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KRIEGER: We were the best of teams

By Dave Krieger, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published February 27, 2009 at 12:05 a.m.

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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.

kriegerd@RockyMountainNews.com

Comments

  • February 27, 2009

    7:31 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    dannakao writes:

    Didn't think this day would come. Best of luck in your future endeavors and I hope to be reading your columns again soon.

  • February 27, 2009

    8:45 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    CO_Native_CO writes:

    No column I'll miss more than yours, Dave. Thank you so very much. [ Channel 2 ~~ REALLY ~~ needs a sports guy... REALLY !!! Check It Out... ]

  • February 27, 2009

    11:14 a.m.

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    4gColoNative writes:

    Dave, what a classy thing to do ... giving mention and credit to the whole team. Best wishes!

  • February 27, 2009

    11:53 a.m.

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    drkenne writes:

    I've always enjoyed reading your column and watched your career from the time you use to bring your Fiat (as a recall a 124 Spider) into our shop. I wish you the best.

  • February 27, 2009

    12:46 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    jjames52 writes:

    Dave,

    More than anything, even in a sports page, I appreciate intelligence. We've received that from you for more years than I know. I am sorry for the loss of your team, but hopefully, for us, we will continue to be able to you at the Post. Sincere thanks...