Yet another daily paper bites the dust

Today is the last day the Rocky Mountain News will print a paper. After 150 years of marking some of Colorado’s, and the nation’s, passages of events, it leaves only the Post to carry on in Denver.

For those of who have spent decades working in the industry, this marks another passing of a respected member of the family.

Farther west, it has been reported that the San Francisco Chronicle is expected to fold soon.

It used to be that people mourned the day when a two newspaper town was reduced to one. Alaskans who have been around awhile were among those who wept a little, or a lot, depending on your choice of newspaper s, when The Anchorage Times went under, leaving only the Anchorage Daily News to bring the news to doorsteps.

Those who still subscribe to the Daily News’ hard copy, can barely feel a pulse when they pick it up in the morning. It gets skinnier and skinnier, and more pale, like a cancer patient hoping against hope for remission.

The worry now, is not whether a town will have two newspapers, but whether it will even have one. The Anchorage Daily News remains committed to publishing a newspaper we can hold in our hands, but how long can they make that promise?

Like many daily, and weekly, papers, they are committing a lot to their online presence. Industry experts say that is the survival mode these days.

But lets face it, the Rocky and the Chronicle had web sites equal to or better than the Daily News, and those innovations failed to keep them afloat.

Here at the Frontiersman, we have a small website that generates interest, but for now it’s not how our bread is buttered. Every day we look for ways to increase revenue so we can continue to publish a paper. From this standpoint, it looks like smaller papers will have a better shot at making it, because people still want to know what’s going on in their town. They can find national and international news from a variety of sources, but they can’t find out Valley high school basketball scores anywhere but here. There’s not a blogger out there who publishes the obituaries of your neighbors, or the engagements of friends you went to high school with all those few years ago.

And nobody can’t wrap a fish, line a bird cage or start a fire with a laptop.