Elsewhere at the Post, the Rocky Mountain Ranger is hanging up his badge. The concept of having a reporter who roams the West, sending in dispatches from unexpected settings, is a venerable one at the paper, but it had fallen out of favor until Guzzo revived it. Although Guzzo's first choice for Ranger, Mike Ritchey, crashed and burned, his second, novelist Ron Franscell, got off to a much stronger start before succumbing to stereotypical topics and a general malaise. Moore apparently agrees, since he's reassigned Franscell to a less-defined feature-writer gig. Down the line, reporter Gwen Florio, who's spent much of her recent time in Afghanistan, is expected to tackle big regional stories that might previously have fallen under the Ranger's hat, but without the title, the mug shot beside the article and, presumably, the tacky Rangermobile Franscell was made to pilot.
Also on the move is religion editor Virginia Culver, who's covered sacred matters at the Post for over three decades. Given that Moore, in his Westword Q&A, said that anyone who's held a beat for more than five or six years has probably been there too long, Culver's targeting didn't come out of the blue. But Peggy Lowe, who worked with Culver at the Post before signing up with the Rocky Mountain News, was still shocked by it.
Brett Amole
Laura Matt, manager of the Glendale Fascinations, whose ads won't be heard on Denver's Clear Channel or Entercom stations.
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"Her nickname around the Post is 'God,' and it's not just because of her beat; it's because people really respect her," Lowe says. "She's fair, she's passionate, and she's kick-ass competitive. I know, because she's kicked my ass a couple of times in the last few years. As a friend of Virginia's, I feel for her. But as a Rocky reporter, I feel like Greg Moore's done us a favor -- because now we don't have to watch our backs for Virginia Culver."
True enough: Culver has been reassigned to write obits, a potentially rich and rewarding arena, yet one that's traditionally been seen as the daily newspaper pasture to which older reporters are sent to play out their careers. Since the Post already has a full-time obituary authority, Claire Martin, this switch doesn't address a big need. Moore, though, studiously avoids portraying it as a demotion. "Virginia's obviously done a lot of distinguished work, but change is good for everyone," he says. "I wanted to find a job for her that I consider to be important and allow her to have more control over her time. And she's comfortable with it." Culver, for her part, didn't return a call from Westword seeking comment.
After learning about Culver's transfer, Sheeler, who's written "A Colorado Life," his Sunday Post pieces, on a freelance basis for several years, contacted Moore to find out if his status would be affected. Boy, was it ever. At a meeting, Moore told him he was leaning in a certain direction; less than a week later, he was informed via e-mail that his last article would appear two weeks later.
Moore insists that Sheeler's axing wasn't personal. "We're just looking harder at our freelance expenditures," he says. "My philosophy is, if it's important enough for us to do every week, we ought to have one of our people doing it -- and we will. We're going to continue to highlight ordinary people who've done extraordinary things over a lifetime."
That's a relief -- but it's hard to imagine anyone doing it better than Sheeler, who was lauded in this space mere months ago ("Dead Lines," April 18). His last effort for the Post, published August 25, was typically remarkable. The family of the late Nick Papadakis, founder of a landmark Pueblo restaurant known simply as the Deli, contacted Sheeler before Nick's death, giving the reporter the opportunity to actually visit his subject and see the final preparations made by his loved ones. These elements lend tremendous immediacy and poignancy to Sheeler's summing up of this particular Colorado life.
Sheeler would like to keep writing in this vein, and after being cut loose from the Post, he had a meeting at the News. He's also readying a book proposal based on his columns and is in the midst of researching a story that will take him to Israel's West Bank. But he can't help mourning a bit over how internal happenings at the Post wound up pulling his forum out from underneath him.
"I've learned more about philosophy from the people I've written about than I ever could have learned from a philosophy course," he says. "These people -- the families, and the people who've died -- really mean a lot to me. I've cried with them; I even dream about them. I've poured so much into this -- and it's really worth pouring that much into, because I've gotten so much out of it. So this is something I'm really going to miss."
No doubt untold thousands of Post readers feel the same way.
