Interpreting the Signals

Does the sale of five major Denver radio stations mean big changes, or more of the same?

Comments (0) By Michael Roberts Thursday, Feb 28 2002

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Schwartz, however, retains a sense of humor, even about the Peak's demise. When asked about the station's journey from Spanish to English to Spanish again, he jokes, "Like Yogi Berra said, it's déjà vu all over again."

And so, despite the ownership swaps, is Denver's radio dial.

Mark A. Manger

Rob Quinn is general manager of Entravision Radio Colorado, new owner of the Peak.

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Prize patrol: They may not have the same thrill factor for the general public as the Oscars (no starlets wearing outfits incapable of covering their assets, for example), but the Colorado AP Editors and Reporters, or CAPER, awards and the Colorado Press Association prizes mean plenty to the folks at the Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Post. That's especially true this year, since the CAPERs and the CPA awards, announced on February 22 and 23, respectively, represent the first outside analysis of the papers' quality since the joint operating agreement took effect just over a year ago.

By these measures, the Rocky was the champ by a landslide. In the CAPERs, it earned the "Best of Show" plaudit plus 21 awards, including thirteen first places, as compared to the Post's ten awards and five first places; at the CPA soiree, the News received the "general excellence" bauble and fourteen first-place honors, with the Post netting six first places. (The Colorado Springs Gazette was the only other publication to face off against the Post and the News in the large-paper category. Westword is not affiliated with the Associated Press and stopped entering the CPA contest after it was prevented from competing against the Denver dailies.)

For newshounds, the results weren't terribly surprising: Although the JOA labeled it a "failing" newspaper, the News has consistently bested the Post in statewide journalism challenges. But News employees were still overjoyed by the results; a source who attended the CPA ceremony confirms that News representatives were in high spirits, while Post types did more grumbling than cheering. The differences in the ways in which the papers reported the final tallies were telling as well. The News ran separate pieces about the CAPERs and the CPAs -- the former on Saturday, the latter on Monday -- and included details about other newspapers' awards. In contrast, the Post published a single article on Sunday that noted its own triumphs but left out everyone else's -- no doubt because printing them would have made it a helluva lot harder to act happy about the outcome.

Equally amusing were the full-page, self-congratulatory ads the papers ran, which used essentially the same template, but very different content. The February 23 Rocky notice was filled with just its CAPER accomplishments. The next day, the Post's ad spotlighted its top finishers in both contests -- otherwise, the type would have needed to be mammoth to fill the page -- and even claimed victory in the CPA's best-series category. In fact, the Rocky won that award as well, and that line was removed when the Post reran its ad on Monday.

On the surface, the lack of enthusiasm that the judges showed for the Post would seem to repudiate the daily's international bent in the wake of the September 11 attacks, but that's not the case: Articles had to be published no later than August 31 for contest consideration. The Post is obviously laying the groundwork for upcoming battles, though: On February 24, the same day it tried to make lemonade out of its CAPER and CPA lemons, the paper published a special terrorism section obviously intended to garner future hosannas. But despite its air of importance, the package was curiously scattershot -- a potpourri of articles that never truly cohered.

In other words, the Post still finds itself on a Rocky road.

Erratum: In last week's column about the foibles of Post columnist Woody Paige, I wrote that a piece the Woodman had written about the Salt Lake City Olympics -- one that oodles of Mormon readers found exceedingly offensive -- had not been placed on the Nexis data service that's used by most media outlets. However, Post editor Glenn Guzzo, who never returned a call seeking comment about Paige, e-mailed after the fact to say that the article in question was indeed on Nexis; as it turns out, it was loaded onto the system two days late, after I'd checked for it. "Another error, Michael," Guzzo wrote. "You've had quite a run of them."

Maybe -- but it sure as hell wasn't as big a gaffe as the Post's printing Paige's column in the first place. Ten thousand angry Mormons can't be wrong.