Governor Hickenlooper make another sexualized slip of the tongue? Get a reporter on it. A green energy company backed by Colorado Democrats' personal sugar momma lays off 70% of its staff after getting nearly half a billion in tax dollars? Let the bloggers handle it.
The press coverage of current events in Colorado this past week should make the Colorado press corps embarrassed to attend their next J-school reunion. While they've been suckered into covering stray tweets about sex and a Governor who's glad to expound on the sexual prowess and proclivities of his fellow elected officials, it's been left to the blogosphere to cover the big story of the week. You know, the one with actual implications for the livelihood and personal finances of Coloradans.
In today's Denver Post, there is not one, but two articles about flash in the pan controversies that for all of the sound and fury surrounding them, signify nothing to the real lives of Coloradans.
Yet, when a potentially massive pay-to-play scandal unfolds right before the media's eyes, they ignore it.
To be fair, they'll probably get a lot more clicks on the sex stories. With the recent Project for Excellence In Journalism study showing that for every dollar newspapers are gaining in digital ads, they are losing $7 in print ads, we can understand their need for the clicks.
But isn't there something called the public interest that should matter to the media too?
While the Colorado press has unbelievably broken not a single story on the massive meltdown at Abound Solar, bloggers are picking up the slack (h/t Michelle Malkin).
Todd Shepherd at Complete Colorado broke the story that Abound had a previously unreported shutdown late last year and was telling their employees that everything was A-OK only weeks before 70% of them lost their jobs. He was also the first to draw the pay-to-play connections in the Abound loan, 18 months ago!
Meanwhile, Amy Oliver of the Independence Institute, uncovered that Weld County saw the writing on the wall and cut off Abound's tax credits in December. She also was the first to report in Colorado on the Sunlight Foundation's find that a "Pat Stryker" shows up in the White House visitor logs only months before the Abound Solar loan boondoggle was approved.
Michael Sandoval, of Peoples Press Collective and The Colorado Observer, has also added original reporting, noting that Stryker gave more to Obama's inaugural than the national media is reporting, bundling $87,500 in addition to her $50,000 donation.
We know that newsroom budgets are down drastically, but is the mainstream press in Colorado okay with ceding a huge national story to the blogosphere?
We thought bloggers were supposed to cover the sex stories and the "real journalists" were supposed to do the investigative reporting.
Maybe it's time the Colorado Press Association give up their Legislative floor access to the folks doing the real reporting.
They say it's Republicans who fixate on bedroom issues. Even the most puritanical conservative couldn't hold a candle to the mainstream media these days.