Last month, in a free-wheeling conversation on conservative talk radio, KNUS host Julie Hayden asked Republican operative Dick Wadhams about GOP gubernatorial candidate Walker Stapleton.

“How does he tap his inner populist?” asked Hayden.

“That’s a good question. Ultimately, you can’t make somebody into something they’re not,” replied Wadhams.

Stapleton sounds as if he’d been listening to Wadhams, judging from his subsequent interview with KNUS’ Craig Silverman.

Stapleton was forthcoming about his private school education at the Brunswick school in Connecticut followed by four years at Williams College in Massachusetts.

At Williams, which he described as “politically correct to a fault,” he said he helped bring conservative William F. Buckley to speak, and he wrote articles for the Williams Free Press.

Stapleton told Silverman during the March 10 interview that he “ruffled some feathers” at Williams.

So it appears that Stapleton might be taking Wadhams advice and embracing his past, trying to show that made the most of it.

But strangely, Stapleton got his own background wrong when Silverman asked him, “What sports did you play?”

STAPLETON: “I played baseball. I played tennis. And I was more — I was a rackets guy. Baseball and tennis were my — were my two.”

A search of Brunswick’s website reveals that Stapleton played squash there. The school proudly lists Stapleton among its student athletes that went on to compete at the college level.

The website states: “Brunswick offers a competitive athletic program that prepares our students for participation in college athletics. While many of our students choose to continue sports on an intramural basis in college, Brunswick’s premier athletes have met with considerable success on college varsity teams. Here is a recent overview of our college athletes.”

Stapleton is listed among the squash players.

Maybe Stapleton played baseball and tennis, too, but it appears he was also a serious squash competitor.  And he apparently played it at Williams college as well.

An email to Stapleton’s campaign, asking why he didn’t mention his squash history, was not immediately returned.

Some people are feeling betrayed by The Denver Post, or should I say its hedge fund owner, for putting its articles behind a paywall about a month before the newspaper decided to lay off a third of its news staff, meaning there’s no way The Post’s offerings will match what you expected when you bought your subscription.

It’s a bait-and-switch, even for someone like me who’s had a subscription to The Post for over 20 years.

So I called The Post to find out if you get your unused money back, if you cancel your annual subscription during the year.

You’d expect to get a partial refund, but with the hedge fund involved, and things being what they are, you don’t know.

You’ll be happy to read that, yes, if you cancel, you can claim your money for unused months.

So now what do those of us with subscriptions do?

You could argue, why give money to the hedge fund, which appears to be sucking money from the newspaper without any concern about journalism?

But you could have taken that position not only when the newspaper went behind the paywall in early January, but ever since Alden Global Capital acquired The Post in 2013.

Things look worse now, awful in fact, but if you subscribe to The Post because you wanted to support local journalism, you still should.

Don’t cancel your subscription.

I mean, there’s still hope. It’s hard to write it, but it’s true.

At some point, you have to expect that The Post will be sold, and maintaining as much journalism between then and now is worth it, so that the next owner can start off in the best place possible under horribly adverse conditions.

Yes, Alden Global Capital will eat some of your money, but not all of it. Or maybe not all of it.

Also, if you believe there’s hope in The Post’s subscription-only model, and I have an itsy bitsy amount of faith in it, then you want to give it a chance to succeed. Yesterday’s staff cuts, coming so soon after the wall was put up, are even more sad, because Alden didn’t give the subscription model a chance to succeed, and now it has much less of a chance.

But there’s still hope for it,

So I’m not canceling my Post subscription. The newspaper still deserves the best shot possible. That’s what it should get from its owners but is not getting. And that’s what we should give it.

Plus, I have no doubt that the dregs of the Post, the 70 stiffs who remain, will still churn out great stories that I will want to read.

The Denver Post took time to extract the actual newsworthy information from Sunday’s Face-the-Nation interview, featuring U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO), instead of simply transcribing the main topic of the senator’s appearance on national TV.

The news, which came at the end of an interview focused on North Korea, was, as The Post’s headline stated, “Cory Gardner doesn’t deny blocking a bipartisan effort to improve gun-purchase background checks in TV interview.”

In contrast, CBS4’s news-free headline read, “Gardner on North Korea Relationship: Hold China Responsible.” CBS4’s piece, like the Hill’s and not surprisingly the Washington Times’, failed to mention Gardner’s repeated refusals to answer questions about his alleged decision to block a proposed bipartisan law to help force federal agencies to accurately document the criminal histories of gun buyers.

The Post not only reported Gardner’s newsworthy gun-question dodge, but also tried (and failed) to get a clarification from Gardner, provided background on the issue, and noted Gardner’s recent statements on gun issues (urging a focus on mental health care, not guns).

Related: In radio interview about how to respond to the Florida massacre, Gardner doesn’t utter “gun,” “rifle,” “firearm,” “bump stock,” “magazine,” or any related words

The important interview, illustrating the secretive tactics used to stop gun-safety legislation, was mostly ignored nationally and locally.

The Post reported that Gardner “did not deny that he put a hold” on the gun-safety bill.

From The Post:

The Colorado Republican, interviewed on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” said he has concerns about the measure that has broad bipartisan support in the Senate over what he describes as “due process issues.”

“This isn’t a issue of whether you like this or not,” he said. “It’s a question of constitutional rights and protecting the people of this country, protecting them from harm …”

“So, you are blocking the bill for now?” moderator Margaret Brennan interjected.

Gardner continued, “… and, and making sure we’re protecting people from harm and making sure that we get this right, and if there’s a constitutional issue at stake then that should be worked out.”