Hayman-oriented reporting continued on KHOW, and before the game, KOA's Dave Logan made it clear that the baseball broadcast would be interrupted if events warranted, which they didn't. In this case, the station wasn't hurt by the gamble -- but that's no guarantee that it won't get burned in the future.
Turkey day: The letter published in this week's edition by Ray Overfield (see page 9), who tells of a Thanksgiving-morning encounter at a local watering hole with former Denver Post columnist Chuck Green, made us curious to learn if Green had shared this particular holiday experience with readers. As it turns out, "Thanks Resound Farther in 2001," his piece from November 23 (the day after Thanksgiving), spoke of an encounter that sounds very much like the one Overfield describes. Green wrote that Thanksgiving began with "a glorious pastel orange sunrise streaking the blue Colorado sky with broad brush strokes that provided an inspirational glow over the eastern horizon," after which he shared "a warm fellowship with some special friends, who shall remain anonymous because that's the pathway they have chosen."
Burning down the house: the Hayman fire as seen on Denver TV.
Related Content
More About
Kinda makes you thirsty just reading about it...
Even better, though, was Green's November 25 followup, "A Second Serving of Turkey Travails," which beat an entire column out of a paragraph that had appeared two days earlier. Green asserted that a couple of sentences on preparing a turkey ("...trying to keep the stuffing from oozing out as we pushed the slippery bird around the table, trying to sew up its unattractive orifices...") had netted a greater response than any similar passage "in all of the 33 years that I've written for the Post." He then spent another 500 words expanding upon this anecdote, with most of his witticisms focusing upon the turkey's "gaping cavity."
It pains me to think we may never read a column this bizarre again. Please come back, Chuck! All is forgiven!
Also unappreciated in some quarters was outgoing Post editor Glenn Guzzo. Last week, a staffer went around the newsroom asking fellow employees to sign a baseball bat to be given him as a goodbye gift; Guzzo is a fanatic for the great American pastime, and once ran his own rotisserie-type sports game called "Strat-O-Matic" on the Internet. But a number of Post types turned down the request for farewell signatures, and two others asked if they could use the bat to smack Guzzo's ass on his way out the door.
Can't you kids play nicer than that?
As for Greg Moore, the former Boston Globe managing editor who's replacing Guzzo, he may be getting ready for his own brand of batting practice. His first day in his new role was June 10 -- during a busy news cycle if there ever was one -- and he commemorated the occasion with a staff meeting that left some of his new charges buzzing with excitement and others edgy and concerned. His main message was that he wasn't going to be like those editors who come into a new situation amid reassurances that they'll leave things pretty much as they are. No, he said, he plans to make changes and to make them soon.
Guess that's his way of holding his reporters' feet to the fire.
