In Trumpian Times Like These, Consider the Alternative

"TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! Couldn’t be happier to see the liberal tears flow. Your article goes straight to the trash with all the other mainstream media’s take. The people have spoken, so sit back and watch as we save our country. You all should be ashamed."

Since Donald Trump's election (the focus of my "Winner Take All" column that inspired that comment), my inbox has been filling up with sentiments like this (and many far less polite). But rather than being ashamed, I am reinvigorated. Westword got its start as an alternative newspaper, and now it is very clear what we are an alternative to: greed, misogyny and flat-out craziness exemplified by Trump's in-your-face Cabinet picks. (Exhibit A: Coloradan Chris Wright, who denies there's a climate change crisis, just tapped as Energy Secretary.)

We founded Westword almost five decades ago — in the wake of Watergate, the Vietnam War and Women's Liberation — as a very vigorous exercise in freedom of the press. Not only did we believe that our writers should be free to cover, and uncover, what was really going on in Denver, but we wanted to share their work freely with the city, by making sure that the publication itself was absolutely free. Long before the rise of the internet, we worked hard to prove that a free alt-weekly could have value.

It was a tough battle, but today no one questions the worth of free publications; in fact, the "mainstream media" has followed the lead of alt-weeklies in both style and substance. People do question how long publications in general will be around, though, and with good reason: Our president-elect now refers to members of the media as "enemies of the state."

"Defund the media" was a rallying cry at Trump's appearance in Aurora in October, but Westword isn't funded by the government. Local, independent journalism doesn't come cheap, and we're supported entirely by advertising and a membership program we introduced six years ago when we assessed the changing media landscape. (Some of this column was included in a letter to those members last week, but given the circumstances, I decided to share it with a wider readership.)

As the Trump Cabinet nominations came fast and furious over the past few days, I couldn't wait to find out what would be announced during my two-hour flight back to the blue island of Colorado. I got my answer with the Wright nomination, which didn't have the looniness of the Matt Gaetz pick for Attorney General, but certainly was a middle finger to environmentalists and the current U.N. Conference on Climate Change. Colorado has filled this position before: Governor John Love was tapped to be the country's first Energy Secretary in 1973; he exited after five months, shortly before President Richard Nixon resigned in the wake of the Watergate revelations.

In response to my story on Wright's nomination, another reader commented: "Westword has always been a fun, positive magazine. Please don’t waste your time talking about Donald Trump and his minions."

Too late. Of course, we'll continue to cover positive developments around town — we live here and love this city — but we'll also continue to uncover the negative, too, in hopes of making things better.

After all, consider the alternative!