In January, the Denver Gazette announced that it had acquired the services of longtime Post sports columnist Mark Kiszla. The move is a throwback of sorts: In 2016, the website's parent, the Colorado Springs Gazette, snatched up Woody Paige, Kizsla's predecessor as lead sports columnist for the Post. As was the case then, the Kiszla hire was clearly designed to give the online news source, owned by gazillionaire Phil Anschutz, a good-publicity injection while weakening its primary rival.
But just weeks later, the Post scored a coup of its own by replacing Kiszla with Troy Renck, a former Post staple who left the paper in 2016 to take a television gig with Denver7. His official return is slated to take place on Monday, March 4, and if past is prelude, he'll prove to be a sizable upgrade over the man he's replacing.
No doubt Kiszla has the higher profile, but his work was clickbait before it was uncool. He tends to specialize in embracing positions intended to outrage whether they make any sense or not. In contrast, Renck is a better, funnier and more original writer than Kiszla, and he's significantly less sweaty and desperate to prod a reaction from the sporting public by any means necessary.
Why Go Back to Print?
Given the ongoing headwinds the newspaper industry faces, Renck's decision to swap broadcasting for a print redux is extremely unusual, as he readily concedes. He mentions "a newspaper guy I know who left to go to radio, and he said, 'I've never heard of someone jumping back over.' And maybe I'm being a little naive about that. But I do believe there's still a viability to newspapers. I couldn't tell you how long it will last, but I wouldn't have done it if I didn't feel newspapers would last for a significant chunk of time."Just as important is that "I've always wanted to do this job, and that colored my response as well," he says. "If this was a job at another newspaper to go write somewhere else, I don't know if I would have done it. But I've always dreamed of being the columnist for the Denver Post. It was an opportunity I wanted and a challenge I felt I needed."
Renck's experience in the Denver sports market is as deep as it is wide. He studied journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder during the early 1990s — a period during which he also chronicled CU athletics for the late, lamented Colorado Daily. Following his graduation, he served brief stints in Arizona at Today's Daily News, based in Lake Havasu City, and the Yuma Daily Sun before coming back to Colorado as a columnist and reporter for the Longmont Times-Call, where he worked from 1996 to 2000. Then, after gigs as an NFL columnist for Broadband Sports and a reporter for MLB.com, he was hired by the Post in 2001 to follow the trials and tribulations of the Colorado Rockies.
In Renck's view, the fifteen years he spent on the Rockies beat were good preparation for becoming a columnist. "I had to write negative things about them all the time," he says. "For most of the fifteen years I covered them, they were one of the worst teams in baseball — and when they stunk, I wrote that they stunk. But the biggest compliment I would get is, 'You were fair to me.' And that happened in multiple sports. If I would rip a Bronco, I would be in the locker room saying, 'Do you think it's time to be traded?' And if I did that, I would want them to read about it afterward and say, 'It was fair. He was out there. He asked the questions, and I knew what he was going to write based on the interview.' They respect you more if you do that."
Although Renck loved day-to-day reporting, his ultimate goal was to become a Post columnist. When such a position failed to materialize, he joined Denver7 — and his learning curve was rapid. "We were the smallest sports staff in Denver, and we were constantly putting things together with duct tape and chicken wire," he recalls. "But you can make excuses or you can make it work, and I felt like, for the most part, we made it work."
Along the way, Renck polished an entirely new set of skills — among them delivering information in smart, incisive, quippy style on camera, during radio guest spots, via podcasts and on social media, which he thinks could prove especially useful at the Post. "Using my platforms, I hope I can bring eyeballs to our writers, because I know how to promote stuff, teasing things and getting them out quickly in a professional manner. That's something I had to learn in TV, where you really have to promote your work to get people to watch. And it can't hurt to put out links or make little videos saying, 'This is what I'm doing today.'"
Of course, television isn't immune from the economic realities that afflict newspapers, and with his Denver7 contract set to expire at the end of February, Renck's future at the station was uncertain. But the Kiszla switch gave him an exciting option. "I probably would have pursued the job no matter what," he allows. "But if I'd been under contract for six more months, it might not have worked. It's very difficult to get out of a contract in TV or radio. So the timing couldn't have been better." The gap between Renck's first interest-gauging text to Post sports editor Matt Schubert and his anointment as columnist was "only two or three weeks," he estimates.
(After the Gazette issued a press release about the Kiszla transition on January 17, Westword requested an interview with him that same day. But Kiszla proved reticent to talk — to me, at least. I engaged in weeks of back-and-forth emails in an attempt to schedule a conversation, with the PR specialist engaged to plug his arrival offering one excuse after another for why he had not yet been able to take a call. The ghosting finally became official on February 16, when she wrote, "Sorry that this has dragged on so long. Kiz is not going to be available for an interview.")
A Tough Act to Follow?
Kiszla's last batch of columns for the Post had been typically inconsistent. The headline of his ham-handed December 9 offering asserted that "If Sean Payton Can't Get Broncos to Playoffs, He Deserves 'F' For First Season as Coach in Denver" — but the next day, after the Broncos defeated the Los Angeles Chargers, he took a swerve by way of the delusional piece "It's a Horse Race: The Hot Breath of the Broncos Now on the Neck of Patrick Mahomes in AFC West."Spoiler alert: It wasn't.
Still, neither of these offerings could prepare readers for Kiszla's disastrous February 1 debut for the Gazette, labeled "I Made a Bold Move: Time for the Broncos to Do the Same." You guessed it: The column found Kiszla equating his decision to join the Gazette staff after receiving "an offer I couldn't refuse" to do the same thing he'd been doing for ages to the Broncos trading away anything and everything, including star cornerback Patrick Surtain, to obtain the number-one pick in the NFL draft, with which they could select USC quarterback Caleb Williams. The result was as laughably egocentric as it was irredeemably dumb.
Granted, the efforts Kiszla has penned for the Gazette since then haven't been quite so cringe-inducing (though the utterly clueless "Nuggets' Title Defense Looks Dead Long Before Playoffs Begin," from February 15, came close). But the brain trust at the Post certainly seems excited that Renck is waiting in the wings.
"As disappointed as I was to see Mark leave the Post, I couldn't have asked for a better replacement," notes sports editor Schubert via email. "Troy's knowledge of Colorado sports, life-long connection to the community and years of experience covering every level of athletics on the Front Range make him a natural fit for the position. Troy is a dogged reporter and tireless worker who has no shortage of informed opinions. I have no doubt he will be a tremendous addition to our talented staff."
Adds Post editor Lee Ann Colacioppo: "No one wanted Troy to leave the Post for Channel 7. He was a terrific reporter, a hard worker and a tremendous colleague. So when he said he was interested in coming back, our focus turned pretty quickly to how we could make that happen. He's developed an enormous following among people in Denver who care about sports, and that's a plus, of course. But the main thing we saw in Troy is someone who will be effective at offering fresh insights, holding the teams (both players and management) accountable and giving our sports-loving readers something to chew on several times a week."
The pressure on Renck is considerable, as he acknowledges. "It was made very clear to me how important this position is to the paper in general," he says. It's really well-read, and that's part of the reason I wanted to go back to the newspaper business. TV is about news and weather, and then...sports. The Broncos are a little different, but in the newspaper business, sports is the machine. It drives so many things. And if you do well as a columnist, that benefits the paper in general, not just the sports section."
He has no beef with the Post columnists who preceded him before casting their lot with the Gazette. "Mark was really impressive at what he did, and Woody before him," he stresses. But while he downplays the battle between the two publications — "I wouldn't compare it to the Post versus the Rocky Mountain News; that was a real newspaper war," he says — he adds that "there's certainly competition, and in these jobs, we all have ego. You don't become a writer or a columnist without it. So the competition is real, and I welcome this opportunity with eyes wide open."
