December 09, 2014 04:23 PM UTC

A Resurrected Rocky Mountain News?

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• by: Colorado Pols

The Denver Business Journal tantalizes Colorado news consumers nostalgic for our two-paper past:

Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz is exploring the possibility of reviving the Rocky Mountain News, the Denver daily newspaper that shut down in 2009 after nearly 150 years of publication, the Denver Business Journal has learned.

Anschutz has prepared a prototype newspaper and is conducting market research to assess the feasibility of publishing the newspaper once again, almost six years after E.W. Scripps Corp. closed the venerable tabloid.

Ryan McKibben, president and CEO of Anschutz' Clarity Media Group, said the prototype is being put out on the Internet with an invitation to potential readers to comment.

Check out the "prototype" at RockyMountainNews.com.

Conservative billionaire Phil Anschutz puts a scare into liberals as the potential owner of a major Denver newspaper, and other media properties owned by Anschutz like the Washington Examiner and the Weekly Standard make that trepidation at least partly justifiable. On the other hand, Anschutz's purchase of the Colorado Springs Gazette has not resulted in a slant in that paper's newsroom–the editorial board was always conservative like the readership, but the news reporting has been down the middle and of good quality.

Bottom line: it would be wrong to complain about the decline in political news reporting in Colorado since the demise of the Rocky Mountain News and not welcome the outlet's return, regardless of who owns it. Any way you slice it, there are more good political stories in Colorado today than there are good reporters to tell them. So we welcome any expansion of the pool.