© Joe Amon/The Denver Post/Getty Images
Protest outside the Denver Post.
Writers and editors at the
Denver Post recently did what more than a few journalists have only dreamed of doing:
They denounced their proprietor in the pages of the Denver Post. So audacious was their action that the gesture made the front page of the
New York Times, which reported approvingly that
the Post "is in open revolt against its owner" and "pulled no punches" in its weekend Perspective section: "News matters," read the
Post headline: "Colo[rado] should demand the newspaper it deserves."
The immediate cause of the newsroom rebellion was a familiar one.
The Post's owner, a New York-based hedge fund called Alden Global Capital, had demanded significant staff reductions and the
Post's editorial-page editor asked, in an impassioned essay, whether "these heartbreaking instructions...represent the beginning of the end" for the
Post. Then he issued a challenge:
If the "vulture capitalists" at Alden Global aren't "willing to do good journalism here, [they] should sell the Post to owners who will."
I should acknowledge, at this juncture, that while I tend to believe journalists ought to refrain from biting the hands that feed them - and that includes subscribers as well as proprietors - I have no idea which side is right or wrong in this matter.
It is entirely possible that, in the new digital age, Denver cannot sustain a plentifully staffed metropolitan daily newspaper - the
Post's principal competitor, the
Rocky Mountain News, closed its doors a decade ago - and
it is equally possible that Alden Global Capital, in distant New York, is merely draining as much Colorado cash as it can.
Comment: Needless to say, if MI5 didn't abet so much of the terror we have seen in the UK and elsewhere, there wouldn't now be a call to grant them more powers - which will likely soon be used against anyone who speaks out against the criminal acts of the UK government.