Dan's Diner: Goodbye to the Rocky, a Local Digital Pioneer

Today is a watershed moment in the history of journalism, and not in a good way.

It's the day that the Rocky Mountain News ceased publication after nearly 150 years of continuous daily production, and Denver became a one-newspaper town.

This hits me and people like me especially hard for several reasons, but among them: I grew up in Colorado and find it hard to imagine the state without an institution that has helped define what it means to live here. I once worked as a journalist in Denver (for The Denver Post, which is now the sole survivor in a long newspaper war). And finally, since moving back to Colorado 5 years ago, I have developed personal friendships with several people at the Rocky based on our shared vision for digital journalism.

Among those friends are editor and publisher John Temple, who I now consider to have been one of the most innovative, entrepreneurial-minded people working in traditional news organizations in the last 5 years. Also, online editor Mike Noe, who I went to college with at the University of Colorado, but only started to get to know when I moved back to the state.

For those who are tempted to think the Rocky, and many other newspapers, are all about a printed medium that is supposedly completely going away (an idea I think is preposterous by the way), you should look at what the Rocky has done in the digital space in recent years.

Just as one tiny example, their online video coverage has become top-notch, and just as good as -- or even better than -- what you see on the nightly news on TV. You can see one final example of that in a video posted on the Rockymountainnews.com Web site, embedded at the bottom of this post. It's on Vimeo, so it should be there if the Web site goes down tomorrow.

Another is citizen journalism pioneer YourHub.com, which was championed by Temple and fostered by Mike Noe and others, including Travis Henry who is now at Examiner.com. It endured much early criticism, but is now making money and -- from what I hear -- will continue to be maintained by The Denver Post.

And not to be forgotten, the Rocky's mobile site has been one of the best local mobile news sites focused solely on Colorado. The Denver Post has since developed and improved its mobile site, but as someone who uses those sites every day, it's clear that it has mostly followed the direction of the Rocky's. I think that goes for a lot of other digital initiatives.

Just to be clear in case you missed it, I'm saying this as someone who proudly worked for The Denver Post in the mid-1990s and helped them get their first Web site going. It's in my DNA to feel competitive with the Rocky, but looking back I have to say that they were definitely leaders when it came to things like design, format (I will really miss the broadsheet paper), and their understanding of and embrace of online community and digital journalism.

Yesterday Scripps said it would now focus its efforts on selling the brand, masthead and archives of the Rocky, so maybe it will have another life. But if not, I like to fantasize about the now-former Rocky staffers who built IWantMyRocky.com continuing coverage in some fashion, even if it's just online.

But don't rule out print in some fashion, even if it's only via a digital-print / print-on-demand approach like Printcasting. Some type of traditional daily print newspaper is also not out of the picture. Just look at what the former employees of the San Juan Star did after their paper folded. They're now starting a new, leaner, meaner daily called the Puerto Rico Daily Sun.

Here's the touching video the Rocky staff put up on their Web site today. If the link goes down tomorrow, I hope someone will put it back up somewhere so that we can all remember how the Rocky Mountain News went out in style. We'll miss you!