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TEMPLE: Learning lessons in trying times

By John Temple, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published January 17, 2009 at 12:05 a.m.

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During my discussion with the newsroom on Thursday, I talked about how other news organizations are handling their coverage of the Rocky Mountain News. For us, it is a lesson in what it's like to be the focus of media attention.

Photo by Mark Holm / The Rocky

During my discussion with the newsroom on Thursday, I talked about how other news organizations are handling their coverage of the Rocky Mountain News. For us, it is a lesson in what it's like to be the focus of media attention.

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You've got to laugh.

If you didn't, you might just have to cry.

We've been in a fishbowl here this week at the Rocky. Other news organizations have been hovering, expecting to cover a mid-January decision day at the paper.

When another old Denver business, National Hirschfeld, suddenly announced late Tuesday that it was shutting down, sadly ending three generations of leadership by one family, a Denver TV station linked its fate with that of the Rocky. Our grave was already dug in its newscast.

Note to other media: We're for sale - at least for now.

The next day when another TV station interviewed me about our future, the reporter asked me to spell my name for the camera and to state my title. When the report aired, my title was wrong. I was demoted. No problem. When I had it, I always liked the job the station gave me.

That same day, a weekly newspaper, where the reporter has been covering this newspaper for as long as I've been editor, published a blog with this headline: "The latest from the Rocky Mountain News grapevine about the paper's future."

The reporter's item raising questions about whether we'd survive the week appeared six days after I had stood at the heart of our newsroom and told the staff, in no uncertain terms, nothing would happen this week. My words were that they should not feel the need to have a box next to their desk, packed and ready to go. They wouldn't need it.

Nothing of that made it into the story, although normally this writer isn't shy about calling me.

I guess the grapevine is pretty slow in this town.

On some radio stations, I'm told, it was even worse. Listeners said the message was clear: The Rocky would be closing Friday.

Look, I can understand the confusion. Scripps executives did say that they would be back in mid-January and that if there were no buyers for the Rocky, they'd have to evaluate their options. They acknowledged that one choice would be to close the paper.

But I still hate to see the clumsy way some of my colleagues at other news organizations approach our story.

I told my staff this week that one of the lessons of this experience is that it tells us what it's like to be the focus of attention of journalists. It tells us what can grate. And what is appreciated. And it reminds us in stark terms of the importance of accuracy.

This experience sensitizes us to the potential impact of our work.

I don't bring these frustrations up to imply that we're perfect in our own work. You can trust that every day we hear from people who don't believe we got something quite right or at least captured the nuance of a situation.

The same day after I spoke with our newsroom about this issue, I went to a dinner where I bumped into Mayor John Hickenlooper, always a chipper fellow but not one to hold back his criticism if he thinks we deserve it.

The mayor complained that we hadn't called him before we wrote an editorial that had appeared that day. He said that we had miscast the reason why the city was exploring how it ran recreation centers. It had been 18 months of work, with the goal of "good government," he explained.

Our editorial had put the focus on saving money as the driving force behind any proposed changes. Our assertion seemed supported in the editorial when I went back to review his complaint. But I hope you get my point. A better-nuanced editorial might have mentioned cost-cutting and nobler motives.

Journalism rarely satisfies everybody. It can't.

But we need to make sure as journalists that we're not so smug or self-satisfied that it too easily satisfies us.

Taking criticism is part of the business. We need to listen.

Being in the crucible of coverage is a lesson to us here at the Rocky. It reminds us that you'll never be sorry if you take the extra step on a story. You'll never be sorry you made the extra call. Or double- checked something you thought you knew to be true.

And it's also a reminder how important it is not to go into a situation with preconceived notions of what the story might be.

Some seem to think the story of the Rocky right now is what we think it would feel like if we had to shut the paper down.

Well, that's one possible approach. But the story these reporters miss if they go that route is how the journalists in this room are keeping their focus on the business at hand - and how by doing so they continue to serve you every day.

John Temple can be reached at editor@RockyMountainNews.com or by mail at 101 W. Colfax Ave., Suite 500, Denver, CO 80202.

Comments

  • January 17, 2009

    7:29 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    incognitoboy writes:

    burning the midnight oil, john? i don't blame you. others may bash, and criticize your quality or ethics or bias or whatever, but i personally have always liked the rocky, even when i didn't agree with everything that was written, and when i lived in denver it was always my choice when i wanted a paper.

    i guess what i'm saying is, thanks for continuing to fight the good fight and hanging in there. i'm sure it's the hardest thing you've yet had to go through, and i wish you all well in the coming days.

    it's sad and troubling when an organization as venerable as the rocky falls on hard times, and i truly hope things pan out in the end, but if they don't, you have my humble thanks, and i'm sure, the thanks of many others.

  • January 17, 2009

    5:04 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    HopiMedicineMan writes:

    This paper must survive. It is indispensible to the political health of this state, as we can see the results as the paper began faltering in the past election cycle. The lessons have indeed been learned. They are: this town won't support two liberal newspapers.
    The traditional readership needs to be honored not abandoned. They live further from the city than Post readers. Objective reporting is essential. That means supervision. If this paper is 15,000 greater circulation than the Post as "Skaj" in another thread, a production worker, indicates, there's no reason this paper should go down.

  • January 18, 2009

    12:56 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    The_Punnisher writes:

    I guess you got the same treatment the rest of the public gets.

    Welcome to the REAL WORLD, John...