Denver Post business reporters missing the story of their lives

Should the Denver Post begin to list and sink, you can bet the story will not be broken by the business reporters at the Denver Post.

In the wake of the death of the rival Rocky Mountain News and as part of the narrative of a larger struggling industry, the business management of the Post is a major story but one Post business reporters seem less than interested in covering. They should be interested. If they start covering that story, and covering it hard, the Post executives might be forced into the kind of action now that could save the paper later.

Last week the New York Times Company, which bled $74.5 million last quarter, threatened to shutter the 137-year-old Boston Globe. It was front-page news in the Washington Post and at the Globe but it was buried in the second graph on the second page of the business section in the Times. More than that, the Times reporters didn’t follow the story for days after it broke and they never pressed Times company execs for comment.

About a week and a half ago, the Denver Post announced that it will no longer deliver weekday and Saturday editions to “outlying parts of Colorado.”

“Only the Sunday edition will be available in print for home delivery and single-copy sales in far western, southern and eastern Colorado and in surrounding states,” Editor and Publisher reported.

Editor and Publisher along with pretty much all of the other outlets that reported the news were working off a brief Associated Press story.

Neither the Denver Post business nor front-page reporters, as far as I can tell, reported or followed the story. That is a major missed opportunity. What other decisions are and are not being made this month in the corner offices of top management that will determine the fate of the hundreds of Denver Post employees?

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