Fortunately, my screwup was matched by one of Johnson's News colleagues, managing editor Deb Goeken. On a Friday in late November, she assembled an e-mail containing information about the paper's proposed story lineup for the following Monday and attempted to direct it to Vikki Migoya, the assistant city editor working on the News's night crew. But the joint operating agreement between the News and the Denver Post didn't only merge business operations at the papers; it also led to the combining of the e-mail system. As a result, Goeken's e-mail wound up going to Vikki's husband, David Migoya, a reporter for the Denver Post. Goeken knows that to be true, since David sent it back to her along with a note guessing that the e-mail was probably meant for Vikki.
The tale might have ended there were it not for a certain coincidence. Rocky reporter Robert Sanchez had put a lot of time and toil into a package of stories about a cop shortage at the Denver Police Department, which had taken to raiding smaller forces for talent. But what Sanchez hoped would be an exclusive turned out to be something less; on the same day, the Post's Sean Kelly wrote a shorter, less in-depth version on the same subject.
Mark Manger
Andy Vuong, Elizabeth Aguilera and Louis Aguilar seek a more diverse Post staff.
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Before long, rumors starting circulating around the News that Kelly's article had sprung to life only after he'd learned about Sanchez's reports from e-mail recipient David Migoya. But that couldn't have been the case, since David kept the e-mail's content to himself. "If I learned of what the Rocky was up to on any topic during the course of my daily reporting on a story, I obviously and probably rightfully would have shared that with anybody at our paper, to give them a heads-up," David says. "However, this was a little different. Because of my personal relationship with one of my competitors" -- meaning his wife -- "the way the e-mail came to me wouldn't have made it right for me to have done anything other than what I did, which was not to share it."
David subsequently learned that Kelly's article was already scheduled for the Monday Post anyhow, which doesn't surprise Goeken. "We had heard they were working on it," she says. "Of course, Robert Sanchez was upset when the Post had it as well, even though they didn't have nearly as good a story as we did; they had just a little story that they buried inside." Nonetheless, she asked Mike Noe, the head of the News's new media department, "to help me limit the toolbox on my e-mail to only people at the Rocky. He knew how to do it and I didn't, so that should take care of the problem."
Maybe not. The morning I spoke to David Migoya, he'd already received two e-mails intended for people at the News. Looks like Goeken isn't the only person at the Rocky who needs help with that toolbox.
