I have some personal news. Thursday, May 15, will mark my five-year anniversary at The Sun, which is one of the rare places where journalism is actually mostly thriving and where my column — thanks to readers old and new, and especially to those who subscribe to my Sun newsletter — has found a wonderful home.
I’m so happy to be part of a Sun team that is playing a prominent role in promoting a journalism model that might actually work. A working model is a must. We know that many newspapers these days are barely hanging on and that others are not hanging on at all.
The numbers are stark. More than 3,200 newspapers have closed since 2005. Many more are expected to close — or, like The Denver Post, to be taken over by vulture capitalists, who strip newspapers for their parts — in the coming years. “News desert” is the term to describe places that no longer have local newspapers. The deserts are everywhere these days, including in Colorado. Even the new pope is worried about the state of journalism.
And it’s not a coincidence that Donald Trump has risen to power as local newspapers, which have traditionally been among the most trusted news sources, have declined. In our media world, Trump’s lies, large and small, are often normalized. The growth of the right-wing MAGA media machine has assured him a space where even his most egregious moves are praised. And the abject cave-in to Trump by the megabillionaire moguls who control much of modern media have left us bereft.
This is how authoritarianism begins. And how democracy ends.
I am fortunate that The Sun, though entirely nonpartisan in its news coverage, affords me this space where an opinion columnist can, say, call out Trump for his latest corruption — like the “gift” of a flying palace from Qatar as Trump’s replacement for Air Force One. According to reports, the plane will likely become Trump Force One upon his presumed retirement in 2028.
It would be wrong and obscene and thoroughly Trumpian — and almost certainly in defiance of the Constitution’s emolument clause — to take a $400 million luxury airplane from anyone. But Qatar, which is allied with Iran and a supporter of Hamas, is not just any country. As the inimitable Jon Stewart put it, you could be expelled from Columbia University if you espoused half the Qatar party line.
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SUBSCRIBENo, Qatar is just the latest country that is ready to offer Trump a little gifty/bribe. Who knows what they’ll ask for in return?
Maybe Trump can move that California spigot to bring water to the Qatari desert. Trump has already announced, on his Middle East trip, that he’s building a golf course in Qatar, just as he’s building a tower in Saudi Arabia and a hotel in Dubai.
Maybe — in a quid-pro-quo wink — he’ll let the Qatari princes in on his latest cryptocurrency-adjacent schemes, like the dinner at the White House for those who invest most heavily in the $TRUMP meme coin, whatever that is.
The 220 winners were estimated to have purchased a combined $148 million dollars in meme coins, brought to you by the Trump family business. Meaning that these guys who bought the coins can probably afford more than two dolls to put under the Christmas tree, no matter where Trump’s China tariffs land. And the Trumps crashing again.
But I digress. I was talking about my recent life in media, wasn’t I? Well, I promise it ties in. Without a strong media presence, our democracy will continue to be at risk.
And my trip to The Sun — nearly as problematic as Elon Musk’s proposed journey to Mars — helps tell the story.
I came to the Rocky Mountain News in 1997 from the Baltimore Sun, because I felt that a change would do me good. I had picked 10 cities where I’d like to live and work, and Denver was among them. I got an offer from the Rocky, which The Denver Post wanted to match, and suddenly I found myself in the middle of one of the last great newspaper wars, with both papers willing to spend big money to try to kill off the other.
To say I loved it is to far understate the case. I lurved it.
I stayed at the late great Rocky until it was shut down, breaking my heart and the hearts of hundreds of thousands of readers. But I was one of the lucky Rocky employees, because I would be hired immediately by The Denver Post. I stayed there until they laid me off because, I was told, the banks said they had to cut payroll by $500,000 by the end of the week. I wasn’t making nearly that much, of course, but I was making enough to make a dent.
And for the first time in my life, since the age of 17, I was unemployed. But, strangely, if I had not gotten laid off at the Post, I would never have made it to The Sun.
Some years later, after the Chuck Plunkett revolution against Alden Global Capital, 10 of the best journalists at the Post left the paper and boldly founded what would become The Colorado Sun. By the way, we’re up to 19 journalists — and counting — now.
Anyway, after getting laid off, and after wearily explaining to the people at the unemployment office that newspaper columnists aren’t really fit for any kind of work other than writing trenchant newspaper columns that often offend politicians, I had tried to start an online newspaper because there was nowhere left in Colorado I wanted to work.
I convinced potential backers that I could handle the journalism, but my business model — which you could generously call naive — would basically get me laughed out of the room. Finally, when I got a financial adviser, we came close to getting the seed money we needed. But close wasn’t close enough.
And after a year of being unemployed, I finally got a job with the newly invigorated Colorado Independent, the online news site run by my friend Susan Greene. And with help from another close friend, Tina Griego — we were three Post refugees — the Indy became a cult news site in town.
But eventually — and probably inevitably — the Indy closed. We couldn’t raise enough money to keep the cyber wheels turning. You can get the drift here as to my career path: The Rocky shut down. The Post was eviscerated. The Indy shut down. Journalism was probably at its low point in Denver history.
There was only one place left for me to go. And so I called Larry Ryckman, then The Sun editor and now Sun publisher and all-around pooh-bah, to ask if The Sun, which was doing great journalism, would be interested in my column.
He said yes. And after a brief negotiation, I said yes. And so here I am.
And so here I hope to be for at least another five great years.
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
The Colorado Sun is a nonpartisan news organization, and the opinions of columnists and editorial writers do not reflect the opinions of the newsroom. Read our ethics policy for more on The Sun’s opinion policy. Learn how to submit a column. Reach the opinion editor at opinion@coloradosun.com.
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