The Dysfunctional Denver Post

(orig. pub. 2/22/11)

I’ve been complaining about this sorry excuse for a newspaper since at least 1984.  My best friend and her then-husband, a high-powered attorney in D.C., visited. He turned the pages of both our Denver newspapers, puzzled, and said, “Is soft news all you get here?” 

Yes, Jim, soft news is all we get, and it’s gotten worse.  There’s been a total news blackout in Denver since William Dean Singleton took over as publisher of the Denver Post in the 1990’s.  Instead of news, we get mattress and dental implant ads, celebrity gossip, obituaries, doggie news, and FOUR pages of comics with NINE puzzles.

Singleton’s still in charge at “Media News Group,” which now owns virtually every paper along the Front Range in Colorado.  It has just acquired the last of the independent newspapers, in Loveland and Longmont.  I am very sorry to see this.  These papers were instrumental in arousing public consciousness of Blair and Gilmore (two prosecutors elevated to judgeships in apparent reward for framing an innocent guy for murder; see this related post). Blair and Gilmore were booted in a judicial retention election in November 2010, one of the few times that device has worked in Colorado; and it worked because the Northern Colorado press was actually reporting on citizen anger and mobilization. That doesn’t happen in Denver.

Singleton is the toady of Larry Mizel and the mobbed-up Brownstein, Hyatt, Farber, Schreck law firm.  (See the 1992 book by Houston Post reporter Pete Brewton, The Mafia, CIA, & George Bush.) I have suspected that Singleton’s newspaper acquisitions were funded by Mizel, the chair of MDC Holdings.  Mizel and his cronies orchestrated the savings & loan debacle.  This is where they got their seed money to begin buying all the public officials in Colorado–and believe me, they own all of them who matter. (Nationally, too.)   Silverado S&L, with Neil Bush on the board, cost taxpayers a billion dollars on its own.  That money flowed out the door to Mizel, Ken Good, Bill Walters, and other high-flying developers, as uncollateralized “loans” which were never paid back.  Two executives at Mizel’s company were once indicted for illegal campaign contributions, and one was convicted of a misdemeanor, but the big fish–Mizel (who’s actually only about 5 feet tall)–is never touched.

Pete Brewton (see above) did a series of articles linking the savings & loan crooks to the CIA, the Mafia, and powerful figures in both major parties (including the Bushes).  Most of his articles never saw the light of day:  William Dean Singleton bought the Houston Post and that was the end of that.  Brewton says in his book that Singleton told him he is “good friends” with Larry Mizel–they were introduced by Michael Milken. Brewton also says this:

“…William Dean Singleton and his partners, who owned the Dallas Times-Herald and the Denver Post, had purchased the Houston Post. Singleton, who was the protege of Houston banker and former Washington Star owner Joe Albritton, is a junk-bond and borrowing patron with a milquetoast personality (except when it comes to cutting staff) and unimpressive intellect who appeared to be fronting for someone else. …”

 Like the Houston Post, two of the other newspapers Singleton bought up had been doing S&L exposes, which were then suppressed. One was the Denver Post and the other the San Jose Mercury News.  I never understood, as a business decision, why these particular newspapers were acquired. Now I believe it was to nip in the bud investigations these papers were doing of the S&L/junk bond rackets Singleton’s sponsors are involved in.  In fact, the largest shareholder of the firm which presently owns the Denver Post, MediaNews, is a hedge fund. There can be no question that real news is suppressed whenever it might adversely impact the profitmaking plans of the banksters. (One of the recent past directors of this hedge fund is Jon Huntsman, reputed to be a Rothschild puppet.)*

Now that Singleton’s bought up the Loveland/Longmont newspapers, it’s apparent the agenda extends to protecting the mob plants in the judiciary.  No more judges will be ousted in Northern Colorado, you can count on it.  Did I mention Singleton is the chair of the Associated Press?  He has argued in favor of media consolidation before Congress, and he is sure making it happen, boy. 

I despise the Denver Post in part as a former Green Party candidate for Colorado Attorney General, in 2002, where this “newspaper” suppressed almost all mention of my candidacy.  No reporter attended any press conference I ever gave, and one of the Post’s editors, Rebecca Cantwell, rewrote an article its legal reporter Howard Pankratz had written about the AG candidates before the election.  She took out all the compliments and substantive information about me. Pankratz called me the morning his story ran, angry, and said, “I want to read to you what I actually wrote.”  It began, “Maynard is smart as a whip,” then detailing my educational background, experience, and what I stood for.  All that was edited out by Cantwell, to swing the race to Ken Salazar, another toady of the Mizel/Brownstein crowd.

In 2004, as the chair of the state Green Party, I picked up our presidential candidate David Cobb at the airport.  Our publicity person had been unable to get an interview of him with either the Post or the Rocky Mountain News.  They would not return her calls. She finally made contact with someone at the Rocky, who said, uh, sorry, we’re going to be in meetings that day.  The morning David was to arrive, in a panic to find something to do with him, I called several newspapers and radio stations in Northern Colorado.  To my delight I instantly set up interviews with about five, including the Longmont Times-Call and Loveland Herald, even the conservative Greeley Tribune.  All these media outlets were excited to interview a presidential candidate!  But the Denver Post was having none of it.  And the Rocky was no better.  (I believe that the guy in charge of the News, John Temple, was put there to preside over its demise, too, so the Post would be all that’s left.)

Now the Longmont Times-Call and Loveland Herald have been absorbed by the same outfit. 

I wish I could think of some solution to this.  These fuckers control everything.
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*As a comment notes, as of Nov. 2017 this link had been switched to point to a different webpage. I can’t find this exact quote now, but did at least link Huntsman and Rothschild with the article I’ve substituted.

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