Saturday, February 28, 2009

Goodbye Rocky Mountain News!



It will sink in over time, how time has changed.
This week we said goodbye to the Rocky Mountain News. It was my Rocky. I subscribed and savored each morning reading each page over breakfast. Now it is history.

As a journalist, I covered the closure. I spent time in the newsroom the day it was closed, and of course it was sad. Yet, employees still had one last newspaper to publish. So they kept at work.

It was the next day, Friday, when I returned to take more pictures of the story, when the reality set in, and set in very hard. There was no work left to do. All that was left was for the men and women to pack their belongings, say goodbye, and then walk out the door for the last time. That was emotional. Especially when these people were "the heart" of Rocky Mountain journalism. Perhaps no group of individuals were more in touch with this state then they were. They laughed. They reminisced. They cried. They hugged. They sat and walked in stunned disbelief. And it affected me too. This was a significant loss for Colorado. And it was the loss of their livelihood.

Goodbye to the Rocky and to my friends who worked there. God bless. I hope to see you again (employed) down the road.