The Denver Post

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The Denver Post once had more than 600 journalists working under a single joint agreement with its crosstown rival. Today it runs with a fraction of that number. That collapse did not happen quietly. It happened in public, with the paper's own editorial board calling its owners "vulture capitalists" stripping the newsroom for parts. How a paper that won nine Pulitzer Prizes and outlasted a silver-boom crash arrived at this point is a story that begins in August 1892, with $50,000 and a Democratic Party in trouble.

• 2. Silver, Politics, and a Rocky Birth

  ›

  The Evening Post was founded in August 1892 by supporters of Grover Cleveland, who had earned a reputation for honest government. The paper's purpose was blunt: stop Colorado Democrats from leaving the party. Cleveland's political standing in Colorado depended on a controversy over silver, the state's most important product at the time. Cleveland and eastern Democrats opposed a government silver-purchase program, which made him deeply unpopular in a state whose economy depended on the metal.

  When silver prices collapsed in 1893, Colorado fell into a depression alongside the rest of the country. The paper suspended publication in August of that year, only a year after it launched. A new group of owners raised $100,000, nearly double the original investment, and revived the paper in June 1894. That resurrection set the stage for a transaction that would define the Post for generations.

  On the 28th of October 1895, the paper was purchased for $12,500 by Harry Heye Tammen, a former bartender who also ran a curio and souvenir shop, and Frederick Gilmer Bonfils, who had worked in Kansas City real estate and lottery operations. Neither man had any background in journalism. What they did have was a talent for promotion and a sharp instinct for what readers wanted.

• 3. Tammen, Bonfils, and the Circus Years

  ›

  A few days after Tammen and Bonfils took over, on the 3rd of November 1895, the paper's name was changed to the Denver Evening Post. Their editorial approach leaned hard on sensationalism, editorialism, and what critics described as "flamboyant circus journalism." Circulation climbed until the Post eventually passed the combined circulation of all three other daily papers in Denver.

  The staff during this era included some notable names. Damon Runyon, who would later become famous as a writer in New York, worked briefly for the Post in 1905-1906. Gene Fowler and Frances Belford Wayne also contributed, as did "sob sister" Polly Pry. The paper's personality during these years was inseparable from its owners.

  On the 1st of January 1901, the word "Evening" was dropped entirely and the paper became The Denver Post. That name would carry through decades of ownership fights, economic crises, and editorial reinventions that Tammen and Bonfils could not have anticipated when they paid $12,500 for what was, at the time, a struggling Democratic mouthpiece.

• 4. Reform, Lawsuits, and the Bonfils Legacy

  ›

  After the deaths of Tammen and Bonfils in 1924 and 1933, control passed to Frederick Bonfils's daughters, Helen Bonfils and May Bonfils Stanton. In 1946, the Post hired Palmer Hoyt from the Portland Oregonian to serve as editor and publisher. Hoyt introduced what the source describes as fair and accurate news reporting. He separated editorial opinion from news stories and created a page he called The Open Forum, which continues at the paper today.

  In 1960, publishing mogul Samuel I. Newhouse made a takeover attempt. Helen Bonfils turned to her lawyer and friend Donald Seawell to defend local ownership. What followed was a series of lawsuits that stretched across 13 years and drained the paper financially. When Bonfils died in 1972, Seawell became president and chairman of the board. He also led the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, which had been established and funded primarily by the Frederick G. and Helen G. Bonfils foundations, whose assets were largely derived from Post stock dividends.

  By 1980, the Post was losing money. Critics charged that Seawell was too focused on building the performing arts center at the expense of the newspaper. He sold the Post to the Los Angeles-based Times Mirror Company for $95 million. The proceeds went to the Bonfils Foundation, securing the financial future of the performing arts center. Times Mirror began morning publication and delivery, which improved circulation, but the paper still did not perform to the company's expectations. Times Mirror sold The Denver Post to Dean Singleton and MediaNews Group in 1987.

• 5. The Joint Operating Agreement Era

  ›

  MediaNews Group had been founded in 1983 by William Dean Singleton and Richard Scudder. By the time they bought the Post, MediaNews operated a national chain with over 60 daily papers and more than 160 non-daily publications across 13 states. The Post was the chain's flagship.

  In January 2001, MediaNews and E.W. Scripps, parent company of the Rocky Mountain News, entered a joint operating agreement. The arrangement created the Denver Newspaper Agency, which merged the business operations of the two longtime rivals while keeping their newsrooms separate. On weekdays, the Post published a broadsheet edition and the News published a tabloid edition. Saturdays brought a joint broadsheet produced by the News staff; Sundays brought a joint broadsheet produced by the Post staff. Both editorial pages ran in each weekend edition.

  At its peak, this arrangement supported a staff of around 600 journalists between the two papers. It ended on the 27th of February 2009, when the Rocky Mountain News published its last issue. The following day, the Post resumed publishing its own Saturday edition for the first time since 2001. The loss of the joint agreement, combined with declining advertising revenue that had already triggered newsroom reductions in 2006 and 2007, left the Post carrying its full costs alone.

• 6. Alden Global and the Newsroom Revolt

  ›

  Since 2010, The Denver Post has been owned by Alden Global Capital, a hedge fund that acquired it when its parent company, MediaNews Group, went bankrupt. From the beginning, Alden pursued what the Post's own editorial board later described as "relentless cost cuts," despite the paper reportedly being profitable. Margaret Sullivan of The Washington Post called Alden "one of the most ruthless of the corporate strip-miners seemingly intent on destroying local journalism."

  The numbers tell a stark story. Before the 2010 acquisition, the Post employed more than 250 journalists. By April 2018, that figure had fallen to around 70, a reduction of nearly two-thirds. The March 2018 announcement of 30 additional layoffs, cutting the newsroom from 100 to roughly 70, was the trigger for an extraordinary public response. The Post's own editorial board published a denunciation of Alden, calling its owners "vulture capitalists" who were "strip-mining" the newspaper. The editorial concluded directly: "Denver deserves a newspaper owner who supports its newsroom. If Alden isn't willing to do good journalism here, it should sell the Post to owners who will."

  The editorial board argued that the cuts had compromised the paper's ability to cover a fast-growing region. Gregory L. Moore, who edited the Post from 2002 to 2016, attributed his departure to Alden's approach. In April 2018, a group called "Together for Colorado Springs" announced it was raising money to buy the Post from Alden. Their statement echoed the editorial board's language almost word for word. In 2020, a documentary titled News Matters was released about the effort to save what was described as the 125-year-old Denver Post.

• 7. Nine Pulitzers and a Cannabis Beat

  ›

  Despite the financial turbulence, the Post built a substantial record of award-winning journalism. Its nine Pulitzer Prizes span more than five decades. Paul Conrad won in 1964 for editorial cartooning; Pat Oliphant won the same prize three years later in 1967. Anthony Suau took the prize for feature photography in 1984. The paper won a public service prize in 1986 for a series on missing children.

  The Post's coverage of the Columbine High School massacre in 1999 earned a Pulitzer for breaking news reporting in 2000. Craig F. Walker won feature photography Pulitzers in both 2010 and 2012. Mike Keefe won for editorial cartooning in 2011. The Post's coverage of the 2012 Aurora, Colorado shooting earned a second breaking news prize in 2013.

  That same year, just before Colorado legalized cannabis, the Post launched an online brand dedicated to cannabis coverage. Under Editor in Chief Ricardo Baca, the publication grew rapidly. By September 2016, it had surpassed the long-established industry publication High Times in its tracking metric. In 2016, the Post's main website drew roughly six million monthly unique visitors and generated more than 13 million page views, according to comScore. Craig F. Walker, whose two Pulitzer wins bookend some of the Post's most turbulent years, remains one of the more distinctive figures in the paper's modern history.