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:rip: The Rocky Mountain News :rip:
Final Edition
Thomas the Psalmist
February 27, 2009
Houston, Texas
"The Rocky" — After one hundred and fifty years of printing and publishing the news will come to an end. The daily is over.
My first job in printing was with a weekly newspaper, the Herald Dispatch for about a year. As a past somewhat newspaper man it is in some ways sad to see the Rocky Mountain News a journalistic tool put to bed for the last and final time.
The Rocky was a tabloid size, easy to handle as we read it and drank our morning coffee. While the electronic news media has come of age, it is still great to have the newspaper in hand especially if one is of the "show and tell" bent. Did you ever notice that if we leafed through the pages several times, we would see a faint blackness on our finger tips from news ink, news ink doesn't really dry.
Over the years . . .
True, there are times we yelled at "The Rocky" when reading an article that dripped with some articles yellow journalism, but I think all major papers have been doing this for a long time.
We read with interest about the events of the day and the political clamour and maybe said, "Finally" or "It ain't right!"
The sports buffs read the Denver Bears (of the past) or the Rockies (of the present) box scores, or check to see who won at the auto races, then look to see how that local young upstart AFL team was doing. My, how all of the sports venues have grown in Denver, especially that young upstart of a football team, the Broncos.
The coupon clippers were not left out, there were usually coupons galore, as well as recipes. We would see the latest fashions, some of which we probably wouldn't be caught dead wearing. Some people would cut out articles of significance to save. Others would save almost every issue of "The Rocky" that are now piled up all over in a car-less garage. Saving issues of "The Rocky" that carried major news stories that would take up most of the paper with all details of that event was a priority keeper for a lot of people.
At times we would read the classifieds like we were window shopping and develope a case of the hav-ta-haves; we'd read about who got married, in the obits we would read of the passing of the famous and infamous, or maybe a friend, and relieved when we didn't see our name. There was the fun page too, I believe it was the last page inside.
"The Rocky" — There are several names for it, of those I remember these, "The Scandal Sheet" - "The Rag" or just "The Daily"
"The Rocky" has also served other purposes, packing for boxes, fire starter for the fireplace, shredded to line the bottom of a bird cage or a cat box. In the winter we would save "The Rocky" and place it by the door to put our wet shoes or boots on. It was a superior product for masking our cars off before painting them, and covering the floor when painted inside the house, let's not forget wiping windows dry. On our days when we were basking in the sun, we would open it and cover our face up - It was nap time.
So they'll put "The Rocky" to bed for the last time today, February 27th, 2009. Thus another part of Denver and Colorado is history will rest with ages.
:wave2:
- That's 30 -
I'm Thomas the Psalmist
