H. Wren

“Let there be no false sentimentality. The Rocky considered me a traitor because I chose to leave in 1993. I was young and ambitious and stupid. Yes, a traitor. We were in a war with the Denver Post — and what a war it was. There was no joint operating agreement. Both papers were completely independent and the competition was unlike anything I ever experienced. Every morning, I picked up the two papers on my doorstep in fear of what the Post had done to me. The Post’s business editor did the same. There was no time for Gannett foolishness. People in Denver and Colorado — and these were Western regional newspapers, not flimsies focused on suburban features — demanded news. In Dayton, I had seen the data on how many readers had simply gone away when the Journal Herald was killed in favor of the Dayton Daily News. They just went away. Denver, on the other hand, was a reading city, a newspaper-obsessed city. Each paper made the other better and citizens were the winners. To fight that war from the Rocky newsroom was to live with a daily rush through your body, a never-ending pressure on your chest, a sometimes nasty world where the paper knew it was fighting for its life — but, what a privilege to have been there.”

“Still, I have to admit, sometimes I think I could’ve dismantled so much more. The very fact that the environment still exists, that a mere 4,000 troops have died in Iraq, that there is still the slightest glimmer of hope for the future left in this nation—it’s easy to feel like maybe I didn’t do my job. But no, no, there’s no use having any regret. I fucked everything up the best I could and that’s good enough for me.”