agency, or DNA, which would be responsible for printing both newspapers as well as managing their circulations and selling their advertising space. After covering production and operation costs of the

DNA, income generated from advertising and circulation would be split evenly and distributed to the two newspapers’ owners, who would use the money to pay for the costs of running their editorial operations and count the excess as profit. Both the Post and

News would be responsible for financing and equipping their own editorial staffs, which would have no coordination and would produce wholly independent content. Each newsroom would be provided a predetermined newshole and color allocation for each edition by the DNA, although they could opt to pay for additional space or color in a particular issue if desired. The DNA would be managed by a committee of four, with two people appointed by the Post and two by the News. If approved by the Department of

Justice, the JOA would last fifty years, with options for renewal thereafter.

As attorneys and executives hammered out the details of the agreement in late

1999 and early 2000, both the Post and News continued operating as they had before negotiations began. Employees at the two papers were unaware a JOA was even under consideration.28 The penny war continued raging, driving circulations sky high, and advertising teams continued plying businesses for greater shares of their ad dollars.29 At the News, where efforts were under way to squeeze every cent available to finance the ongoing penny war, department heads were recommending drastic actions, such as closing important news bureaus in Colorado Springs and Boulder and replacing full-time positions with internships. They made such recommendations assuming the newspaper was earnestly in the throes of a life-or-death struggle. As one staffer said in pitching

331 penny-pinching ideas, “these are driven more from a win-the-war-now approach; once the war’s won, I’d reverse course.”30

The completed JOA was revealed to the public May 11, 2000, when MediaNews and Scripps filed their application with the Justice Department. Their argument in justification of the JOA was neatly summarized by Scripps CEO Burleigh in a press release issued the same day:

The substantial investment by Scripps in the News over the years had rewarded the Denver community with one of the finest and fastest growing newspapers in the country. . . . But that growth has come at tremendous cost to Scripps and its shareholders. Unfortunately, the simple reality of newspaper economics makes it clear that the hard fought battle for market share cannot be sustained for the long- term. We believe the joint operating agreement proposed here today is Denver’s best hope for preserving its rich newspaper heritage, of which the News has been an integral part for more than 140 years.31

The same rationale was presented in more formal terms to the Justice Department.

Competing media had eroded the industry’s customer base throughout the twentieth century, leading to a reduction in editorial diversity throughout the United States. In

Denver, the market had grown sufficiently intolerant of two major newspapers as to inflict sustained losses on the weaker News and therefore threaten its survival, despite the absence of a full-blown circulation spiral. To qualify as a failing newspaper, the application asserted, the News needed only to show a history of losses and the absence of a reasonable means of reversing them. The two newspapers had, in the 1990s, “remained locked in a death struggle, dueling feverishly with aggressive circulation, advertising, and news strategies” that left the News on the brink of failure despite having invested in the quality of its editorial product through its printing plant and Pulitzer-winning newsroom.32 Without the JOA, the proposal claimed, “the News’ continuing operating

332 losses threaten the paper’s survival, and endanger its editorial voice, within the foreseeable future.”33

All of this was news to the staffs of the two newspapers and particularly that of the News. Editor Temple remembered being called into an office along with other managers at the News on May 10 to meet with executives from Scripps. “We were told that the E.W. Scripps Company was going to file for a JOA,” Temple said. “There was no discussion with management. . . . It came completely out of the blue. We had no idea. We thought we were winning. We thought we were doing great.”34 The announcement rippled throughout the News’s executive team. Strutton, who was not interested in working with Singleton and others with the Post, knew he was being pushed out of the

News by the decision.35 So too was News president Robert Burdick, whose position was made obsolete by the DNA.36 But the announcement hit the newsroom particularly hard, leaving its journalists confused and angry. “Nobody felt like they were working at a failing newspaper,” Temple said. “They don’t want to be part of a failing—you tell competitive journalists you’re part of something failing. Forget it.”37 Others, such as longtime News columnist Gene Amole, were saddened to see a century of fierce competition ended by a JOA that “seems to turn that tradition upside down.”38 Some wrote songs memorializing the announcement.39 Linda Sease, a marketing executive at the News, tried to stay upbeat. “I think the best news in all of this is that the Denver

Rocky Mountain News will be here 50 years from now,” she told a reporter.40

The task now facing the executives of MediaNews and Scripps was convincing the Department of Justice that the News was failing, as evidenced by the $123 million in operating losses incurred by the paper in the 1990s, and that it would be in the public

333 interest for the JOA to be approved. Sensing that the contentious Detroit JOA, which was fought over between 1986 and 1989 and had to be settled by the US Supreme Court, had foundered because it lacked the support of the Detroit papers’ unions, MediaNews and

Scripps began lobbying the unions of the Post and News for their support.41 Letters backing the proposal were secured from each of the papers’ major unions just before the end of the JOA application’s public comment period, a move Singleton expected to help usher the proposal through the Department of Justice without the need for a public hearing.42 Such efforts were complemented by assurances from Scripps to Justice that it was committed to improving the editorial quality of the News rather than trimming the newsroom’s budget if the JOA was approved. One drafted letter pledged the addition of eleven full-time positions to the newsroom within the first year of the JOA and expressed hopes to increase the staff by as many as thirty-six in the years that followed.43

But while the two papers made promises of improvements and secured the buy-in of their unions, key stakeholders in the Denver community rose to vigorously oppose the

JOA. The most vocal of these was Jake Jabs, owner of American Furniture Warehouse.

Jabs, like many business owners in Denver, was a chief beneficiary of the competition between the News and Post, which drove advertising rates well below what would be expected in a market the size of Denver. Rates had been so low in the 1990s that the Post ran multiple “A” sections to appease advertisers who wanted to be in the front of the paper.44 “Advertisers loved [the competition],” Strutton said, “especially the ones that advertised in other markets. They knew that they got a heck of a buy at either newspaper.”45 Temple agreed, observing the competition between the papers stimulated

Denver’s economy and subsidized its businesses by driving down advertising rates.46

334 Those businesses were loath to surrender such special treatment. In July, Jabs filed a complaint with US Attorney General Janet Reno opposing the JOA on the grounds that the News was not actually losing an appreciable amount of money.47 Jabs also objected to predictions that a JOA would raise subscription and advertising rates at both newspapers, with prices potentially quadrupling.48 Jabs’s objection joined two others that had been filed with the attorney general’s office, one by a Denver freelancer challenging the

News’s claim to be a failing newspaper and another by the Association of Alternative

Newsweeklies opposing JOAs generally and the Denver proposal specifically for creating a monopoly.49 MediaNews president Lodovic later dismissed Jabs’s opposition as bluster by an advertiser suddenly facing the same kind of rates common to other major cities in the United States. “That’s to be expected,” Lodovic said, having experienced similar opposition to JOA proposals in other cities. “That kind of blowback lasts until they can’t afford not to advertise anymore.”50

The prospect of increased subscription and advertising rates was also not in conflict with the Newspaper Preservation Act. Instead, all that was at issue was whether the News was genuinely a failing newspaper. The Department of Justice’s Antitrust

Division, which was tasked with making a recommendation to the attorney general as to whether the public hearing requested by Jabs and others was necessary, determined after extensive research that required an extension of the division’s usual period of inquiry that the News was, in fact, failing. As a result, the Antitrust Division recommended on

September 8, 2000, that the JOA be approved without a hearing.51 All that stood between the News and Post and their JOA was the agreement of US Attorney General Reno.

335 Restructuring

Reno was not long in deciding. On January 5, 2001, she approved the Post/News

JOA, finding the News to be a failing newspaper and agreeing that the agreement would serve the purpose of the Newspaper Preservation Act by saving a second editorial voice for Denver.

Reno’s decision was based on a two-part test of the News as a failing newspaper, the measure recommended to her by the Antitrust Division following its own investigation. In her view, to qualify as failing, a newspaper need only prove “(1) the newspaper is suffering financial losses (2) that more than likely cannot be reversed,” and she specifically argued that the newspaper did not need to have entered a circulation spiral or be on the brink of financial failure.52 Regarding the first point, Reno accepted

Scripps’s stated losses, both with and without the inclusion of intracorporate charges, and noted that an independent analysis by the Antitrust Division had found the News to be “a considerable net detriment to Scripps.”53 To the second point, that the losses were more than likely irreversible, Reno cited the Post’s successes in mitigating the News’s gains as indication that no matter how aggressive the News was in its advertising and circulation tactics, it could not escape its losing battle against the Post. She also specifically addressed the claim by one public commenter that the penny war qualified as an

“unreasonable management practice” specifically designed to lose money and, thus, either qualify as a failing newspaper in a speculative JOA or win the war outright. “It may be that, upon reflection, the ‘penny paper’ strategy was a bad business decision for a newspaper that was already losing money,” Reno stated. “But there is no evidence that

336 the News and Scripps were incompetent or otherwise embarked on a plan to lose millions to weaken the paper and prepare for a JOA.”54

Reno similarly dismissed complaints by other public commenters that a JOA could result in advertising and subscription rate hikes. Indeed, she stated that both she and the Antitrust Division assumed price increases would follow JOA approval. But she accepted “that the gain of preserving the News’s editorial presence outweighs the negatives from any price increases.”55 Acknowledging the state of advertising and circulation parity between the two newspapers but pointing to the discrepancy in operating income as determinant, and noting the support of the application from the paper’s unions as well as Colorado Governor Bill Owens, the JOA was approved.

And so, after one hundred and eight years of vigorous competition, Denver’s newspaper war came to an end. In public comments after the announcement, Singleton,

Temple, and Post editor Glenn Guzzo praised the JOA as ushering in a period of increased editorial competition freed from the constraints of business concerns.56 From his vantage at the Denver Business Journal, former Post editor Westergaard saw an opportunity for the two papers to capture a competitive drive that perhaps had been overshadowed by the circus-like stunts the papers had concocted in the late 1990s to outsell each other.57 But no one denied that the business war—that is, the tactics that led to penny subscriptions for readers and rock-bottom advertising rates for businesses—was over. There was also a sense among the employees of the News and Post that the spirit of competition, which inhabited every department of both papers, had evaporated. “We’ve had such a mind-set that this is a winner-take-all kind of newspaper town,” the Post’s mailroom supervisor told one reporter. “And now it kind of feels like cooperate with the

337 enemy. I think a lot of people find that disappointing. It just feels weird right now.”58

Reporter Lynn Bartels stopped throwing copies of the News onto porches during her morning walks. “If you know Scripps-Howard, and you know the history of the JOA, you knew that we were on borrowed time,” she said.59

The Justice Department’s rules allowed the approved JOA to go into effect

January 22, but the two newspapers would not have to wait that long to begin making changes.60 Indeed, they had begun filling the Denver Newspaper Agency’s top positions within weeks of filing their application the previous spring. Tapped to head the DNA as president and CEO was Kirk MacDonald, who had previously been executive vice president and general manager of the Post before leaving in 1998 to run Hearst’s newspaper division.61 MacDonald’s position was an important one—he would be responsible for breaking most ties in votes by the DNA’s four-person board. Appointed alongside MacDonald was Scripps’s vice president of newspaper operations Jeff Hively, who served as the DNA’s executive vice president and chief operating officer.62 As the management team of the DNA was filled out in the following months, the agency began conducting its own market analyses to understand where the joint advertising and circulation operations would be situated in Denver’s media ecosystem. Such studies gave the Post, News, and DNA much to be excited about. Analyses suggested the total Denver media market was in 1999 worth about $1.3 billion, a whopping 21 percent of which was controlled by Yellow Pages, followed by the Post with 15 percent of the market share and the News with 14 percent. The JOA would create an advertising behemoth that would claim almost 29 percent, or $365 million, of the market.63 At the same time, the papers

338 would be eliminating their primary competitors—one another—allowing the DNA to raise advertising prices and capture an even greater share of the market.

But as business operations began shifting from the newspapers to the DNA in

January, setting the stage for both papers to make unprecedented profits in the future, the

JOA introduced entirely new problems for each paper’s newsroom, the only surviving independent vestiges of the News and Post. These complications were particularly pronounced at the News. The JOAs terms stipulated that the Post alone publish on

Sunday and the News on Saturday, both as broadsheets. For the Post, this meant businesses as usual, producing the largest and most lucrative newspaper of the week. But the News was tasked with creating an entirely new newspaper in a format it had not used since World War II.

The final Sunday edition of the Rocky Mountain News was published April 1,

2001, and the following Saturday, subscribers of both the Post and News received only one paper, the broadsheet News. Temple explained to readers that the Saturday News was printed as a broadsheet “to be a distinctive newspaper that felt comfortable to readers of both the News and Post.”64 The News staff poured time and energy into the Saturday edition, chocking it with high-quality editorial content in an effort to make it as close to a

Sunday edition as possible.65 But despite the paper’s strengths, News readers responded negatively to the change. It quickly became apparent that the problem was a serious one that threatened the paper’s readership. One July 2001 market analysis concluded that

News readers “do not just dislike the Saturday broadsheet,” but “dislike it passionately,” noting there was no reason to expect readers to warm up to the format and that they were either spending less time reading the Saturday broadsheet than they had the tabloid or

339 were foregoing reading it at all.66 Another study was even more blunt, finding that 45 percent of readers of the Saturday News “hated” the broadsheet format and that News readers were dismissive of the broadsheet Sunday Post as well.67 In effect, News readers were left without a newspaper that they liked on either Saturday or Sunday, regardless to which paper they subscribed.

Ironically, the broadsheet Saturday also reduced the number of differences apparent to readers between the News and Post, in spite of such differentiation being a core concern of the DNA. Before the JOA, each newspaper had sought ways to differentiate itself from its rival through its reporting and presentation, columnists, comics, wire and features services, and so on. In the end, however, the divergence in format had often been sufficient alone to secure for each paper a unique readership.68

Now, with a single format on weekends and a single business management structure, the

DNA had to work hard to find ways to convince readers that Denver still had two distinct newspapers and should subscribe to at least the one that most appealed to their tastes or, optimally, to both. The News, Post, and DNA focused on marketing the newspapers in such a way as to play to public perceptions of the differences between the two products.

The Post, for example, had long cultivated a readership comprised of Denver’s white- collar classes. Its content played to that audience’s interests. When asked how they perceived the Post in one readership study, common descriptors were “intellectual,”

“international,” “national,” “respected,” and “establishment.”69

Meanwhile, the News, especially after the financial need to appeal to higher- income demographics was removed by the pooling of advertising receipts through the

DNA, was happy to build on its reputation as Denver’s blue-collar paper—a designation

340 it had embraced, to varying degrees, since Scripps’s earliest days of ownership. Top attributes given by readers for the News included “working class,” “fun,” “adventurous,”

“innovative,” and “investigative.”70 After being promoted to publisher and editor of the

News the summer after Strutton’s January 2001 departure, Temple sought to capitalize on the close relationship between his newspaper and its working-class readership.71 On the advice of longtime News columnist Gene Amole, he began publishing a weekly column in which he spoke directly to the paper’s readers about why the News had done what it had over the past week.72 Such was designed to set Temple and his paper apart from the

Post, where such an intimate relationship between publisher Singleton and average

Denverites did not exist.

Similar decisions at both newspapers contributed to a concerted effort by all parties, both within the DNA and in the newsrooms, to manage the public’s perceptions of the two brands and, as Temple said, “to make sure that neither brand got out of whack with the other.”73 The two newspapers were promoted in such ways as to encourage people to subscribe to whichever was most in need of readers to keep circulations regulated and, consequently, to keep advertising rates desirably high. As a result of brand image calibrations by the DNA and the efforts of each newsroom to best serve their unique readerships, two distinct editorial products persisted. Such served the stated purpose of the Newspaper Preservation Act while helping the DNA’s bottom line. “There was a clear differentiation between their [the News’s] reader and our reader,” Lodovic said, “and as long as the readership of both was significant enough, advertisers had to advertise in both.”74

341 But those advertisers could not be relied upon until they accepted the new reality brought about by the legal monopoly that was the DNA. The deeply discounted rates of the newspaper war began disappearing in the lead up to the full implementation of the

JOA in April 2001, the same time the News ceased publication of its Sunday edition.75 By

May, DNA president and CEO MacDonald announced that more than 95 percent of the

2,100 advertisers previously under contract with the two papers had signed new agreements.76 Those who had left the flock, DNA representatives said, were those who had been advertising merely to take advantage of unprofitably low ad rates.77 But others, including major advertiser Jake Jabs, proved intransigent, going so far as to develop a coalition of JOA critics that filed for an injunction against the implementation of the agreement.78 The filing was dead on arrival, but it prompted a public tit-for-tat between

Jabs and Post publisher Singleton in which Jabs called the newspapers “greedy” and

Singleton, in reply, called Jabs a “bully, a liar and a deceptive business man.”79 Jabs pulled all advertising for his American Furniture Warehouse chain from both the News and Post, shifting his ads to other Denver media, and particularly television, running spots that claimed he was dropping prices as a result of his no longer having to pay for newspaper advertising.80 Despite the bluster, Jabs eventually cut a deal with the DNA, and his ads returned to the Post and News two months after his boycott began.81 But resistance to the DNA’s strong-arm tactics with advertisers only grew as Denver’s economy flagged with the onset of the early 2000s recession. By October, advertisers said the DNA had eased its hardline approach to rates and was again making deals, especially for advertisements in the struggling Saturday News, in response to discouraging ad volumes.82

342 Readers, too, would face sticker shock when the time came to renew their subscriptions resulting from post-JOA rate hikes. Thousands had locked in promotionally priced subscriptions in the thick of the penny war, signing up for a year’s worth of six days a week of either paper for $3.12. A year later, the cost of an annual daily subscription to either the Post or News had jumped to $137.50.83 Certain promotions could pull that price closer to what readers were used to—Denverites could receive the

News Friday through Monday plus holidays for $26 or the Post for $36—but the days of penny papers were history.84 Readers aired their objections by dropping subscriptions to the papers in droves. When in 2000 it reached its peak daily circulation of 427,000, a figure lofted by the penny war, the News carried so many subscribers that it alone accounted for 29 percent of the daily circulation of Scripps’s entire nineteen-property newspaper division.85 In 2001, the first year of the JOA, the News shed 24 percent of its daily circulation, representing a loss of 104,000 subscriptions. But ditching those readers was, to a degree, a calculated decision by the DNA to bring circulations back in line with expenses. During the penny war, the drive to have the highest circulation led the newspapers to overproduce, spending money on newsprint, ink, and press workers that did not result in equivalent advertising and circulation revenue. From the DNA’s perspective, falling circulations were far from worrisome. They were necessary.

Cash Cow

Adjustments to advertising and circulation rates were also extremely effective at producing financial results, extending the Post’s profitability into the twenty-first century while converting the News from a gadfly to a gold mine for Scripps. Changes made by the DNA to the News’s subscription rates and circulation figures, for example, rapidly

343 yielded higher returns. In 2000, the paper received an average of $29 in circulation revenue for each subscriber.86 By 2004, that figure had improved to $71 per subscriber, a

145 percent increase. Such improvements drove the News’s net income back into the black. In 2001, JOA implementation costs and low profits from the DNA kept the News down, resulting in a net loss for Scripps of $12.2 million.87 But the situation improved materially in 2002. In that year, the DNA paid Scripps $30.2 million for its share of the

JOA’s profits, leaving Scripps with $9.4 million in profits after accounting for the expenses of operating its newsroom. In 2003, the DNA paid Scripps $37.9 million resulting in a $15.3 million profit on the News; in 2004, the DNA paid $36.6 million, yielding the News a $13.8 million profit.88 At that rate, the financial losses of the 1990s

News would be wiped out within ten years and possibly before the end of the decade.

Direct figures for the privately held Post are not available. However, its share of the

DNA’s profits would have been equal to Scripps’s, and, considering the Post controlled its costs to such an extent that it managed to remain profitable even during the penny war, it stands to reason that its net profits met or exceeded those of the News. The fight for

Denver was over, and both papers were the winners.

Soaring profits emboldened the newspapers to make good on their promises to the

Justice Department to invest in their newsrooms post-JOA. Between 2001 and 2004,

Scripps increased the editorial budget of the News by more than $2.5 million a year.89

That extra cash enabled News reporters to travel more freely and gave the newsroom the ability to hire more freelancers, expand its polling for the 2004 election, and invest in new equipment. It also allowed the newsroom staff to grow. Enough payroll was added to the News in 2004 to fund almost three new full-time reporters, and the paper had

344 commitments from Scripps to further grow the newsroom by nearly eight employees in the following two years.90 Through a three-year recalibration of News salaries, which pulled low newsroom pay rates up to the national average, employees were treated to higher pay that encouraged them to stay at the paper.91

Investments made in the News’s editorial staff were frequently mirrored by the

Post, whose newsroom also swelled post-JOA. While the News struggled to adapt to its new broadsheet Saturday in 2001, Singleton doubled the size of the Post’s Washington bureau, hired experienced national and international reporters, and spent lavishly to send reporters around the world and to purchase extra newshole from the DNA in which it printed extra news.92 As the News’s staff grew from 2001 to 2004, the Post’s expanded at an equal rate, maintaining about thirty-five more full-time reporters than its competitor throughout the period.93 In late 2003, seventeen of those reporters were covering the

Post’s metro beats, limiting the News’s ability to distinguish itself through its coverage of

Denver. “The staffing gap between the News and Post remains a critical issue,” one passage in the News’s 2004 plan read. “We can say all we want about how we work harder and smarter, how we hire better people, but in the end numbers do matter.”94

The enlarged and better-equipped newsrooms of the Post and News were thus armed to fight the final battles of the Denver newspaper war, the scope of which was contractually limited by the JOA to editorial matters. To some extent the passion of the war was muted by the business truce—in 2003, Temple was quoted saying he feared the

News was in danger of becoming a utility, and rekindling the passion of the war was made a priority.95 But in other ways, the drive to outperform the rival newsroom was as strong as ever. Both spectators and participants observed that despite the technical truce

34 5 brought about by the JOA, the editorial battle raged on, in some ways with greater ferocity than had previously been possible. The shifting of business functions to the DNA left both newsrooms to prosecute the fight with greater freedom than ever before, particularly in terms of publishing stories that might otherwise have resulted in retribution from advertisers, such as a 2003 series highlighting the impact of rapid real estate development on local water supplies.96 This suggests that despite its many limitations, the ability of the Newspaper Preservation Act to encourage editorial competition and diversity was more than theoretical. In Denver, the JOA between the

News and Post directly stoked the fires of rivalry. Those readers who shouldered the increased subscription rates post-JOA benefitted from strong content such as the News’s

2007 series “The Crossing.” The story of a 1961 collision between a school bus and a train outside of Greeley, Colorado, “The Crossing” was told in thirty-three parts over a span of one and a half months. The print version was accompanied by a dedicated website where the story was told in text, photos, videos, and audio narrations, and the work sparked so much interest that public forums were held in Denver and Greeley to discuss the project. “The Crossing” was later nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. The paper would claim three Pulitzer Prizes in the years following the

Columbine High School shootings in 1999, for which both the News and Post received the award.97 All were for the News’s photography and feature writing—two areas in which the newspaper sought to distinguish itself against the Post.

With both profits and productivity high in 2004, Denver’s newspapers had good reason to be optimistic. Yet signs warned that the long-term problems both newspapers had fought as independent entities were intensifying. While a drop in circulations had

346 been expected to follow the launch of the JOA, market analyses began indicating that readership trends were shifting in undesirable ways. Some of this was attributed directly to the penny war, which was thought to have acclimated readers to unfeasibly low subscription rates.98 While it was true that shedding unprofitable subscribers was in the best financial interests of the DNA, it would have been even more beneficial to retain such subscribers by convincing them to pay higher rates, but doing so proved difficult.

Readership of the News slid through 2003, followed by a similar drop for the Post.99

Furthermore, the decreases were not only a matter of eliminating duplication, in which readers who had taken advantage of penny prices and subscribed to both newspapers dropped one while keeping the other. As one study reported only a year after the start of the JOA, the number of Denverites who did not read any newspaper on a given weekday had increased by 140,000.100 Part of the problem for the News was disruption to newspaper reading habits resulting from dissatisfaction with the Saturday broadsheet.101

Reader habits were further affected by the growing influence of the Internet, although there is no evidence the newspapers perceived the web as a serious threat to their profitability. Simultaneously, the DNA was still struggling to secure the volume of advertising that it had hoped the JOA would maintain, its customers languishing in a tepid economy or, in the case of department stores, testing out the value of other advertising media.102

Similar patterns were present throughout the American newspaper industry as a whole, as illustrated by the Pew Research Center’s first “State of the News Media” report in 2004.103 That study showed that despite a growing national population, the total circulation of US newspapers had fallen at a rate of about 1 percent a year since 1990,

347 and by 2000 the number of households that subscribed to at least one newspaper had fallen to 53 percent.104 Far more alarming was slippage among younger readers, who became less likely to read newspapers as time passed.105 One bright spot in the report was that advertising revenue remained extremely strong, with one study of thirteen publicly traded newspaper companies finding such papers could expect pretax profit margins of around 19 percent into 2003. But when newspapers were considered in the context of the larger media ecosystem, which included the Internet, the prospect of such strong profits in the future became tenuous. “If online proves to be a less useful medium for subscription fees or advertising, will it provide as strong an economic foundation for newsgathering as television and newspapers have?” the report asked. “If not, the move to the Web may lead to a general decline in the scope and quality of American journalism, not because the medium isn’t suited for news, but because it isn’t suited to the kind of profits that underwrite newsgathering.”106

Economic Realities

In August 2006, the staffs of the News and Post began working in a new $100 million building constructed in the very heart of Denver’s downtown, looking over both the Colorado state capitol and the Denver city and county building.107 The News took the fifth floor of the eleven-story building, with the Post just above it on six, the DNA taking space on floors seven through ten, and MediaNews Group claiming the top floor. Given the state of the newspaper industry at the time—downward circulation trends were accelerating and new Internet advertising models siphoning away revenues—the decision to construct such an expensive building, as well as a separate, $135 million press facility, was a statement of confidence in the future of Denver’s newspapers. “We have two very

348 smart and very intelligent owners,” Harry Whipple, who took over as head of the DNA in

2006, told a reporter.108 “They would not be investing a quarter of a billion dollars unless they saw a future return from their investment.”109 He pointed to the construction as proof that the newspaper industry was not dying but was merely passing through “the most marvelous time in transition and change in the newspaper industry in the last 40 years.”

Such optimistic statements clearly had an element of public relations savviness behind them, but company documents show that while the members of the JOA were seeking ways to capitalize on the Internet, they were slow to understand how rapidly it was threatening their business model. Studies as early as 2004 stated that decreases in daily print readership were roughly equivalent with increases in web traffic, suggesting that a shift was under way, especially among readers with household incomes of $25,000 to $50,000—the blue-collar readers the News sought to serve.110 Other studies attributed such changes to readers taking the value of Denver’s newspapers for granted, partially due to the lasting impact of the penny war’s cheap subscription rates.111 One such report noted that while the effects of migration to the web were directly impacting subscriptions, pointing to figures such as the 8 percent of readers who stopped subscribing after beginning to use the newspapers’ websites and the 21 percent who read the papers less frequently after going online, the newspapers still dominated the market in classified and shopping advertising.112 In late 2006 leaders at the newspapers were only beginning to grasp the full impact the Internet was having on their bottom lines, identifying its effect as distinct from the gradual circulation slide of the 1990s and early 2000s.113

The Internet was not the only problem facing Denver’s newspapers. While penny prices were believed to be discouraging subscriptions halfway through the decade, the

349 widely disliked Saturday broadsheet continued impacting subscriptions as well. A 2003 study observed that “News readers lament the format change to which they must adapt on weekends.”114 Two years later, Temple half-heartedly celebrated in one company report that the News had managed to maintain more paid daily readers that the Post “even though we don’t have the Sunday paper and alienate our loyal readers with a broadsheet on Saturday.”115

Temple later said that while opposition to the Saturday broadsheet subsided over time, News readers never forgave the JOA for taking away their weekend paper. “The problem was that it satisfied neither side,” Temple said.116 That weakness posed a critical threat to a newspaper whose main advantage was its format. As a result, despite committing extensive resources to the paper and making it a rival to the Sunday Post, the

Saturday News wound up being one of the most critical failings of the JOA. “Rocky readers didn’t like the format, the Post readers didn’t like it because it wasn’t organized the way they were used to, it didn’t have the same writers, they didn’t understand it, it seemed to be coming out of nowhere, and it didn’t look like any paper they were used to,” Temple said.117 The dissatisfaction with the Saturday issue pushed advertisers away from the edition, damaging the JOA’s bottom line and, subsequently, the profits delivered to Scripps and MediaNews. But more importantly for the News, it left the paper without a strong weekend product. In a JOA market flush with cash, as was Denver in the early years of the agreement, being weak on the weekend was not important, as long as the slack was picked up by the partner newspaper. But if something were to happen to the market that threatened the existence of the JOA, encouraging the closure of one of the

350 newspapers to avoid splitting profits between two properties, the absence of a robust weekend presence could mark a newspaper as the more likely candidate for closure.

Regardless of its ongoing format struggles and the clouding forecast of the newspaper industry, the mid-2000s were not years of gloom at the News. Indeed, the newspaper launched innovative web projects that sought to capitalize on the shift of readers and advertisers to the Internet. The most substantial of these was YourHub.com, a community journalism project produced by the News with support from the DNA.118

Observing that advertisers still resistant to JOA ad rates were migrating to suburban newspapers who could offer businesses targeted audiences at lower rates than the Denver papers, the News launched YourHub.com to undercut the shift by beating the suburban papers to the web. The newspaper created forty-two websites for communities around

Denver and enabled anyone to publish any non-obscene content to them.119 Once the project went live April 28, 2005, News journalists sifted through the user-generated content to find the best community news, pushing it to the front page of each local site.120

The content from the YourHub pages was then siphoned into templated pages for fifteen weekly print sections of the News with a total circulation of 408,000. It was an early example of a top-tier major metropolitan newspaper embracing user-generated content and community journalism, and it received criticism in major trade publications including

Editor and Publisher as being little more than a public bulletin board.121 But a year and a half after its launch, YourHub.com was pulling in more than a half-million page views each month and turning a 26 percent profit. Similar projects such as RockyPreps.com, a website that curated high school sports scores and news, struggled to find advertising success but drew page views from student athletes and parents across the state.

351 Meanwhile, both the Post and News were among the top choices of Denverites for online information, particularly for breaking and local news.122 Page view and unique visitor statistics are scarce, but between January and August 2005, the Post attracted roughly 94 million page views from 18 million unique visitors, while the News netted 83 million page views from 13 million unique visitors.123 Combined, the two DNA newspapers netted an average 22 million page views per month during the period. While substantial, both newspapers failed during the era to stave off advances by competitors for both advertising and news content, ceding important ground to companies both in and out of Denver. On the news front, Denver’s NBC television affiliate, KUSA Channel 9, sometimes outperformed both the News and Post on key measures, including site most frequently visited for news and information, by several percentage points.124 Even core

News and Post website users were being pulled away by 9 News in 2006 market studies.

At the same time, classifieds website Craigslist was rapidly rising to tear away jobs, automotive, real estate, and buy/sell/trade advertising, threatening many of the few remaining advertising niches the newspapers had left.125

But the Post and News were not just competing against outsiders. Frequently, the web strategy enacted by Scripps and MediaNews drove the two to needlessly compete with each other online, allowing 9 News and other rivals to capitalize on fragmented audiences and draw them to their own content. Both the News and Post operated their own websites built upon different platforms, limiting the ability of the DNA to control the layout and content of the sites. In the middle of the decade, the publishing platform used by the News was so restrictive that journalists were unable to edit page metadata for search engine optimization.126 At the same time, the News and Post competed to draw

352 traffic to their own websites. When the terms of the JOA and composition of the DNA were negotiated in 1999 and 2000, isolating content in separate websites was intuitive.127

They were seen as extensions of the newspapers, typically featuring the same content that appeared in the print editions of the News and Post, and while both papers were actively developing their web presences, neither had a clear vision of how important the Internet would become to their success as readers migrated away from print and onto the web.

But as Temple explained, the status quo established at the start of the JOA did not have to continue indefinitely, especially as the impact of the web became clear in the mid-2000s:

The web strategy of the JOA was insane. . . . Think about it. Now you’re a web user. Your relationship with the brands and format is gone. What do you want? You want speed, you want great stuff, you know, there something else you want. Now, suddenly, the JOA had to deal with two web publishing systems. . . . Scripps ran its web operation, the Post ran its web operation, and the agency had nothing to do with running either of them. It was just a mess.128

In retrospect, Temple said the DNA should have shifted away from concentrating certain types of content on the papers’ separate websites, which were segregated as vigorously as were the print editions of the papers, and instead created new digital news properties under the supervision of single newsrooms. As a model, he offered YourHub.com, a project managed by the News for the benefit of the DNA as a whole. Temple envisioned a string of similar projects, such as independent skiing, hiking, and other tourism-oriented websites managed by one paper or the other on behalf of the JOA, reducing the duplication of such content and strengthening the DNA’s position against other web publishers. The News of the 2000s saw components of its identity, much of which was wrapped up in its tabloid format, torn away, first by the Saturday broadsheet and later by

353 the Internet. Further differentiating the DNA’s web products could have allowed the

News to reclaim for itself a brand identity that, when stripped of its format, was largely reliant on tone and style, two traits that had followed from, not led, the News’s tabloid appearance.

In the absence of a stronger web strategy, both the Post and News were laid bare to the ravages of a rapidly declining newspaper industry, which slumped beginning in

2004 before sharply falling in 2005, 2006, and 2007.129 After nearly leveling out industry-wide in 2003, US daily circulations declined by about 1 percent in 2004, 2.6 percent in 2005, 2.8 percent in 2006, and 2.5 percent in 2007. In total, national daily circulations fell 8.4 percent between 2007 and 2001, when the Denver JOA began, while

Sunday circulations were off by 11.4 percent. Declining circulations contributed to an economic downturn throughout the industry that began in 2005 and gained momentum thereafter. It was led by many factors—increasing newsprint prices from 2003 through

2005, flattening ad revenue followed by a 7 percent drop in 2007 (driven by decreases in retail display advertising and an inability of newspapers to command high ad rates resulting from their weakening circulations), and the evaporation of classified advertising. These problems combined to spur a 42 percent drop in the value of publicly held newspaper companies from 2004 to 2007.

Worsening conditions throughout the industry quickly impacted Scripps newspapers, especially its JOA properties. The first victim was the Birmingham

(Alabama) Post-Herald, a five-day-a-week afternoon newspaper in a JOA with Advance

Publications’ larger Birmingham News. When the Post-Herald published its last edition on September 23, 2005, its circulation had shrunk to 7,544, and Scripps attributed the

354 closure to unfavorable economic conditions at the afternoon paper.130 Two years later, on

December 31, 2007, the JOA between Scripps’s afternoon Cincinnati Post and Gannett’s

Cincinnati Enquirer was allowed to expire, with Scripps shuttering its paper, which had been published for one hundred and twenty-six years, immediately thereafter.131 Then, on

February 23, 2008, the Albuquerque Tribune, a newspaper from which the Rocky

Mountain News had drawn talented journalists and innovative techniques for decades, ceased publication, ending the first JOA in history and leaving Journal Publishing Co.’s

Albuquerque Journal alone in the field.132 The closure left the News alone, too, as the last surviving JOA newspaper within the Scripps flock.

Scripps’s unloading of its JOA newspapers reflected the difficult economic conditions falling across the industry, but it also highlighted the company’s shifting priorities. Its newspapers struggling, the company turned to other assets, particularly its growing cable television properties, for support. For years, the company had used the revenues from its profitable newspapers to subsidize other investments. It had supported the News in such a way for decades, banking on the hope that it would someday control the Denver market and produce high yields. So too did the company direct profits into entrepreneurial projects such as HGTV, Food Network, and Travel Channel. As the newspaper market declined, the company shifted its attention to those ventures, which had become immensely profitable, to the detriment of newspapers, which were now yielding lower returns. “They didn’t treat newspapers in any denigrating [way]—they liked what we did,” said Temple, who was vice president of news in Scripps’s newspaper division in the second half of the decade in addition to being editor and publisher of the

News. “But if you woke up in the morning and you could think about page 3 of the Rocky

355 Mountain News or the new HGTV show or the new Food Network show, what would you think about? They were smart.”133

As 2008 continued following the closure of the Albuquerque Tribune, the magnitude of the threat facing Denver’s newspapers came into focus, pressuring the

News and Post on multiple fronts. First, after posting profits of more than $60 million in

2002, 2003, and 2004, the DNA never again produced such substantial results for its owners. In 2005, with its profits cut by expenses involved in the construction of the new

DNA building, the agency provided Scripps with only $15.8 million, handing the News a

$8 million loss after newsroom expenses were subtracted.134 Then, as the full impact of the industry’s decline impacted the city, profits to each paper sank to $9 million in 2006, leaving the News short an estimated $15 million.135 DNA profits rebounded in 2007, yielding each paper $19 million. But in 2008, the decline in newspaper circulations industry-wide accelerated to 4.6 percent daily and 4.8 percent Sunday.136 Industry advertising revenues slipped by 13 percent in the first quarter of 2008, then dropped to 15 percent in the second quarter and 18 percent in the third quarter.137 Compounding the sharp decline in print revenues was a downtick in digital ad revenues, which fell 2.4 percent in the latter nine months of 2008. Subject to the same pressures as the rest of the industry, DNA profits to its papers fell again in 2008 to $9.5 million.138 At the News, which trimmed its budget by millions through payroll and benefits reductions, such dismal profits cost Scripps an estimated $13 million. Losses were likely similar, if not slightly higher, at the Post.139

As the recession deepened throughout 2008, and after years of deterioration in the larger newspaper industry, the likelihood grew that one of the JOA’s partners would have

356 to close. If either the News or Post closed, and if millions of dollars were cut from the surviving newspaper’s expenses, and if that paper managed to maintain the DNA’s 2008 income, it might be able to break even or even eke out a small profit. The question, then, was which newspaper would go. Thus, not even a decade after the implementation of the

JOA, the Post and News found themselves locked in another war of attrition. This time, however, the prize was not massive profits but mere survival.

Death

There were clear signs, however, that the odds of the Post surviving were better than those favoring the News. Foremost among these was the spinning off of Scripps’s cable network division from the E.W. Scripps Company into Scripps Networks

Interactive, a move announced in October 2007 and effected in July 2008.140 The move protected Scripps’s valuable cable assets from its struggling newspaper division. After peaking in 1999 at $271 million, the newspaper division’s operating profits sank throughout the 2000s, falling markedly in 2004 and 2005 before tanking in the years that followed.141 While still profitable, the division managed only $71 million in profits in

2008.142 Meanwhile, Scripps Networks, the company’s cable network division, exploded from operating profits of $34 million in 1999 to $648 million in 2008, more than compensating for the losses of its newspapers.143 Publicly owned Scripps had built

Scripps Networks on the back of its newspaper and broadcast television divisions, sustaining $49 million in losses while the cable channels got on their feet from 1993 through 1997.144 But newspaper division profits slipped by $53 million in 2006 alone, before the onset of the recession.145 With no reason to expect an industry turnaround, the siloing of Scripps Networks away from the company’s news divisions exposed Scripps’s

357 interests in preserving high returns for the company’s growth-centric investors and deep concerns about the lasting viability of its investments in broadcast television and, in particular, newspapers.146

Singleton’s MediaNews Group, meanwhile, was a newspaper company that happened to own a few broadcast television stations. Unlike Scripps, it was not a diversified media company—it would live or die by its papers. It was also shielded from public scrutiny, allowing Singleton discretion in deciding how long to wait out the News in Denver. The evidence suggests the Post was suffering just as much, if not more so, than the News financially.147 But as Temple observed, the question of which paper would survive in Denver ultimately came down to a test of will and the differing degrees of agency afforded by public versus private ownership:

Dean could make a personal decision. “I want to be the most powerful publisher, journalist, that kind of person, in Denver. I’m willing to make sure I can do that, and I’m smart enough”—and he is smart enough. “I’m smart enough to make that happen. And goddamn it, I’m going to make it happen.” Scripps: “Of course we want to be leaders in Denver, but really? There’s other things. Yeah, we want to do that, but we want to do other things, too.”148

When the DNA’s partners began discussing a Denver newspaper market with only one paper, Singleton expressed the same idea to Scripps. “I wasn’t going to close the Post,” he later said. “I live here, I raise my kids here, I’m a newspaper junkie, and it was the flagship of our company.”149 But he also articulated one other major reason the Post should be the surviving paper—its control of the Sunday franchise. Thus, Singleton said, whether Scripps left the field or whether the two parties negotiated split ownership of the

Post, his paper should be the survivor, although he left the door open to a buyout offer from Scripps if that company strongly wanted the News to be the last paper standing.150

358 On December 4, 2008, Scripps president and CEO Rich Boehne and senior vice president of the company’s newspaper division Mark Contreras walked into the newsroom of the Rocky Mountain News and informed its staff that the newspaper was for sale.151 Boehne said that if a buyer did not step forward within four to six weeks, the

News could be closed.

Reactions in the newsroom were mixed. Some people cried. Some cracked macabre jokes to ease the tension. Some got on their phones and started calling around about new jobs. Others, acknowledging they had already watched as the industry crumbled around them for years, nevertheless expressed shock. “I’m very disappointed if this means the end of the Rocky Mountain News,” said Janet Reeves, who had worked at the paper for twenty-six years and was then senior editor for multimedia and photography. “It’s a very special place.”152

Ultimately, they knew they were largely powerless to change the paper’s fate, which could only be saved by the most brazen investor who would be willing to buy a

JOA newspaper in the midst of a deepening recession during the greatest period of decline in the history of the industry. Boehne noted that the best-case scenario for the paper was “that somebody says, ‘I have always wanted to own the Rocky Mountain News and this is my opportunity to do it.’”153 And as the Post knew, such miracles were possible—it was such a twist of fate that had brought Singleton to buy that paper as

Times Mirror stretched the Post’s neck across the chopping block. But as former News editor Michael Howard observed, the industry in 2009 bore little resemblance to that of the past, and he said that he didn’t “know anyone dumb enough to buy a newspaper” in

359 that climate.154 Singleton agreed. “I don’t believe anybody thinks the Rocky can be sold,” he told a Post reporter at the time.155

As the following weeks would show, they were right. The announcement that the

News was on the market, despite sending shockwaves through the industry as a harbinger of worsening times, did attract the attention of potential buyers who were curious enough about the prospect of owning the oldest newspaper in Colorado to consider it.156 But

Temple, who was responsible for meeting with interested parties, said two things scared them off. The first was obvious—the economic crisis in which the recession compounded the decay of newspapers’ revenues. The second stemmed from the JOA, which, after yielding the News substantial profits in its early years, was now a liability. “Who would go into a partnership fifty-fifty where you can’t control your economic fate?” Temple later said. “It’s a fifty-fifty partnership. You’re in partnership with a guy who has a long history in the newspaper industry and has a deep reputation. No one was willing to get into that bed.”157

While Scripps tried to find a buyer, members of the News staff began preparing for the worst. Plans had been under way for months to create a series of features for the newspaper’s one-hundred-and-fifty-year anniversary, which was to be celebrated in April

2009. Suddenly, it was possible that the paper might not make it that far. Even worse, if the News did wind up closing, it was possible that the announcement might come without giving the newsroom a chance to create a farewell edition. To guard against this possibility, Temple oversaw the creation of two distinct news products, each of which was carefully designed so as to be relevant regardless of the paper’s fate. First, he guided the small group of journalists creating content for the anniversary in such a way that their

360 work could be quickly recast and published as a retrospective on the News’s history in the event the paper suddenly closed. At the same time, at the recommendation of video journalist Sonya Doctorian, he oversaw the creation of a documentary that could satisfy any of three possible scenarios: sale, closure, or, if the paper somehow survived under

Scripps ownership, the hectic period of uncertainty into which the News’s staff had been thrust. As it was created, holes were left in the video into which footage resulting from any of the scenarios could be inserted to create the finished product.

As four weeks, and then six weeks, and then two months passed with no sale announcement, the full weight of the News’s fate began to settle in. But the paper’s journalists and readers continued lobbying to anyone who would listen in an effort to save the newspaper. IWantMyRocky.com, a website launched after Scripps announced it was trying to find a buyer for the paper, collected more than one hundred and eighty comments over the course of several weeks calling for the paper’s preservation, testimonials that the site displayed along with links to contact Scripps and Colorado’s senators and representatives.158 And on the frigid, blustery night of January 29, about three hundred News staffers and readers congregated in front of the Denver Press Club and marched to the DNA building, where they held a candlelight vigil in support of the paper’s preservation. Colorado historian Tom Noel, dressed as News founder William

Byers, led the procession and lighted the first candle, passing the flame forward along a line of people that stretched from one end of the building to the other.159 “Save our

Rocky,” participants chanted as traffic flowed past.

It was not until nearly a month later, thirteen weeks after the paper was initially put on the sale block, that hope for the paper’s future was finally squelched. Rumors

361 began filtering into the News’s newsroom early Thursday, February 26, 2009, that a plane carrying Scripps executives was scheduled to arrive in Denver at 9 a.m.160 Reporters checked with their own sources, combed the Internet, and turned to Westword, the

Denver Business Journal, and the city’s other news outlets for more information. Only minutes later, finance editor David Milstead was able to confirm that Scripps executives were indeed in town. Later that afternoon, Boehne and Contreras were once again in the newsroom, but rather than bearing surprises, this time they brought the news everyone knew was coming. The News would cease publication after the following day’s edition.

The paper’s one hundred and eighty eligible employees would split about $4.8 million in severance—a figure that would not become clear until after two months of negotiation— but their jobs had finally been eliminated, leaving them facing weak employment prospects in an imploding industry.161 Singleton had won control of the Denver market, and in exchange, he allowed Scripps to exit the JOA cleanly, leaving the Post to shoulder

$130 million in debts accumulated by the DNA as it struggled to adjust to the economic downturn.162

After peppering the executives with questions and consoling one another, the

News’s journalists threw themselves into preparing the paper’s final edition. As they worked, Colorado Governor Bill Ritter visited the newsroom to offer condolences in person, Denver Public Library produced an original copy of the News’s first edition for staffers to inspect, and memorials to the paper’s life flowed in from Colorado’s leaders and other readers.163 “The irony is even with a restricted staff and this strange limbo the

Rocky was putting out strong papers to the end,” Westword editor and longtime Denver news observer Patty Calhoun wrote.164 “For a couple of weeks I’ve had a feeling in the

362 pit of my stomach that today became a knot,” wrote John Hickenlooper, then Denver mayor and later Colorado governor.165 Harry Puncek, who had delivered the paper as a middle-schooler in the 1950s, was one of several readers to lament the paper’s end. “It’s like losing a relative,” he wrote. “Not a brother or sister, but an uncle—somebody who’s really sort of a wise person. When you’re sort of wondering about things . . . he sort of lets you think for yourself but, at the same time, he’s a source of great information. I always trusted the News. I didn’t always agree, but I always trusted.”166

Temple’s prescience in preparing stories in case the paper suddenly closed paid off. Video footage of Boehne’s announcement and the reactions of News staffers was dropped into a nearly finished video project, saved, and immediately published to the web under the title “Final Edition.” Denver’s television stations immediately began airing it.167 Meanwhile, months of quiet and often secret plans for the final edition were put into action. “I wanted to make sure that if we were going to be shut down that we said goodbye in a way that would be truly memorable and would be respectful to all the people who’d ever worked at that organization,” Temple said. “That they would look at it and say, ‘That’s us. You got it.’”168 Copy and photos commemorating the paper’s long history were prepared as a fifty-two page wrap for the last issue. Farewell columns were written for the paper’s main section, as were dozens of reflections from News employees, and the day’s events were documented in a series of detailed stories about the paper’s closure and the future of the Post.

Finally, after a flurry of activity, the paper’s final edition was put to bed. Under the flag of the paper’s inaugural 1859 edition, a brief valediction welcomed readers to one last morning’s news. “We hope Coloradans will remember this newspaper fondly

363 from generation to generation,” it read in part, “a reminder of Denver’s history—the ambitions, foibles, and virtues of its settlers and those who followed. We are confident that you will build on their dreams and find new ways to tell your story. Farewell—and thank you for so many memorable years together.”169

Last Run

The presses of the Rocky Mountain News thundered in the pre-dawn hours of

Friday, February 27, 2009, just as they did every night. But this night, pressman Robert

P. Rowland had a highly unusual duty. When his work was done, he sat down and typed the following note:

CERTIFICATION I, Robert P. Rowland, do hereby certify that I was present at Press line B folder at 4:21 a.m. on February 27, 2009 and verified that the following procedure was followed to capture and insure that this copy of the Rocky Mountain News as the final and last copy produced. We shut down the other press (C press line) running the same edition approximately 3 minutes before shutting down B line. We cleared C line and ran all copies into the final production stage in the Packaging department. Press line B was left as the only line continuing to run the final edition. At 4:21 a.m. we shut down B line and I personally controlled the final copies coming off the folder/press. We captured the final copies, (approx 80) by taking them off the line in the order they were produced. With the line stopped I took the final two copies, the last produced and the 2nd from last produced and secured those copies as well as the stack of approx. 80. The line was then cleared to white copy and the press was cleared behind to insure no further copies existed. This is the final copy of the Rocky Mountain News produced. [signed] Robert P. Rowland February 27, 2009170

That letter, accompanied by the final copy of the final edition of the Rocky, the plates from which its front and back pages were printed, the plant’s nightly production report, and a copy of part of the edition’s space budget, was delivered to Denver Public Library for preservation. It shares a home with one of very few surviving copies of the very first

364 edition of the News. They were issued one hundred and forty-nine years, ten months, and four days apart.

1 See the contents of the February 27, 2009, edition of the Rocky Mountain News.

2 John Temple, “When Dust Settles Your Rocky Still a Winner,” Rocky Mountain

News, May 17, 2000.

3 Gerald J. Baldasty, E.W. Scripps and the Business of Newspapers (Chicago:

University of Illinois, 1999), 4–5.

4 Edward E. Adams, “Market Subordination and Competition: A Historical

Analysis of Combinations, Consolidation, and Joint Operating Agreements through an

Examination of the E.W. Scripps Newspaper Chain, 1877–1993” (PhD diss., Ohio

University, 1993).

5 A description of this agreement is found in chapter 3 of this work.

6 John C. Busterna and Robert G. Picard, Joint Operating Agreements: The

Newspaper Preservation Act and its Application (Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex, 1993).

7 Ibid., 2. In the 1930s, JOAs were formed in El Paso, Texas; Nashville,

Tennessee; and Evansville, Indiana. In the 1940s, JOAs were formed in Tucson, Arizona;

Tulsa, Oklahoma; Chattanooga, Tennessee; and Madison, Wisconsin. In the 1950s, JOAs were formed in Birmingham, Alabama; Fort Wayne, Indiana; Lincoln, Nebraska; Salt

Lake City, Utah; Shreveport, Louisiana; Knoxville, Tennessee; Charleston, West

Virginia; and St. Louis, Missouri.

365

8 Newspaper Preservation Act, Pub. L. 91–353, § 2, 84 Stat. 466, 15 U.S.C. sections 1801–1804 (1970).

9 Busterna and Picard, Joint Operating Agreements, 93–119.

10 Paul Farhi, “The Death of the JOA,” American Journalism Review, September

1999, http://ajrarchive.org/Article.asp?id=317. The number of JOA cities peaked in the mid-1980s.

11 Ibid., 12–18.

12 Ibid.

13 Farhi, “The Death of the JOA.”

14 Adams, 1993.

15 Larry Strutton, interview, December 19, 2017; John Temple, interview with

Ken Ward, October 22, 2017, 27 (transcript available from researcher upon request);

“Owners of the Denver Post Once Asked Scripps for JOA,” Denver Business Journal,

May 19, 2000.

16 Larry Strutton, interview with Ken Ward, October 21, 2017, 13. Transcript available from researcher upon request.

17 William Dean Singleton, interview with Ken Ward, October 27, 2017, 13–14.

Transcript available from researcher upon request.

18 Application by the E.W. Scripps Company and MediaNews Group, Inc. for

Approval of a Joint Operating Arrangement Pursuant to the Newspaper Preservation Act,

15 U.S.C. §§ 1801, 23. Stated losses are as follows: 1990, $9.4 million; 1991, $17.4

366 million; 1992, $15.5 million; 1993, $22.7 million; 1994, $6.4 million; 1995, $9.7 million;

1996, $6.9 million; 1997, $2.9 million; 1998, $12.7 million; 1999, $19.8 million.

19 Ibid.; “Schedule of Revenues and Expenses,” March 12, 2000, folder “JOA—

2000,” box 3, Rocky Mountain News Collection, WH 2129, Western History Collection,

Denver Public Library, hereafter referred to as “Rocky Mountain News Papers.”.

20 Application by the E.W. Scripps Company and MediaNews Group, Inc., 28.

21 Singleton, interview, 9.

22 Ibid., 13.

23 Gale Directory of Publications and Broadcast Media (Detroit: Gale Research,

1995), 188–89; Gale Directory of Publications and Broadcast Media (Farmington Hills,

Michigan: Gale Group, 2000), 253, 255.

24 Application by the E.W. Scripps Company and MediaNews Group, Inc., 30.

25 The E.W. Scripps Company, December 31, 2001, Form 10-K to the Securities and Exchange Commission, “Eleven-Year Financial Highlights,” F-1.

26 “Joint Operating Agreement among the Denver Post Corporation, Eastern

Colorado Production Facilities, Inc., Denver Post Production Facilities LLC and the

Denver Publishing Company,” May 11, 2000, box 12, Rocky Mountain News Papers, 4.

27 Ibid., 19–20.

28 Temple, interview, 20–22.

29 Singleton, interview, 13–14.

30 John Boogert to John Temple, January 10, 2000, folder “Strutton,” box 5,

Rocky Mountain News Papers.

367

31 “Scripps and MediaNews Group Seek to Create Jointly Owned Company to

Produce and Market Denver Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Post,” May 11, 2000, folder “JOA—2000,” box 3, Rocky Mountain News Papers, 2.

32 Application by the E.W. Scripps Company and MediaNews Group, Inc., 21.

33 Ibid., 33.

34 Temple, interview, 20–22.

35 Strutton, interview, 21.

36 Temple, interview, 20–22.

37 Ibid.

38 Tillie Fong, “JOA Announcement Stuns Employees at Both Newspapers,”

Rocky Mountain News, May 12, 2000.

39 The following lyrics can be found in folder “JOA—2000,” box 3, Rocky

Mountain News Papers:

JOA (to the tune of Yesterday)—new lyrics by Robert Denerstein

Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away Then I heard about the JOA. Oh, I believe in yesterday

Suddenly, we’re not half the News we used to be. There’s no Sunday hanging over me. Oh, I believe in yesterday

Did it have to go, I don’t know—Scripps wouldn’t say. I know we’ll all pray someone reads our Saturday.

Singleton, he says that his crummy broadsheet won. And now we’re not having any fun Since Scripps announced the JOA

Resume—yes, it rhymes with JOA

368

I’d better not let mine decay Oh, I believe in yesterday.

JOA—does it mean that they will cut my pay? How I wish I’d never seen the day When Scripps announced the JOA. Mmm mmm mmm mmm, JOA

THE DENVER ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS NEVER ON SUNDAY MARCH Words and Music by Marc Shulgold

The news was bleak the other week, as round our chief we stood. “We’re deep in debt, but do not fret—from bad can come some good. So don’t throw rocks, don’t bring a box to pack up all your stuff. Sailors do their best, it’s true, whenever seas turn rough.”

We saw the light, the mood turned bright as smiles filled the room. “Why, who needs Sunday anyway?” That thought chased off our gloom. With one day less, we’ll have less stress—our nerves will not be frayed. We can watch sports in our undershorts and, hey, we’ll still get paid!

CHORUS: We’re marching along at the Rocky, failing but rising again. We’re heading off into the future, undeterred by what’s around the bend. That JOA won’t stay O-way, but that’s OK, you see. ‘Cause if God can rest on Sunday, and pick it up Monday Well, that’s good enough for you and me!

NEVER ON SUNDAY INTERLUDE: You can by a Rocky Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday, we won’t let down our fans. Won’t you try a Rocky Friday or Saturday, the best way to make your weekend plans. But never on Sunday, you must read the Post. We’ll be back on Monday, when it matters most. We’re on vacation—orders from DC (still waiting on that call, Janet). Far less aggravation, more security.

CHORUS: We’re marching along at the Rocky, failing but rising again. We’re heading off into the future, undeterred by what’s around the bend. If you want to read it Sunday, you’ll have to wait till Monday. But tell me—what’s the B.F.D.? If you must know the news du jour, there’s only one way that’s for sure—

369

Just turn on your damn TV.

We’re smiling with glee at the Rocky, happy to be here today. We’re all feeling free at the Rocky, it looks like we’re here to stay. So the heck with Kreck and Mean Chuck Green, and that awful mess they call The Scene. Here’s an offer you can’t refuse. If the Post has got you down, there’s another rag in town. It’s the Denver Rocky Mountain—an information fountain!— The Denver Rocky Mountain News!

40 Tillie Fong, “JOA Announcement Stuns Employees at Both Newspapers.”

41 Michigan Citizens For Indep. Press V. Thornburgh, 493 U.S. 38 (1989).

42 Singleton, interview, 14.

43 Alan Horton to John Temple, July 26, 2000, folder “Rocky Mountain News:

Budget Planning and Overview 2003, Folder 1,” box 15, Rocky Mountain News Papers.

44 Neil Westergaard, interview with Ken Ward, October 20, 2017, 14. Transcript available from researcher upon request.

45 Strutton, interview, 22.

46 Temple, interview, 9.

47 Kelly Pate, “Furniture Tycoon Jabs Takes Stand Against JOA,” Denver Post,

July 7, 2000.

48 Ibid.

49 Burt Hubbard, “Retailer Opposes News-Post Deal,” Rocky Mountain News,

July 7, 2000.

50 Jody Lodovic, interview with Ken Ward, October 20, 2017, 11. Transcript available from researcher upon request.

370

51 “Findings, Conclusions, and Order of the Attorney General,” in the Matter of

Application by the E.W. Scripps Company and MediaNews Group, Inc. for Approval of a

Joint Operating Arrangement Pursuant to the Newspaper Preservation Act, 15 U.S.C. section 1801–1804, January 5, 2001, 6.

52 Ibid., 11.

53 Ibid., 13.

54 Ibid., 17.

55 Ibid., 20.

56 Burt Hubbard, “War Over News Will Intensify,” Rocky Mountain News,

January 6, 2001.

57 Westergaard, interview, 15.

58 Mike Soraghan, “Reno OKs Newspaper Pact,” Denver Post, January 6, 2001.

59 Lynn Bartels, interview with Ken Ward, October 20, 2017, 8. Transcript available from researcher upon request.

60 Kirk MacDonald and Jeff Hively to coworkers, January 5, 2001, folder “JOA—

2000,” box 3, Rocky Mountain News Papers.

61 Michael Booth, “Ex-Post Exec to Head News Agency,” Denver Post, June 29,

2000.

62 Ibid.

63 Urban & Associates, Inc., “Executive Summary: 2000 Expanded CASH for the

Denver Newspaper Agency,” November 2, 2000, folder “Executive Summary Cash

2000,” box 12, Rocky Mountain News Papers, 112–13.

371

64 John Temple, “Welcome to the Weekend,” Rocky Mountain News, April 7,

2001.

65 Temple, interview, 25.

66 Michael Reid to John Templin [sic, Temple], September 26, 2001, folder

“RMN—Redesign,” box 7, Rocky Mountain News Papers.

67 Urban & Associates, “Executive Summary: Baseline Vital Signs Research for the Denver Newspaper Agency,” October 5, 2001, folder “Executive Summary,” box 10,

Rocky Mountain News Papers, x.

68 Lodovic noted that differentiation was a focus of the 1990s Post but that specific differentiation tactics had been unnecessary. “You didn’t have to,” he said. “It was a tabloid versus a broadsheet.” Lodovic, interview, 13.

69 “Brand Portfolio Analysis: Rocky Mountain News; the Denver Post,” May 15,

2002, box 7, Rocky Mountain News Papers.

70 Ibid. Less clear were the perceived political leanings of the two newspapers.

The reader study cited here identified the Post as the more conservative paper and the

News and liberal. Lodovic and others, however, considered the News far more conservative than the Post, and anecdotes collected by the researcher from those familiar with the papers were mixed in their identification of the political leanings of the papers.

More consistent during the era was the News’s appeal to working-class readers and the

Post’s popularity among a slightly more white-collar audience.

71 “Temple Named Publisher of News,” Rocky Mountain News, August 30, 2001.

72 Temple, interview, 39–40.

372

73 Ibid., 24.

74 Lodovic, interview, 11.

75 Patrick Sweeney, “Discounted Ads Disappear with JOA,” Denver Business

Journal, April 22, 2001.

76 Kirk MacDonald, speech at City Club luncheon, Brown Palace Hotel, May 29,

2001, folder “JOA—Kirk MacDonald,” box 6, Rocky Mountain News Papers, 12.

77 Sweeney, “Discounted Ads Disappear.”

78 Patrick Sweeney, “Judge Rules JOA Can Go On,” Denver Business Journal,

April 12, 2001.

79 “Jake Jabbed by JOA Chief,” Denver Business Journal, April 1, 2001.

80 Sweeney, “Discounted Ads Disappear.”

81 “Jabs Back in the JOA Fold,” Denver Business Journal, June 21, 2001.

82 Patrick Sweeney, “Post-JOA Ad Hikes Fade Amid Bargains,” Denver Business

Journal, October 7, 2001.

83 Patrick Sweeney, “Newspaper Rivalry Rages, Despite JOA,” Denver Business

Journal, May 26, 2002. It should be noted that the price of the standard, seven-day-a- week annual subscription submitted by the News to the 2000 Gale Directory of

Publications was $87, much more than its promotional penny price. Gale Directory of

Publications and Broadcast Media (2000), 255.

84 Sweeney, “Newspaper Rivalry Rages.”

85 The E.W. Scripps Company, December 31, 2002, Form 10-K to the Securities and Exchange Commission, 5.

373

86 “Circulation Revenue 2000 to 2004,” folder “2005 Budget,” box 1, Rocky

Mountain News Papers.

87 The E.W. Scripps Company, December 31, 2004, Form 10-K to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

88 The E.W. Scripps Company, December 31, 2006, Form 10-K to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

89 “2004 Budget Highlights,” folder “Budjet [sic] and Polls,” box 1, Rocky

Mountain News Papers.

90 Ibid.

91 Temple, interview, 23–25.

92 “Rocky Mountain News, 2002 Budget: 2001 Overview,” folder “Rocky

Mountain News: Budget Planning and Overview 2002: Folder 1,” box 15, Rocky

Mountain News Papers, 2–3.

93 “Rocky Mountain News vs. Denver Post Staffing Levels, 2002–2004,” folder

“Rocky Mountain News: Budget Planning and Overview 2005: Folder 1,” box 15, Rocky

Mountain News Papers.

94 “Rocky Mountain News: 2004 Strategic Issues,” folder “Budjet [sic] and

Polls,” box 1, Rocky Mountain News Papers, 2.

95 “Rocky Mountain News Brand Discussion,” August 29, 2003, box 7, Rocky

Mountain News Papers, 17.

96 Westergaard, interview, 6; Temple, interview, 23–25; Bartels, interview, 8–9.

See “Running Dry” series in late 2003; for example, Lou Kilzer, Jerd Smith and Burt

374

Hubbard, “Much of Douglas County’s Well Water, Once Throught Abundant Enough for a Century, Could Drop Out of Reach in 10 to 20 Years,” Rocky Mountain News,

November 22, 2003.

97 The News won the following: 2003 Pulitzer Prize in breaking news photography; 2006 Pulitzer Prizes in feature photography and feature writing. The News won the 2000 award for breaking news photography, while the Post won the award for breaking news reporting, both for their coverage of the Columbine High School shooting and its aftermath. See “Prize Winners,” Pulitzer.org, accessed January 2, 2018.

98 Minnesota Opinion Research Incorporated, “The Denver Newspaper Agency:

2003 Strategic Study,” July 2003, folder “2003 Mori and Scarborough,” box 9, Rocky

Mountain News Papers.

99 “Product Planning Proposal,” August 22, 2003, box 8, Rocky Mountain News

Papers, 3; “Summary: Circulation & Readership 2004,” folder “2004 State of the Rocky

Presentation,” box 8, Rocky Mountain News Papers.

100 “Client Research: Rocky Mountain News,” folder “JOA—Marketing 2003,” box 6, Rocky Mountain News Papers, 16.

101 “Product Planning Proposal,” 3.

102 “Merrill Lynch Equity Research Survey,” folder “Budjet [sic] and Polls,” box

1, Rocky Mountain News Papers.

103 Project for Excellence in Journalism, “State of the News Media 2004,” accessed January 2, 2018, http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-

375 content/uploads/sites/13/2017/05/24141554/State-of-the-News-Media-Report-2004-

FINAL.pdf.

104 Ibid., 22.

105 Ibid., 27–28.

106 Ibid., 2.

107 The Post began operating from its floor of the DNA building in late August

2006; News personnel began moving into their space in early August. All operations for the Post, News, and DNA were to be run from the new building by late September. The building was not formally opened until December. Margaret Jackson, “Building for the

Future,” Denver Post, August 28, 2006; John Rebchook, “Rocky on the Move—to a New

Home,” Rocky Mountain News, August 4, 2006; Tom McGhee, “Ribbon-Cutting

Dedicates Newspaper Building,” Denver Post, December 7, 2006.

108 Rebchook, “Rocky on the Move”; Will Shanley, “New Leader At Helm of

DNA,” Denver Post, May 4, 2006.

109 Rebchook, “Rocky on the Move.”

110 “2004 State of the Rocky,” 63.

111 “Denver Newspaper Agency: 2005 Strategic Recommendation,” January 2005, folder “JOA—Marketing 2004,” box 6, Rocky Mountain News Papers.

112 Ibid., 13, 17.

113 “Financial Overview,” folder “Budget 2007,” box 10, Rocky Mountain News

Papers.

376

114 Minnesota Opinion Research Incorporated, “The Denver Newspaper Agency:

2003 Strategic Study,” July 2003, folder “2003 Mori and Scarborough,” box 9, Rocky

Mountain News Papers, 4.

115 “2006 Budget Overview, Rocky Mountain News,” folder “Budget 2006,” box

3, Rocky Mountain News Papers, 2.

116 Temple, interview, 25–26.

117 Ibid.

118 Ibid., 30.

119 “2006 Budget Overview, Rocky Mountain News,” 1.

120 John Temple, “Behind the Scenes at YourHub.com,” Rocky Mountain News,

May 7, 2005.

121 John Temple, “John Temple Responds to Criticism of YourHub.com,” Editor and Publisher, October 29, 2005.

122 Belden Interactive, “Denver Newspaper Agency: Research Summary and

Recommendations,” 2006, folder “Belden Interactive,” box 8, Rocky Mountain News

Papers, 2.

123 “Financial Overview,” 4.

124 Minnesota Opinion Research Incorporated, “The Denver Newspaper Agency:

2003 Strategic Study,” 28–29.

125 Belden Interactive, “Denver Newspaper Agency: Research Summary and

Recommendations,” 2006.

377

126 “Rocky Mountain News 2005 Budget Proposal,” folder “Rocky Mountain

News: Budget Planning and Overview 2005,” box 15, Rocky Mountain News Papers, 6.

127 Temple, interview, 31–32.

128 Ibid., 29.

129 Figures in this paragraph are taken from the 2005 through 2008 State of the

News Media reports produced by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in

Journalism project.

130 “Scripps Closing ‘Birmingham Post-Herald,’ Dissolving JOA,” Editor and

Publisher, September 22, 2005.

131 “‘Post’ Dated: Last Day for Cincy Paper Arrives,” Editor and Publisher,

December 31, 2007.

132 “‘86’ for ‘Albuquerque Tribune’—To Close on Saturday,” Editor and

Publisher, February 20, 2008.

133 Temple, interview, 34–35.

134 The E.W. Scripps Company, December 31, 2005, Form 10-K to the Securities and Exchange Commission, F-16.

135 The E.W. Scripps Company, December 31, 2007, Form 10-K to the Securities and Exchange Commission, F-16.

136 Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, “State of the News Media 2009,”

175.

137 Ibid.

378

138 The E.W. Scripps Company, December 31, 2008, Form 10-K to the Securities and Exchange Commission, F-15.

139 Though not reported in Scripps’s SEC filing, other company documents projected the News’s 2008 budget at $22.5 million, leaving the paper with negative income of about $13 million. The same document cites Post publisher Singleton as claiming a $24.5 million budget for his paper, putting the Post’s 2008 losses around $15 million. “Denver 2008 Budget Overview,” December 4, 2007, folder “2008 Department

Budgets,” box 7, Rocky Mountain News Papers, 1, 4.

140 “Scripps to Spin Off Cable, Interactive Units,” Cincinnati Business Courier,

October 16, 2007; “Scripps Spins Off Interactive Company,” Cincinnati Business

Courier, July 1, 2008.

141 The E.W. Scripps Company, December 31, 2008, Form 10-K, F-2; The E.W.

Scripps Company, December 31, 2005, Form 10-K to the Securities and Exchange

Commission, F-2.

142 Ibid.

143 The E.W. Scripps Company, December 31, 2005, Form 10-K, F-2; Scripps

Networks Interactive, Inc., December 31, 2008, Form 10-K to the Securities and

Exchange Commission, F-2.

144 The E.W. Scripps Company, December 31, 2002, Form 10-K to the Securities and Exchange Commission, F-2.

145 The E.W. Scripps Company, December 31, 2008, Form 10-K, F-2.

146 “Scripps Spins Off Interactive Company,” July 1, 2008.

379

147 See note 138.

148 Temple, interview, 35.

149 Singleton, interview, 17.

150 Ibid., 16–17; James Paton and Kevin Vaughan, “Media Turmoil Snares

Rocky,” Rocky Mountain News, December 5, 2008.

151 Paton and Vaughan, “Media Turmoil Snares Rocky.”

152 Lynn Bartels, “Surprise Announcement Rattles Newsroom Staff,” Rocky

Mountain News, December 5, 2008.

153 Paton and Vaughan, “Media Turmoil Snares Rocky.”

154 Ibid.

155 Steve Raabe, “Rocky for Sale,” Denver Post, December 5, 2009.

156 David Milstead and James Paton, “Private-Equity Investor Group Explored

Buying Newspaper,” Rocky Mountain News, February 27, 2009.

157 Temple, interview, 63.

158 Archived copy of the February 8, 2009, status of IWantMyRocky.com, accessed January 5, 2009, https://web.archive.org/web/20090208231400/http://iwantmyrocky.com:80.

159 Melanie Asmar, “The Rocky Mountain News Throws One Heck of a Vigil,”

Westword, January 30, 2009. Brief clips of the vigil can be seen at Joe Murphy, “Rocky

Mountain News Candlelight Vigil,” YouTube.com, January 29, 2009, accessed January

5, 2018, https://youtu.be/rXf1fXkRwYs.

380

160 Katie Kerwin McCrimmon, “Finally, It Was True . . . Closing,” Rocky

Mountain News, February 27, 2009.

161 Michael Roberts, “E.W. Scripps, Former Rocky Mountain News Employees

Finally Reach Severance Agreement,” Westword, April 27, 2009.

162 David Milstead, “Smooth Sailing Not a Given for Post,” Rocky Mountain

News, February 27, 2009.

163 April M. Washington, “‘60 Minutes,’ Other Media Spotlight Rocky’s Final

Day,” Rocky Mountain News, February 27, 2009.

164 “Driveways Won’t Be the Same,” Rocky Mountain News, February 27, 2009.

165 Ibid.

166 Gary Massaro, Berny Morson, and Jean Torkelson, “To Readers, It Wasn’t

Just a Newspaper,” Rocky Mountain News, February 27, 2009.

167 Temple, interview, 35–36.

168 Ibid.

169 “Goodbye, Colorado,” Rocky Mountain News, February 27, 2009.

170 Robert P. Rowland, “Certification,” February 27, 2009, C071.88 R598fi 2009,

Rocky Mountain News: Final Day Collection, Denver Public Library.

381 Chapter 8: Discussion

Having reached the end of the history of the competition between the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News, the dissertation in this final chapter turns to consider the research questions posed in the introduction. To review, they were:

1. What were the main strategies employed by the Rocky Mountain News and

Denver Post as they competed for a limited audience from 1892, when the

Post was founded, to the closure of the News in 2009?

2. How did the News and Post respond to other threats, such as other Denver

newspapers, news media, and economic forces, to their long-term viability

from 1859, when the News was founded, to 2009?

3. What changed in the late 1990s that made a joint operating agreement

between the News and Post appealing to both parties?

4. To what extent do the reasons for closure of the News cited by the E.W.

Scripps Company match the evidence available to independent researchers?

The following proceeds through each question in turn, using the information gleaned from the narrative presented in the first seven chapters to develop informed responses.

The chapter concludes with a brief reflection on the legacy of the long competition between the Post and News.

RQ1: Competition

As a result of the rich data drawn on by this project and the scope of the query, the first research question—“What were the main strategies employed by the Rocky

Mountain News and Denver Post as they competed for a limited audience from 1892, when the Post was founded, to the closure of the News in 2009”—demands the most

382 exhaustive answer. Over the course of 116 years of competition, the two newspapers found countless ways to draw readers and advertisers toward themselves or away from their rivals. Upon analysis of the data, however, the most impactful of these strategies can be separated from the rest and divided categorically. First, the News and Post used editorial strategies, such as emphasizing particular kinds of content and methods of presentation, to attract readers. Second, the papers employed business-oriented strategies, some successful and others catastrophic, in bids to appeal to readers and advertisers, attack competitors, or make peace. Finally, the papers used strategies that straddled the line between the traditional editorial/business divide, particularly in purposefully differentiating the two newspapers from one another.

Editorial

The nature of editorial competition between the Post and News varied considerably over the course of the papers’ long fight, sometimes bringing them to directly attack one another in their columns or, in the case of F.G. Bonfils’s physical assault of Thomas Patterson, on Denver’s streets. At other times, the two newspapers virtually ignored one another, either competing through the quality and substance of their content or, at times, by not visibly competing at all.

Consider, for instance, the two newspapers’ use of editorial tone in differentiating themselves from one another in pursuit of readers. This was crucial from the inception of competition between the two papers. When the Post was purchased by Bonfils and Harry

Tammen in 1895, the Denver market was still struggling to shake off the lingering influence of the partisan era of newspapering. Of the three daily general-interest newspapers successfully operating in Denver at the time, two were partisan and were

383 maintained not only for profit but political purposes as well. While they had adopted elements of the sensational yellow journalism popular in the East, much of their tone followed from their partisan function. The appearance of the independent and bombastic

Post, then, represented the arrival of an entirely new tone in the market. Bonfils and

Tammen were not beholden to political interests but were instead free to publish whatever content would attract attention in their relentless pursuit of profit. Although the partisan papers such as the News could adopt similar presentation styles as the Post and even use highly personal and entertaining voices in attacking their enemies and rivals, they could not benefit from the same tone which freed the Post to condemn any political candidate, champion any popular cause, intimidate any business owner, and publish any advertisement. The Post’s sensational tone, the predominant manifestation of yellow journalism in Denver, was key to the paper’s rise to the top of the market.

The Post’s position atop the market beginning in the early 1900s explains why yellow journalism held out for so long in Denver even as less extravagant and sensational styles of reporting took root elsewhere in the country. As W. Joseph Campbell notes in his book The Year that Defined American Journalism, it was uncertain in the late 1890s which journalistic paradigm would take hold in the twentieth century. In New York City,

Hearst’s Journal popularized “journalism of action,” the flashy, self-celebratory, participatory journalism of excess that also characterized the Denver Post.1 Hearst’s journalism of action was supplanted by the impartial, fact-based style of Adolph Ochs’s

New York Times. Interestingly, the dominance of the Times’s model resulted largely from its competitive posturing relative to Hearst’s Journal and other New York newspapers as well as Hearst’s political and industrial ambitions.2 As a consequence of the Post’s

384 vigorous adoption of yellow journalism, the lack of political ambition on the part of

Bonfils and Tammen, and the failure of the owners to grow their newspaper into a chain, the paper made yellow journalism the dominant paradigm in Denver for fifty years. Such made the city a vibrant journalistic scene defined by populist newspaper crusades, self- celebratory editorialization, stunt reporting, raids on the newsrooms of competing newspapers, and gaudy page design.

Journalism of action thrived later in Denver than many other cities in the United

States, outliving Bonfils as the defining characteristic of the Post into the 1940s. But it was eradicated from the Post’s pages by Palmer Hoyt when he professionalized the paper’s tone. As the Post moderated its appearance, included more national and international news, championed moral causes such as anti-McCarthyism, and increasingly sought to capture Denver’s white middle- and upper-class readership, the paper’s tone became sophisticated and aloof. At the same time, Jack Foster’s News was figuring out how to operate as a tabloid without adopting the sensationalism commonly associated with the format. The News settled on a tone that was both casual and visual, appealing to the same blue-collar Denverites underserved by the now-stodgy Post. As the two newspapers modified their tones for competitive purposes, they secured for themselves audiences, both of which deserved representation in the media but, importantly, were of different value to advertisers.

This distinction in tone contributed to a second avenue of editorial competition: content. The tone of the News led it to prioritize content that was more local, more visceral, than the content of the Post. Such was evident in Foster’s method of judging the strength of an issue of the News— counting the number of “reader stoppers” it

385 contained—as well as later News editor and publisher John Temple’s emphasis on reporting in ways that generated strong gut responses in readers.3 Similarly, the tone of the Post led it during the Hoyt era to include news not only from the distant reaches of the Rocky Mountain empire but also the nation and world. This wide-ranging information was presented in a detached but analytical way both because the newspaper assumed the role of de facto scribe of Denver (a position shunned by the News beginning no later than the early 1970s) and because it saw itself in the 1950s and 1960s as a modern, professional newspaper, one responsible for making sense of a confusing and dangerous world. In time, the News’s emphasis on enterprise and investigative reporting brought it to present information in a similarly analytical, though less detached, way.

The main battlefield of editorial competition was local news reporting, which both papers strove to dominate. This was true from the earliest days of competition between the two newspapers, when Bonfils and Tammen’s ability to identify or manufacture topics of local interest drew in readers by the tens of thousands. When Roy Howard strode into Denver and attempted to steal the market’s momentum from the Post, the newly purchased News tacked on extra pages and strove to equal its competitor’s coverage of local news. But it struggled to match the resources dedicated by the Post to covering Denver.4 Relying on the relatively meager budget provided to them by Scripps-

Howard, News managers complained from the 1920s to 2000s that their smaller metro desks left them at a disadvantage. To hand their competitor complete control of local content, however, would have spelled doom for either paper. Thus, its often limited resources drove the News to focus not on printing more stories but rather reporting the stories it did pursue with greater depth. It is inaccurate to say the News focused on quality

386 while the Post focused on quantity—both were esteemed major metropolitan daily newspapers responsible for reporting on all major events in Denver. But the Post’s duty as de facto paper of record throughout most of the twentieth century, combined with its goal to be the voice of a Rocky Mountain empire in the second half of the century, drove it to provide coverage to a broader scope of local topics, which filled the pages of the frequently fat paper in an effort to provide something for everyone in Denver.

Meanwhile, the lean News’s personal tone and relationship with less affluent communities led it to cover local news with greater depth. Rather than a clear difference of quality versus quantity, then, the Post might be understood as historically focusing on horizontal local coverage as opposed to the News’s emphasis on vertical local coverage— two successful approaches in a competitive news market.

In a final major editorial strategy, the News and Post manipulated the visual presentation of that content in ways that appealed to audiences differently. The plainest example of this is the News’s 1942 decision to go tabloid and the Post’s decision in the late 1980s not to follow suit. The shift to smaller-sized pages had clear financial justification in the context of World War II paper rationing, but the benefits far outlasted the war. It was the News’s tabloid format that set it apart visually from its competitor on newsstands. This was true not only in terms of the paper’s size and shape but also its treatment of front-page stories—single, large photos under bold headlines with sparse body copy. Earlier, the Post had been the paper that sought to distinguish itself through striking Page 1 presentation, using bright red headlines printed in a hodge-podge of fonts atop stories that meandered above, around, and below a floating nameplate. That look, like the Post’s sensational tone, was thrown out during Hoyt’s modernizations. The staid,

387 reformed Post contrasted sharply with the flashy News from the late 1940s on. It was this differentiation in presentation from which emerged each paper’s distinct tone and content. A second, related presentation-centric strategy was to offer advertisers and readers bright color in as great a supply as possible. While Hoyt emphasized cleanliness in appearance, his Post was proud to boast widespread use of color advertising, and both papers spent lavishly on presses capable of printing in vivid color in the 1980s and 1990s.

These editorial strategies were extremely successful for both newspapers throughout most of the history of competition between them. As explained later, such differentiation allowed newspaper competition to continue in Denver much longer than in most American cities. And as all of the strategies considered here stem from the News’s shift to tabloid, which came to define both what the News was and Post was not, it follows that competition in Denver would likely not have been sustainable without the

News becoming a tabloid or some similar change taking place.

Business Operations

Major strategies employed on the editorial side were often long-lasting. Once the papers settled into their niches after the News’s adoption of the tabloid and the Post’s modernization under Hoyt, they kept them, and once the use of color became a means of competition, it remained so. Business-side strategies were less persistent. Instead, the papers alternated their use of dominant business strategies, which were better suited to quick change than were long-term strategic editorial decisions. A consistent set of business-oriented strategies was relied upon throughout the history of competition between the News and Post, being used, then suspended, then resumed at a seemingly opportune moments.

388 The mundane but highly consequential strategy of limiting expenses, for example, was used at each newspaper to maximize profits or minimize losses at various times. At the Post, Bonfils was known to operate his newsroom on a thin budget, an approach

William Shepherd took to excess during his stewardship after Bonfils’s death. The Post’s purse strings were loosened during the Hoyt era, tightened under Seawell, and loosened again under Times Mirror before Singleton arrived and nearly tied the bag shut, eventually relaxing expense controls during the penny war and after the approval of the

News/Post joint operating agreement. The situation was similar but more stable at the

News. Scripps-Howard spent to excess during the circulation war that followed its purchase of the News before shifting to the budget-conscious strategy characteristic of the chain. Spending remained closely controlled at that paper until the 1990s. Following a few spending binges, the paper was placed back on its usual diet after the instatement of the joint operating agreement.

In nearly every case represented in the sources consulted for this research, carefully controlling costs resulted in gains, not stagnation. The News’s circulation grew considerably while under stringent spending restrictions imposed by Scripps-Howard in the 1940s and 1950s, for example, as did the Post after Singleton’s belt tightening.

Miserliness, however, resulted in significant losses for offending managers. Thus,

Shepherd’s penny pinching at the Post, while yielding grand short-term gains, threatened the paper’s longevity while later costing it millions when updates to its obsolete machinery became essential.

A second strategy on the business end was to spend lavishly when updating newspaper plants as in the case of Hoyt’s new plant for the Post in the 1940s, Times

389 Mirror’s Post plant in the late 1980s, and Strutton’s News plant in the early 1990s. The success of this strategy was entirely dependent on opportune timing, something absent in each case. Hoyt’s Post, for example, had no choice but to modernize, but massive spending decimated the paper’s profitability in ways that threatened its ownership, making it vulnerable to the News in the 1970s and 1980s. Later, the cost of Times

Mirror’s plant contributed to the financial problems that eventually forced the company out of Denver. The expensive plant at the News, meanwhile, pressed that paper financially at the same time it was turning to face a resurgent Post, making the paper unprofitable just when it needed to find ways to mitigate its competitor’s gains. In each case the newspapers would have been better able to weather the financial burdens of their plants had they been built several years earlier during times of fortune rather than increasing competition. Naturally, this observation is possible only through hindsight unavailable to the papers’ publishers when deciding to build. But the problems caused by

Shepherd’s miserliness in the 1930s and early 1940s, for example, which forced Hoyt to make such sweeping and expensive improvements upon assuming control of the Post in

1946, were in plain view to the Post’s owners even before Hoyt’s arrival. The option of maintenance and gradual improvement rather than massive one-time spending should have been apparent in each of the cases above and, in the face of the evidence, given greater consideration.

At times, the burden of an expensive press was magnified by massive overall spending, a strategy often used in attempts to quickly force concessions from a paper’s rival or to end the newspaper war outright. Such spending resulted in retaliatory spending by the competing paper, leading to war, in both 1926 and the 1990s. In both cases the

390 instigator was the News. The success of such spending depended on the goal. As explained in chapter 3, Scripps-Howard likely either specifically wanted concessions from Bonfils as a result of the 1926 war or was willing to accept them in lieu of unilateral victory. Thus, the News’s massive spending in the late 1920s might be viewed as successful, although Roy Howard later considered it to have been a complete failure.5 It is much harder to find merit in the News’s spending in the 1990s. The depreciation of its plant made the already low-performing paper highly unprofitable beginning early in the decade. The penny war drastically increased the News’s financial problems as that paper attempted to seize the market, a gamble that guaranteed the paper would be unprofitable until a dramatic change in the Denver market occurred. Had the eventual change been outright victory, the News’s financial losses possibly could have been made up in the interval between the end of the penny war and the disintegration of the newspaper industry in the mid- and late 2000s. Ultimately, however, strategically dumping money into the market was a flawed strategy in both cases in which it was done, particularly in relation to the News’s heavy spending in the 1990s. It also failed to achieve meaningful gains for the Post during two less dramatic episodes of spending under the management of Hoyt in the 1940s and 1950s and Times Mirror in the 1980s.

When the free spending strategy failed to achieve the newspapers’ goals, both were willing to pursue a fallback strategy—collusion. This was first illustrated in the negotiated truce of 1928, which ended the circulation war between the News and Post with the division of the Denver market under rules governing publication schedules, content, and other such matters. That agreement provided a release valve that eased the growing competitive tension of the 1920s circulation war, which was driven by generous

391 spending by both papers that cut into the Post’s profitability and pushed the News deep into the red. A wider-reaching and legal form of anticompetitive cooperation facilitated the de-escalation of the penny war of the 1990s, which also was driven by massive spending and for which there was no other apparent means of détente. The strategy of collusion could not always be relied upon, however. Collusion was possible only when competitively driven spending created financial tension at both papers simultaneously, as illustrated by Scripps’s refusal of the joint operating agreement offered by Times Mirror in the late 1980s. This point is elaborated in response to research question three below.

Hybrid Strategies

The strategy that was most important to the longevity of newspaper competition in Denver cannot be situated within either the editorial or business-oriented categories of strategies. Instead, it encompassed all aspects of the operations of both the News and

Post, affecting the way they developed and published stories, hired and fired journalists and managers, solicited advertising, and constructed their plants. It allowed the papers to coexist competitively in Denver from the ascendance of the Post in the late 1890s until the implementation of the JOA in 2001, and it maintained the profitability of the JOA from its inception until the newspaper industry’s decline undercut the papers’ business model. That strategy was purposeful product differentiation.

The means of purposeful differentiation are expressed in both the editorial and advertising content published in the papers’ pages. During the 1890s, the Post adopted a bold visual style and a politically independent, populist voice to distinguish itself from the partisan papers atop the Denver market. Later, as a consequence of its access to chain content as well as its limited financial resources, the Scripps-Howard News emphasized

392 feature and human-interest writing to distance itself from the Post’s do-all approach, while both papers operated only in the exclusive time slots allotted them by the 1928 publishers’ agreement. The real differentiator, however, came with the News’s shift to tabloid, which gave the two papers distinct appearances and drove the News to emphasize strong, single front-page stories, deep local reporting inside the paper, and photography whenever possible. The Post, meanwhile, happily embraced its role as chronicler of

Denver and the region. The different formats and editorial styles were suited to different types of advertising; in particular, national businesses were disinclined toward the tabloid

News, giving the Post an advantage on Sundays that helped it lead on that day, whereas focused metro reporting helped the News appeal to local advertisers. Yet despite these differences, businesses that wanted to reach all Denver newspaper readers had to buy space in both newspapers, padding the revenues of the News and Post alike.

It was often easier for the two papers to build on the competitive advantages that followed from their differentiated products rather than attack the strengths of their competitors. The Post of the 1980s, desperate to lead in some way in order to maintain advertisers during the most dire slump of its competitive history, redoubled its efforts on

Sunday. The News of the 1990s focused its efforts on highly visual, local, enterprise journalism. Such only served to strengthen the differentiation between the products, maintain for them independent readerships, and force advertisers to continue buying space in both papers.

Sources consulted for this project converged to identify differentiation as the single most important strategy used in the history of newspaper competition in Denver.

Interviewees repeatedly pointed to purposeful product differentiation, particularly the

393 difference in format between the papers, as crucial to the success of both the News and

Post. Former MediaNews Group President Jody Lodovic put it plainly: the two newspapers had distinct readerships because of their different formats, forcing advertisers to advertise in both papers. In the absence of such extensive differentiation, advertisers could have focused their ad buys in a single paper, leading to a circulation spiral and death at the other.6

Two additional hybrid strategies that demand mention are the development and manipulation of prestige and the exercising of leadership. First, papers cultivated their prestige strategically throughout the market’s competitive history. For the Post, this was most apparent during the reign of Palmer Hoyt, a publisher who elevated the newspaper to the national stage by expanding the geographic scope of its content and championing its values, earning the paper journalistic acclaim. The Post’s prestige attracted national advertising and bolstered the paper’s reputation for regional, national, and international news coverage. Meanwhile, the News relied at various times on its prestige as Colorado’s oldest newspaper and reputation for strong local reporting in Denver. But the clearest example of the ebb and flow of the News’s prestige came in the wake of Front Range

Plus, the doomed effort in which the paper stopped serving the outer reaches of Colorado and suffered a reduction in prestige as a result. This drop in prestige mattered to advertisers, who considered Front Range Plus an indication of weakness, not fiscal sensibility. Second, leadership in both editorial and business matters was highly consequential in directing the progress of the competition between the papers. This work is not a leadership study, and as such its observations regarding leadership are made in passing. However, it is clear that key leaders such as F.G. Bonfils, Roy Howard, Palmer

394 Hoyt, Jack Foster, Michael Howard, Dean Singleton, and John Temple exerted lasting influence on their publications, as did others. In particular, the determination of Helen

Bonfils to stave-off S.I. Newhouse’s attempted takeover of the Post and the patience of

Singleton in the late 2000s were paramount in directing the flow of history.

Lessons

At first blush, the success and failure of the Post and News in executing the strategies outlined above may seem of little relevance to news organizations operating in today’s media environment. After all, newspapers claim a much smaller share of media consumption and advertising than they did in the twentieth century.7 The industry decline described in chapter 7 outlived the Great Recession that began in 2007. The decline continues to this day. As such, some might think the examination of the competition between the Post and News makes for good history but offers little in the form of practical advice.

Hogwash. Far from being irrelevant, the history of the News and Post offers more today than at any point in the past. The modern mediascape is swamped with competition: hyperlocal, city, state, and national websites; suburban, metro, and national daily and weekly general and special-interest newspapers; local and cable television stations; magazines; local and national radio broadcasters; bloggers; and podcasters all produce news directed at overlapping audiences, even as companies and individuals circumvent journalistic mediation altogether by speaking to audiences through social media platforms. The story presented in the first seven chapters of this dissertation ended with the death of a single, admittedly large and influential, Denver news organization.

Fueled by the low entry cost provided by the web, new publishers sprang up in its place.

395 Many failed. Many remain. Those that survive will do so because they find strategies that secure for themselves loyal audiences and, in turn, profitability.

Foremost among these strategies must be product differentiation, particularly as media continue to converge on the web, where old format differences disappear. After years of fragmentation resulting from the distribution of news content through social media sites, changes to the algorithms by which those platforms operate, combined with the rising use of paywalls to gate and profit from content, appear to be driving news organizations to focus on providing content primarily through their own websites and apps. The key to mass-market success will be to differentiate the content on those websites and apps while devoting sufficient attention to those areas of reporting necessary for the maintenance of general-interest audiences. In the case of the News, this meant covering enough of Denver’s day-to-day goings-on that readers felt generally well- informed while providing a wealth of valuable content unavailable in the Post, encouraging single-paper readers to choose the News over the Post while remaining relevant to a wide range of advertisers. While the tabloid/broadsheet distinction currently has no perfect parallel on the web, there are numerous other ways digital products can be differentiated. Compare two hypothetical free-access news websites, one operated by a television broadcaster and one by a newspaper. Both cover general-interest topics, but the television station likely emphasizes videos compared to text and photo-heavy content from the newspaper, to the benefit of both publishers. Web publishers can vary the tone, substance, and quantity of content they publish; the kinds of media they emphasize in reporting the news; the ways they support themselves, be it through ad-based, subscription-based, or membership-based business models; the designs of their

396 homepages; the degrees to which they interact with audiences online; and a host of other dimensions of differentiation. To find space in a media-rich world, digital publishers should aim to differentiate themselves to the greatest degree possible and thus make themselves indispensable to their readers.8

To recommend that news organizations operate on carefully maintained budgets is, at present, unnecessary. Digital advertising still fails to yield revenues commensurate with print advertising, and widespread adoption of paid digital access models only now seems to be taking hold.9 But in light of the spread of paywalls to news organizations with previously open digital access, including the Denver Post, and rising paid subscriptions at publications such as the New York Times and Washington Post, this researcher is bullish and anticipates a future in which publishers again have the financial means to compete directly with one another in ways that benefit the public.10 One can imagine the development of a competitive situation in Denver in which a digital upstart manages to threaten the dominance of a more established news organization, with both publishers possessing the resources to appeal to readers by expanding the breadth and quality of their reporting. In such an event, both publishers would be well advised to heed the warning of Denver’s newspapers—massive spending sprees may fail to capture the market quickly, forcing companies with short-term outlooks into positions of weakness, whereas consistent improvement to content lends itself to stability and lasting success.

Furthermore, if the competitor matches the blitz, a nightmare situation can develop in which both organizations are locked in a battle of attrition with no clear means of exit. As exemplified by the News’s thirty-year march to the top of the market, a smarter strategy is to gradually improve the news organization’s product in order to cultivate a growing

397 audience by producing high-quality content while maintaining careful controls on spending.

Lastly, modern publishers should be mindful of the remaining strategies employed by the News and Post, most of which can inform best practices in competitive situations of all kinds. As long as national and international news remain freely available from online out-of-market news providers, providing local content will remain of tantamount importance to hyperlocal, metro, and state news organizations. This is even more important now than in the twentieth century, during most of which wire content in newspapers remained a valued way of receiving out-of-community news. Legacy news organizations that successfully adapt to the Internet will undoubtedly draw on prestige to their competitive advantage while upstarts will attempt to develop prestige of their own.

And leadership will continue to determine the competitive success of news organizations, regardless of the medium in which they publish.

RQ2: Survival

While the struggle for dominion over the Denver news market is most fruitfully investigated by focusing on the direct competition between the Post and News, there were many more forces acting on the two papers than one another. These pressures and the steps taken to overcome them are key to answering this project’s second research question, which asks, “How did the News and Post respond to other threats, such as other

Denver newspapers, news media, and economic forces, to their long-term viability from

1859, when the News was founded, to 2009?” The answer is that the newspapers countered such challenges in various ways with widely differing degrees of success. At times the newspapers proved adaptive, as they did in the face of economic challenges in

398 the 1930s and 1940s. But against other obstacles, particularly emergent news and advertising media, the papers failed to react with sufficient force and creativity to safeguard their positions in the market, a shortcoming that became an acute crisis in the face of the Great Recession.

The talent of its staff and ingenuity of its leaders are largely responsible for the success of the Rocky Mountain News. However, that newspaper would never have survived nearly one hundred and fifty years in Denver had it not been for two other factors: resolve in the face of nearly overwhelming odds and the E.W. Scripps

Company’s long-term confidence in the market. To begin, the odds were against the

News from its earliest days. Had Colorado’s first newspaper pioneer, Jack Merrick, set to work immediately after arriving at Cherry Creek in April 1859, he could have issued his newspaper days before the News’s Byers managed to complete his first edition.11 Such alone would not necessarily have sunk the News, but it would have put that paper in a subordinate position in a volatile market from the start. Byers clearly saw losing the race to publish at Cherry Creek as unacceptable, as evidenced by the preparation of the

News’s inside pages before leaving Omaha. But Merrick was distracted and Byers was well organized, and the News survived. Fate—assisted with a poor understanding of

Colorado’s temperamental weather—again attempted to crush the News in 1864, when

Denver’s great flood nearly washed the paper away entirely. In that case, it was Byers’s ability to purchase a competing newspaper outright, a consequence of his deep integration with Colorado’s burgeoning political class and patronage from its leaders, that kept the News afloat. This partisanship, along with the gradual broadening of the content

399 in its pages, helped the News stave off constant challenges from rival papers throughout the nineteenth century.

The arrival of the Post and its rapid ascendance to the top of the Denver market provides a third point in time at which the News could easily have folded in the face of outside pressures. Consolidation increased in the American newspaper industry through the early decades of the twentieth century and could have made the News an attractive acquisition to the Post.12 Instead, the promise of Denver proved too alluring for Scripps-

Howard to ignore, drawing the company into the market and expensive competition with the Post in contradiction of Scripps-Howard’s historical strategy of buying and maintaining low-cost newspapers. If the News could outlast the Post, either by ending it directly or allowing other competitive pressures to overwhelm it, Scripps-Howard would inherit a market worth untold millions. It was this potential more than anything else that kept the News alive during its first fourteen years of Scripps-Howard ownership, a period during which the paper cost the chain millions. So too was its potential that drove the company to again spend millions on the News during its failed bid to capture the market in the 1990s.

The Depression challenged the Post and News to gradually adapt in the wake of their 1920s circulation war to increasingly difficult economic conditions. They did so in unremarkable ways that prioritized the maintenance of profitability over editorial quality or competitive opportunism. At the Post, the Depression’s entire impact was absorbed by the paper’s departments rather than its shareholders, who siphoned away what were then record-high profits during the 1930s.13 The sources used by this study provide an even clearer picture of the News’s adaptation to the difficult Depression-era economic climate.

400 Advertisers reduced their buys in the second-place News in favor of the dominant Post.

The News responded by shrinking its editorial offerings in proportion to advertising losses and allowing paid advertising to seep into previously sacrosanct portions of the paper, such as its editorial pages and section-fronts. These actions were less innovations than emergency measures enacted to survive the period, changes that were reversed once the economy improved. They were also characteristic of a company focused on its long- term fate in the market. In comparison, despite having a stronger newspaper facing a weaker economic downturn, Times Mirror later bailed on the market to improve that company’s immediate financial standing, a consequence of its short-term outlook.

General economic strain did not provoke meaningful innovation at either newspaper during the history of their competition. Specific external challenges did. When confronted by the specific problem of newsprint scarcity, the News took the radical step of reinventing itself as a tabloid. As discussed above, doing so entailed not only a change in size but also in substance, pushing the paper to pursue different kinds of stories and present them in a new tone. It was a decision that provided the two newspapers sufficient competitive distance from one another to face other external threats, particularly the rise of new news and advertising media.

The importance of this competitive buffer is clear when one considers the papers’ survival in the twentieth century despite meager and haphazard responses to such challenges. Only a handful of cogent policies for addressing emergent media can be identified or inferred from the sources, and none were effective in stemming the steady encroachment of other media on the attention of potential readers and pockets of advertisers. For example, one of the tenets of the editorial agreement entered into by the

401 Post and News in the wake of their 1920s circulation war was to eliminate coverage of radio stations’ promotional stunts, limit the mere mention of radio in print, and bar broadcasters from some kinds of newspaper advertising.14 But such frequently conflicted with Scripps-Howard’s chain-wide policies pertaining to radio coverage, leading it to operate contrary to the Post’s narrow interpretation of the agreement, even as the Post outright ignored anti-radio policies when doing so was immediately advantageous. Later, the two newspapers forged limited cooperative agreements with broadcasters to publicize the papers’ reporting over the airwaves in exchange for privileged positions for the broadcasters’ schedules and announcement in the papers. None of these approaches addressed radio in a strategic manner. Despite the urging of News managers and others to own a share of radio by buying a large interest in a Denver station, Scripps-Howard avoided embracing a two-medium strategy in the market, as did the Post.

There were two moments in the competitive history of these two newspapers when either the Post or News seemed on the verge of mounting a meaningful response to the challenge of an intruding medium. The first occurred when the Post very nearly did precisely what the News failed to do: diversify, specifically through the creation of a new

National Broadcasting Corporation television affiliate in Denver. When the Post studied the possibility of starting a station, going so far as to contact NBC representatives to discuss launching a station as an arm of the paper, the Post was acknowledging that years of dismissing the medium as neither a viable way to convey news nor a competitor to print as an advertising medium had been incorrect.15 Such thinking had previously kept the News and Post from capitalizing on radio as a new means of reaching their audiences, instead ceding control over a large portion of the overall Denver news market to

402 newcomers. Ultimately, the Post committed to an expensive plant rather than media diversification, and the papers would eventually form the same kind of mutual exchanges with Denver TV stations they had with radio broadcasters, cooperating with certain TV broadcasters in news sharing in exchange for publicity. Owning a broadcast station in addition to a newspaper would have opened the door to decreased editorial quality within

Denver if their broadcasting affiliates had repackaged the newspaper’s reporting in a different format. However, from a competitive standpoint, it would have strengthened either paper’s financial stability and buffered its newsroom from the newspaper industry’s later tribulations. The door to intermarket cross-media ownership was closed to both the News and Post by the Federal Communication Commission in 1975.16

A second episode of near-clarity in response to the threat of a new medium came in the News’s launch of user-generated news sites in the mid-2000s. The creation of

YourHub.com and RockyPreps.com represented a complete rethinking of the role of the

Rocky Mountain News in the digital age and was sensitive to the newspaper’s relationship with both the Internet and the Denver Newspaper Agency. Had the DNA committed to a full reconceptualization of the web operations of the Post and News, the agency might have discovered an alternative to the uncritical and counterproductive model into which it stumbled when the joint operating agreement was created in 2000. Rather than isolating content on their two websites, RockyMountainNews.com and DenverPost.com, in addition to the two print newspapers, new websites might have been created along the lines proposed by John Temple in chapter 7. Instead, the two newspapers competed rather than cooperated online, to the advantage of competing websites like 9News.com and, ultimately, the detriment of the News.

403 The failure to adequately respond to the web hindered the two newspapers in addressing what was ultimately the greatest external threat of all: the combination of the accelerating collapse of the newspaper industry and the Great Recession. As they had during other economic crises, the two papers responded to the recession by gradually reducing spending in an attempt to maintain consistent levels of profitability. But whereas both newspapers had toughed-out the Great Depression because they saw

Denver as a long-term investment, the market’s potential was growing dimmer in 2007 and 2008, and Scripps’s metamorphosis into a public company had shifted its focus toward the short term. This is discussed in greater detail in response to research question four below.

In sum, the early News responded to external threats by leaning on its partisanship for financial support; both the News and Post responded to economic crisis by reducing expenses to buoy profits to as great an extent as possible, with far-sighted owners being more willing to sustain deeper losses for longer and public owners selling or closing in the face of economic calamity; and neither newspaper adapted in a strategic way to emerging media that threatened their readerships and advertising dollars. What do these observations offer to those operating in the modern media ecosystem?

First, they show the lack of resolve short-term-oriented publicly owned companies exhibit as compared to owners focused on long-term success in the context of real examples of economic hardship. This is particularly clear in the case of Times

Mirror, which abandoned its investment in Denver in the face of only moderate economic strife to appease shareholders. This example should not be overemphasized. Some of

Times Mirror’s problems in Denver, including its antiquated press and afternoon delivery

404 time, stemmed from mismanagement by its previous, private owners. But in all cases in which the papers were sold beginning with Scripps-Howard’s purchase of the News, private ownership yielded greater stability and profitability. Thus, private ownership may be more desirable for publications in competitive markets seeking to operate over the long haul, whether in the service of their communities or simply for profit.

Second, publications must vigorously adopt new media, not partner with it. Had either the Post or News diversified into radio or television broadcasting, they would have mitigated the loss of advertising dollars to broadcasters, retained readers who shifted to broadcast news as the twentieth century progressed, and subsequently been less vulnerable to the ravages of the 2000s. Had they managed to escape their pre-JOA approach to the Internet and found new ways to deliver content online, they could have avoided losing page views to digital competitors such as 9News.com, a website operated by Denver’s NBC affiliate. Instead, in each case, the newspapers dismissed the new media as legitimate means of conveying news and advertising until shifts in readership and ad share were well under way, preferring the short-term security of existing business models over the possibility of long-term success through the invention of new models through the adoption of emergent media. As a result, the newspapers were unable to lean on a diversified advertising base in the 2000s, making Denver untenable as a two-paper town. Such findings support the conclusions of researchers such as Herndon, who observe that the newspaper industry’s short-term orientation and failure to invent new advertising models contributed to its demise in the face of the Internet.17

405 RQ3: JOA

The answer to research question three—“What changed in the late 1990s that made a joint operating agreement between the News and Post appealing to both parties?”—can more or less be answered by summarizing chapter 6. The Rocky Mountain

News was Denver’s leading newspaper in the wake of Times Mirror’s failed ownership of the Post, far outpacing its competitor in daily circulation. Seeking a profitable means of remaining in the market, Times Mirror offered to enter into a JOA with Scripps but was rebuffed. Times Mirror subsequently sold the Post to Dean Singleton and MediaNews

Group, who, through improvements to the paper’s content as well as its bottom line, reversed the paper’s decline. In 1988, the E.W. Scripps Company went public, offering a portion of its shares for sale and exposing itself to public scrutiny for the first time. In

1992, the News spent $150 million on a printing plant to replace its outdated equipment and bring its color capacity to par with the Post. But Post gains continued. In 1996, the

News attempted to limit costs through its Front Range Plus strategy by shrinking its coverage area to include only Colorado’s urban corridor. Advertisers were not impressed by the subsequent dip in the paper’s circulation—while the News retained a lead among local advertisers, it struggled to attract national ads. In a bid to definitively seize the circulation lead, the News in 1997 gradually began selling penny-a-day subscriptions to an expanding portion of the market. The Post hesitated to match the promotion, but by

1998 was forced by the News’s rising circulation to counter with penny prices of its own.

The penny war continued into 1999, cutting deeply into the Post’s profits while making the News grossly unprofitable, devolving into a war of attrition in which neither paper could safely stop selling penny newspapers without signaling weakness to the other.

406 After sustaining million of dollars in losses, Scripps offered to enter into a JOA with the

Post, and the Post accepted. The News’s financial losses were marketed to the US Justice

Department as evidence the newspaper was failing, as required of at least one of the newspapers by the Newspaper Preservation Act. An application was filed with Justice in

May 2000 and approved by the attorney general in January 2001.

1999 was the first time in the history of the two newspapers that they simultaneously identified a JOA as in their best interest. The only similar circumstance was 1928, before formal JOAs were used in the industry, when the Post and News entered into a limited collusive agreement to end a two-year circulation war. After that truce, the Post held a definitive lead in Denver for forty years. Had the News sunk to the point of near failure during this time and offered the Post a JOA, it likely would have been waived off, as the Post would have been strong enough to simply kill the News. This was seemingly the case in 1987, although with the roles reversed after the News had quickly supplanted the Post as the dominant newspaper in Denver. Though the Post was desirous of a JOA, the News turned it down on the prospect of ending the Post and owning the market outright.

By 1999, Scripps had been pouring millions of dollars into the penny war for two years and had operated the News at a loss for nearly a decade, decisions it was forced, as a public company, to defend to its stockholders. MediaNews was watching its lucrative

Post slide closer and closer toward unprofitability. Neither had a clear lead either in daily or Sunday circulation, and each claimed a slight edge in one of those categories. Both could potentially carry the penny war on indefinitely, with MediaNews committing more of the Post’s profits to the fight and Scripps diverting money from more profitable

407 properties. Under those circumstances, there was no clear and legal route to normalcy other than a joint operating agreement. A JOA, however, ensured profitability for both newspapers, assuming 1999 market and industry conditions held. Thus, with both newspapers tired of the expense of the penny war, desirous of guaranteed increased profits, and devoid of viable alternatives, the conditions were right for a Post/News JOA for the first time.

Before rushing off from this research question, it is worthwhile to explore how the sources considered for this project contextualize both the Denver JOA and the Newspaper

Preservation Act. Both have been the subject of popular and academic debate. In the context of the competitive history of the News and Post, however, both are validated—to a point.

Beginning with the Denver joint operating agreement, much has been made as to whether the News was actually failing when it filed for a JOA with the Post. An academic example doubting this point is found in Shuo Chen and William Shughart’s analysis of the terms of the Denver JOA, which found the agreement’s fifty-fifty profit split damning. They write:

When the parties to a joint newspaper operating arrangement propose to divide their profits equally, a straightforward implication of that offer is that the papers themselves think each has the same chance of survival if they continue to operate independently. A reasonable policy response in such cases is to reject the JOA application, or hold it in abeyance until additional evidence becomes available that the failure of one of the parties is imminent.18

What the authors call “straightforward” might better be called simplistic, certainly in the case of the Denver JOA, which the authors use as a case to support their theory. Consider the agreement in the context of its players and the history of the market. By the time

408 MediaNews and Scripps began negotiating the JOA, they had pressed their competition to the point that there was no turning back. For one to stop prosecuting the penny war would have signaled weakness to the other, encouraging it to go in for the kill. With only limited information, each was left to believe the other was financially capable of continuing the penny war. They were correct. The Post remained profitable enough to continue the fight. Scripps as a whole remained profitable enough to continue the fight.

On that basis, the JOA was negotiated to include a fifty-fifty profit split. But the fact that

Scripps could continue to siphon profits away from its other properties to subsidize its fight in Denver does not erase the unprofitability of the News itself. If Chen and

Shughart’s proposal was made policy, a newspaper chain as a whole, rather than an individual newspaper, would have to be pressed to the brink of failure in order for a newspaper to qualify for a JOA. Such is in keeping with neither the spirit nor substance of the Newspaper Preservation Act. By any reasonable measure, the News itself was a failing newspaper. That alone was sufficient to threaten editorial diversity in Denver and satisfy the requirements of the Newspaper Preservation Act.

Next, answering whether the Denver JOA served the purpose of the Newspaper

Preservation Act requires measuring the Denver agreement against the stated purpose of the act, which is explicated in its second section:

In the public interest of maintaining a newspaper press editorially and reportorially independent and competitive in all parts of the United States, it is hereby declared to be the public policy of the United States to preserve the publication of newspapers in any city, community, or metropolitan area where a joint operating arrangement has been heretofore entered into because of economic distress or is hereafter effected in accordance with the provisions of this Act.19

409 Thus, the question being asked is whether the Denver JOA preserved an editorially independent and competitive newspaper in the Denver metropolitan area. Yes. Absent a clear and legal means of disentangling from the penny war, it seems the competitive battle between the Post and News was, by 1999, a death struggle, as elaborated in the papers’ JOA application and borne out in this project’s sources.20 Had the application not been approved, the News’s losses likely would have increased to the point that publicly owned Scripps, after throwing millions of dollars into the paper, would have closed it.21

The company’s decision to close the News in 2009 only strengthens the likelihood this is correct.

Instead, the journalists of the Rocky Mountain News continued reporting in

Denver, providing their devoted readers a newspaper with which they identified. This latter point is important. The survival of the News kept people reading who might otherwise have abandoned print journalism in favor of less extensive reporting produced by other local media. One criticism of the Newspaper Preservation Act is that it failed to preserve true editorial diversity, with JOA newspapers publishing much of the same content with similar tone.22 In light of sources that showed Post and News reporters frequently chased one another in their reporting, this criticism has weight. However, in the context of the modern media ecosystem, where distrust of the media is rampant and disillusioned news consumers may be as likely to trust pseudo-news or propaganda as reporting grounded in journalistic verification, the degree of diversity in editorial content in Denver is less important than the fact that there was diversity—that readers dissatisfied with the Post, whether because of a perceived political bias or any other reason, had another high-quality newspaper to which they could turn. Further, the intentional

410 differentiation of the News to make it appealing to blue-collar workers encouraged it to serve those readers in a way a true monopoly newspaper, which would focus on attracting higher-earning readers to the detriment of other populations, would not.

All of this ended when the News folded in 2009. Using the sources consulted for this project, there is no telling whether the News would have lasted another six months or three years had the JOA been disallowed. However, it seems likely that for at least a few years and perhaps a decade, the Denver JOA successfully served the Newspaper

Preservation Act’s stated purpose of preserving editorial diversity and that the act materially benefitted the people of Denver.

RQ4: Fault

This dissertation began with Scripps CEO Rich Boehne’s announcement to the employees of the Rocky Mountain News that Scripps was closing the newspaper, claiming “the business model and the economy changed, and the Rocky became a victim of that.”23 This assertion, which was expanded upon in the pages of the News’s final edition, is key to answering the fourth and final research question of this project, which asks, “To what extent do the reasons for closure of the News cited by the E.W. Scripps

Company match the evidence available to independent researchers?” Of the questions asked by this research, it is this one that is of greatest importance to newspapers operating today, as its answer might help them better understand the pressures that have been acting on them for the past fifteen years and avoid a fate similar to that of the News. As such, the following reply proceeds methodically, first establishing the reasons offered by

Scripps to explain the News’s closure and then analyzing the accuracy of those reasons and exploring alternative outcomes to the late stage of competition between the Post and

411 News before, finally, issuing a verdict regarding Scripps’s assertions and making recommendations for contemporary publications.

Adequately answering this question requires a clearly formulated reason offered by Scripps for the News’s closure. Unfortunately, most news reports and press releases provide only limited explanations from the company. The most detailed published explanation available is a short-form news article published in the final edition of the

News written by business reporter Joanne Kelley, who condensed the question-and- answer sessions held by Boehne throughout the day the closure of the News was announced.24 The argument offered by Boehne for the News’s closure identified in

Kelley’s article can be summarized as follows:

1. The business model by which the News operated had become unviable.

2. The combination of the failing business model and the Great Recession

made it prohibitively expensive to operate two daily newspapers in

Denver.

3. No amount of expense reductions at both newspapers would have been

sufficient to allow both papers to continue operating.

4. Therefore, one of the newspapers had to close.

To determine whether the business model by which the News operated was failing, it must first be determined what that business model was. Boehne offers little help in his comments, but the News’s business model was not a particularly confusing one, complicated only by the JOA binding the two papers. The model can most easily be understood by looking at the JOA as a whole rather than the News or Post. The Denver

Newspaper Agency was a company that sold two products. First, it sold content, which

412 was delivered in the form of the Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Post, to readers.

Second, the attention of those readers was sold to national, local, and classified advertisers, who paid the DNA for access to the two papers’ readerships. Income generated by the DNA was used first to pay for its own expenses. Excess revenue was then used to pay for the costs of running the newsrooms of the Post and News by their owners, MediaNews Group and the E.W. Scripps Company. Any remaining income was counted as profit by the owners, who expected to make money commensurate with the risk involved in maintaining the business.

That the News’s business model was no longer working is obvious. The DNA was not generating enough revenue for Scripps to cover the expense of the News’s newsroom, leaving Scripps with multimillion-dollar shortfalls each year. The News’s woes reflected the overall trend of the newspaper industry, in which revenues were falling as circulations dwindled and advertisers sought higher impact for their ads in other media. The only question, then, is whether the model was failing, or, to quote Boehne’s actual language, whether it had become “too expensive to publish two morning newspapers with the amount of revenue available in” the market.25 Assuming success is profitability, the

Denver business model was, by the time the News closed and as early as 2005, a failure.

The onset of the Great Recession in 2008 increased the stress on three components of the News’s business model. The first two are easiest to understand.

Households crunched by the recession were limited in their ability to subscribe to DNA newspapers, and advertisers with shrinking revenues purchased less advertising. Both trends were already present as a result of the wider downturn in the newspaper industry, and the Great Recession might therefore be understood as depressing the already

413 downward-sloping trajectory of the newspaper industry generally and the News’s business model specifically. More insidious is the third stressor, which assaulted the one reason the News had survived as long as it had: the potential of the market. In her article,

Kelley quoted Boehne as specifically having said that the combined pressure of the industry decline and recession had increased the risk of the company failing to recoup its investment in Denver and that the degree of risk had finally become unbearable.26 When

Scripps placed the News on the sale block in December 2008, it was effectively declaring that it no longer saw potential in the market.

The sources available to this project find no evidence that the reasons Boehne gave for the closure of the News are incorrect. On the contrary, the formulation of the challenges facing both the News and Post articulated in Kelley’s article is clear, informative, and accurate insofar as those particular challenges are concerned. But what is most important about Boehne’s explanation of the forces behind the News’s closure is what is absent from it. The News was not alone in suffering from a failing business model. As a partner in the JOA, the Post was subject to the same model. In fact, because

MediaNews was not a diversified media company, it was impacted even more adversely by the newspaper industry’s decline than were Scripps and the News. Likewise, the Post was every bit as vulnerable to the Great Recession as was the News. The real question is, why did the News close rather than the Post?

The simple answer is that Post owner and publisher Dean Singleton was more passionate about the market, that he loved the newspaper he owned as well as Denver, whereas Scripps had no such attachment to the city, the News, or even newspapers generally. Comments by Singleton, Temple, and Denver Business Journal editor Neil

414 Westergaard support both points, and they should not be discounted. But other forces were at work. Singleton’s commitment to Denver, for example, was one not only of adoration but financial necessity. Unlike Scripps, Singleton’s MediaNews was in the business of newspapers and was weakly diversified. In the midst of the industry’s decline, which affected his company’s bottom line with far greater force than it did

Scripps’s, Singleton needed a profitable Denver Post in order to keep his company afloat.

The potential of the Denver market was therefore very much alive for Singleton. Not so for Scripps, a company that by 2009 was protecting valuable assets by shielding them from its newspaper division and that would spin off its newspapers entirely five years later.27 The potential of the market had already evaporated for Scripps, which was restricted in the scope of its patience by its public ownership. To Scripps, the prospect of trying to outlast Singleton and MediaNews was a doubtful one, as the latter still saw potential in the market. For the first time in its history owning the News, Scripps did not.

Thus, it was the News that reached the breaking point first rather than the Post.

Furthermore, the Post was in a much stronger position to succeed in the market in the event the News closed than if the positions were reversed. The News lacked a Sunday newspaper and its readership, and it appealed to blue-collar readers. It would have to undergo major changes in order to operate in a truly monopolistic market, whereas the

Post already had all the trappings of a monopoly newspaper. The purposeful differentiation of the News from the Post had made sense under the JOA, which sought to create two newspapers as different from one another as possible in order to capture the largest audience. In a single-newspaper city, the traits which had been ascribed to the

News would have been liabilities.

415 What of the third and fourth points in Boehne’s explanation, that expense reductions would be insufficient in addressing the failed business model and recession and, consequently, that one of the papers had to go? As proof that cuts would not have saved the News, Boehne said that the company had calculated the savings of cutting in half the newsrooms of both the News and Post and reducing the salaries of the surviving employees, finding that such changes would not have generated enough savings to allow both newsrooms to remain in operation. There is nothing in the sources consulted for this study that suggest Boehne is incorrect in his assessment that cuts were not enough.

Instead, the closure of the News was tantamount to laying off the same number of employees while leaving the Post free to make further cuts into its otherwise untouched staff.

But even in light of all the above—the industry decline, the Denver business model, the recession, the commitment of Singleton to Denver, and so on—Boehne is only partially correct in his final judgment, that one of the two papers had to go. He is right if both newspapers were to be preserved as major daily operations. But as Temple observed, there were other models already present in other markets when the News folded that could have preserved a second editorial voice for Denver. Specifically, Temple pointed to the Las Vegas Sun as an example of what journalism could have looked like in

Denver had the owners of the Post and News tried to preserve the value their newspapers were providing to their community through their competition. The Sun operates under a joint operating agreement with the Las Vegas Review-Journal in which the Sun is produced by an independent newsroom and distributed as a section of the Review-

Journal. Before the closure of the News, Temple traveled to Las Vegas to review how

416 that model might be applied in Denver. He returned to Denver convinced the model could be adapted to successfully continue the News’s mission of serving its distinct and underserved readership. “It would have been better for the community if the decision was, ‘Let’s produce something that has the greatest value for the community,” Temple said. “And I think it’s clear that that is not what has happened.”28

In review, Scripps claimed that the News closed because the combination of the failure of the paper’s business model and the Great Recession made the Denver JOA so unprofitable as to require one of its two partner papers to close and that no amount of cost reductions would have changed that fact. This assessment is mostly correct, although it neglects to identify that the News closed rather than the Post because the Denver newspaper market no longer held potential for the News but still did for the Post, driving

Singleton and MediaNews to outlast Scripps. The company line also fails to identify alternative business models that could have been adopted by the News.

There are insights that can be pulled from this analysis, the first and foremost being that the ultimate causes of the death of the Rocky Mountain News were precisely what they appeared to be: the decline of the newspaper industry and the Great Recession.

There is no bombshell in the closing pages of this project. The News was not killed by the

JOA, with or without which the market could not have supported the expenses of two newsrooms producing expansive general-interest daily newspapers. Nor was it done-in by unreasonable profit expectations, unless newspapers should be expected to operate at multimillion-dollar losses. It was economics, disinterest in the face of industry decline on the part of Scripps, and both passion and financial necessity on the part of Singleton and

MediaNews.

417 This helps explain why newspapers have not disappeared outright, as was expected by some at the time of the News’s closure.29 The recession exaggerated the rate at which newspapers were disappearing, with the financially vulnerable newspapers succumbing rapidly under the dual pressure of the industry’s decline and the recession.

The News and other high-profile newspapers such as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer happened to fall in this first wave, sparking fear of an impending mass extinction of newspapers. Since then, cash-strapped surviving news organizations, including legacy newspapers, have worked to identify viable business models that can help them avoid the fate of the News when the next economic downturn arrives. In particular, the appearance of paywalls on previously free news sites, including the Denver Post’s website, and the adoption of membership models, shifting the profit emphasis away from advertising toward subscription, seems to be taking hold.30 Given the rapid onset of terminal economic conditions in the late-2000s, news organizations would be wise to adopt future- oriented business models now, even at the loss of short-term revenue, to protect their long-term survival.

Legacy

Denver changed dramatically between 1859 and 2009. So too did its newspapers.

After earning the right to publish at Cherry Creek, the News helped build Denver by selling the city to skeptical easterners, establishing itself as the preeminent newspaper in the community. But it struggled to get ahead, constantly facing competitors in the market.

As the crowd thinned late in the nineteenth century, the News was given a brief window to capture the market but was thwarted by the monumental success of the Denver Post.

The ensuing 116 years of competition provided Denverites with an abundance of news

418 and entertainment at affordable prices and subsidized the city’s businesses by offering them advertising at rates well below industry norms. Even after the joint operating agreement sanctioned monopolism, resulting in higher subscription and advertising rates, the city benefitted from two newspapers, each with its distinct editorial voice and readership. When the News closed in 2009, few among Denver’s diverse population were without representation in the pages of either the Post or News.

Ultimately, Denver was subjected to the same journalistic decline as almost every other American city. Its second newspaper died, leaving the survivor to reap the rewards of a true monopoly in a major metropolis. After years of toughing out the competitive slog, the Post was rewarded with complete domination over Denver’s newspaper market.

But as Temple observed, the Post fell victim to one last twist of fate in the wake of the

News’s closure.31 The Post and News had fought tooth and nail in Denver because they believed in the promise of the market. If they could outlast their rival, the thinking went, they would be rewarded with riches the likes of which no newspaper at either Scripps or

MediaNews enjoyed. Finally, after over a century of fighting, the Post stood victorious in

2009, ready to claim its prize.

But the treasure had vanished. As the newspaper industry dissolved in the 2000s, so too did the business model upon which any victorious newspaper in Denver would rely. The Post’s reward for its decades of scrapping in Denver was the same decay that afflicted the rest of the industry. MediaNews Group filed for bankruptcy in 2010, overwhelmed by $930 million in debt, and Singleton stepped down both as MediaNews

CEO and Post publisher.32 Though the Post survived subsequent restructuring, its newsroom was reduced by wave after wave of layoffs and buyouts, its print edition

419 thinned, and its headquarters and most of its staff moved outside of city limits.33 In less than ten years, the Denver market went from a shining example of editorial diversity and journalistic competition to one with barely one daily general-interest newspaper.

Veteran Denver reporter Lynn Bartels noted that the News escaped the troubled fate of its rival. She said:

In a way, maybe it was good that we [the News] did die when we did, because we look like John Kennedy or Marilyn Monroe. Everybody, ‘I love the Rocky and I miss it and I wish it were back,’ and the Post looks like Sally Struthers in some infomercial. They’ve aged and it shows. People, ‘I love the Rocky and wish it were back’—if it were back with as few . . . reporters as the Post operates on, people would be hating it.34

What kind of death did the News suffer in 2009? It was not starvation. The end came so quickly the paper’s staff had little warning the paper was dying. It was not murder. There was no conspiracy or malice against the News by Scripps or even the Post. It was not manslaughter. The paper failed not because of mismanagement but because the business model upon which nearly all American newspapers operated collapsed. In light of

Bartels’s keen observations, the closure of the News looks most like a mercy killing.

Denver journalism is a shell of what it was a decade ago. But as news organizations finally begin to adopt business models that are profitable in today’s digital- centric media ecosystem, there is reason to hold out hope that better times will come. As a result of the competition between the News and Post, Denverites enjoyed a remarkably high standard of journalism for more than a century. The new voices rising to fill the void left by the News’s death and the Post’s retreat give hope that a new era of competition may yet begin, returning to Denver the editorial vigor its residents deserve.

420

1 W. Joseph Campbell, The Year that Defined American Journalism: 1897 and the

Clash of Paradigms (New York: Routledge, 2006), 75.

2 Ibid., 105–110.

3 Jack Foster to Jack R. Howard, March 7, 1949, (second page dated March 18), folder “1949 City File—Denver—Rocky Mountain News,” box 238, Roy Wilson

Howard Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., hereafter referred to as “Howard Papers–LoC”; John Temple, interview with Ken Ward, October

22, 2017, 14–15. Transcript available from researcher upon request.

4 Ed Leech to G.B. Parker, May 29, 1928, folder “1928 City File Denver Leech,

Edward T. (2),” box 24, Howard Papers–LoC.

5 Roy Howard to Charles McCabe, May 18, 1935, folder “1935 City File Denver

Rocky Mountain News,” box 100, Howard Papers–LoC.

6 Jody Lodovic, interview with Ken Ward, October 20, 2017. Transcript available from researcher upon request.

7 Keith L. Herndon, The Decline of the Daily Newspaper: How an American

Institution Lost the Online Revolution (New York: Peter Lang, 2012), 9–10.

8 For example, see Helle Sjøvaag, “Homogenisation or Differentiation?: The

Effects of Consolidation in the Regional Newspaper Market,” Journalism Studies 15, no.

5 (2014): 511–21; Hsiang Iris Chyi and George Sylvie, “Competing With Whom?

Where? And How?: A Structural Analysis of the Electronic Newspaper Market,” Journal of Media Economics 11, no. 2 (1998): 1–18; Txema Ramirez de la Piscina, Beatriz

Zabalondo, Alazne Aiestaran, and Antoxoka Agirre, “The Future of Journalism—Who to

421

Believe?: Different Perceptions Among European Professionals and Internet Users,”

Journalism Practice 10, no. 1 (2016): 71–92.

9 Pew Research Center, “State of the News Media 2016,” accessed February 6,

2018, http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2016/06/30143308/state- of-the-news-media-report-2016-final.pdf, 9; regarding the history and recent rise of paid digital subscription models, see Ángel Arrese, “From Gratis to Paywalls,” Journalism

Studies 17, no. 8 (2016): 1051–67.

10 Mark Harden, “Denver Post Starts Charging for Online Access; Most Staffers

Moving to Adams County This Week,” Denver Business Journal, January 15, 2018; Joe

Concha, “NY Times Subscriptions Doubled in 2016,” TheHill.com, February 2, 2017, accessed January 30, 2018, http://thehill.com/media/317531-ny-times-subscriptions- doubled-in-2016; Lucia Moses, “How the Washington Post Grew Digital Subscriptions

145 Percent,” Digiday.com, July 12, 2016, accessed January 30, 2018, https://digiday.com/media/washington-post-grew-digital-subscriptions-145-percent.

11 Merrick arrived at Cherry Creek four days before Byers. Robert L. Perkin, The

First Hundred Years: An Informal History of Denver and the Rocky Mountain News

(Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1959), 31.

12 Oswald Garrison Villard, The Disappearing Daily: Chapters in American

Newspaper Evolution (Freeport, New York: Books for Libraries Press, 1969), 3.

13 Bill Hosokawa, Thunder in the Rockies: The Incredible Denver Post (New

York: William Morrow, 1976), 186.

422

14 E.T. Leech and W.S. Cady to Cass E. Herrington, August 9, 1929, folder “1929

City File Denver Leech, E.T. (carbons),” box 34, Howard Papers—LoC, 2; Editorial

Memorandum, November 23, 1928, folder “1928 City File Denver Leech, Edward T.

(2),” box 24, Howard Papers—LoC.

15 Memorandum of meeting among Palmer Hoyt, E. Ray Campbell, and Gains,

August 17, 1951, folder 22, box 7, MSS WH 1226, Edwin Palmer Hoyt Papers, Western

History Collection, Denver Public Library, hereafter referred to as “Hoyt Papers.”

16 Mickie Edwardson, “Convergence, Issues, and Attitudes in the Fight over

Newspaper-Broadcast Cross-Ownership,” Journalism History 33, no. 2 (Summer 2007):

86.

17 Herndon, The Decline of the Daily Newspaper, 219–22.

18 Shuo Chen and William F. Shughart II, “Bargaining for Monopoly: The Joint

Operating Arrangement between the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News,”

Antitrust Bulletin (Spring 2004): 46.

19 Newspaper Preservation Act, Pub. L. 91–353, § 2, 84 Stat. 466, 15 U.S.C. sections 1801–1804 (1970).

20 Application by the E.W. Scripps Company and MediaNews Group, Inc. for

Approval of a Joint Operating Arrangement Pursuant to the Newspaper Preservation Act,

15 U.S.C. §§ 1801, 21.

21 William Burleigh, Scripps CEO at the inception of the JOA, told the researcher that Scripps company did not have a contingency plan in place for if the JOA was disapproved by the Justice Department, but he speculated that the News likely would

423 have closed had the JOA been killed. William Burleigh, interview with Ken Ward,

February 15, 2018.

22 See, for example, Birthnay Ardoin, “A Comparison of Newspapers Under Joint

Print Contracts,” Journalism Quarterly (1973): 340–47.

23 Rocky Mountain News, “Final Edition—The End of a Newspaper,” YouTube video, 21:43, posted May 26, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGBacrUAIDQ.

24 Joanne Kelley, “4 Questions for Rich Boehne,” Rocky Mountain News,

February 27, 2009.

25 Ibid.

26 In Boehne’s own words, “there’s too little room to take risk now and there’s so much downside risk in this business.” Ibid.

27 Laura Lorenzetti, “E.W. Scripps Joins the Media Trend as It Splits Newspapers and TV,” Fortune.com, July 31, 2014, accessed January 18, 2018, http://fortune.com/2014/07/31/e-w-scripps-joins-the-media-trend-as-it-splits-newspapers- and-tv.

28 Temple, interview, 28.

29 Examples of news articles on the theme abound. See, for example, Marie

Bénilde, “The End of Newspapers?” New York Times, March 16, 2010; Jack Shafer, “The

Beginning of the End for Newspapers, Slate.com, May 29, 2009, accessed January 29,

2018, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/press_box/2009/05/the_beginning_of_th e_end_for_newspapers.html; Laura Marquez, “Extra, Extra: Is It the End for

424

Newspapers?, ABCNews.com, January 15, 2010, accessed January 29, 2018, http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=6973782&page=1.

30 Arrese, “From Gratis to Paywalls.”

31 Temple, interview, 35.

32 Renee McGaw, “MediaNews Group Parent Files Chapter 11,” Denver Business

Journal, January 22, 2010; Greg Avery, “Dean Singleton Retiring as Executive of

Denver Post’s Owner,” Denver Business Journal, November 4, 2013.

33 Mark Harden, “Denver Post Starts Charging.”

34 Lynn Bartels, interview with Ken Ward, October 20, 2017, 10. Transcript available from researcher upon request. Bartels noted immediately following this quote that she thought the Post was doing a good job considering the limited resources at hand.

425 Bibliography

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442 Appendix A: A Note on Sources

Colorado Media Histories

A few dozen researchers have told pieces of Colorado’s media history since the founding of the Rocky Mountain News in 1859. However, their efforts were uncoordinated and tell the story of Colorado journalism in short episodes and themes.

Those specific to the News and the Denver Post are reviewed in detail below. The most general considerations of state journalism are represented by the several newspaper guides that have been published, which help establish papers in specific towns at specific times. The most accessible of these is Oehlerts’s Guide to Colorado Newspapers: 1859-

1963, although Wallace Hayden Rex’s Colorado Newspapers is often more comprehensive. In 2015, Harper, Leavitt, and Noel published a new summary of newspapers organized by county with more details about some titles, although researchers must still consult the previous indexes for information about some short-lived newspapers. Among more specific titles, most concern the frontier period. William

Newton Byers, the first publisher of the Rocky Mountain News, wrote a first-hand account of the establishment of Colorado journalism in Newspaper Press of Colorado.

That title is supplemented by works by a number of frontier press researchers such as

Halaas, Umans, Marshall, McMurtrie, and Noel, who address such varied topics as the advertising of early Colorado newspapers, the booster role of the press, and the development of journalism elsewhere along Colorado’s Front Range. In addition to the frontier press, Colorado’s mine camp journalism has received some attention in works by

Ward, Jackson, and Cummins, with special attention paid to the Cripple Creek Mining

443 District. Unfortunately, the expansive agricultural plains east of the Front Range have not received focused attention.

At times, historians have researched the journalists working at Colorado newspapers, typically in articles for regional historical magazines but sometimes in book- length works. In most cases the featured journalists passed through either the Rocky

Mountain News or Denver Post at least briefly, sometimes reporting for both, frequently moving to other Denver newspapers, larger firms in the east, or away from journalism to write literature rather than news. As described in Edward Horace Weiner’s The Damon

Runyon Story, Runyon worked through the Rocky Mountain News and Denver Post on his way to the New York American and, eventually, notoriety as a Hollywood writer.

Meanwhile, Joseph G. Brown’s biography of Eugene Field offers the perspective from one 1880s rival of the News. Field edited the Denver Tribune from 1881 to 1883 on his way to Chicago, where he became known for his poetry and newspaper column. Brown’s review of Field’s time in Denver highlights the incessant editorial sparring among the city’s newspapers born not of “personal spite nor malicious business rivalry” but “sharp competition.” Other works on early Denver journalists include Levette Jay Davidson’s review of pioneer editor and educator O.J. Goldrick; Will Fowler’s biography of his father, Gene Fowler, who worked in Denver news before becoming an author and screenwriter; the autobiography of George Creel, who reported and editorialized for the

Post before heading the Committee on Public Information during World War I; and Ellis

Meredith’s article on early News printer Frederick Meredith and editors Thomas

Patterson and John Arkins. Once again, Denver’s early journalists have received more attention than have its more recent contributors, but articles on later journalists exist. Lee

444 Olson wrote such a piece about Eugene Cervi, who reported at the News and Post in the

1930s and 1940s before publishing Cervi’s Rocky Mountain Journal, a business weekly, from 1949 until 1966.

All of the sources reference above can be found in the bibliography. General histories of the Post and News are discussed in the literature review above.

Sources as Used in Each Chapter

Chapters 1 and 2 are aided by a wealth of sources housed in Colorado repositories and online. First, Denver Public Library provided access to many boxes of archival materials, including the papers of William Byers, which consist of family correspondence, scattered diaries, and other manuscripts; the John Lewis Dailey papers, which include diaries and diary transcripts and some business papers; and the William

Russell Thomas letters, which describe in limited way the atmosphere of the News in the late 1860s and early 1870s. Also available at Denver Public Library are a master’s thesis about early Colorado Territory newspapers by Joseph Umans and Colorado newspaper compendiums such as Donald Oehlerts’s Guide to Colorado Newspapers. At History

Colorado, two handwritten books dictated by William Byers were extremely important to this study’s understanding of the News’s founding and the early years of Colorado, the first titled The Newspaper Press of Colorado and the second History of Colorado, while oral histories and interviews contained in the Bill Hosokawa Collection were crucial to understanding the Post in the 1910s and 1920s. Finally, newspapers were consulted for this chapter by a variety of means. When possible, early newspapers were viewed at

ColoradoHistoricNewspapers.org, a source preferred in this research because of its accessibility. Later newspapers were viewed both in their original printed form and on

445 microfilm at Denver Public Library. Though not used for this work, microfilm of other early Colorado newspapers can also be found at History Colorado. At the end of the period, the papers of E.W. Scripps held in Ohio University’s Alden Library proved useful.

Chapter 3 draws heavily on several manuscript collections. Of these, most important are the Roy Wilson Howard papers in the manuscript division of the Library of

Congress, which form the backbone of the chapter. No equivalent source by a manager of the Post for this period exists. As such, the chapter necessarily provides greater detail about the operations of the News. This source bias is offset by particular focus on those passages in the Howard papers that shed light on the operations of the Post as well as consultation of oral histories of Post employees and the newspapers themselves, all of which were found in Denver Public Library’s Western History Collection. An assortment of other sources, including the Roy Howard papers at Indiana University; the E.W.

Scripps papers at Ohio University; newspaper directories; the Gene Fowler collection at the University of Colorado Boulder; and the Eugene Cervi and Rocky Mountain News collections at Denver Public Library also inform the chapter.

Chapter 4 benefits from an array of sources larger than that of any other chapter.

It draws primarily on correspondence and corporate reports contained in the Edwin

Palmer Hoyt, Bill Hosokawa, and Eugene Cervi collections in Denver Public Library’s

Western History Collection, the Jack Foster collection at the University of Denver, the

Bill Hosokawa collection at History Colorado, and the Roy Howard papers housed at the

Library of Congress in Washington, DC. It also draws on the handful of oral histories, recollections, formal studies, and manuscript collections housed at Denver Public

446 Library, History Colorado, and the University of Colorado, including a 1980 speech about Hoyt given by Post journalist Elvon L. Howe, a 1969 PhD dissertation on Hoyt by

Post managing editor and assistant to the publisher, Mort P. Stern, and documents illustrating the operations of Denver’s typographical union.

Chapter 5 introduces a wealth of interviews of key managers at both the Denver

Post and Rocky Mountain News contained in the Sue O’Brien papers held at History

Colorado in Denver. O’Brien, herself a Denver journalist, researched the history of the competition between the two newspapers during the 1980s and early 1990s and wrote a series of articles related to that brief period for the Post’s 1992 centennial. Interview materials included in O’Brien’s collection included both full interviews as well as interview fragments preserved only in O’Brien’s research notes. Both of these inform the chapter, as do O’Brien’s newspaper clippings related to Post and News history. The interviews in O’Brien’s papers, which were conducted primarily with Post editors and managers, were complemented by oral histories collected by the researcher of this work from Larry Strutton, who worked at the News in the 1960s and 1970s and returned to the paper as its publisher in the 1990s, and Neil Westergaard, a reporter at the Post in the

1980s who would become executive editor of that paper in the 1990s before becoming editor of the Denver Business Journal. Additional sources consulted include the Edwin

Palmer Hoyt papers held at Denver Public Library, which contained documents pertaining to the ongoing legal battle between the Denver Post and S.I. Newhouse; the

Bill Hosokawa collection at History Colorado, which included an interview of 1970s

Denver Post publisher Donald Seawell as well as newspaper clippings; the unprocessed

Steven G. Garnass collection at History Colorado, which included a memo and

447 newspaper clippings pertaining to the Post’s exposé of News editor Michael Balfe

Howard’s drug use and relationships with state law enforcement officers; and an oral history collected from early-1970s News editor Vincent Dwyer held by History Colorado.

Chapter 6 relies foremost on a series of oral histories collected by the researcher specifically to aid in the writing of this dissertation. Two of these were introduced in chapter 5: those of Larry Strutton and Neil Westergaard. Oral histories collected by the researcher from the following individuals were introduced in the chapter: William Dean

Singleton, who purchased the Post in 1987 and controlled it throughout the era; John

Temple, who joined the News in 1992 and became its editor in 1998 before later becoming its publisher; Jody Lodovic, an accountant at MediaFirst who became its chief financial officer in the early 1990s and later became its president; and Lynn Bartels, who joined the News as a reporter in 1993 and later reported for the Post. These oral histories are complemented by information housed at History Colorado that was collected by Post reporter Sue O’Brien for a series of articles regarding the competition between that paper and the News in celebration of the Post’s 1992 centennial including an interview with

Dean Singleton. Additional resources utilized here include the Frances Melrose papers at

Denver Public Library as well as that library’s unprocessed Rocky Mountain News collection, explained in greater detail below.

Chapter 7, like that before it, gleans many of its observations from oral histories collected from the following individuals, who were deeply involved with the goings-on of both the Post and News: John Temple, Dean Singleton, Larry Strutton, Jody Lodovic,

Lynn Bartels, and Neil Westergaard. Interviewees provided not only their own recollections related to the competition between the News and Post but also, in some

448 cases, financial figures and examples of editorial projects undertaken at the papers. These oral histories were complemented by the unprocessed Rocky Mountain News Collection housed at Denver Public Library. This collection, which consists of twenty-six boxes of company documents, memos, budgets, contracts, consultant analyses, newspaper clippings, digital files, readers’ letters, circulation reports, website visit reports, and emails, was combed for information related to the present study. The collection proved invaluable to understanding the competition between the two newspapers in the 1990s and 2000s, particularly during and immediately after the filing of the JOA. These materials were supplemented by contemporary news reports from both the News and

Post, which frequently function in this chapter as primary sources when relating the perspectives and actions taken by managers and journalists at the two papers, as well as other Denver publications such as the Denver Business Journal and Westword and industry magazines such as Editor and Publisher.

449

Appendix B: Major Individuals Mentioned in Connection with the Papers he following owners, publishers, editors, business managers, executives, and frequently mentioned individuals appeared in connection with the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News in chapters 1 through 7 of this work. This appendix is meant only to supplement the dissertation; dates may not be inclusive and represent only that information which was uncovered in the course of researching the larger work.

Ambrose, James—Editor of the News in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Amole, Gene—News editorialist from 1977 until his death in 2002.

Arkins, John—Editor and owner of the Rocky Mountain News in the late nineteenth century.

Bartels, Lynn—Reporter for the News in the 1990s and 2000s; following the close of the News, a reporter for the Post; previously a reporter at the Albuquerque Tribune.

Boehne, Rich—President and CEO of the E.W. Scripps Company in the late 2000s.

Bonfils, Frederick Gilmer—Owner of the Post from 1895 until his death in 1933.

Bonfils, F.W.—Post business manager in the 1920s and nephew of F.G. Bonfils.

Bonfils, Helen G.—Daughter of F.G. Bonfils and trustee to a large portion of Post stock who was responsible for maintaining local ownership of the Post following F.G.’s 1933 death until she herself died in 1972.

Bonfils Stanton, May—Daughter of F.G. Bonfils whose 1960 sale of Post stock spurred the attempted takeover of the Post by S.I. Newhouse.

Burleigh, William—CEO of the E.W. Scripps Company in the late 1990s.

Burdick, Robert—Editor of the News in the mid-1990s and president of that paper in the late 1990s.

Byers, William Newton—Founder of the News in 1859 and owner of the paper until 1878.

Campbell, Ray—Director on the Post’s board and trustee to a large portion of the company’s stock in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s.

Casey, Lee—Interim editor around 1940 and long-time editorialist at the News.

450 Cervi, Eugene—Founder of Cervi’s Rocky Mountain Journal in 1949 after writing for both the News and Post.

Contreras, Mark—Senior vice president of the E.W. Scripps Company’s newspaper division in the late 2000s.

Dailey, John Lewis—The first printer of the News in 1859 and partner of Byers in owning the paper from 1859 until 1870.

Davis, Forrest—Editor of the News for a brief period in the 1930s.

Dwyer, Vincent—Editor of the News in the early 1970s; previously a writer for seven years at the Post and many more years at the News.

Erburu, Robert—Executive and eventual head of the Times Mirror Company in the 1970s and 1980s.

Estlow, Ed—Business manager of the News in the 1970s; later president and CEO of the E.W. Scripps Company.

Foster, Jack—Editor of the News from 1940 through 1970.

Gibson, Thomas—A founding partner of the News in 1859 and, later, publisher of the Rocky Mountain Gold Reporter and the Rocky Mountain Herald.

Guittar, Lee—Publisher of the Post in the early 1980s.

Graves, Aubrey—Editor of the News for a brief period in the 1930s.

Guzzo, Glenn—Publisher of the Post in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Hailey, H.W.—Business manager of the News in the 1940s and early 1950s.

Hall, David—Editor of the Post in the mid-1980s.

Hickey, Maurice “Moe”—Publisher of the Post in the late 1980s; previously an executive in the Gannett newspaper chain.

Hively, Jeff—Vice president and COO of the Denver Newspaper Agency and Scripps vice president of newspaper operations in the early 2000s.

Horton, Alan—Senior vice president of Scripps’s newspaper division in the 1990s.

Howard, Jack—President of Scripps-Howard’s radio division in 1940, later head of the E.W. Scripps Company, and son of Roy Howard.

451

Howard, Michael—Editor of the News in the late 1970s and grandson of Roy Howard.

Howard, Roy—Head of the E.W. Scripps Company from the 1920s through the middle of the twentieth century; previously the head of United Press Associations wire service.

Hoyt, Edwin Palmer—Editor and publisher of the Post from 1946 through 1970; previously editor and publisher of the Portland Oregonian and director of the domestic branch of the Office of War Information in 1943.

Hunt, Donald—Publisher of the Post in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Jarrett, Will—Editor of the Post in the early 1980s.

Kelly, Tim—Managing editor and briefly interim editor of the Post in the 1980s.

Leech, Edward—Editor of the News following Scripps-Howard’s purchase of the paper in 1926 until 1931; earlier a newsboy for the Denver Times, reporter for the Denver Republican, and editor of the Denver Express.

Lewis, B.W.—Business manager of the News in the late 1950s.

Lodovic, Joseph “Jody”—Chief Financial Officer of MediaNews Group in the 1990s and president of the company in the 2000s.

Looney, Ralph—Editor of the News in the 1980s.

Lounsbury, Charles—Editor of the News from 1931 until 1935.

Loveland, William Austin Hamilton—Owner of the News for a period in the nineteenth century.

MacDonald, Kirk—President and CEO of the Denver Newspaper Agency in the early 2000s; previously executive vice president and general manager of the Post and head of Hearst Communications’ newspaper division.

McCabe, Charles—Editor of the News for a brief period in the 1930s.

McKibben, Ryan—Publisher of the Post in the 1990s.

Merrick, Jack—Publisher of the Cherry Creek Pioneer, the second newspaper in Colorado.

452 Monell, Gilbert C.—A founding partner of the News in 1859; turned back before reaching Denver and later sold his shares to Byers.

Morrow, Walter—Editor of the News for a brief period in the 1930s who held various other leadership position with the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain.

Newhouse, Samuel Irving “S.I.,” Sr. —Head of the Advance Publications newspaper chain who attempted a hostile takeover of the Post in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Patterson, Thomas MacDonald—Owner and publisher of the News from 1890 until 1913; US representative and senator during periods of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Rowland, Robert P.—News pressman responsible for producing and verifying the final copy of the newspaper in 2009.

Schlosberg, Richard—Publisher of the Post in the mid-1980s.

Scripps, Edward Willis “E.W.”—Founder of the Scripps newspaper chain, active in the concern from the 1870s until his death in 1926.

Scripps, Robert—Executive of the Scripps-Howard chain in the 1920s and 1930s and son of E.W. Scripps.

Seawell, Donald—Publisher of the Post following Helen Bonfils’s death in 1972 until 1980; previously attorney to Helen Bonfils.

Shaffer, John Charles—Owner of the News and Denver Times from 1913 to 1926; owner of the Chicago Post and Star League newspaper chain.

Shepherd, William—Publisher of the Post following F.G. Bonfils’s death in 1933 until 1946; previously Post managing editor.

Singleton, William Dean—Founder of MediaNews Group in 1983 and CEO of the company in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s; publisher of the Post in the 2000s.

Spencer, F. Gilman “Gil”—Editor of the Post in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Strutton, Larry—Publisher of the News in the 1990s; previously a pressman and eventually production manager of the News in the 1960s and 1970s and an executive in the Times Mirror Company in the 1980s.

Tammen, Agnes—Wife of Harry Tammen and beneficiary of the Tammen estate, which held a block of Post stock, following his death.

453 Tammen, Heye Heinrich “Harry”—Owner of the Post from 1895 until his death in 1924.

Temple, John—Editor and publisher of the News in the 2000s; previously editor of the News and managing editor of the Albuquerque Tribune in the 1990s.

Westergaard, Neil—Executive editor of the Post in the 1990s; later editor of the Denver Business Journal.

Whipple, Harry—Head of the Denver Newspaper Agency following Kirk MacDonald in the 2000s.

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