Montrose - Daily Press

Stephen Woody

The Notebook

The Notebook’s at a point where a dozen more subscriptions is likely more appreciated as a dozen more awards. But I have to admit: Having the Daily Press named by the Colorado Associated Press last Friday as the best small daily in the state for general excellence is pretty darn sweet. The AP also named the Longmont Times Call for general excellence for medium-sized markets, and the Denver Post, for metropolitan markets.

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Said the AP of the DP: “The Daily Press is consistent, with excellent and close attention to local coverage. The ‘circle of life’ is very well done.” The ‘circle of life’ business is how we cover the basics - births, deaths and much of what is in-between. Graduations, weddings, anniversaries, fund-raisers and so forth. Life, basically. Much of what we publish goes onto the refrigerator, ala “refrigerator journalism.” Some ends up in a family bible. We’re certainly not perfect, as a couple of readers pointed out last week, explaining our shortcomings. But with each issue, there’s much initiative and commitment. Each edition is different; there’s a fresh roll of newsprint each day on the press, much to fill online as well.

Now and then, the news has a harder edge. Like a big drug bust. Or a plane crashing in a local neighborhood. A controversy at the airport over an FBO contract. A botched election. A tip that leads to an investigation of a mining company. Or a local man, a hero really, who dies for his country in a foreign land, in uniform, while providing aide and succor for his fellow soldiers. When these events occurred, the Press’ news staff, led by managing editor Bill Swaim, stepped up and provided in-depth, first-rate coverage, which was the basis of the AP honor. I’m proud of this staff, and happy they received this recognition.

And thank you, too, for reading.

More notes from the Colorado Press Association annual meeting…..

It was good to see other neighboring newspapers honored at the Colorado Press Association meeting in Denver. David Mullings and his crew at the Ouray Plaindealer and the Ridgway Sun were honored. The Plaindealer got into a scrap with the Ouray board of county commissioners last year over the BOCC’s violation of open meetings law. Eventually, the Plaindealer prevailed. It was good to see David’s moxie recognized.

Ditto the Gunnison Country Times and editor Chris Dickey, publisher Stephen Pierotti. It was named the best weekly paper in its class. The Country Times provides a warm memory, as my father many years ago was a former owner, and Gunnison was my first stop, fresh out of college. The Country Times has one of the better slogans under its flag each week: “Printing all the news we know about for more than 100 years.”

The Delta County Independent, owned by Randy Sunderland and his family, was also honored. Randy just finished up the year as the Colorado Press Association president and provided real leadership to a highly-diverse (read: herding cats) membership - metro dailies like the Rocky and the Post, to weeklies, to industry vendors and college educators. It’s not an easy job to be a CPA president, but Randy did it well, along with the demands of publishing Delta County’s newspaper of record, the DCI. Former Press publisher Charles E. Adams served two stints as a CPA president, in 1907 and again in 1936. The CPA was founded in 1878.

One example how newspaper production has changed is what we do with the Lake City Silver World and my friend, Grant Houston, the publisher. Years ago, when we began printing the Lake City newspaper, Grant would drive the newspaper pages over and drop them off. He’d go eat lunch, or re-supply at our stores while we printed his paper. Afterwards, he’d pick up the bundles and drive them back to Lake City. These days, it’s all electronic. He sends the newspaper via the Internet, which we download, then print. We then deliver the bundles to the men’s rest room at the bridge at Blue Mesa, which intersects at U.S. 50, and Colorado 149. He sends a check (we which appreciate) for his printing. Because of all this new technology, I had not seen Grant in five years, and it took a meeting in Denver to reconnect. (David Mullings, Grant and I were chatting and David remarked how Lake City is only 24 miles from Ouray, but those darn mountains get in the way of more neighborliness.) I first met Grant back in 1975, when he was the editor of the ‘Top of the World’ collegiate newspaper for Western State College, and I was just starting out at the Country Times.

Some shameless name-dropping. It seemed wherever the Notebook looked last week, there was someone famous: actress Laura Linney at the Montrose airport; Gov. Bill Ritter and I spoke for bit at his “home,” the executive mansion at a CPA lunch Thursday. Friday morning, I talked up Sen. Wayne Allard in the Brown Palace lobby. Then in walks NBA Hall of Famer Bill Walton, who has lunch at the Ship’s Tavern inside. He was in town for that night’s Jazz/Nuggets game. Friendly guy, who also chatted with a couple of Daily Press staffers.

I ran into Montrose/Olathe school board members Nancy Fishering and Carol McDermott as well. They were attending the Colorado School Boards Association meeting, which was being held at the same time.

BumperSnicker spotted on en route home Sunday: More Jesus, Less Beavis.

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