Four days later, however, something did change -- Puls's tune. On October 24, the Boulder Daily Camera ran an item titled "Publisher: Colorado Daily No Longer for Sale." In it, Puls claimed that the cyber-listing hadn't been authorized by current management, and even though the paper might consider an especially lucrative offer, it wasn't actively courting one.
Speaking to Puls doesn't clear up this jumble. According to him, he learned that the Daily was up for sale from Journal reporter Rhines: "She said, 'You're selling the Daily,' and I said, 'I am?'" But Puls didn't ask her to wait on the story until he found out what was going on, and he insists that he has no problem with the version that hit print. Moreover, he identifies the Daily's previous publisher, Chris Harburg, as having hung the for-sale sign on the paper, adding that she apparently told no one she'd done so even though the Daily is employee owned. Daily editor Pam White echoes these comments: "When the Boulder County Business Journal hit the streets, everybody was like, 'What the hell?'"
Rand Carlson
Editor Chris Magyar tries to keep Go-Go from being a no-go.
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Clint Talbot, a former Daily editor who's now a columnist with the Daily Camera, was considerably less surprised. Prior to his departure from the Daily, he says Harburg openly discussed the possibility of peddling the paper and even had him feel out staff members to get their opinions. Last year, Talbot discloses, the Daily offered to buy back shares of the publication from former employees -- and since the proposal was made at a time when the Daily was especially strapped for dough (the money came from a loan made mainly to purchase a printing press), it raised speculation that a sale was being seriously contemplated.
Harburg, who now lives in Philadelphia, verifies some of Talbot's remarks while muddying others. She says she did discuss the possibility of a sale with staff members but agreed to list the paper only after a broker claimed that he had lined up a potential purchaser who wouldn't step forward until she'd done so. Still, she's certain that the agreement would have expired long ago -- and she denies that buying back shares from former Daily workers was done as a precursor to a sale, chalking it up instead to "an interest in consolidation."
Amid all this mayhem, Puls argues that the Daily is doing better than ever, having just expanded its distribution to some institutions of higher learning outside Boulder, including the Auraria campus. But at press time, a listing for the Daily (referred to generically as a "Rocky Mtn. Free Daily") remained on the publicationsforsale.com site, alongside a request that the $3.9 million be paid in cash.
Wait a second. I think I've got that much on me...
Fridays on their mind: The November 17 debut of the Denver Post's redesigned Weekend section begged the question, "Why did they bother?" After all, the division of the guide into two separate segments, with movies (and TV) in the first and the rest of the entertainment universe banished to the second, offered minimum cosmetic improvements and only one notable new feature, a local music/club column by KTCL jock Kat Valentine that, on week one at least, was every bit as superficial as the Post's other pop-music coverage.
A likely explanation is the impending joint operating agreement between the Post and the Rocky Mountain News. Since the JOA will eliminate the Sunday News, thereby shifting the papers' main entertainment battleground to Fridays, the Post is apparently positioning itself to better compete with the Rocky's more user-friendly Spotlight insert. And the timing? In all likelihood, the powers at the Post thought the feds would have approved the JOA by now -- but as it turns out, Justice Department types have been sorta busy with what's been going on in Florida for the past couple of weeks. Speaking of which...
Every vote matters: Lost in the blizzard of numbers relating to this year's never-ending presidential campaign were at least three more totals just begging for further calculation.
In the November 9 Denver Post, writer Susan Greene kicked off an article about Gail Schoettler's narrow loss to Bill Owens in the 1998 Colorado governor's race with this lead: "5,416. That number will haunt Gail Schoettler for the rest of her days. It's the votes by which Colorado's former treasurer and lieutenant governor lost to Bill Owens..." But the next day, the Post's busy corrections box noted that while Schoettler had been told by the late Colorado secretary of state Vikki Buckley that she'd fallen 5,416 ballots short, "the official secretary of state's abstract lists the margin as 7,928 votes." But the correction didn't mention that one page after Greene's piece, in a graphic labeled "A Look at Various Races Decided by Less Than 1 Percent of the Vote" that also ran on November 9, Owens was shown to have beaten Schoettler by 8,151 votes.
Demand a recount, Ms. Schoettler! You might have been governor for the past two years and not even have known it!
