February 26, 2009 10:09 PM UTC

End of the Rocky Mountain News

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• by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: July 10, 1861. Remains true today.

Original post follows.

Last edition publishes tomorrow. So much for long goodbyes.

We are, well, needless to say.

Colorado’s oldest newspaper will publish its final edition Friday.

The Rocky Mountain News, less than two months away from its 150th anniversary, will be closed after a search for a buyer proved unsuccessful, the E.W. Scripps Co. announced today.

“Today the Rocky Mountain News, long the leading voice in Denver, becomes a victim of changing times in our industry and huge economic challenges,” Rich Boehne, chief executive officer of Scripps, said in a prepared statement. “The Rocky is one of America’s very best examples of what local news organizations need to be in the future. Unfortunately, the partnership’s business model is locked in the past.”

The Rocky has been in a joint operating agreement with The Denver Post since 2001. The arrangement approved by the U.S. Justice Department allowed the papers to share all business services, from advertising to printing, in order to preserve two editorial voices in the community.

None of what we said last month has changed:

…the loss that awaits our community is not so much the quantity of reporting that a two-newspaper market generates, or the competition that envigorates that news reporting (though this all is worth noting). We want it noted unmistakably in the record that the loss is qualitative–that the political newsroom at the Rocky Mountain News is the best in the state, and it’s an open question whether the vacuum that will be created when the paper folds will be filled. Or at least filled anywhere near as well.