There is a resurgence ongoing with the nation’s newspapers and here in Colorado. Alden Global Capital, owners of The Denver Post, this past year were able to purchase Tribune Publishing, one of the largest newspaper chains in America that includes The Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, New York Daily News and Boston Herald.
Chairman of Alden Global Capital is Heath Freeman who lives in New York City and spends time at his home in Florida. The Denver Post is now part of this massive group of substantial and influential newspapers.
Here in Colorado The Denver Post owns a bevy of daily and weekly newspaper that include Boulder, Longmont, Loveland, Sterling, and Greeley daily newspapers and a bevy of weekly newspapers scattered across Eastern Colorado. They somehow missed purchasing The Pueblo Chieftain that ended up in Gatehouse Newspapers stable of over 600 newspapers across the United States.
Denver based Phil Anschutz owns The Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph along with the Broadmoor Hotel. He has done a stellar job with both the hotel and the newspaper. He also has a newspaper empire and started The Denver Gazette as a digital only newspaper several years ago launched from his Colorado Springs Gazette operation. The online newspaper competes with the Colorado Sun, also a digital newspaper, started by former Denver Post former staff members and other talented writers.
Here’s where the fun begins in Colorado with this past summer with The Colorado Sun purchasing the Healey family-owned Colorado Community Media. The assortment of 25 weekly newspapers were part of the Sentinel chain of 13 newspapers that once circled the Denver Metro area. The papers were eventually assembled by Jerry Healey over past decades that includes The Littleton Independent, Englewood Herald, all of Douglas County, Jeffco and Adam’s county major newspapers. All of these newspapers are now under the Colorado Sun flag and at last report are being printed in Cheyenne, Wyoming, no longer being printed at The Denver Post plant in Berthoud, Co. where The Villager has been printed for many years.
Healey had 25 newspapers in Colorado Community Media. The Denver Post, through their subsidiary, Prairie Mountain Publishing, has about 18 and the latest bomb shell hit last week with Swift Communication selling all of their Colorado newspapers to Ogden Newspapers with home offices in West Virginia. Swift has dominated the Colorado ski mountain towns owning the very successful Vail Trail and Aspen Times, along with Steamboat Springs Pilot and many other Western Slope towns, including my old newspaper, The Craig Daily Press.
If you start adding up the numbers, there are about 120 major newspapers operating in Colorado’s 65 counties with active newspapers in almost every Colorado town.
Almost half of these newspaper have been recently purchased, largely by outside money from major newspaper corporations or foundations providing funding for a newspaper group such as The Colorado Sun.
There are now three newspaper groups functioning in Arapahoe County, The Villager, The Colorado Sun group, and The Sentinel in Aurora.
The Villager is on the move and recently purchased the Gilpin County Weekly Register-Call, the oldest weekly newspaper in the state started in 1862. The site of “The Richest Square Mile on Earth” where gold was first discovered in Gregory Gulch. Home to the Central City Opera and the famed Teller House, and the billion-dollar casino industry.
Seems like everyone wants to live and play in Colorado, and why not? Ink is still flowing by the barrels here in booming Colorado.