Go to the mobile version of this Web site.

Login | Contact Us | Site Map | Paid archives | Electronic edition | Subscription Questions | Extras

KRIEGER: We were the best of teams

By Dave Krieger, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published February 26, 2009 at 11:15 p.m.

Text size  

More Sports Columns & Blogs

More stories »

It is as inexplicable to me now as it was almost three months ago when our parent company announced it wanted out of Denver. Other than Bob Seger, I never knew anyone who wanted out of Denver.

I arrived a little more than 27 years ago with a job offer from the Rocky in my back pocket. Al Knight, my new boss, suggested I check into the Holiday Chalet on Colfax until I got my bearings. The old Victorian bed and breakfast was still there last time I drove the avenue. That was comforting because pretty much everything else has changed.

A lot of it for the better. The Dude. Big-league baseball. Big-league hockey. LoDo, which wouldn't exist without Coors Field.

Some of it for the worse. I still don't get how a newspaper with 200,000 paying subscribers and hundreds of thousands more readers on the Web cannot make a go of it. Obviously, I'm not an MBA.

Not our fault, the suits say. Business model's fault. So who came up with the business model?

Not long ago, a member of the audience demanded that songwriter Jackson Browne finish a concert with something upbeat. "The fact is," Browne replied, "that my truly cheerful material — there's not that much of it."

Me, too, at the moment. But let me draw on what there is. If the Rocky sports section has been your companion, you should know as you wave goodbye that it was a much bigger team effort than was obvious. You may have noticed the bylines and column mugs, but we were the beneficiaries of a team that corrected our mistakes and designed cool pages and made us look good.

The night the Broncos hired Josh McDaniels as head coach, I had already filed a column for the next day's Rocky on another subject. Copy editor Taylor Osieczanek e-mailed me at 7:48 p.m. to alert me. This wasn't really his job; he was just trying to give me a heads-up. Beat writer Jeff Legwold called to tell me he had nailed it down. By the time Richard Lord, running the night sports desk, called to find out if I would rewrite, I already had a list of themes I wanted to touch on. For all my years here, we have been teammates with a common purpose, unstated and understood.

The team that produced this sports section started with sports editor Barry Forbis, who built us into one of the top 10 daily sports sections in America, as judged by the Associated Press Sports Editors, with fewer resources than many of the other names on that list.

His right-hand man, deputy sports editor Kevin Huhn, was the person I dealt with on a daily basis. Moose, everyone calls him. I would work for either of them again in a heartbeat.

Their assistant sports editors were Mike Bialas, Steve Foster, Gerry Valerio and Bob Willis. They assigned, organized and edited most of what we've published.

The people who designed the pages and fixed the mistakes in our raw copy were Josephine Badovinac, Todd Burgess, Paul Glaviano, Angel Hernandez, Chuck Hickey, Tim Jamiolkowski, Paula Lentini, Richard Lord, Greg McElvain, Taylor Osieczanek, Tom Auclair, Jon Perez, Bob Sheue, Amy Speer, Tony Trowbridge and Anthony Welch.

The clerks who took all those high school game results, schedules and statistics were led by Chris Schmaedeke and Heather Embrey and included A.J. Boogert, Shannon Bustos, Gary Damrell, Aaron Duignan, Jonathan Garcia, Joseph Garcia, Nick Garner, Mitch Gillespie, Jessica McWhirt and Matt Southard.

The reporters who brought you the news were Jeff Legwold and Lee Rasizer on football, Tracy Ringolsby and Jack Etkin on baseball, Chris Tomasson on basketball, Rick Sadowski on hockey, B.G. Brooks on college sports, Lynn DeBruin on golf, Scott Stocker, Alan Pearce and a host of loyal freelancers on preps, and Jim Benton, Clay Latimer and Aaron Lopez on whatever they were asked to tackle.

My fellow columnists were Sam Adams and Bernie Lincicome. Our incomparable cartoonist was Drew Litton.

Our photographers were the best, as the Pulitzer board will tell you. Among them were Judy DeHaas, Preston Gannaway, Barry Gutierrez, Ellen Jaskol, George Kochaniec, Brian Lehmann, Joe Mahoney, Javier Manzano, Matt McClain, Darin McGregor, Ken Papaleo, Wes Pope, Chris Schneider and Dennis Schroeder; videographers Laressa Bachelor and Sonya Doctorian; and intern Tim Hussin.

It's hard to describe the unspoken sense of mission we shared. We had an ideal of what the Rocky should be, and we worked every day to get there. We were brothers and sisters of the heart.

They say all good things come to an end. It was a privilege to be a part of this one.

Comments

  • February 26, 2009

    11:32 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    chip writes:

    good luck Dave
    hope you continue writing in Denver...over the years you have become Denver's best sports columnist in my opinion

    a sad day...

  • February 27, 2009

    5:06 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    nmbronco1 writes:

    Thank you for giving us an insight into some of the workings of the RMN sports team. It hurts to be losing one of the best things in my life - a paper that I've been able to read since 1978 when I lived in Boulder, which followed me to Vail (hated living there!), Grand Junction, and then here in the Taos, NM area where for many years you could buy it at several places in vending machines. I worked in Jackson Hole, WY in the summer of '85 and found the RMN there too. It's a shame such a good paper has to go down the tubes... one of America's best.

    Word has it you are headed to the (disliked) Denver Post. I guess I'll have to look in there from time to time. Unlike now where the RMN online is one of my primary reads. Best wishes to you, Dave, and the entire RMN sports team!

  • February 27, 2009

    7:45 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    BroncoCole writes:

    I grew up with the Rocky. This is a sad day for Denver (the greatest city in the world).

  • February 27, 2009

    7:49 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    cmcray1 writes:

    Krieger, That was classy, typical for you. It is easy to see why the Post offered you work. Most of us read both papers anyway, but I ALWAYS read the RMN first. See ya around.

  • February 27, 2009

    10:46 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    LikeISeeIt writes:

    Dave, good luck to you at the Post. Over the years from when you were covering the Nuggets through the present you have always offered insightful commentary, even when I totally disagreed with the things you said. You have always approached your subject with thought, class, and a lack of hyperbole, which isn't a bad thing. You'll give me the only reason to log onto the Post's site and read you there. Thanks for the memories!

  • February 27, 2009

    10:50 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    Andynonymous writes:

    I'm a grown man with tears in my eyes. I've been reading the Rocky for 30 years, and it's like losing....I'm not sure what it's like losing, I've never lost a paper before.

    Guess I'll trudge over and see if I can get my same user name at the Post. It's been a great paper, you've been a great columnist, my favorite since D!ck Conner died.

  • February 27, 2009

    11:33 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    Six_Does_Not_Equal_Seven writes:

    Dave - Best of Luck... You are my favorite columnist in Denver, and the Rocky was my favorite paper by a long shot. Two years ago I got the opportunity to be one of the lucky 17 people chosen to compete in Last Columnist Typing contest that the Rocky held... What a thrill and a highlight that was for me. The Rocky and it's staff will always hold a special place in my heart and in my memory... Class acts each and every one of you! Scott Sunday

  • February 27, 2009

    1 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    RomBrew writes:

    Good Luck to you Dave, You truly are one of my favorites and I can't agree with you more about the comment on who figured out the business model.
    I look forward to reading you again another place time.