The Mackerel Wrapper

A weblog for Pete Ellertsen's mass communications students at Benedictine University Springfield.

Friday, February 27, 2009

The Rocky Mountain News, April 23, 1859-Feb. 27, 2009

The Rocky Mountain News publishes its last edition today. Instead of what I'd planned for COMM 209, I want us to visit their website at http://www.rockymountainnews.com/. We'll see how a great newspaper covers its death throes, we'll learn more about some unsettling trends in the news business and we'll read some very, very good journalistic writing while we're at it.

The Rocky, as the paper was known, was a tabloid. It was the No. 2 paper in Denver the market, which is dominated by the Denver Post. It was like The Chicago Sun-Times in that respect, a scrappy little paper working harder (in my opinion) to catch up with the dominant Chicago Tribune.

Finally as we go along, we'll pause to make note of some examples of cross-platform convergence journalism as the lights are going out in newspaper newsrooms across the country.

Live blogged by Rocky staff at http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2009/feb/26/live-coverage-official-announcement-rocky/

The Denver Post is the surviving daily. It has text and video at http://www.denverpost.com/ ... when I Googled into it this morning, it carried a splash page directed to The Rocky's readers, who will receive The Post to fill out their subscriptions.
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About Me

Springfield (Ill.), United States
I'm a retired English, journalism and cultural studies teacher at Springfield College in Illinois (acquired by Benedictine University and subsequently closed). I coordinate jam sessions for the "Clayville Pioneer Academy of Music" at Clayville Historic Site and the Prairieland Strings dulcimer club, and I sing in the choir and the contemporary praise team at Peace Lutheran Church in Springfield. On Hogfiddle I post links and video clips for our sessions and workshops on the mountain dulcimer (a.k.a. "hog fiddle"), as well as research notes on folklore and cultural studies, hymnody and traditional Anglo-Celtic and Scandinavian music. I also posted assignments and readings in my interdisciplinary humanities classes. The Mackerel Wrapper (now on hiatus), carried assignments and readings for my mass comm. students. I started teaching b/log when I chaired SCI-Benedictine's assessment committee, and reopened it as the privatization of public schools grew increasingly troubling and closer to home.