Denver has become the Sally Field of cities. They like us, they really like us, we exclaim whenever the country shows the slightest inclination to forgive us our trespasses. It was just four months ago that Denver International Airport was scheduled to open–for the fourth time. Instead, Mayor Wellington Webb…
It was eighteen years ago this week that Westword, which would be printing Volume 1, Number 1, in a matter of hours, moved out of a bungalow basement and into its first office in LoDo. Not, of course, that this part of town was then known by that hip, nod-to-New-York…
It would have been such a pretty sight: Paula Woodward, star TV reporter, hauled off in chains, Sky9 following as the sheriff’s car stops first at 7-Eleven for coffee, then at Burger King for fries as it slowly wends its way to Denver County Jail. Live remotes from the gymnasium-cum-dormitory,…
Denver International Airport is deserted at twilight. It looks like the last relic of some tent-worshiping civilization after the bomb is dropped. Which, of course, is precisely what had occurred earlier this day, 25 daunting miles away, when members of the Denver City Council learned that the proposed “back-up” baggage…
The debut episode of Rocky Flats Close-Up, a half-hour Department of Energy infomercial tucked into the wee-hour time slots usually reserved for miracle car washes and thigh trimmers, is about as exciting as watching Chernobyl cool down. Anchor Mike Nolan–the former Channel 9 sportscaster who peddles RVs when he’s not…
At eight in the morning, Governor Roy Romer already looked tired. After a month of putting out fires–both literally and metaphorically–he was now glad-handing his way through the train heading from Denver to Cheyenne. And by car twelve, the campaigning was beginning to wear thin. It’s a tough year, the…
As a battle cry to rally the troops, the letter from the publisher of the Rocky Mountain News sounded more like a call to retreat. “Having spent over 20 years at the Rocky Mountain News,” wrote Larry Strutton in the paper’s in-house newsletter last month, “I am very aware of…
Denver’s new curfew-enforcement program is supposed to keep kids out of trouble. So far, though, it’s the adults who are doing all the brawling. And the fight’s just beginning. Councilwoman Mary DeGroot had been out of town for just about an hour last Thursday evening when the calls started coming…
“I feel that there is not a more important meeting being held in these United States as is being held here these next two days. If we lose this battle, there are no more moral absolutes left for this nation.” And so Will Perkins, the Colorado Springs car dealer who…
It was Friday afternoon, and the wheels of justice were turning more slowly than your average wastewater worker drinks his coffee on an unauthorized break. During a lull in the inaction, Dave Lougee, news director at Channel 9, made a call back to the office and then sprinted down the…
Get out the Midol. That was the warning hissed by one editor, male, upon exiting the very first meeting of the Rocky Mountain News Task Force on Women. And don’t forget the aspirin, either. Because this embarrassing attempt to enlighten its own newsroom promises to be a headache for everyone…
Jim Norris was behind the counter when the governor of Colorado came in and ordered his usual. Roy Romer stopped by this particular Peaberry outlet at least once a week, always ordering a Frozen Bear–sort of a sweetened espresso slurpee. And he’d always been “basically pretty friendly,” Norris recalls–but not…
Your tax dollars at work. While Channel 4 fell on its pantyhosed butt with the most insipid of sweeps week programming, Paula Woodward’s “Keep on Truckin'” investigation for Channel 9 offered a classic, if rare, example of television journalism. The premise was simple: Follow city employees–in this case, workers in…
If Mayor Wellington Webb truly wanted to save the city “embarrassment,” as he professed when he announced the “indefinite” delay of Denver International Airport’s opening, he might have awakened a little earlier last Tuesday morning. Even if Webb’s Good Morning America no-show was due to alarm-clock failure rather than any…
“DIA baggage test scores big: no hits, no errors.” After a week of watching luggage fly off computerized carts in inadvertent comedy routines that would do the Three Stooges proud, Mayor Wellington Webb surely dreams of such headlines. But that’s precisely what the Rocky Mountain News pronounced as recently as…
Wes McKinley had been out on the trail with his herd several days when he finally rounded up a copy of last Friday’s paper. And there the foreman of Colorado Special Grand Jury 89-2 learned that the Department of Justice’s long-awaited internal review of the Rocky Flats investigation had determined…
It’s cherry blossom time in Washington, D.C., but for some Clinton watchers, the bloom is already off the rose. Last week, while addressing the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Bill Clinton blew his stack over yet another Whitewater question. He couldn’t be expected to remember every little detail from fifteen…
Lower downtown cleared out on Monday, as hundreds of people dropped purple sweatshirts over their suits and took themselves out to the ball game. You could have popped a high fly into the heart of this historic district a stone’s throw from Coors Field, and no one would have been…
Ordinarily, Governor Roy Romer takes a backseat to no man. But then there’s Henry Alford. Alford, a prankster and journalist, had already inflicted his own yummy snack food, Nubbins, on New York City (and written about it in the late, lamented Spy magazine); he would soon pass himself off as…
The bomb dropped March 4 at United Airlines headquarters back East. Two weeks later it exploded in Denver–where there’s still a whole lotta shaking going on. Most of the fallout centers on United’s deal with the city to delay the opening of Denver International Airport. On February 28 Mayor Wellington…
After two years of whistling in the dark, you’d think that Bruce Pederson and Jackie Taylor would have seen the light. You’d think they’d forget about happy endings. But even so, the two Resolution Trust Corporation whistleblowers felt their hopes rise on February 24, the day Deputy Treasury Secretary and…
Last Monday night we were in limbo–literally–over Stapleton. Returning from several days out of town (and out of touch), we were toasting our last flight into the old airport and the end of an era when the pilot’s voice came over the loudspeaker. Appropriately enough, he told us that because…
