Inside the Temple

The Rocky's leader believes his paper is a survivor.

A A A Comments By Michael Roberts Thursday, Aug 1 2002

...continued from page 6

Larry Winter

John Temple at home in the Rocky's newsroom.

More About

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Weekly Newsletter: Our weekly feature stories, movie reviews, calendar picks and more - minus the newsprint and sent directly to your inbox.

So you feel strongly that theRocky will be around in fifty years?

I don't know if the, quote, Rocky Mountain News will. I don't know what market forces will occur. Will Denver have a newspaper? I think there will still be some form of newspaper. What it will be called, I don't know. But it's an old name, it's a great name, so I would hope it would be called the Rocky Mountain News. Because if you sit in this office as the editor of this newspaper, you have a responsibility to the institution, and my responsibility is to help maintain it. [Former News editors] Ralph Looney, Jay Ambrose and Bob Burdick all sat here, and somebody else will sit here. That's why it's important I give it to them in a shape they can do something with. There are people in this newsroom -- young people in their twenties --who could be the editor of this newspaper, and they'll do something different with it than I do. But what I'm trying to do is to make a newspaper that really connects with people. A newspaper is like a city: It has many neighborhoods and all kinds of aspects to it. And when a newspaper's at its best, it can be really important parts of readers' lives, and people will find real value in it. I think newspapers can survive a long time if they do that. If they don't, I don't blame people for turning away.