(Growing crowd noises) All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical let Democrats, which is what they're doing and stolen by the fake news media.

That's what they've done.

(Crowd chanting) USA!

USA!

We will never give up we will never concede it doesn't happen.

You don't concede when there's theft.

(Crowd noise) We will not take it anymore.

And that's what this is all about.

(Crowd chanting) The police are now running back into the Capitol Building.

We have cheers from the protesters that are watching behind the scenes.

(Crowd noise) This is incredible.

(Crowd noise) Our democracy is in in a very dangerous place right now.

(Crowd noise) We're all part of this f-ing history!

There's so much anger.

There's so much distrust.

(Screaming crowd) Let's go!

You guys are savage!

Let's go!

Our very democracy depends on access to reliable information.

( Screaming crowd ) We've lost more than 2,000 newspapers in the United States.

Where do you go for information when your newspaper is gone?

( Crowd noise ) When you have a vacuum, it gives rise to question facts and question convention and create confusion, that when you divide people based on fear, you get some of the stuff that we're seeing.

( Crowd noise ) In this country, we've seen a real decline in the levels of truat in the press.

( Crowd noise ) Journalists are being called the enemy of the people.

What causes people to be fearful?

A lack of information, they don't really know what's going on.

They don't trust what's happening.

We are here for a f-ing revolution!

I'm more worried about our democracy today than any other time in history.

This is 2021 y'all!

This is insanity!

( Crowd noise ) This is the first time that I've seen our country have such a major issue that we couldn't come together on.

( screaming crowd ) And that's worrisome.

There's a very old saying that democracy dies in darkness.

And when the lights go out, we all suffer.

( Screaming crowd ) There's a gun!

There's a gun!

And it's happening.

We're seeing it before our eyes.

( Gun shot ) ( Music into ) The past couple of weeks are showing once again, just how tough the business of news is right now.

( Music ) Over the last decade and a half, we've seen 1800 newspapers disappear off the landscape of the U.S.

And you need newspapers or journalists of any kind to hold these people to account.

I think the days of newspapers being printed on paper in these communities is pretty much over.

All of this has led to the growth of so called - news deserts, places where there is limited access to news outlets.

I think it's undeniable, local reporting is really going the way of the horse and buggy.

The average newspaper is going to be like passenger trains.

They're going to be many, many important cities that just don't even have those.

The real tragedy of this is the coverage of local governments and state governmens has really diminished if not evaporated.

There is no democracy without a free and independent press.

There never has been and there most certainly never will be.

I never wanted it to come to this.

(Sound of paper dropping) We were going to call them out one way or the other.

We were in open revolt against our owners.

I started writing it.

And I read about the first three paragraphs of the editorial.

And I just pushed back from my desk and -- Whoa!

He jumps up out of his chair runs into my office shuts the door, makes sure that no one is listening.

Are you sure?

Are you really sure?

You know what you're doing here?

Right?

You know what's going to happen if you publish this editorial?

And so I said, "So you like it" (Laughter) If they fire you for this I will proudly walk out that door with you.

( Music ) The hedge fund managers often tellingly referred to as vulture capitalists have hidden behind the narrative that adequately staffed newsrooms and newspapers can no longer survive in the digital marketplace.

The Smart Money is that in a few years, the Denver Post will be rotting bones.

And a major city, in an important political region will find itself without a newspaper.

Denver deserves a newspaper owner who supports its newsroom.

If Alden isn't willing to do good journalism here, they should sell The Post to owners who will.

It just finally felt like well, this is what we've all been saying but haven't been able to put out there.

I'm walking around thinking, well, in about 30 minutes I'm not going to have a job anymore.

On Sunday morning, I get The Times I go out to pick up the paper.

It's on the front page on a Sunday, and it's above the fold.

That night on CNN, The New York Times editor, Dean Baquet talked about what we had done, The biggest crisis in journalism is not Donald Trump's attacks on the Washington Post and the New York Times.

We're big, we can stand it, we can even thrive and it can even inspire us.

The biggest, the biggest crisis is the, is the decline of local newspapers.

This is a major city, Denver that now is on the verge of having fewer than 100 journalists.

That's astounding.

This is a crisis in American journalism.

And I think everyone assumed that the digital age would bring in new competitors who would pick up the slack.

That has not happened.

I mean, how often does a news organization, a newspaper, actually publish an editorial that is contrary to the wishes of their owner?

And that's not only extraordinary, that is courageous.

But you're welcome to do that.

You're all from the press department, press room all of you?

What it's about for Alden is, the money.

That's it, you know, they're going to sell off the properties.

They're going to sell off the real estate.

They're going to lay off people, they're going to do whatever they have to do to make money.

The Denver Post is on its way out the door.

It's in the death throes as a newspaper.

It went from being a once very solid, very strong paper that had won several Pulitzer Prizes, to a paper that now is so dreadfully understaffed that it's barely able to cover the news.

When they take that newsroom from 120 to 100, rom 100 to 68, or something like that.

When you don't have those feet on the street, there are stories that aren't being told.

The Denver Post is in a really tough spot.

A newsroom, a very proud newsroom, that once numbered 250 to 300 journalists is now down somewhere around 60.

They've been cutting down beyond the bone.

I mean, they're they're deep into the bone now.

Marrow's spilling all over.

(Horn honking, people chanting) The news matters.

That's the rallying cry from workers at The Denver Post who marched in Adams County today.

Supporters of The Post are fed up with cutbacks by their owner.

Leading the way, Chuck Plunkett.

He had been the editor of the editorial page.

Some call him a hero.

(Cheers from the crowd) I can't believe I'm in this situation.

And I never would have been in this situation if it hadn't been for you.

I really need Alden Global Capital to come around and either start reinvesting in it's newsrooms and start looking for a way to preserve local journalism across all it's holdings, but particularly at the Denver Post.

Or they need to sell us to more responsible owners, And that's the message these people are trying to get out.

And it's time for the people of Colorado to stand up and help these folks, if they care about local journalism, and they shou.

Without local journalism, Thomas Jefferson said, the people that are in power will turn into wolves and prey upon the rest of the populace.

Journalists, he said, are more important than government.

I try not to use profanity.

I'm tired of watching people walk out our doors, good quality people like you.

(Cheers) So thanks so much, and keep doing what you're doing Don't let the vultures get you down.

(Cheers) How do you get out into the public mind, an "Enough," or #MeToo or that kind of a story narrative so that people understand, "Oh, that's why it's terrible if my state paper collapses."

I could have kept my job as the editorial page editor.

I didn't, I didn't take that route I resigned.

In our world, the way America works, if you really want to get something accomplished you have to go big.

I want to keep writing about the issue and publishing in places.

That was another reason why I left The Denver Post was so that I would have the freedom to do that.

We had photos from like our Pulitzer Prize winning photographers and our other - just all the photographers that work at The Denver Post, and they were all over the lobby, like an art exhibit.

And it was really beautiful.

And it captured a sense of what it was like living here just by walking around.

And, um when I walked through the lobby all the photos were gone.

And -- it just made such a statement.

Good to see you.

I don't even think of it as The Denver Post building anymore.

No, it's not.

It's absolutely not this is, you know a housing for corporations.

Man, I miss it.

(Laughter) I really do.. I played high school sports here.

I was.

I still have clippings when I was in the papr back in 1990 - 91.

Wow So I mean, there's nothing like a hometown newspaper.

You ‘t get local information anywhere else, like you can a hometown newspaper.

It's impossible to cover a major metro area like Denver, with only 60 people.

It's just not, it's just not possible.

And so a lot of things will not get covered.

(RECALL!

RECALL!

RECALL!)

Schools wont get covered the way they should.

Law enforcement won't get covered the way it should.

“Step away or be arrested for interfering.” “Ow!” “Stand up and act like a lady.” “There you go.

Now you can go to jail.” Environmental issues won't be covered the way that they should, and politicians and others will know that nobody is actually looking, nobody's paying attention.

Holy crap.

(Siren sounds) All of a sudden the house shook.

And we heard a loud bang.

Exactly a year ago a house blew up in Firestone, Colorado.

The remains of two people have been pulled from the rubble of this house explosion.

It just got even worse.

It's on fire now.

The whole area is smoked out.

In better days,we probably would have had somebody doing nothing but chasing that story for the next year.

We haven't been able to do that.

There was a settlement in the case.

The company announced on its website that it has settled with the Martinez and Irwin families.

And we missed it.

I felt like what have we really been missing by not focusing intently on that .

These are people who live in this area tell me they heard about a dozen gunshots... And pick the things that are most important and most urgent.

And we do have really tremendous reporters still left.

I mean, it's not like everybody is a three-legged dog in our shop.

This is not, this is not what we have.

We have really skilled, really devoted, really diligent reporters who can get out there and get any story that we want them to get.

But we do have to choose our battles.

And sometimes I feel like I'm going to be sick because I know that I am not able to fight all of the battles that need to be fought.

(Birds chirping) I'm leaving, I'm just worn out.

When they announced that they were laying off 30 people, it was heartbreaking.

That's not good for me.

Come on, girls.

Why did I name him Smoky, Smokey and Smoky?

Kelly Cluckson and then Smokey with an EY, and Smoky with just a Y. The two gray ones.

Bock, bock!

When I got to The Denver Post, there were more than 300 reporters and editors.

Every time I think of Dana leaving, I burst into tears.

So I've been trying, honestly, not to think about it that much.

Because it just during the day, I literally will like break down and cry.

It's not my intention to leave people high and dry.

I mean, I didn't spend the amount of time that I've spent with Elizabeth to be like, "Hey, see ya, good luck."

She, for me is The Denver Post.

She is so good at her job, if you're working on any story from any section, and you came over and said, “Hey, who would you think to call for this," she'd have 10 people for you.

She was born to do this job.

And so to think that she's had enough, because of all of these circumstances is so disheartening to me.

I mean, if I weren't completely exhausted, I probably would stay and see if I could, you know, be part of the revolution from within, but I'm just tired.

Keep trying to get back into running and trail running , but that kind of stuff.

It's just at The Post, it's been so... Time?

(People talking) And they put out cheeses and crackers.

I was at The Post for 13 years.

And I started out covering higher education.

I covered politics, health, and for the last six years, I was on the investigative projects team.

And at the time, there was a big push to invest in investigative reporting and to take a group of reporters who would really be watchdogs for the community and delve into longer term projects or issues that just required more than a couple of days, or even a couple of weeks of reporting, or not spending the time that we used to spend talking about how to make a story better.

Instead, we talked too much about corporate goals and pageviews.

and whether we're selling enough digital subscriptions, And I just miss the old days when you could sit down with your editor and really go over a story and be working for your community.

(Traffic sounds) It would be nice to be able to have a chance to like bounce it off someone cool.

Have it published somewhere cool.

Hey man!

Good to see you.

Hey!

Thanks for coming!

Good to see you!

How are you?

I'm well.

How are you?

It's been awhile.

One of the ideas that's floating around right now is should you stop subscribing to The Denver Post?

I get that.

You want to take it to the man, you want to hurt the man where it hurts.

I don't support a subscription boycott at all.

Let's get the community involved.

Let's try to find a way, some of you guys are super plugged in.

Many of you guys are super plugged in, you know how to do this kind of thing.

Let's get the governor to come.

Let's get the mayor of the city of Denver to come.

Well, thank you for the opportunity and thank all of you.

(Applause) Good evening, everyone.

I support good, strong independent journalism.

And I support The Denver Post.

And I've done everything I could in the last couple of weeks to help grow your circulation.

(Laughter) (Applause) Not always with the headlines I want, but just I thought Id share that with you.

(Laughter) Its not always about how The Post reports on me, it's about the fact that every one of us have access to independently, independent, verifiable standards in reporting that's important for the growth of our city, and the growth of our democracy.

(Amen!)

And as someone who understans, I studied journalism in school, my daughters studying.

We learn from day one in Journalism 101, the standards of journalism.

And all of that is being lost with digital... social media platforms.

And we cannot surrender our children and the future of our community and the future of this nation to tweets.

(Laughter) That's what's happening.

What can you do to help find different ownership to help put pressure on Alden?

I was actually going to try to meet with them when I was in New York last week.

And I think this is when I was in New York when I got word about Chuck's resignation, which was really disappointing.

And so we backed off on it at that point in time .

Look at how private equity has responded to the protests that Chuck just described.

There's a group outside their building in New York last week.

They don't care.

They don't respond at all.

They don't even send out a PR person.

We just heard the mayor say he backed off from calling Alden because Chuck Plunkett resigned.

To me, that is when when you f--ing call Alden.

Nothing to me, indicates that The Post is savable.

I don't know that there would be a groundswell in the community to save anything other than the Broncos.

The mayor can make a call to John Elway.

And the Broncos should start taking up, take a knee for local journalism.

If we can get those types of influentials behind us.

We need to save this paper.

I don't think that's going to happen.

I'm sorry to say that.

I think the villain of the moment is Alden.

But the real thing in front of us is change.

I think that we are going to see an evolution of journalism that may leave newspapers behind.

And we need to start thinking about what that looks like.

(Slow dramatic music)♪♪ Today I'm meeting the Chair of the Department of Journalism, and potentially the Dean of the College of Media Communications and Information to talk about maybe working at the University of Colorado as a journalism instructor that runs their News Corps program.

Yeah, I'm looking for some employment.

I mean, I feel, I feel good about my chances.

I feel like I'm a quality product.

I feel like I could do a good job.

I'm here to tell you how glad I am that you're here again.

Oh, thank you so much.

Let's hope it works out.

Oh wow, what a nice office.

You know what, thank you.

Oh, that's great.

This space,is, well it's messy.

♪♪♪ Bass music There's no city in America that doesn't have one newspaper.

None.

There's no city.

♪♪ Denver is among the most thriving economically successful cities in America right now.

Look outside and just try not to bump into one of the cranes.

Denver is thriving, and it's a big growing city.

And the idea that it could not have a newspaper is insane.

I mean, that's baffling.

♪♪ Denver was a two newspaper town, The Rocky Mountain News and The Denver Post, for over a century.

For most of that time, The Rocky Mountain News was a morning newspaper, The Denver Post was an evening newspaper.

♪♪ Fast drum music I worked for The Rocky Mountain News, which was, you know, bitter enemies with The Post for years.

That's why I came here, to be in the newspaper war.

That's why I came here from Baltimore, to be in this newspaper war.

I fought in it.

♪♪ Fast drumbeat music It was a great newspaper reading community.

Probably a million newspapers were thrown in driveways in Denver.

♪♪ We were just fast, we were nimble.

We were smart.

We embraced all types of technology.

We understood video.

Hello, I'm Molly Hughes in The Denver Post newsroom.

Colorado is one of only six states... We were just really really, really good.

( Music ) We had about 250 journalists they had about 250 journalists.

Sure there were turf battles and tensions ( Music ) Well, I left The Boston Globe in part because I had been passed over for editor.

I started opening myself up to other opportunities.

So Dean, we met in March, we had dinner, he came to Boston and we had like a five hour dinner.

And he offered me the job, probably about a month and a half later.

Yeah, what we're gonna run on what the plan was for Sunday was just, a little list of, you know, these are your top 4/20 events.. It started on Saturday.

So some of that stuff you have to get in Friday because it's happening on Saturday.

But when I came, there were just some things I wanted to do.

I wanted to sort of speed up our metabolism.

I wanted to change some processes.

I wanted to improve the plannin.

I wanted to elevate the writing and I wanted to elevate the ambition.

( background talking ) Scripps, the Cincinnati based owner of The Rocky Mountain News, they competed on price for circulation, and they competed on price for advertising.

And it got to the point where the papers were selling annual subscriptions for $3.65.

A penny a day.

( TV ad - Rocky Mtn News) Scripps thought it could win against Dean Singleton, the owner of The Denver Post, because Dean was a privately held company that had financed his company through debt.

But ultimately, the big problem was that Scripps was traded on the New York Stock Exchange and had public shareholders they had to answer to Wall Street analysts.

And they had to explain quarter after quarter why they were losing money in Denver for the long term.

( TV ad Rocky Mtn News ) Ultimately, when Scripps didn't win that newspaper war war as quickly or as easily, as they thought they could, they decided to throw in the towel and they went to Dean Singleton and negotiated what's called a joint operating agreement that allowed newspapers to collaborate on the business side and set prices in order to preserve two separate newsrooms, two separate editorial voices.

They built that beautiful Denver Post Rocky Mountain News building right across from the Civic Center.

Perfect placement.

It seemed like the future was bright for the two papers.

They were very optimistic about the future.

But two or three things happene.

( Background news report ) Oh my God.

That just exploded.

I just saw another plane coming in from the side.

The second explosion major financial institutions have teetered on the edge of collapse.

And some have failed.

( Somber music ) Colorado went into that recession later than the rest of the nation and stayed in it longer than the rest of the nation.

By the time Colorado got out of that recession, you started seeing what we call the secular problems of the newspaper industry.

of the newspaper industry.

( Music) There's an old saying in advertising to the effect of I waste 50% of my money on advertising, I just don't know which 50%.

Well, with the Internet, and with Google and Facebook, that's not true anymore.

That's very targeted, very effective advertising.

Advertising on on the web for newspapers has been a disaster.

I don't know why I don't understand that.

But looking at a, an ad, a full page ad in a newspaper, somehow when you're turning the pages of newspaper, you stop and you look at that full page ad.

But when you're online, when you see that ad, it bothers you.

The things they tried to do like pop ups and all those things.

I mean, people couldn't stand that.

And advertisers don't want to offend people.

That's not that's not good advertising.

The idea of taking the shotgun approach to having a big full page newspaper ad, and not really knowing who's reading and who's responding to it is somewhat archaic.

You couldn't grow the digital advertising platform to replace what you were losing on the print platform.

Right?

And so you couldn't charge the same rate.

And so we were losing money, year over year, every year for 10 years.

(Music) The classified advertising is what really killed the newspaper industry.

Craigslist, herel you could advertise for free, Wanting to sell your refrigerator.

Put the ad in for a week it costs - ack, I can't remember what it costs you, but it costs your more bucks than you thought it would.

Not only is Craigslist free, you can put photos of your refrigerator on there.

Classified advertising in newspapers couldn't do that.

They had an opportunity to buy them, they should have bought them.

And they should have learned lessons from how they were doing things differently, to modernize their products.

And they didn't.

So that's huge missed opportuni.

The classified advertising that made up one third of the revenue of newspapers across the nation.

So if you're talking about where your profit margin is, all of your profit margin came in classified advertising.

(Music) People were getting their news for free online, which was provided basically, by the newspapers, That's the original sin is sort of giving your content away for free.

And it's really hard to make people pay for something when you've given it to them for free for a long, long, long time.

The Internet is free.

So they picked up, you know, my column, for instance.

My column runs on Google, you know, Google News.

They link to my column, so I'm not getting anything for that.

(Music) But that isn't the whole story.

What happened truly was the subsidy for the newsroom got taken away.

The newspaper used to be subscribed to by people who might have wanted to learn where the yard sales were on on Saturday.

Maybe they want to do the jumble every single day.

Others need the TV book.

And the people who enjoyed news suddenly realized that the true cost of a newsroom and it wasn't getting paid for anymore.

They ran out of ways to grow revenue.

I think all of you know, Rich Boehne and Mark Contreras, Rich is the president and CEO of the E.W.Scripps Company.

And of course Mark is the Senior VP of Newspapers.

Im going to let Rich speak and talk to you and answer any questions.

Good morning, we won't take long we want to answer your question.

Tomorrow will be the final edition of The Rocky Mountain News.

(Booing) Certainly not good news for any of you, and certainly not good news for Denver.

One thing I just want to make sure and say it's certainly nothing you did.

You all did everything right.

But while you were out doing your part, the business model and the economy changed.

And The Rocky became a victim of that.

You know why?

Why The Rocky and not The Post Let me try to be just as straight as I can.

Denver can't support two newspapers any longer.

Just can't happen.

(Music) It was a very sad day.

This is the end of this newspapr 149 years, we didn't even get her to 150.

♪ (Upbeat tempo) Dean Singleton is a , sort of an outlaw owner.

He was in his youth.

♪ He was known as lean Dean and not for his stature.

He was known because he bought newspapers and but he reduced the staff to those papers.

And a lot of those papers went out of business.

♪ He had a reputation for being vicious in cutting costs.

♪ He's an old newspaperman, and much in the way that that Rupert Murdoch is.

He's cantankerous, willing to make quick decisions.

He's willing to do a lot of cutting when he needs to do it But he has newspapering in his blood.

(Music) Dean might as well have been Citizen Kane.

I mean, he just he loved the power that came with the newspaper.

He's one of the most persuasive people I've ever known.

He loved being, hearing the real facts of what, how decisions were being made and what was going on.

And the other part of it was, I benefited tremendously by his wisdom and experience.

♪♪ He made a lot of money buying up newspapers, he bought bigger newspapers, he bought more and more newspapers.

He's at various times, has owned and closed both the secondary papers in Houston and Dallas in his home state.

He's bought and sold papers in California.

Media News was centered in Denver, and The Denver Post is where his offices were.

This became his baby and he was completely invested in The Post.

He borrowed money and bought newspapers and was a great business model as long as the newspapers were as profitable as they were.

♪♪ Media News Group which is what Dean Singleton's company was called at the time.

And it was regarded as an advantage that it was a privately held company Dean Singleton, his business partner and a handful of other people owned all the stock in the company.

It did not trade on the New York Stock Exchange.

When the Rocky Mountain News closed, people said, “Oh, isn't it great, that Dean Singleton is a private company, he doesn't have shareholders, he doesn't have Wall Street, That's why he won.” And that may well be true.

But it didn't take very long for us to see the downside of that situation.

And that's what's playing out today.

I can cut costs with the best of them.

I've got a lifelong reputation for cutting costs.

For most of my career, I cut more than anybody did.

I bought a lot of money-losing newspapers in my career, and had to put them together with other newspapers.

And we had to cut a lot of cost.

And we laid off a lot of people and so I was the villain.

(Printing press sounds) Newspapers are a business.

The first thing to go is employment advertising.

And that was followed by real estate advertising.

And that was followed by automotive advertising.

Local retail started to go, department stores started to go.

There's no real advertising content in the newspaper.

So you're only getting those who want the newspaper for news.

And with all the revenue declining like that, you didn't have the money to spend on news.

The newsroom hated to hear this, but consistently 57% of our readership read us for the ads.

When the revenue picture of newspapers started to decline rapidly, we knew that you really couldn't have debt.

We had debt.

So you couldn't have debt and fight the battle.

As he cut and did efficiencies, and was forced to do more efficiencies, because of all the secular pressures around him.

He cut too deeply.

As many newspaper owners, most newspaper owners have done, hurting the product itself.

What the thinking was, is, you know, while our advertising base is shrinking with the papers we have, if we go out and buy other newspapers that have more stable advertising bases, we can hold on to more of our advertising revenue.

So they went out and overpaid for newspaper properties and all of a sudden, next thing you know, they're in debt.

And it's just a miscalculation.

And it was exacerbated by the recession in 2008.

Lots of chains folded around this time.

Famous chains.

Like there's no more Times Mirros.

There's no more Knight Ridder.

These were the best chains of newspapers in America and the chains themselves collapsed.

When people ask, “Why did Dean Singleton choose to sell to Alden?”, that's not quite the way that it worked.

What was really not appreciated at the time was that he made a choice to finance his company through debt, hundreds of millions of dollars in debt floated to the public and public bondholders.

If a company gets into financial trouble, bondholders have more power than stockholders do.

Back in 08, ‘09 and ‘10, we still thought we could win the battle.

And we still had some fight left in us.

But we couldn't do it and have debt.

So we negotiated with our 60 or 70 lenders to convert their debt to equity and become our partners.

(Music) I didn't expect somebody to go buy up the shares, but they started buying shares.

You could see the handwriting on the wall.

(Music) What happens to you if the business you're in, doesn't make the returns that it once did?

And there's not a lot of good options When you get into that position.

Dean, I am quite sure never wanted to see Alden do what it has done to the company that he worked so hard to build up.

I'm sure this has been nothing but heartbreaking for him.

And if he had to do it over again, I'm sure he would have made some different decisions.

He built that company on sweat and blood, over 20-25 years, There's no way that he would have intentionally done anything to break that up, he was too proud of it,.

I'm sure he would like to have done something different, I think he would have done anything to avoid the outcome that we're seeing right now.

I mean I would have probably fought until the end if I hadn't struggled with multiple sclerosis.

But if I had stayed, the result would have been the same.

I mean, I would have cut as many costs as Alden's cut.

The only people left that would buy a newspaper, were Wall Street firms who wanted to take a mature business and liquidate it over time.

Alden Global Capital is a hedge fund.

They're located in New York City at the top of the Lipstick building.

And it's a small group of folks who understand financial markets in really sophisticated ways and are able to invest large amounts of money in businesses that they see as struggling and they've got a business strategy to milk profit out of those companies over a period of time so that their investment makes sense.

It's all just, you know, cut and dry capitalism.

It had to have been after a previous layoff starting to look at well, who is this Alden Global?

Um, Hey, they own all these other companies.

Whoa, they just bought Payless.

They just bought Fred's Pharmacy, you know, the some retailer on the East Coast.

And those were both near bankruptcy.

What happened?

Holy cow.

All the money's gone.

And now they're shutting those things down.

From the outside looking in, they have little faith that a newspaper like The Denver Post, or their other properties can actually increase or maintain their revenue if they spend on the product.

This is the business they're in.

They just have one playbook.

To Alden, you've only got one constituent and that's the shareholder.

The fact that Alden is so secretive, that they won't return phone calls, they won't answer questions just sort of makes me more stubborn.

I'm a freelance investigative reporter but I investigate Alden Global Capital.

I have worked for many years ata newspaper- The Monterey Herald that ended up getting bought by Alden Global Capital.

So I've experienced firsthand what happened.

I've been outspoken about my experience working under Alden.

It was grueling and heartbreaking to see what happened to a really good little paper.

So Alden invests in any company that's in trouble, is a potential target for them, especially if they're on the verge of bankruptcy or just declared bankruptcy.

To Alden it's all the same whether you put out cheap shoes or you put out a newspaper, it's just another commodity to them.

We have about 80 newspapers across the country, things like The Denver Post, San Jose Mercury News, The Orange County Register, The Boston Herald.

So now I was really stunned one day to open up my email and find this chart here.

On a story by Ken Doctor, and of course, I follow all of Ken's writing on this.

He's great.

Ken came out with this earth shaking data from all the DFM papers throughout the chain, they were making 17% profit in some areas were making a 30% profit margin.

I was amazed by the level of profit of almost a billion dollars in revenues, and profits of about $160 million a year at about a 17% margin.

And essentially, 17% is about twice of what most newspaper chains are making.

The claim is that we need to have more layoffs, because you know, the economy's so bad, because the company just has to tighten our belts.

You know, we're just barely making it and ... I'm sorry, 17% margin is not just barely making it.

That is thriving.

They're solidly profitable, they're cutting their core product the newsroom, the thing that you have to have, if you're going to have a newspaper.

You know, I'm no expert on hedge funds, but it's clear that Alden has a plan, Double digit returns year after year.

That's just, that's not sustainable.

It's to me a reckless disregard for the institution itself.

You know, they've cut and cut and cut.

And you know, just this year, the newsroom went down from 100 people down to around 60.

I mean, that's, that's brutal.

Clearly, and within the laws of the country, companies can buy and ruin companies and and lay off and get rid of the jobs of 1000s of people.

We know that that is legal.

We expected that the newspaper industry would be different because it always had been.

That's the pain and the penalty of having a hedge fund owner like Alden owning The Post, because it makes it easy to make cuts, you don't care about what the impact is, you don't understand what the impact is, and allows you by having that distance to just look at the dollars like you don't have to look at the consequences because you don't know and you don't care.

19% returns that the owners are demanding from properties like The Denver Post.

There's only one way that you can produce 19% returns year after year.

And that's to cut people.

We got dragged into more and more meetings with representatives of Alden who were questioning just basic tenets of journalism, like, why do you have photographers?

Our owners announced that we were going to have to move out of the iconic Denver Post building downtown, and that for the first time in its history, there'd be no Denver Post in Denver.

Now we are in our printing press which is in unincorporated Adams County, basically directly next to refineries, and all these other factories.

It smells like dog food all day.

(Music) We describe this one meeting in December as defending your life where you come into this meeting and you have to defend everything you do.

You've got to explain every dollar you spend, and why you spend it the way you do.

And can you find a way to do it cheaper?

And can you find a way to do it without as many people and why can't you be the same size as some piss*ant paper in New Jersey?

When he called me one day and he said, I need to see you today.

And he came over and he says I can't, I can't do it anymore.

It's the cuts - the cuts that are being required are more than I can take and I think that I want to go.

Here's the message.

I'm not doing any of that.

I'm not making any cuts.

Because to me, that was just evidence that they didn't care.

And that was it.

I mean, I knew then I was done.

You don't need.

(Music) When Greg resigned, he didn't specifically say that more cuts were coming.

But we all kind of assumed that that's the reason he was leaving.

And sure enough, not long after he was out the door they cut another 20 or so.

We cut people in November.

And I thought that was going to take us through to the end of the fiscal year.

But no, it didn't.

And so I, I was not prepared for that.

(Music) They were gasps in the room.

Everyone was so shocked.

And then within,within almost less than a second, there was this just burst of like crying.

And, you know, it was just awful.

In the newsroom, we were working so hard.

But we were so unaware of what was happening on the business end.

And there was no way we could find out.

I felt like I was floating out of my body and like not even attached to the real world.

And like I had this very clear thought.

This is where The Denver Post dies.

(Music) The entire journalistic ecosystem is suffering right now.

News deserts, as others have said are emerging and spreading accross the country.

We've lost more than 2000 newspapers in the United States.

That means towns, that means entire counties that have no newspaper.

And when that happens, the soundtrack of a community just gets muted.

Like you just don't know what's going on.

A newspaper has the blowtorch.

The newspaper really was the town square, Strong daily newspapers have played a pivotal role in the relationship between the public and their government.

And oftentimes, you know, I mean, journalists are trying to get the news and the truth but they're also trying to sell newspapers.

Oftentimes they'll come after elected officials and we officials seem to take offense.

The weighting, the way the story is slanted sometimes puts us at a disadvantage.

But the alternative of not having a strong voice of the people, not having a strong daily newspaper That is unacceptable for a variety of reasons.

One of the most important ones being if you're a mayor or governor, and you believe in good government, the media helps you uncover places in your agencies, where someone's doing stuff bad.

Oftentimes, its journalists who find out about that and by reporting on it, we're embarrassed to see that what we're managing isn't as successful as we'd like.

But it allows us to fix it and improve it.

And that ultimately, is a kind of a foundation democracy, it allows people to believe in their government.

It's sad, but inevitable, the business model went away.

And so we're probably not too far away from not having any print community newspapers left.

What's it gonna be like when there isn't that voice anymore that steps in and like plays, a referee in a certain kind of way.

Welcome to the revolution!

Youre one of those people who is prepared to fight who said Im not going to let this happen to America either were going to go with American values or were going to go with socialism.

We're going to have extremeism .

You want to say that If any white people ever own slaves, the Muslims still run the slave trade, you wicked whore!” Its just this ocean of information, it is just washing over all of us.

Mixed in with all of those wonderful nuggets of factual information is all of this other stuff all of this noise.

All of this misinformation and disinformation.

(Noisy montage) Disinformation is rampant and dangerous.

In fact, BuzzFeed goes so far as to say that disinformation broke the United States in 2020.

We have a crisis of misinformation in this country.

I fear that people just rely on sort of fast food information.

They get these posts from friends and others on social media.

They don't bother to verify whether they're true or not.

They just know that their friend or family member shared this and they don't really give it much thought.

There's just a lack of critical thinking that people don't stop and wonder how do they know that?

Is it true?

With so many sources, separating fact from fiction can be confusing.

A recent study from the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University found 1200 websites claiming to be local news with questionable backgrounds, all run by Metric Media There are Pay to Play sites that have popped up that are masquerading as news sites.

It's a phenomenon known as pink slime journalism, where the stories aren't patently false, but slanted and sometimes paid for by interested parties.

Some articles like this one on Governor Polis were duplicated from other states, copied word for word with only the name changed.

There's quite a vacuum.

And there's quite an opportunity for others who may not care about verifying facts, who in fact, may have their own agenda who may be trying to simply stir up misinformation and anger and distrust of the government.

And that's a real danger for our democracy.. The best way we can show respect for the voters who are upset s by telling them the truth.

We can choose to accept the truth, or we can choose to reject the truth.

But the problem is, a lot of people don't want to hear it.

And they don't want to believe that it's the truth.

Why aren't you supporting President Trump?

I do... Support.. ahhthe things President Trump does... You're not supporting him!

I do you agree with many of the things he is for and I support those things.

Are you going to support him in ahh, the fraudulent vote system?

The election?

No.

Youre a joke!

An absolute joke, a disgusting shame!

It's dangerous for our democracy when we have millions and millions of people.

who don't want to hear the truth who believe that there's an agenda behind facts.

The role of journalism is it's just absolutely central to civic life.

We need the public to be engaged and we need the public to sort of make an assessment as to what are reliable sources of information and what aren't.

People tend to be drawn to news outlets that affirm their pre-existing point of view.

There are any number of media outlets that are just there to pander, sometimes with information that is absolutely false.

And with all sorts of crazy conspiracy theories, I think that that is dangerous for democracy.

We should be able to agree on our facts.

Where are you getting information when you don't have journalists who are providing you verified information?

Okay, you may disagree with something we say You may think we've said it wrong, but don't think we're being dishonest.

You can say what you will about bias in mainstream media.

But there are, and were, ethical standards that a lot of alternative voices have little or no interest in adhering to.

If one person tells you it's raining, and one person tells you, it's sunny, it's not your job to quote both of them, it's your job to look out the f---king window and figure out which one's right.

We're all still trying to put out a paper every single day, which is hard in itself, but we have all these other obstacles.

And we have colleagues packing up their desks and leaving weight of sadness and distraction.

When I was packing up from we're on the sixth floor, before we moved.

I did make a big decision recently to leave The Post after 13 years, and it was really a hard choice.

And I just miss working for your community.

And it just doesn't feel good anymore.

It's not like that in the newsroom.

I mean, it's hard to work somewhere for 13 years, and not leave on the best of terms, I feel like even though my colleagues understand, and a lot of them are considering leaving as well.

I felt like some guilt.

was about what it's like to age ou of foster care.

And it was something that I thought about doing for years, what it's like to grow up in foster care and not find a family.

I got a lot of feedback from the community, feedback from people who are teachers, people in the community who said, I've always wanted to be a foster parent, I'm really going to do it afterI read this story, which was awesome.

Like, that's all I could want to come out of it is more people to offer to give homes to these kids.

I couldn't leave until I got these kids' stories out of my notebook.

Whether you get your news on the phone, or on a tablet, whether it's called The Denver Post, or whether it's called some newfangled name, that doesn't bother me so much.

its just, I want to make sure there are credible journalists of sufficient size and scale in a newsroom to do the job that fills that paper of record roll.

It can do a tremendous amount of good.

In particular, for people who don't have power, who don't have a voice, who wouldn't be heard, unless journalists actually listen to them.

Here's the frustrating part, we'll never know the stories that aren't being written.

The bad guys who weren't caught, the good guys who aren't being celebrated the community programs that are working or that aren't working.

And, you know, we just don't know the stories that aren't being done.

And that's the real loss for the community.

Local news needs to be saved because this is how people make informed decisions.

And this is how you keep a community going, is to tell stories that matter to people, about their neighborhoods and their cities and keeping an eye on what those in power are doing.

I do not want district funds spent on a program that as of today has been found to be illegal and unconstitutional.

(cheers) Any community needs to know what the city council is doing And right now, especially in a country that's so divided and has so many issues, I think news is more important now than ever.

(horns honking & cheering) (crowd chanting) Local government can really corrupt and we need to watch it.

And as one lawmaker joked when they heard about the 30 cuts to our newsroom, (Music) So I was a suburban reporter in Dayton, Ohio, about 1977 or something like that.

I was covering a little suburban community, mostly all white.

I was the first black reporter they had ever seen covering their county commission meetings.

And I fell across the story that there had been a number of police settlements.

Turns out they were for millions of dollars.

And I was able to dig around in there and find out that these police officers have been using what they call SAP gloves, S-A-P and they were leather gloves that had lead in the knuckles, They were arresting you, and you resisted, they'd beat the hell out of you with the SAP gloves And it didn't leave any bruises on your hands.

And I was able to find some of the people that had been beaten up and had filed complaints and ultimately wrote that story broke that story.

The current commissioner launched and investigation.

The fired some of the police offices and they actually ultimately forced the police chief to resign.

And I was like, you know, “Hey, I really like this, okay, I'm making a difference!” (music) This little town called King City.

While no one was looking, members of the police force started a towing scheme, working with a relative of the chief of police who owned a towing company.

And they would pull over anyone who looked undocumented.

A year later, we get a notice from the district attorney, they've indicted half of the King City police force.

Criminal charges all the way around.

And then the story became national news.

(Music) The city of Bell, this tiny little town, the whole city council gave themselves raises six figure salaries, nobody was covering it.

Finally, someone at the Los Angeles Times went out to this little community and found out.

Well, that's a news desert in action.

That's what happens when nobody's looking.

(Crowd noise) Who is an independent voice, who isn't beholden to the government, who isn't beholden to some other powerful institutions.

That's the press.

And we all lose if you don't have those independent voices.

We want justice!

You know, this is not about a bunch of poor journalists, you know, boo hoo, journalists are losing their jobs.

I mean, that's sad, too.

And I'm sorry to see my friends and colleagues who've lost their jobs.

But this is much bigger than just a group of journalists This is about a community that loses every time another experienced reporter walks out the door.

In a business that's dying, those who really understand that don't want to be there to conduct the funeral.

(Printing press) Somebody is going to have to turn off the lights on all these newspapers.

And I didn't want to be the one that did it.

I remember when I was a 17 year old kid, working for the Wichita Falls Times Record News.

And at midnight, they sent me out to cover a car accident.

And I took my camera and my notebook.

And I remember the police officr said, "It's a one car accident, and he's dead."

And his feet were moving.

His legs were moving.

And I'd never seen anybody die before.

And he was still moving.

And I said, "But he's still moving" They said, "Yeah but hes dead, the muscles will move around for another half hour, but, but he's dead."

That's kind of where print newspapers are today.

All right.

We need good journalist right now.

And yeah, there's some real challenges in the industry.

And we all know that those of us who have been workig in it.

But that's not to say there's not cause for optimism and energy and enthusiasm, because there's much to do.

I'm excited, I'm ready to go.

I'm looking forward to it.

I can't wait for class to start.

I think that this is going to be a good move for me.

And I hope it's good for the students.

All right, welcome class to Senior News Corp.

My name is Chuck Plunkett.

I'm really glad that you guys are in this class.

It's very exciting to see young people interested in journalism.

It's a really interesting and exciting time, although one that's full of challenges.

The 21st Century newsroom has to have people that think about the money.

They think, well, how are we making sure that what it is we do is going to be valuable enough to our readers and viewers that they're going to want to pay for it and support it.

Introduce yourself to the person near you.

And ask do like a little bit of .. .each of you interview the other?

What's something about you that we should know?

A skill that you might bring or an interest that you might have?

And why are the reasons that you might be drawn to journalism?

(Class noise) This is an opportunity for us.

The public wants us to succeed the public's cheering for us in some ways, we need to figure out how to connect with them and do right by them right now while we have the chance.

All right, so let's hear from you guys.

Let's just start here and work our way around.

We're on our way, from Lafayette down to Civic Center in Demver, where we'll have the official announcement of The Colorado Sun.

(rain) I'm expecting that it's gonna be raining.

And we can script everything.

It'll be cruddy like this out, and then we'll all be like, Ah, here comes The Colorado Sun and the real Colorado sun will burn off all of the bad weather and we can emerge in light or something crazy like that.

You know, there's a lot of different types of publications that are being affected by this massive change in the business of journalism.

Definitely, we took advantage of that momentum.

I don't know whether we would have seen the same response if Chuck had not fallen on his sword in that way.

But, you know, thank God he did because now the public can, you know, get over this narrative that journalism is somehow broken.

And it's not journalism that's broken, the business model is broken.

And so perhaps we can find a different way to do the journalism business.

Woo hoo!

Look at this Colorado Sun!

Thanks for coming.

I'm wired up six ways to Sunday.

I said I've been to a lot of press conferences but never quite like this.

That's not a gun in there.

Good.

(Crowd noise / greetings) This is Jo-Lee.

She's seven and this is Lucy she's ten.

I sent the older one for donuts.

Is the Sun obscured?

Do I need to step down a few steps?

Is this better?

The Denver Post went through several rounds of layoffs.

Many wondered what was next for those journalists who'd covered Colorado for years?

Well, now we're learning a few of them have started a new publication.

Thank you for joining us this morning.

It's a bit strange to be on this side of the microphones.

The Colorado Sun is an online news organization that will cover the news that matters in Colorado.

The journalists you see up here today are the owners of The Colorado Sun, and we will be the ones calling the shots.

The need for news coverage by professional journalist is only going to be more important as society tries out these new ways of supplying the news.

With the newspapers themselves getting smaller, and a lot, too many operations that are onesies and twosies starting up, that they can't really stand up to the demands of the times of covering the institutions that need to be covered.

Not just government, but business and labor, and any sources of power and wrongdoing in the community.

The Colorado Sun has no future, in my opinion.

It doesn't have a long term funding model, and they do a good job, but there's no business model there.

We're doing our best to prove them wrong.

We think we can make it work.

And we're working really hard to make it work.

I appreciate the skepticism.

But, you know, till those skeptics come up with something better then, why don't you help us figure out how to get it done.

You know, it's become real.

And we're building a business.

There's been a lot of learning to do that had little to do with journalism.

At this point, there are a lot of unknowns.

And those are the kinds of things that keep me up at night, sort of business structure wise, that's really where we're at now... ...really pushing hard to get a subscription and place for people to We do sit in these meetings of the ten of us, sometimes I wonder like, what huge thing do we not even know that we're supposed to do.

You know, we've had conversatios of, we need to hire like a business person.

A business person could be a lot of things, but we just put it in one category like a grant, you know, writer, or who is this you know, mysterious business person that can help us solve all these problems of making sure that we make money.

It was one thing to run a newsroom.

I know how to do that very well.

It's quite another to start up a new business and, and that's a new experience.

You know, part of this is it was an opportunity to make a change in the business, not just with reporting, but changing the whole business model.

It's a big risk.

It's exciting and scary.

But if it doesn't, at least I'll feel like I tried to work on a solution for journalism.

when you say he did his statement, do you mean for the Federation?

Or did you send them to the BLM?

It's terrifying really to, you know, when you think about 80% of startups fail or whatever, I mean, that's a scary thing to leave your job that, you know, was fairly secure.

I had a lot of seniority there, and start something that might not pan out.

And we're really just banking on Colorado to want to give us money to read good journalism.

We don't know what we don't know.

We need to, kind of like your head is spinning with okay, I gotta focus on landing all these great stories.

Oh, but wait, like, we have to set up a night at a brewery to sell Colorado Sun t-shirts.

Im Jennifer Brown, I'm also a writer at the Colorado Sun, I'm just feeling overwhelmed right now that you took abit of your night to come out here and support journalism, that means so muchcto us, so thank you.

I am certain that we're going to create products that deserve success.

It's up to us to make sure that the business model is successful and that The Sun itself is successful.

And I don't think it's gonna be easy.

It's ours to mess up, I guess is what I want to say.

It's ours to screw up.

(Explosion Protestors screaming) These are unprecedented times.

I think that we're having our Berlin Wall moment.

This is an uncomfortable moment for everybody.

And in order for us to be able to coexist, we have to get uncomfortable.

(Chanting) All the issues that have come up with race in recent months.

I just feel like everybody could be doing more.

(Chanting) We've had a lot of uncomfortable conversations at The Sun about, you know, we're too white of a newsroom, like, pretty much all the newsrooms in Colorado 80% just pushing headlines to people, but I have tried to recruit minority candidates, I have made job offers to minority candidates.

And, you know, I will keep trying, I can't change, you know, who we are today.

But I can change who we are as we grow.

And our intent to grow.

Having a more diverse staff would be great.

But I think it's also important to have diverse sourcing.

And as you know, we're mostly print.

And when you don't see pictures of sources, you don't realize, you know, how diverse our sources can be.

I feel like I try to be genuine in my sourcing with diverse sources.

But people don't see that because there's no pictures.

Do I need to rethink it for the public's sake.

And for all the critics' sake, maybe we should take that person's photo.

So we don't get that criticism.

I brought my whole self to work.

And I recognized that I was brought there not to act like all the white guys.

But to act like an editor who's black, right?

Who understood that there's a whole community out there that thought that this was a place where they weren't welcome And that part of change wasn't just changing our coverage.

It was changing about how we looked and how we related to each other.

And we talked about things like this all the time.

Like it would be nothing for me to sit in a meeting and hold up the newspaper and say if I see another white kid licking an ice cream cone on a 100 degree day, I'm going to throw this paper across the room because there's a rainbow of people licking ice cream cones today.

This boy posed with a picture of a little black calf calf with his knee on its neck and said this was my pet George.

Newspapers and journalism are needed more than ever.

The need has only grown.

It isn't less of a need.

There's more of a need.

saying the N word over and over again.

So, in my case action is trying to report the truth and make sure people know what the truth is.

It's measured.

It's thoughtfully reported, it's not reactive.

When I look back at the last two years, I realize so much that I didn't know.

In no way do I condone any racist behavior.

But publicly shaming children for their ignorance is not an appropriate use of So what you have to remember is that the 10 of us were journalists, editors, reporters, no business experience.

(laugh) to pass the Coronavirus on - via cash.

But I'd like to dig into that a little bit, if not the Coronavirus.

You know, are we at risk for something else down the road The pandemic has accelerated everything good and bad.

Ad revenue has just completely fallen off a cliff.

But it has also greatly accelerated membership.

I'm always happy to deposit checks.

This is what makes news go.

oh, this one's $2.

Its super sweet.

It's very sweet.

Yes.

It all helps.

So this is the time period for June 30 to July 6.

During that time period, we've had 633,000 pageviews from 350,000 users.

The average time they're spending is 2 minutes and 15 seconds.

So far this year, we have had 20 million pageviews on our stories.

And that's big.

And just last week, surpassed 10,000 paying members.

Is it sustainable?

I don't know.

I mean, we certainly see some of that hurt right now and during the Coronavirus.

What surprises me all the time, and probably every journalist out there is the support we get from members.

...So they won't touch those either or they'll wipe it off before they run it.

It seems to be working.

Well, in some ways, I think with what's going on in this country, like our jobs are more important than they have been in the last, you know, few decades anyway.

But I just hope, like I fear sometimes that journalist journalism comes out of this morphed, and I hope it's for the better.

Because you can see examples everyday of what could be for the better.

And then what's going down the way of, you know, totally partisan reporting.

Yes, that's basically what I need.

I mean, you can go out and be as objective and truthful as possible, and there are still a contingeny who don't.

I mean, I am related to people who don't believe the news.

This attack on our liberty, magnificent liberty, must be stopped.

And it will be stopped very quickly.

We will expose this dangerous movement, protect our nation's children, end this radical assault and preserve our beloved American way of life.

I just think that a lot of people are frustrated, that objectivity has been hijacked.

Objectivity was was applying scientific standards to fact gathering, you had to be able to document how you put these facts together, so that anybody else that were looking at the same set of facts reasonable people will come to the same conclusions so that people would believe what you wrote, they will believe it.

You know, we create false equivalencies, that, you know, if there's, you know, a bunch of people that believe in climate change, then they're like two people that don't, that we give those two people the same weight as we give the 98 who think that it is a problem.

You'd better be f-ing scared!

Man, you guys are f-ing scared!

I think I'm sitting here seeing an attempted assassination on our society.

I've never seen this happen in my life.

I think our democracy's got real challenges.

The government did this to us.

We were normal, good, law abiding citizens.

And you guys did this to us.

We want our country back.

We are protesting for freedom right now.

That's the difference.

And so here we are right now inside the halls of Congress.

This is exactly what so many anticipated and yet the Capitol Hill police are doing their best but failing to control the situatio.

For the most part, journalism's doing its job and nobody's paying attention.

My job is to continue telling the truth.

I cannot control whether people want to believe us or not, and whether they do believe us or not, we'll continue to tell the truth.

When you don't have robust journalism, the democracy is not the same.

Open the door!

I'm confident that we will get through this period but it does require the American public to think about what the consequences are if free expression or free press were to be eliminated.

(Protestors screaming) (Music)