Woolly Mammoths

Rocky Mountain News publishes final edition

While the Rocky closing is sad, (really it is), the frustrating part about this article is the lack of honest reporting. Yes, the internet has caused the newspaper to decline, but it wasn’t just the internet. It was the inability to change with the times.

They say in this article that the housing slump and unemployment rate caused the decline of classifieds, but that is absurd. Yes Craigslist and realtor.com etc. hurt the classified section of the newspaper, but I think the newspaper also hurt the classified section of the newspaper more. I wanted to post my rental property on the Camera’s classifieds, the cost was astronomical. It just wasn’t worth it. Had the newspapers not stuck their own heads in the sand and catered to the shareholders (had they not forgotten that content is what sells a newspaper) and recognized the changing world of technology, they might have survived the changes. But they were too big too slow and too old. Woolly mammoths. They refused to change with the times.

I am sorry to see this newspaper go and my peers in the industry’s jobs with it. But not all of this is the job or housing market. This has been coming for a long time and the newspaper refused to see it. I am sad to say this strikes me as something remarkably similar to Detroit.