January 15, 2009 06:44 PM UTC

Rocky's Doomsday Approaches

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• by: Colorado Pols

The Denver Post reports:

Rocky Mountain News owner E.W. Scripps Co. said Wednesday it will accept bids for the struggling newspaper through the close of business Friday.

Scripps then will review any offers “as quickly as possible, but there’s no specific timetable for completing that process,” spokesman Tim King said.

Wednesday’s announcement, made among increasing speculation about the future of the News, marks the first time that Scripps has set a specific deadline for dealing with the 150-year-old newspaper…

Many newspaper analysts have said that the chances of selling the News are slim.

While at the Rocky Mountain News itself, last-minute hope and rumor control:

E.W. Scripps, owner of the Rocky Mountain News, said Wednesday its attempts to sell the newspaper could stretch beyond Friday into at least next week…

When Scripps announced its plans to sell the Rocky on Dec. 4, it said it “intended to entertain offers through mid-January” for the paper and would examine other options “if no acceptable offers emerge in the course of that period.”

That’s led to local speculation that the Rocky’s last day of publication could be Saturday.

It won’t be Saturday, but the last day of the storied Rocky Mountain News might not be far away at all now–barring something nobody really anticipates at this point. Proposals for local public funding to save the Rocky were unserious, and while a federal bailout of the paper is in interesting idea with some precedent, very few considered it likely in this case.

As we’ve said from the beginning, 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.