Today's issue of the Rocky Mountain News will probably be its biggest selling edition in years. Unfortunately, that's because it will be the last issue. Souvenir collectors will grab copies off the news rack, maybe hoping to sell them in the future on eBay. Newspaper lovers will buy copies just for old-time's sake.
When I first came to the University of Wyoming in 1990, I wanted to continue writing news stories. I contacted the News' state editor, Steve Campbell, to see if he would be interested in buying some freelance stories from southeast Wyoming. He was interested in the black-footed ferret story I was pitching and agreed to buy it.
Over the next few years, I wrote occasional pieces on ferrets and UW for the News. I made a little spending money as a stringer, but my main objective was to keep my reporting and writing skills fresh. However, I can't deny that I still enjoyed the rush of seeing my byline on a story, particularly in the largest daily newspaper in Colorado.
But around 1993, Steve informed me that the News had cut its budget for stringers. He couldn't buy any more articles from me and the News was cutting its coverage of the outlying regions to focus on stories closer to Denver.
Looking back, I should have seen that budget cut as the beginning of the end for the News. It's still a big newspaper by most standards - over 200,000 papers sold on weekdays, over 400,000 on weekends.
But circulation doesn't keep papers in business any more. As always, advertising pays the freight and that revenue just isn't there any more. Maybe it's competition with TV or the Internet. Maybe it's the worldwide economic crisis. Probably, it's a combination of many factors that is driving newspapers out of business.
But newspapers might point the editorial finger at themselves. Despite the competition, despite the lousy economy, you don't hear about newspapers cutting their ad rates to attract business. Newspapers made a lot of money for many years and made a lot of owners and stockholders wealthy.
I blame greed for a lot of the newspaper industry's problems.
