Denver post editor who criticized paper's ownership resigns
BOULDER, Colo. — Chuck Plunkett said he knew that he was risking his job as the editorial page editor of The Denver Post when he wrote an impassioned editorial last month blasting the newspaper’s hedge-fund owners as “vulture capitalists” who had hobbled Colorado’s largest newspaper with deep layoffs and cost-cutting.
“What they were asking was to be quiet,” Plunkett said in an interview. “For me to just sit quietly by would be hypocritical.”
Plunkett said his editorial had discussed how Alden continued to cut newsroom jobs despite making significant profits, its efforts to keep articles about newsroom turmoil out of its own newspapers and the firing of the editorial page editor of the (Boulder) Daily Camera, another Alden-owned paper in Colorado. Dave Krieger, the editor in Boulder, was fired last month after he self-published an editorial that excoriated Alden’s management.
Plunkett said his editorial had been rejected by Guy Gilmore, the chief operating officer of Digital First Media. Gilmore did not respond to an email Thursday night.
Representatives of Alden Global Capital and Digital First Media did not respond to emails or phone messages.
Plunkett, 51, drew national attention last month for putting together a series of articles that criticized the management of the 125-year-old newspaper — the largest in Colorado — and called for the newspaper to be saved.
“If Alden isn’t willing to do good journalism here,” the editorial said, “it should sell The Post to owners who will.”
The paper, which has been owned by Alden since 2010, was ordered in March to cut 30 jobs from a newsroom with a head count that was already below 100. That process is expected to be completed by July.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
JACK HEALY © 2018 The New York Times
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