Lo-Fidelity: The soap opera of our two local papers — as the printing press turns

If video killed the radio star, then the Internet and cell phones, along with a remorseless sucker-punch from AI and social media, are right on schedule to snuff out everything else. The next shoe to drop, if you ask me? Newspapers. 

I see piles of unread newspapers all over town. Stacks of them. Plastic bags filled with the day’s news sitting outside of businesses and hotels. A hundred people looking at their phones have stepped over the papers to get inside without even bothering to pick them up. Kinda like those abandoned poop bags you see on the trail. 

I’m the dude who takes the papers (both) inside, usually around midday, removes them from the bag, and sheepishly lays them out in genuine hopes of being read. I’m reminded of the lonely, forlorn bunches of produce people pass by at the market on their way to the prepared foods section. Just like the poor turnips and cauliflower will never get eaten, those papers will never be read.

It’s sad to me because I know all of the hard work and coordinated effort it takes to bring an edition of the physical newspaper to press (and grow turnips and cauliflower) and distributed. Frankly, it’s a miracle we have two thriving, daily local papers. It feels to me like most everyone in town reads both newspapers, but I do occasionally run into people who claim they specifically don’t read The Aspen Times because of the lawsuit “thing” that happened three years ago surrounding the “O” word. “Your loss,” I tell them. “Don’t be a one-trick-pony in a two-newspaper town.” 

Remember the cries from townsfolk wishing The Aspen Times to fail? The effect those cancelations and proclamations had on me? The bad-mouthing pushed me toward The Aspen Times, the newspaper I used to sell as a kid. I reminded the naysayers, “Careful what you wish for.” They were inadvertently hoping to live in a town that had less news coverage, and that wasn’t necessarily a good thing or anything to strive for. 

Some people in Aspen are still trying to figure out the subtle difference between editing and censorship. Sometimes, I’ll have someone call, email, text, or tell me in person that they’re mad as hell because the local papers didn’t publish one of their letters or their letter was “censored.” I learned very quickly in the newspaper business that if an editor edits your stuff, your first response should be, “Thank you!” The editor just did you a favor by not making you look or sound like a complete lunatic. I know over the years my editors have saved me. Don’t want your rant to be edited? Try the cesspool of social media or a barstool. 

There are whole geographic areas in America that are facing what they call news “deserts” where there’s no local coverage. The stories are devastating. Here in Aspen, we have the opposite: an over-saturation of reporting, what I refer to as a news “swamp.”

I’m proud to say I’ve written for both local papers. I enjoy the sibling-esque rivalry between the two papers. It reminds me of the angsty Aspen/Vail conflict. Everything in Aspen is a competition — from yoga to how many days you ski and where, to how fit you are, to what you read, what you wear, drive, live, ride, ski or snowboard, where you eat, to how you pray. Aspen has a nasty little underbelly. There’s a stifling, narrow-minded inculcation here in Aspen that if you don’t vote a certain way or support one issue and fight another, then you’re not a real “local.” Hogwash, I say. 

I truly think the two local papers boost and compliment each other. And besides, there’s an incestuous feel to Aspen media, like most everyone in the local news business has oscillated back and forth from one news organization to another over the years, like the dating scene here. Have you noticed that both local newspapers have been doing “Breaking News” updates on their online platforms? I love the fact that the primary newspaper in Aspen in the late 1800’s was called the “Aspen Daily Times,” an omen/prophecy/emulation of both present papers. 

I was thinking the other day, what sucked me into the newspaper business? My dad used to have an office right across the hall from the Aspen Daily News, and one fateful day, I went in to run a classified ad of some sort. The newsroom was a wreck. I was immediately taken by the mystery, the romance of print, the clackety sound of typewriters, the intrigue, the energy, the bad lighting, mangy carpet, the smell of hangovers, cigarettes, and stale coffee. I felt like I was in a detective’s office from an old black and white movie. 

It suddenly occurred to me that the rumpled, overworked/underpaid characters in this office held an omnipotent power, a secret; they knew what the entire town was going to be talking about the next day. The clueless people walking around Aspen had no idea what was about to hit them. The soul-crushing outrage du-jour was baking on the pages like a soufflé that would soon unfold into the hands of eager readers. 

That’s why I’ve been enjoying the new TV series modeled after “The Office” called “The Paper,” which reminds me of our cherished local newsrooms. “The Paper” is to Aspen newsprint/online what Spinal Tap (Both one and two — go see the new one at the ISIS) is to the touring rock-and-roll industry. From the profanity-laced screaming coming from behind closed doors, to the high-maintenance columnist drama, to Waylon — the office dog that won’t stop farting — our local media world is a constantly unfolding, real-life saga with all of the hirings, the firings, and the AP wire-ings. What you read in the local papers isn’t even the half of it. Being right on the lunatic fringe of our town’s news cohort gives me a sense of purpose.

Long live the local papers. Both of them. 

Contact Lorenzo via suityourself@sopris.net.