Colorado Springs Gazette owner launches 'Denver Gazette' newspaper in the Post's backyard
What’s half a newspaper war? A newspaper tussle? Whatever it is, Denver is poised for one.
Six years after floating an idea that Clarity Media might relaunch The Rocky Mountain News and challenge The Denver Post, conservative Denver billionaire Phil Anschutz’s media company is going for it. Kind of. The company will launch what it’s calling an “interactive newspaper” in Denver but it won’t be in print. And Clarity didn’t revive the Rocky, though it owns its name and intellectual property. Instead, beginning next month with staff from the Gazette in Colorado Springs and ColoradoPolitics, along with some new hires, the company will launch The Denver Gazette, a daily digital news outlet.
“We’ve long considered publishing a Denver newspaper,” Clarity CEO Ryan McKibben said in a statement, adding in part that the “timing and market dynamics aligned.”
Here’s some history and context about this move: Anschutz’s Clarity Media, which bought The Gazette in Colorado Springs in 2012 and also owns the conservative Washington Examiner site, is a well-financed operation that has been seeking for years to establish itself as Colorado’s primary source for information, particularly when it comes to politics. It offers a conservative editorial voice in a state that is trending a deeper shade of blue. The Gazette’s current editor has said Anschutz “tried to buy The Denver Post … but The Denver Post would not sell to him.” In 2014, Clarity explored bringing back the Rocky and confirmed it had quietly bought the rights to its assets when the venerable paper folded in 2009.
Read more: https://www.coloradoindependent.com/2020/08/28/denver-gazette-newspaper-colorado-media/