A Denver Daily Wouldn't Touch Michael Garcia

Temple didn't attempt to contact either Moore or Jones before writing his column, nor does he feel he should have. "I'm not going to waste my time interviewing other editors about their thinking process," he says. "I tried to lay out what I was looking for" — and he cared most about nailing down every aspect of the subject independently as opposed to simply repeating information found while web-surfing. Face the State "isn't a news organization to me," he allows. "It's something different, and it's okay for it to be out there. But in a case like this, I'm not going to publish a story that begins, 'FaceTheState.com says.' I'm not going to destroy somebody's career just because somebody else says something. Otherwise, you're a reed in the wind."

Bartels is dealing with her own brand of blowback. She's received e-mails from readers charging her with pro-Democrat bias for not running accusations against Garcia earlier, as if she had any choice in the matter. On top of that, she must deal with paranoia from the very politicos who would be expected to most enjoy Garcia's fall. "I've had several Republicans say to me, 'The rumor is, you're going to write a story about Republicans and their indiscretions,'" Bartels reveals, adding, "All I'll say is, there may have been one or two."

Don't expect the Rocky to publish such material without compelling proof of its veracity. And betcha Face the State won't go there, either.

Sectional healing: No, the Business section hasn't vanished from the weekday Post. On February 5, it began appearing as part of Denver & the West; only Sunday reportage will now run in a separate pull-out. Moreover, Colorado Sunday, a lifestyle-oriented section introduced in September 2005, is being reduced to a single page. Readers can find it — where else? — in Denver & the West on February 10.

Post editor Moore mentions two reasons for the Business move. "One is the continuing pressure to save newsprint and space," he says, "and the other is that the section was virtually disappearing. Generally, we've been running a six-page section, and a page and a half of that was obituaries. We didn't want it to completely fly away." Even so, he emphasizes that "our commitment to business-news coverage is the same, and the number of people devoted to coverage is the same, too."

Regarding Colorado Sunday, Moore says he liked certain aspects of the presentation but admits that "it never achieved the type of section status I always hoped it would — and the editorial holes were horrific." He thinks the single page will retain the elements that worked best even as it allows for "a cleaner presentation."

The Post remains in cost-cutting mode, which makes sense given that last month, Standard & Poor's seriously downgraded the credit rating of its parent company, MediaNews Group. As a result, readers will have to work a little harder to find the work of business columnist Al Lewis, who made fun of the "incredible, shrinking Rocky" in a blog published just about this time last year.

Clearly, there's a whole lot of shrinkage going on.