An industry's death rattle

Posted at 8:26 AM on December 22, 2008 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)
Filed under: Economy

2009 will likely be the year the Twin Cities becomes a one-newspaper town. The closest thing to us is, perhaps, Denver where the Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Post (owned by Dean Singleton, who also owns the St. Paul Pioneer Press) are slugging it out to be the last newspaper standing.

The Rocky isn't going down without a fight, and it's willing to shed its dignity in the process.

The newspaper has created iwantmyrocky.com to rally support for the newspaper. In the process, its employees get to publicly beg for their jobs.

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Comments (5)

"Every act of creation is first an act of destruction."

- Pablo Picasso

Posted by Erik Hare | December 22, 2008 9:42 AM

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Which Twin Cities newspaper survives in this scenario? I'm thinking the already smaller Pioneer Press wins while readers in Minnesota lose.

Posted by Sornie | December 22, 2008 10:04 AM

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Some prevailing wisdom says the Star Tribune declares bankruptcy, Singleton buys it for pennies on the dollar, closes the Pioneer Press and publishes under the Star Tribune banner with a mixture of PiPress and Star Tribune staffers. We'll see.

Posted by Bob Collins | December 22, 2008 10:37 AM

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It strikes me, Bob, that if your scenario unfolds, it might be smarter for Singleton to keep the PiPress banner and let the Strib header die. There's no question that the Strib is the better-known and more widely read paper, but how many readers in the state maintain a ridiculous partisan bias against all things "Red Star"? I've never heard a similar level of vitriol directed at the PiPress - most people, even those who don't read it, seem to regard it as a scrappy underdog. So even if Singleton winds up owning both papers, I think he'd be wiser to fold the Strib's best people into the PiPress operations, and keep the St. Paul banner.

Posted by Sam | December 22, 2008 5:20 PM

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//but how many readers in the state maintain a ridiculous partisan bias against all things "Red Star"?

I hear that a lot. And then I see the number of conservative bloggers and twitter tweets that link to it. Plus it -- the op/ed section -- has gotten pretty bland in the past year.

Posted by Bob Collins | December 22, 2008 5:42 PM

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