Dyer laughs off the demand, describing it as "just them having fun." But he takes umbrage at the implication that the Weekly gave up its editorial independence when it entered into a relationship with the Tribune. The Weekly/Now retains control over its content, he says, "and we get to cover way more news than we ever did before, which is exciting to us." Plans are in place to bump circulation from 33,000 to 45,000 and triple the size of the news staff with an eye toward branching out even further. "Initially, we're going to a Friday-Saturday publication schedule," Dyer allows. "How we'll grow into the future, I'm not exactly sure."
Such expansion at a time when most newspaper staffs are contracting portends even more heated competition for readers in this fast-growing part of northern Colorado — a metropolitan triangle formed by Fort Collins, Greeley and Loveland. As of last year's column about the flood of print products in the region ("Paper Chase," December 7, 2006), five free weeklies were in regular circulation there: the stand-alone Weekly and Chronicle, plus RH Weekly (affiliated with the Loveland Reporter-Herald), Ticket on the Street (from Fort Collins's daily paper, the Coloradoan) and a Tribune offering, NextNC. Today's total is officially one fewer: Tribune publisher Steve Weaver says NextNC will now become his paper's weekend guide, although some copies will still be available for street-side pick-up.
Yet the Trib's sponsorship of an expanded Weekly/Now escalates the conflict, turning the latter into a heat-seeking missile aimed directly at the Coloradoan. While Dyer won't come right out and say that an old-fashioned newspaper war is brewing, he concedes that he looks upon the Coloradoan as the Weekly/Now's only real rival, and he's obviously eager to start throwing punches. "I think the next few years are going to be wildly interesting in Fort Collins," he says.
The Coloradoan is no easy mark. It's owned by Gannett, a firm that's much larger than Swift Communications, the comparatively modest parent company of the Tribune. However, the paper is hardly immune to the economic forces battering newspapers across the country. In September 2005, the Coloradoan's publisher, Dorothy Bland, and executive editor, Michael Limon, resigned amid sliding circulation. The following year, the paper suffered through a round of layoffs that mostly impacted non-editorial positions. Then, in June, another ten workers involuntarily bid farewell. Most of the recent cuts involved business-siders, too; current executive editor Bob Moore says one and a half newsroom positions have been eliminated via layoffs since October 2005. Still, Moore isn't foolhardy enough to declare that the worst is over. "I've learned it doesn't pay to try and figure out where we're going to be in six or twelve months," he acknowledges. "We are where we are."
Moore says he's not sure if the Tribune is specifically going after the Coloradoan, "but they're certainly targeting the Fort Collins market, and if you look at the demographics, you can begin to see why. Fort Collins has a greater number of likely newspaper readers and a more attractive audience for advertisers than what they have in Greeley." He feels that the tag-team approach "speaks to the difficulty both papers are having in reaching advertisers and audience," and doubts that the Weekly/Now will be able to ramp up beyond its two-times-a-week strategy anytime soon. In his view, "The Greeley Tribune is essentially able to pay for the second day by discontinuing their NextNC product, and judging by their decision to kill it, it's clear it wasn't as successful as they wanted it to be. In the short term, they're able to go to that second day because they have the expense resources already committed. But it'll be very interesting to see if they can add subsequent days — and I would be surprised if they can. Reaching an audience with a printed medium is an increasingly difficult task in the current environment."
The Tribune's Weaver isn't nearly as aggressive in his comments, downplaying the idea that hostilities are imminent and stressing that his publication and the Weekly/Now haven't merged. Dyer "owns his paper, and we own our paper," he says. "We're collaborating. The collaborative model is the way we like to work." The Weekly/Now sales staff will assist the Trib in Fort Collins and Larimer County, he notes, while folks on the news side will provide the Trib with editorial assistance and occasional content. With regard to the Weekly/ Now potentially increasing its number of publication days, Weaver insists that Dyer will make that choice on his own. However, he concedes that, as the bi-weekly's printer, "we'd love to print more of them."
Predictably, the Chronicle's Johnson doesn't buy such claims of independence. "It's like a Darren thing on Bewitched," he says. "They replaced Darren, but they still acted like the new Darren was the same Darren. And everyone could see that it was a totally different Darren." Likewise, the version of Fort Collins Now the Chronicle crew created at www.FortCollinsNow.blogspot.com has nothing in common with the one Dyer and his employees will launch on August 3 and 4. The site is wholly concerned with pie: Features include an image of a woman holding a cow-pie clock and a clip from The Sopranos starring a horse called Pie-O-My.
In the end, Johnson believes the Chronicle will get its just desserts. "With the whole pie thing, we're setting ourselves up to be able to comment on the war, because I don't think either of them will," he says. "We can sit on the sidelines as hecklers — eating pie."
Critic condition: Being put on a diet might seem like the worst thing that could happen to someone who eats for a living. But Rocky Mountain News restaurant reviewer John Lehndorff knows better.
In late June, Lehndorff was in Telluride covering the town's namesake bluegrass festival when he slipped coming out of the shower. "I came down hard on both elbows with a resounding thud," he says. "It wasn't a pretty sight." He was patched up at a local medical center, but upon his return to the metro area, he had a more thorough examination and learned that his left elbow required surgery. After the work was done in early July, he began rehabilitation, which was complicated by other health issues — specifically lower back problems and an arthritic hip that required him to get around using either a cane or a wheelchair. His hip needs an operation, too, but Lehndorff's doctors say they can't schedule it until he loses some weight. "Right now, I'm not taking advantage of the entire menu" at the rehab facility, he says. "I'm eating very light."
At this point, Lehndorff isn't sure when he'll be back on the job, and he may work behind the scenes for a while rather than critiquing eateries. That may be just as well, since the long cast he's currently wearing would make it harder than ever to maintain his anonymity — something he does in print by way of a photo that doesn't show his face. Nevertheless, he's working hard to shape up, and he hopes the process goes more smoothly than his trip to the movies the night before his elbow surgery. He thought he could get his mind off incisions to come by watching Ratatouille, an animated flick with special appeal for gourmands. But the projector broke down, and the only other thing he wanted to watch was Sicko, director Michael Moore's documentary about the sad state of the health-care industry.
Lehndorff hopes his story has a happier ending.