April 02, 2010 01:39 AM UTC

Bad Words at The Denver Post (Rhymes With "Frankruptcy")

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• by: Colorado Pols

Strange story from Westword media reporter Michael Roberts today regarding more weirdness at The Denver Post:

Last Friday afternoon, we published an interview with award-winning Denver Post reporter Miles Moffeit, who confirmed that he was jumping to the investigative unit at the Dallas Morning News. Moffeit had given his two-week’s notice the previous day.

This item was subsequently featured on Jim Romenesko’s Poynter.org journalism-news page, and the following Monday, Post editor Greg Moore told Moffeit to clear his desk and leave the office within a few hours.

Moffeit declined to comment for this blog. For his part, Moore, responding via e-mail, writes, “That is true. We paid him through his resignation date and everything he was owed. I felt it was better we part company right away. I felt some of his comments to Westword and their implications were untrue and injurious to The Post and it was better he just begin the next chapter of his career. I am grateful to Miles for all the good work he did here and wish him well in Dallas.”

Which of his comments were injurious to the Post? Sources speculate that Post senior management objected to Moffeit’s focus on the relative health of the Morning News in comparison to the Post.

About the Morning News, he said, “They’ve gone through the worst of their layoffs, and they have no debt at all, so it’s not a drag on them. They’ve made a profit the last two quarters.” In contrast, the holding company of the Post’s owner, MediaNews Group, had just emerged from bankruptcy — a word the Post avoided using whenever possible in its coverage of the filing.

We read the initial Westword story when it came out last week and didn’t think anything of it. There were certainly no comments or quotes that would have raised any of our collective eyebrows. And if it’s true that the Post objected to Moffeit talking about the paper’s emergence from bankruptcy…well, that’s just odd. It’s not like it’s a big secret that the Post went through a bankruptcy. Hell, who hasn’t?