"Six Major Layoffs at the Denver Post," a blog published yesterday afternoon, noted Stephen Keating among the half-dozen supervisors let go by the broadsheet. However, his affiliation with the paper continues, in a manner of speaking. Keating is in the midst of a major project for MediaNews Group, owner of the Post, and while he can't go into detail about it at this point, he's clearly excited about what he calls "a new way to deliver news and advertising."
Keating has worn many hats while at the Post. The October 2003 Message column dubbed "Business Call" caught up with him right after he'd been named business editor for the broadsheet -- a gig that marked something of a homecoming. He'd served as a business reporter from 1994 to 2000, a period during which he'd penned a book about Colorado's cable titans titled Cutthroat: High Stakes and Killer Moves on the Electronic Frontier. Shortly thereafter, he briefly left journalism in favor of the Privacy Foundation, a non-profit organization affiliated with the University of Denver, only to return to the Post in the business-editor role. And he subsequently took over PoliticsWest.com, the Post's political website, which became a major focus of the paper during the run-up to the Democratic National Convention and this past November's presidential vote.
In the aftermath of the election, Keating began to transition away from his PoliticsWest.com duties, and in January, he formally turned over the reins to Curtis Hubbard. Since then, he's overseen online special projects for the Post -- but he's also gotten involved in the aforementioned MediaNews notion, which will now become his primary focus. As such, he's more fortunate than his five colleagues, who found out along with him that they would be receiving the unwanted gift of an involuntary separation package. Still, he hopes the results of his efforts will help newspaper journalists in the not-too-distant future. In his words, "the project has great promise to create a new experience for readers and advertisers and create new revenue streams."
Which, with luck, may prevent layoffs down the line.
