The war ended quietly.
Everyone expected it to end. Yet it still sent a chill.
The newspaper that was here before our state was founded was going away. And there we were, the last ones standing.
No one popped champagne in the newsroom. There was no victory to celebrate.
A few hours after the announcement the Rocky Mountain News was closing, I bumped into Tina Griego and Mike Littwin at the Dazbog coffee shop. Tina started her Denver career as a reporter at the Rocky, then jumped to The Denver Post as a columnist, then back to the Rocky.
Now, she’ll be our colleague again at The Post. Her eyes were red, and she looked tired. The last few months have been rough.
There was nothing I could say. This was a death in our journalism family, no matter how bitterly we fought over the years.
And the Rocky and The Denver Post did battle fiercely for 117 years. The Rocky was founded on the banks of the Cherry Creek in 1859. The Post followed in 1892, joining the Express, the Times and the Republican as newspapers all jockeying for relevance in a burgeoning town.
But eventually, there were just the Rocky and The Post, duking it out like two heavyweight prizefighters.
Literally.
The two editors actually came to blows at one point.
On Christmas morning in 1907, the Rocky Mountain News ran an editorial accusing one of The Denver Post’s owners, Frederick Bonfils, of blackmailing businessmen for advertising revenue.
The “pugilistic Bonfils,” the story goes, tackled Rocky editor Thomas Patterson, a prominent Democrat and U.S. senator, the next time he saw him.
Patterson couldn’t substantiate his blackmail charges in court, but Bonfils was fined $50 nonetheless, according to the book “Voice of Empire,” by William H. Hornby.
And the war marched on.
In August 1932, the News printed a front-page story quoting a Democratic politician calling Bonfils “a rattlesnake . . . a public enemy who has left the trail of a slimy serpent across Colorado . . . the contemptible dog of Champa Street.”
Bonfils sued the News for libel. But when he died in 1933, the suit died with him, according to Hornby’s book.
My, how times have changed.
Instead of tackling my one-time rival at the Rocky, we’ve asked him to join us.
Beginning this week, the Rocky’s longtime editorial page editor, Vincent Carroll, will join The Post and will begin writing his popular column for us several times a week.
Carroll knows Colorado and its politics, having worked at the Rocky for nearly three decades. He will bring keen insight and sharp commentary to our op-ed pages.
We’re excited to have Vincent join us, and hope you, our regular Post readers, will find his columns thought-provoking, too.
Even though we’re adding his strong conservative voice to our editorial board, you can count on The Post to remain a strong, centrist voice for Colorado through our house editorials. And we’ll continue to publish local and national liberal voices on the op-ed page as well. We view our pages as a balancing act, and we’ll continue to do our best to give you a good mix of ideologies and of local and national columnists.
In today’s Perspective, you’ll find columnists George Will and Amy Goodman, who represent opposite ends of the political spectrums. Both columnists have anchored the Rocky’s op-ed pages in recent years, and perhaps they’ll find a home here, too.
Today marks a new day at The Denver Post, and a new commitment in our effort to be the voice of the Rocky Mountain Empire.
As we wrote in an editorial Friday, we hope you will continue to walk with us as we navigate the unsteady but exciting days ahead.
Editorial page editor Dan Haley can be reached at dhaley@denverpost.com.
