No matter what you thought of Dusty Saunders during his 54 years at the Rocky Mountain News, it’s hard not to love him after reading his memoir, which came out late last year.
The book, Heeere’s Dusty: Life in the TV and Newspaper World, is perfectly timed to chronicle an era that already seems like ancient history, even though Saunders ended his career at the Rocky just five years ago.

Jason Salzman :: TV critic’s memoir chronicles newspaper era that seems like ancient history, but it wasn’t long ago
Using unadorned language, which you’ll recognize if you saw his work over the years, Saunders takes you through his life at the Rocky as a wide-eyed copy boy, a wide-eyed reporter and editor, and a wide-eyed TV-and-radio columnist.
One success followed another in a profession that seemed limitless and excitement-packed for a hard-working guy like Saunders. He started his own section of the Rocky.

The bulk of the 300-page book recounts his interviews with Hollywood and news celebs of all types, national and local. The name dropping runs cover-to-cover, and it’s more entertaining than you might think because Saunders himself is so excited by meeting all the people, including Bob Hope, Johnny Carson, Howard Cosell, Katie Couric, Peter Jennings, Tim Russert, Mary Tyler Moore, Dustin Hoffman (in the bathroom), and many more.

On the broadcasting beat, which he was inventing as he went along, Saunders flew around the country (often with his wife), covering national entertainment stories, looking for Denver angles. (Once, he tells us, he packed his wife and two kids in a hotel room at the Ritz-Carlton in Pasadena.)

When Denver Post Editor Chuck Green hinted that he might want to hire Saunders, Rocky Editor Ralph Looney found out, called Saunders into his office, and handed Saunders a slip of paper with a counter-offer salary figure on it, even before Green had made his offer.

“Will that keep you?” Looney asked Saunders.

“Yes,” Saunders told him.

“I can’t even remember, frankly, what the figure was that Looney gave me,” Saunders told me. “But in that day and age, with my financial position and my professional position, it was a reason to stay at the Rocky.”

I asked if he’d have jumped ship for The Post.

“I don’t know what their offer was,” he said. “I probably would not have left, because the Rocky was treating me very well. Why would I have wanted to leave?”

See what I mean by ancient history?

Rather than facing layoffs and furloughs, like reporters nowadays, while working 24/7 in three or more platforms, Saunders dabbled in radio and a bit on TV, mostly on weekends.

From 1994 to 2001, he co-hosted a Sunday KHOW radio show with his “friendly Denver Post competitor” Joanne Ostrow.

The show was canceled when a “major” executive of Clear Channel, which owned KHOW and KOA (and still does) came through Denver and heard Saunders and Ostrow criticizing good old Mike Rosen.

I wondered what Saunders, who pulls his punches, espcially by today’s standards, could possibly say about Rosen that would be considered over the top.

So I asked Saunders what he and Ostrow were saying about Rosen that was so offensive, but he didn’t remember specifically.

“Joanne and I had a very good thing going,” he told me. “We didn’t get on the radio Sunday morning and say, ‘Gee, did you hear what Mike Rosen said about this.’”

“That’s what I’d do if I had a radio show,” I told Saunders.

“It wasn’t that type of show,” he replied. “We’d just go with the flow. If someone would call in and criticize a TV performer, we’d voice our opinion. This particular day we sided with the callers. We agreed Rosen shouldn’t have said that. A guy named Randy Michaels, who is now with the Tribune Company, was the big programming honcho out of Cincinnati for Clear Channel, and he happened to be in town. And he heard us. I guess he went ballistic. We’re paying these print guys to get on our radio stations and criticize our work.”

Shortly after this, and after Saunders and Ostrow refused to make “on-air commercial pitches, something we obviously couldn’t do,” their radio show was canceled.

Saunders’ book veers between his innocent and personal encounters with media stars, which are described, and hints of wild partying, which aren’t. I g0t the feeling Saunders could have told a lot of after-hours stories, but he side-stepped my question about this when I interviewed him.

As it is, the book as an unreal simplicity and quaint quality to it, buy that’s no doubt partly because of the contrast in the newspaper biz between then and now.

Saunders took a buyout in from Scripps and left the Rocky in 2007, two years before it closed.

“I felt at the time, this was the beginning of the end,” said Saunders, who’s 80 years old and lists his speaking engagements about his book on his website. “I didn’t have any inside information on what Scripps was going to do. I would have been more shocked had I’d still been there [when the Rocky was closed].”

“Writing the book, and even now, I still have wild dreams about my working at the Rocky,” he said.

Mitt Romney promised to sit down with real-life reporters (yes, they’re still out there) during his visit today to Colorado, according to a report yesterday by Fox 31 political correspondent Eli Stokols, and it looks like he did, as 7News is teasing its interview for the 3 p.m. news.

Stokols, you recall, called Romney out for NOT meeting with real-life Denver reporters last time Romney came to Colorado, preferring the cozy confines of conservative talk radio. So you have to wonder whether Romney would have stayed mum, had it not been for Stokols.

Stokols’ report that Romney plans to meet with TV reporters caught the attention of Denver Post Editorial Page Editor Curtis Hubbard who tweeted, “Do Obama/Romney have stones to talk to print media? Apparently not.” (Now would be a good time for The Post to throw a public fit over Romney’s favoritism toward TV news, if he, in fact, avoids print reporters during his Colorado swing. Same with Obama, next time he comes.)

I’m looking forward to seeing the local TV interviews with Romney, but meanwhile (and maybe this will piss Hubbard off even more) Romney took questions from radio hosts at 8:30 this morning. Listen to Mitt Romney on KOA Radio May 9 2012 at 17:15.

Tubbs: “How do you handle the criticism that Mitt Romney flip flops on issues…because you’ve certainly been accused of not sticking with one message, the most recent, your comments about the auto bailout?”

Romney: “Well actually, I had the same position on the auto bailout I had from the very beginning. I actually wrote about it. So nothing has changed there. I do understand that the nature of an opposition campaign is to try and create a narrative that is harmful to the opposition. And that’s been used against me by my opponents, and frankly, it is not accurate. There is one place where I did change my view, and when I became governor, I became solidly pro-life, wrote an op-ed to the effect that I was going to be a pro-life governor, and that’s been my position ever since. By the way, that was seven or eight years ago, and I continue to have that view. I’m happy to defend the things that I believe in. And by the way, if I were going to change positions, you would have seen a very different candidate than you have. My view is I’m sticking true to the things that I believe. I hope people are willing to understand that.”

If I’m a radio host, or if I’m just about anybody at this point, I’d be thinking, “One flip flop?”

First, there’s health care reform, which Santorum, among others, pointed out. Romney was complimentary of Obama modeling national reform after Massachusett’s model, but later he was against Obamacare.

With respct to the auto industry, Romney said he wouldn’t sit back and let the auto industry die, in apparent contrast with an op-ed he wrote saying the feds shouldn’t intervene.

Then there’s the stimulus, solar energy, climate change, immigration, the tax pledge, gun issues, and more, as widely documented.

Reporters shouldn’t let Romney get away with saying he’s a one-time flipper. Even if you just look abortion, he’s a serial flipper, as his position has changed back and forth. Throw in the other stuff, and you understand the Jimmy Kimmel joke, featured in a video produced by Democrats:

“Experts are predicting kind of a tough battle between Mitt Romney and his biggest ideological opponent, Mitt Romney from four years ago. Those guys don’t agree on anything.”

During the year, I’ll be asking Denver journalists what they’ve been up to since leaving the Rocky or The Post…-and what they think of the state of Colorado journalism these days.

I previously queried former Denver Post columnists Jim Spencer and Bob Ewegen, among others.

John Rebchook covered real estate and other topics at the Rocky Mountain News from 1983 until the newspaper closed in February 2009. “I believe I have the dubious distinction of having covered business topics longer than any other journalist in Denver’s history,” John emailed me. “(Of course, it is inevitable now that I’ve said that, someone will prove me wrong.)”

Here’s what John has to say (via an email) about 1) his current situation and 2) the state of Colorado journalism:

1. After the Rocky closed, I was approached by Peter Lansing, head of Universal Lending, one of the largest privately held mortgage banking companies in Denver. I had known Peter for about 25 years and had a great deal of respect for him. During the go-go days of mortgage financing, Universal Lending stayed away from the toxic loan products, such as Option ARMS and other subprime mortgages. He left a lot of money on the table, but he refused to sell mortgages that he decided were poison for consumers. By virtue of this, his company survived and prospered, when many others imploded.

In the waning days of the Rocky, Peter said he would like to talk to me about career choices, if the paper closed. He said he enjoys giving advice, and has a knack for it.  After the Rocky was shut, we met for lunch one rainy, cold day last spring. Peter said he would like to sponsor me in some fashion, but he didn’t know how or in exactly what form. He said there are a lot of opinion pieces on real estate on the Web, but virtually no reporting. I asked Peter if we went forward on this, would I be able to speak to his competitors. “I insist on it,” he said. He said he did not want to control or influence the editorial content. I, of course, could quote him, from time to time as I did at the Rocky, when appropriate. For him, it would be a type of passive marketing to get his company’s name in front of real estate professionals and consumers.  About eight months ago, InsideRealEstateNews.com  was born.  Land Title Guarantee also joined as a sponsor. I’ve enjoyed writing the blog a great deal. It keeps me in touch with what is happening in the real estate world, and gives me more freedom to choose my own topics than I had at the Rocky. I also have enjoyed learning about the technical aspects of blogging. I create my own graphics, such as tables; take and post my own photographs; and shoot and post my own videos. My blog has been growing by leaps and bounds. I make a fraction of what I made at the Rocky, however, and economically it can only continue in this form if I get more sponsors and/or advertising. I’m working on both of those options. Hopefully, I will be able to make a decent living writing my blog. I also have completed a number of freelance writing and editing assignments. I am a total free agent. I even appeared on a commercial for Bass Pro, in which I posed as an instructor for a bird-watching class!

2. Without a doubt, I think Denver would be better off with two competitive, daily newspapers. It certainly keeps reporters on their toes when they know that a reporter at the rival paper is competing against them. Competition is good. That said, it is quite amazing that two papers of the same size survived as long as they did, given the economic realities of everything from Craig’s List, declining readership among young people, and all of the news available on the Web. One of the ironies of losing my job at the Rocky is that I now have more time to read the Denver Post and the Wall Street Journal. I think the Post has done an admirable job of covering the news since the Rocky closed. Many of my former colleagues relish finding the occasional bad lede to poke fun at, but the truth is that every reporter from time to time wrote ledes that were stinkers. I hated looking at my stories after I wrote them, at the Rocky, because I knew I would find something I would change, with the pressure of the deadline behind me. I certainly thought all of the reporters at the Post were worthy competitors when I was at the Rocky, and they are still excellent journalists and reporters. When I was at the Rocky, I always looked at the Post long before the sun rose, to see if I had been beaten on a story. Too many days I would go to work in a dark mood because my butt had been kicked. I would also say that when I traveled around the country, I would always look at the local papers. Outside of a few major cities, I never found papers that I thought were as good as the Denver Post or the Rocky Mountain News for local and business coverage. And I thought the business sections of both papers put to shame the business sections of much bigger papers. For example, when I would visit my family in suburban Chicago, where I grew up, I always thought that the business sections at either of the Denver papers were far superior to the business section of the Chicago Tribune. I also think that people tend to expect too much from an individual paper.  Years ago, I was talking to a guy who owned a real estate company in Denver. He had been invited to a focus group of readers at the Rocky to see what they wanted in a paper. Basically, they said they wanted everything. But he felt like they were deluding themselves. Were they really going to read a 20-inch story about Senegal or a 40-inch story about a new Volvo factory in Sweden? The real estate owner each day read Denver dailies, the Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. Only then, did he think that he received a good overview of what was going on. He felt it was incumbent upon the reader to broaden his or his perspective by going to a wide variety of publications. He did not think any single newspaper could provide “one-stop reading” to fulfill all of your news needs. Now that the Denver Post has won the newspaper war here, I’ve thought back to that conversation often. I think it is as true now as it was back in the day.