Rocky Mountain News for sale

There's no way he remembers, but Tracy and I were dancing on top of the same bar -- not together -- after I had way too much tequila during spring training about 1988 or so.

 

At Fitzwilly's? Were you and Rogers singing Sweet Judy Blue Eyes?

 

Tracy, one UW Cowboy (sort of) to another, keep your head up. Whatever happens, we'll look forward to reading your dispatches from spring training.

 

Like I said before, I second that. You're a class act and if the worst case happens I'm sure someone would snap you up in a second.

 

Thanks for the support. I actually feel decent. My daughter is raised. Don't have to figure out a way to get her through school. I have a good wife. There are others at the paper who face a bigger challenge than I do. I pray for them because we have some top quality people working on our desk. They save the butt of illiterate writers time and again without recognition. Their motivation is their pride and they don't deserve to be slapped down by corporate greed. As writers we have visiblity and people like us or hate us. Desk guys are hidden from view and too often in this business there is a sad truth to the ``out of sight out of mind'' mentality. I've been in the business 40 years, the last 33 doing baseball, so I've seen a lot of changes and knew things were going to get bizarre, but I never anticipated the changes in the last five years to be so quick. I knew I was old the day I heard a writer telling an intern, ``You should have seen the computers we had when I broke into the business.'' A guy looked at me and asked me about the computer I had when I broke in. I explained it was an Olivetti typewriter and we handed the copy to Western Union. You know the irony? We had later deadlines back then. Oh well. Things change and we have to change with them.
Oops. I've started to ramble.
P.S. I am officially a senior right now. Just 21 more hours and the degree will come. Dang Intro to Lit is slowing me down.

 

Sorry to truncate your thoughtful, entertaining post, Cowboy, but that insight, put that way right there, grabbed me. The uber-bosses will claim now that all of this is based on sheer survival and that no one is left unbloodied in what's spiraling down so rapidly.

But it was the years of corporate greed that preceded this, the refusal to accept a lesser profit margin in good times to research and develop methods that would embrace new technologies, even the refusal to accept a lesser profit margin because the best newspapering -- if it's going to have teeth and depth -- should probably make $1 a year after everyone is fairly paid.

Now it's panic and survival (short-term, sadly). But before it was greed and the other ills that harbored.

 

Hate this. B.G. Brooks, who covers CU for them, is a buddy and really good guy. Hate it for him, hate it for all of them. Jesus.

 

Butch is one of the best college writers around and one of the nicest people you'll meet in this business.

 

If they combined the best of each staff they could have one of the best staffs in the country.

 

And a backup staff just as big to jettison into unemployment.

 

I hate to keep saying I second that, but Mizzou's right.

I never met Tracy in person (but still love his work), but I DID meet B.G. when I was out in Boulder. I went out to watch the Rockies in the Division Series last year, and we have two local athletes at Colorado so I asked the higher-ups "look, as long as I'm out here, do you want me to grab them for stories?"

So I went out, and while I was waiting for one of the athletes B.G. comes up (for another football story). He's surprised to see I made the trek out to interview two athletes, then I explained I was out there to watch the Rockies and he was like "ohhhhh". Made sense to him.

We talked about the business for about 15 minutes or so before his interview subjects showed up. Never arrogant, never rolled his eyes that someone way below him on the totem pole wanted to chat with him, had a big smile. I'll never forget that.