The Message

Eventually, sources say, many of the complaints levied against Zarrella at Channel 7 began cropping up at Channel 9. Some attribute the tension that arose between Zarrella and the off-air sports crew to his stubborn perfectionism; others portray his behavior as a character flaw. Either way, witnesses report that his unhappiness became more pronounced in his last several months at the station. He stopped attending some team practices and didn't show up as expected to host the Furry Scurry, a May 1 fundraiser for the Denver Dumb Friends League that Channel 9 co-sponsors. He also got into a verbal tiff with executive sports producer David Hunt within earshot of numerous colleagues. (Hunt referred all inquiries about Zarrella to Ogden.) Finally, Ogden and Zarrella met face to face. No one's sharing the content of their exchanges, but on May 17, Channel 9 employees received a tersely worded e-mail from Ogden informing them that Zarrella was no longer an employee of the station.

With Zarrella banished, Channel 9 needs a lot of help, sports-wise. The station still has the services of Denver's best-loved sportscaster, Drew Soicher, a devilishly snarky wit with a weakness for bobbleheads -- but promoting him to the night shift would gut the hugely profitable morning franchise, which is already losing Sabine. Ogden confirms that Soicher isn't going anywhere, saying, "Drew has a very particular set of skills, and a talent that lends itself to the morning program, which is number one in the country in the top 25 markets. We are reluctant to change that formula."

Promoting another in-house prospect appears just as improbable: Neither Rod Mackey, a competent second-stringer, nor Ryan Chiaverini, who comes across as an eager intern, are likely candidates for the A-team. That's why Ogden spent time in early June interviewing outsiders for the job. Prognosticators are guessing that Soicher's brother, Marc Soicher -- who was hired last year by Fox Sports Rocky Mountain after an undistinguished run at Channel 4 and recently made an April Fools' Day cameo on Channel 9 -- is the front-runner, but Ogden doesn't name any names. In all likelihood, he'll hire a sports anchor in a matter of weeks, and he's even closer to bringing aboard a new weather personality. The latter will probably wind up with Sabine's old morning schedule. Nick Carter, who's been filling in, suffers from a severe panache deficiency, a liability that also afflicts Sardella's replacement, Bob Kendrick.

Zarrella doesn't lack charisma -- even his detractors admit that -- and people with difficult personalities are hardly an endangered species in metropolitan newsrooms. If occasionally acting like a jerk were a fireable offense, dead air would dominate many a broadcasting day. Perhaps that's why Zarrella has retained attorney Steinberg, a prominent attorney known for defending high-profile clients such as former Denver Broncos linebacker Bill Romanowski, who was acquitted of charges that he illegally obtained prescription stimulants, and Mike Anderson, a Broncos fullback suspended last season after testing positive for marijuana. Steinberg doesn't always bat 1.000: He represented financial advisor Will Hoover, who was convicted earlier this month on more than forty counts of swindling investors -- but he has a reputation as an effective and aggressive litigator. He's just the sort of person Zarrella might want to file a lawsuit on his behalf. Such an action could lead to the most colorful inside-media trial since journalist Dave Minshall's age-discrimination claim against Channel 7, whose parent company, McGraw-Hill, wound up paying him over $500,000.

It'll take a trip to court to unveil the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about Zarrella's exit. By then, there's no telling how many more bodies will have passed through Channel 9's revolving door.

Size matters: Most readers have reacted positively to the new-look Denver Post, whose consistent homeliness was largely mitigated by a redesign introduced on May 4. Yet some staffers are unhappy about a side effect of the makeover. The additional use of white space intended to lighten up the paper visually, as well as a modified, multi-deck headline approach in some sections, means fewer words fit into the same space. One source estimates a loss of from 11 to 18 percent in many sections, and comparisons of columns by Diane Carman seem to confirm these numbers. Five Carman pieces published prior to May 4 generally ran at about 800 words, while five printed afterward are closer to 650 -- a shortfall of just over 18 percent.

As it turns out, though, these differences have more to do with a rethinking of the metro columns than anything else. When Post editor Greg Moore arrived at the paper in 2002, columns often came in at just 500 words, which struck him as too brief, so he augmented the space to accommodate a lot more text. During preparations for the redesign, he decided to back off a bit. The 650-word length splits the difference between the pre-Moore and post-Moore columns.

Nonetheless, Moore confirms that there has been a word-count loss, albeit a fairly modest one; his best guess is 6 percent. Some scribes think otherwise, he says, because the system on which most of them write wasn't immediately modified to take the new design into account, thereby exaggerating the disparity. In truth, the word deficiency is offset to a large degree by the use of a main-body typeface that's actually one point smaller than its predecessor.