Newspapers are mortal. They’re born, they grow and hopefully they thrive. Comparatively few make it for 10 years, even fewer to 20, and only a handful to 40 or more.
Let’s look at the Colorado Springs newspaper business at several points in time, beginning with the founding of Colorado City in 1859.
In 1859 a scattered little settlement called El Dorado, at the entrance to the western mountains, was given the grandiose name of Colorado City by founders Melancthon Beach, Rufus Cable, Anthony Bott and George Bute. The little city survived and for a while thrived, profiting from the thousands of gold-seekers and adventurers heading for the mountains.
In 1861 the Colorado City Journal became the first newspaper in the Pikes Peak Region, apparently because Colorado City had become the territorial capital of Colorado. Denver-area legislators were forced to stay for a session in Lucy Maggard’s little hotel. They didn’t like it and skedaddled as soon as possible. Denver soon became the capital, and the Journal only printed six issues.
The Civil War ended Colorado City’s little boom and printed newspapers didn’t return until General William Jackson Palmer founded Colorado Springs in 1871, and he and William Bell founded Manitou Springs in 1872.
Palmer’s cities were meant to cater to an affluent clientele, not the humble rapscallions that derived their living from “trade,” as the gentry referred to the men and women who provided the necessities of life.
One of the oldest businesses in Colorado Springs is the Gazette, having survived since 1872 with the business model of the printed word.
Advertising in The Blue Book, a journal of “Society” in 1898, the Gazette wasn’t averse to self-promotion. Here’s the text of a full-page ad that included a rendition of the Gazette’s stately downtown building,
“The Representative Paper of Cripple Creek Mining District…Official Reports of Colorado Springs Mining Exchanges…Only Morning Daily in Colorado Springs…Larger Local Circulation than all others combined…Official Paper of the County and City.”
Its survival reflects canny ownership and feeble competition. At one time, there were two papers fighting for readers/advertisers; the morning Gazette and the evening Telegraph. They eventually merged, first by co-publishing the Sunday Gazette-Telegraph.
Firmly entrenched for generations, the Gazette was challenged in the mid-20th century by the Colorado Springs Free Press, a moderately progressive newspaper aimed at readers who were fed up with Gazette and its far-right owner Harry Hoiles. The Free Press hung around for a few years, but was eventually vanquished by the G-T.
In 1993, John Weiss and Kathryn Eastburn launched the Independent, a proudly liberal weekly aimed at the city’s stifled minorities. It was an immediate success, effectively offering an alternative to the Gazette’s anti-gay, anti-environmental and anti-regulatory screeds.
(Bias note: I wrote for the Indy, sold advertising and had much too much fun there for many years). It lasted for three decades before giving up the ghost in 2023.
Meanwhile, the Gazette has retained its daily monopoly and has had no fiscal issues since being acquired by Phil Anshutz’s Clarity Media in 2012. It’s still reliably conservative, but its presentation of the news appears to be laudably independent. How long will the print issue last? I don’t know, but the past suggests that it’ll outlive many of its current subscribers. But as print lovers age, the print edition may become unsustainable.
For we ancient warriors, printed daily newspapers are joyful, necessary and hopefully still relevant. But for others, they’re a useless artifact of bygone centuries. The purpose of a newspaper is news, with or without paper – so get it online!
Yet there’s something about paper newspapers. The written word endures, rather than disappearing into the tangled digital bush. To print aficionados, it’s fun to read and keep dailies and weeklies, not to mention books and magazines.
Printing presses of the world, rock on! And here’s to The Independent, the renascent Business Journal, the Gazette and most of all the Pikes Peak Bulletin.
