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.”

Last week Denver Post Editorial Page Editor Curtis Hubbard fired back at all those people who’ve said The Post’s commentary pages favor right-leaning points of view over left-leaning ones, or vice versa.

Hubbard presented the results of a bean-counting project conducted during the first quarter of 2012. He categorized editorials and columns on the Post’s commentary pages as being left of center, right of center, or  “nonpartisan or centrist.”

In his weekly column, Hubbard wrote that the majority of the opinion content was “nonpartisan or centrist” (43 percent of “local columns,” 55 percent of editorials, and 54 percent of syndicated columns).

Partisan opinion content was found to be mostly left of center according to Hubbard’s admittedly subjective count. Local columns were 32 percent left-of-center versus 25 percent right-of-center, editorials 26 percent versus 19 percent, and syndicated columnists 29 percent left-leaning versus 18 percent right-leaning.

In his column, Hubbard claimed that he had all the data in a spreadsheet.

Great, I thought, he can just shoot it over to me.

So I asked him for it, because media bean-counting is fun to audit, for me. And it can provide an excellent starting point for debates about the media.

“I hadn’t considered making it available for public review,” he emailed me.

This was a surprise to hear from an outfit that wants Mitt Romney to release his tax returns for public review. I trust Hubbard more than I trust Romney, but I like to verify what both of them say. Plus the ensuing debate about categorization would be educational. I hope, after due consideration, Hubbard releases his spreadsheet.

I asked Hubbard if he’d share his “local-columnist” data starting from the date of the departure of Mike Littwin. Last year, I showed (with bean counting) that the Post’s local columnists were fairly well balanced on the left-right scale. But with Littwin gone, I worried the opinion page would veer right with no in-house columnist to counter Vincent Carroll.

Hubbard wrote that “23 columns were published since Littwin’s departure [March 20], including work by Rosen, Hubbard, Carroll, Quillen, Andrews, Ditmer, and Barnes-Gelt.”

Of these 23 local columns, six were categorized as from the right, six as from the left, and 11 as non-partisan or centrist, according to Hubbard.

My audit of the same sample of columns showed them to be mostly right-leaning: seven centrist, six left-leaning, and 10 right-leaning. And my tally is only that close because I categorized four of nine columns by Vincent Carroll as “left-leaning.” That won’t happen typically, I’m guessing, but I could be wrong. (Worth noting is the fact that Carroll wrote 9 of 23 “local columns” that appeared in The Post during the first three-and-a-half weeks since Littwin left.) I’m happy to share my tally with anyone who wants to see it, by the way.

I asked Hubbard if he’d evaluated the political cartoons on the commentary page, and he replied that he had not done so but would start to do it going forward. That’s a good thing because my impression is that they lean right. But impressions are the worst kind of media criticism.

Hubbard wrote that readers’ feedback about his own bean counting had given him an idea, which sounds intriguing and innovative to me: add an interactive feature to the opinion section of The Post’s website that would allow site visitors to evaluate content (editorials, local columns, etc.) on a political scale. In other words, let readers count beans too.

Hubbard would like to “display for readers a feature that says something like ‘our grade’ of where a piece falls on the political spectrum and then allows them to vote. Ideally, it would be something that would keep a sort of running score sheet.”

Hubbard doubts that The Post has money to develop this Left-Center-Right feature, but he suggested that “if any of your astute readers would be interested in developing that piece of technology as a public service, I would be willing to discuss being their beta test site.”

It’s a great idea, and it would indeed be a public service. (And I’m not saying that just because he called you astute.)

And so, I extend the invitation.  Do you, or does anyone you know, have the expertise to aid in developing and implementing this feature? If so, contact Hubbard at The Post as soon as possible. (Any project in the newspaper industry these days is urgent.)

In any case, Hubbard wrote in his column that he plans to keep his internal spreadsheet up to date “to better inform our work moving forward.”

“Not only will it help to refute the charges of readers and campaigns in a highly charged election year, it will help us in our goal of producing opinion pages that are reflective and worthy of this great state,” he wrote in his column.

That’s true, especially if he can find a way to get readers involved and share his bean counting with us.

If you look at Denver media, you find way more partisan support for Republicans than Democrats.

I’m not talking about “conservative” media figures versus “progressive” ones. I’m talking about media types who urge people to vote Republican.

Here is my list of Denver media figures who are partisan Republicans:

Freeland Denver  Post columnists John Andrews and Mike Rosen (also on KOA); Michael Brown, KOA; Ross Kaminsky, KOA; Jon Caldara, KHOW; Dan Caplis, KHOW; Steve Kelley, KNUS; Jimmy Sengenberger, KNUS.

As for partisan Democrats in the Denver media, I can’t think of any. Can you?

AM 760’s David Sirota, who no longer appears regularly in The Post, is a leftist, but he trashes Democrats repeatedly, even saying last year he didn’t “give a shit” about who’s elected president this year. KHOW’s Craig Silverman, who will argue with GOP-talking-head Caplis on KHOW, wanted to attend GOP caucus meetings because of his love for Mitt Romney.

In my tally of partisan Republican media figures, I’m not even counting Denver Post columnist Vincent Carroll, who predictably sides with Republicans.

Carroll doesn’t say, outright, to vote Republican or that he favors Republicans, though he routinely attacks Democrats and their initiatives.

Similarly, left-leaning Post freelance columnists Ed Quillen and Susan Barnes-Gelt don’t tell us to vote Democratic or to support Dems. Same with Littwin, when he was at The Post.

In contrast, Post freelance columnists John Andrews and Mike Rosen don’t hide their partisan support for Republicans.

Andrews’ column can look like it’s a memo to the GOP faithful, as it did in the Post in October:

“I have no foresight about how the race will go, other than to implore my fellow Republicans against overconfidence in the face of President Obama’s potent incumbency and billion-dollar war chest.”

Rosen, is unabashed partisan Republican, whose partisan support for the Republican party is boring. In a February Post column endorsing Romney, Rosen described himself “as a philosophical, principled, right-leaning, Reagan Republican.”

He wrote:

“I see trillions of dollars’ worth of difference between Republican supply-siders who want to balance the budget within our tax capacity, and left-wing Keynesians, like Paul Krugman, who boast trillion-dollar deficits are an economic stimulus, and want to double up. There are stark differences when it comes to energy, labor unions, social policy, education and, most important, limited government. Democrats are inherent statists.”

I asked Wesword’s Latest Word blogger Michael Roberts, who writes about media issues frequently, if he could think of a local media figure who’s a partisan Democrat.

“You certainly have a few not-entirely conservative voices,” he told me, citing AM 760’s David Sirota. But he describes Sirota as “not a guy who says you must go out and vote for the Democrats.”

“If there’s an example out there, the equivalent of a Jon Caldara or something, I can’t think of it right now.”

Neither could right-leaning media-type Kelly Maher.

Reached by phone, the always-quotable John Andrews told me his Denver Post column was established when Andrews went to then Post Publisher Dean Singleton in 2004 and told him that The Post’s commentary page lacked partisan Republicans.

Andrews said:

“I went to Dean Singleton and said, I see Gail Schoettler has  a column in the newspaper. Wouldn’t it be fair if I had a similar platform? But I haven’t seen anything from Schoettler in a long time.”

So now the opposite is true, I told Andrews. Partisan Democrats are needed at the Post for basic fairness.

“If your thesis is that there is an asymmetry, I would say there probably is,” Andrews said. “It’s partly a result of Democrats having decided that they are not going to be as out there saying their party is good. That partly accounts for the fact that you get a lot of liberal voices, but they are not saying, I’m a Democrat and proud of it.”

Andrews says this is a strategy by Democrats, like former legislator Ken Gordon, to get more Democrats elected, by pretending political parties are a bad thing and “it’s all about good government.” But political parties enhance civil society, Andrews said.

In any case, whatever the reason, there’s obviously a partisan commentator gap out there in the Denver media. You’d like to think the radio station executives in town would look to the greater good and create at least one itsy bitsy slot for a partisan local Dem, but this won’t happen.

The Post is another matter. Its commentary page shouldn’t favor partisan Republican over partisan Democratic columnists. More on The Post in a future blog post.

I just wrote Mike Littwin a thank-you e-mail for being such a reliable source of amazement and inspiration for so many years. I mean, how lucky was Denver to have a writer of his caliber for so long at a daily newspaper?

What he wrote about didn’t matter. That’s why my Republican mother-in-law, who doesn’t read my blog, kept telling me how much she loved him, even though she hates Obama so much she can barely contain herself once she gets going.

I hope Littwin somehow lands somewhere else in town, but meanwhile, without cheapening the loss of Littwin and others at the Post, you have to wonder about the op-ed page at The Denver Post now.

Littwin and Vince Carroll balanced each other out on the page, as former Post Editorial Page Editor Dan Haley told me last year when I pointed out, with careful bean counting, that The Post op-ed page was more balanced with Harsanyi gone.

Haley told me at the time:

Locally, as of next week, we will have two main op-ed columnists (Carroll/Littwin) who will write 12 columns a month from the right and left. That’s balance.

I emailed The Post’s Editorial Page Editor Curtis Hubbard this morning, and after expressing my sadness about the layoffs and telling him I didn’t want to cheapen Littwin by looking ahead while Littwin’s chair on the editorial board is still warm, I asked Hubbard how he’ll balance the commentary page now that Littwin’s columns, blogs, and tweets are gone?

He replied:

We’ve still got a lot to sort through here, but providing a wide variety of voices and viewpoints remains a priority or the op-ed page.

Rush Limbaugh’s 1950’s-era comments last week, calling a woman a “slut” for believing that her health insurance should cover birth control, came from the mouth of…Rush Limbaugh, an unelected publicity hound/entertainer of the first order.

And Limbaugh’s extremism got all kinds of coverage, locally and nationally.

Then ColoradoPols broke a story yesterday about extreme comments at home in Colorado, by elected Republican legislators at a rally on the west steps of the Capitol.

Pols posted videotape of GOP speakers, including Sen. Tim Neville comparing Nazi Germany to the Obama Administration. Other video clips consisted of, as described by Pols:

“Sen. Harvey declaring that a program of mandating contraceptive coverage is “not a slippery slope, but a cliff” to “genocide somewhere down the road.” Sen. Lambert called the policy “mind control,” and read from a right-wing column warning that the same authority could be used to force the purchase of “euthanasia pills.” Not to be outdone, Sen. Renfroe said that it could to a situation “where England was when their king decided he needed to rule the church.”

Reporters who didn’t make it to the rally should go back and cover these comments, handily posted on Pols, to air them out. That’s what journalism is about.

It’s obvious to me that the statements by elected GOP  officials deserved more attention from the local media than Limbaugh’s comments, weird as they were.  They’re elected officials. Maybe they’re publicity hounds too, but still.

Candidates like Joe Coors who make extreme comments in secondary media outlets, like talk radio, also deserve media scrutiny when they go off. There’s not much public-interest value in reporting that KNUS talk-show host Steve Kelly thinks Obamacare is leading to a government takeover of the individual, but when Joe Coors, who’s running against Rep. Ed Perlmutter, says it, it’s news.

Here’s what Coors said on KNUS’ Kelley and Company yesterday:

Kelley: How big an issue is [Obamacare] in this race?

Coors: It’s huge…. Governments that have controlled health care in their countries basically own the individual. And we cannot let Obamacare legislation dictate our lives in any matter shape or form, and I’m very much opposed to it and would certainly vote to repeal it or defund it or whatever I could do when I get back there. [BigMedia emphasis]

Kelley: You make a great point. Yeah. Think about that. If someone could make a decision on your health and decisions on your health, they have total control over you.

Coors: Yes, sir.

Listen here to Joe Coors on KNUS 3-13-2012 say Obamacare leads to total control of the individual.

A reporter might ask a veteran getting VA coverage if he or she feels the government owns him.  Or a Brit, or to a lesser degree a Canadian or someone on Medicare, for that matter. And what does government control over healthcare have to do with mild-mannered Obamacare anyway?

With depleted staff, reporters at legacy news outlets can’t be everywhere and do everything like they could before, or at least try to. They should throw out any hesitancy to use material from places like Pols or talk radio, if the material is verifiable and newsworthy.

For example, I was just listening to a podcast of Grassroots Radio Colorado from Monday, in which  Sen. Neville describes how he prepared his comments about Nazi’s and the Obama Administration for the rally.

He said:

I was doing some research last night, and I was putting my notes together [for his speech at the rally] and of course you pull things apart. You don’t like this. You don’t like that. And you know I was looking at the rise of Hitler in Nazi Germany and the parallels I was seeing were pretty scary.

What’s scary to me is how many of us, including smart reporters, are ignoring this stuff.

The Denver Post’s  latest “Battleground Colorado” panel is stacked against Democrats, but Post Editorial Page Editor Curtis Hubbard tells me that things will be fair in the end, as Dems will outnumber Republicans on a future panel.

The Post’s “Super Tuesday” panel, the second in election-season series that promises to be interesting, in part because of the different levels of interaction with the community, features the following folks, according to The Post:

Former state chair Dick Wadhams, Jessica Peck of Henley Public Affairs and Arapahoe County Commissioner Susan Beckman for Republicans; Former House Speaker Terrance Carroll and political strategist Leticia Martinez of Project New West for Democrats; analyst Eric Sondermann of SE2 communications; and special guests former GOP congressman Tom Tancredo and Colorado College professor Tom Cronin.

Sometimes it takes me days of bean counting to show unfairness. But here, The Post does the counting for me. Two for the Dems. Three for the GOP. That’s a stacked deck!

My progressive friends will hate me for it, but I’ll accept Sondermann as a centrist here, as The Post defined him in its first panel Feb. 10. Cronin looks to be left-leaning. And Tancredo is way right, but overall a partisan Republican.

So what gives? Why create a panel with a 4-1-3 split in favor of the conservative agenda?

In response to that question, Post Editorial Page Editor Curtis Hubbard emailed me:

The makeup for the first panel was 2-2 between Ds and Rs, with me and Sondermann serving as referees.

Given the attention that’s being paid to women’s issues, I wanted to add voices of suburban women for our second panel on March 7. But I don’t want the panel to get too unwieldy. So, for next Wednesday’s discussion, where much of the focus will be on the Republican primary and the conversation largely focused on Romney vs. Santorum, I opted to bring in an additional Republican woman for broader context of what’s happening and how her friends and neighbors see it shaping up.

As we move closer to November, you can look for some panels to tilt toward Ds, more participation from unaffiliated voters, and additional guests who bring experience that is under- or unrepresented on the panel (young voters, rural voters, retirees).

I’m also eager to hear from readers in hopes of providing information that they’re interested in for future panels.

Hubbard also informed me that Beckman will be part of the panel going forward, and one more Democrat and independent will be added “hopefully by April or May.”

There’s a good chance someone is going to say something newsworthy when he or she prefaces it with, “some folks in my office cringed when I said this, but I’m going to say it again.”

That’s what Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler said to a GOP group, as reported by Colorado Statesman’s Judy Hope Strogoff, prior to repeating his view that the mainstream media hates uppity Republicans. I wrote about it the first time he said it, calling on wimpy reporters to fight back and ask him for more evidence, but no enterprising reporter took the challenge.

Now journos have another chance. Gessler said:

Gessler: “Republicans who behave well, who the mainstream media can sort of pat on the head and say, “Good boy, that’s a good job,” Republicans who sort of toe the line and don’t really want to make real change but you know, sort of will kick around the edges a little bit but buy into the mainstream media, the big money type framework — they’re good, they’re okay, they’re the Republicans that they like. But God forbid someone would really want to shake things up, that’s terrible. So they don’t like that.”

I wouldn’t say I had to catch my breath after I read that, like Andrea Mitchell was after Foster Friess told her that “gals” should just keep their knees together.

But I was gasping as I read numerous other Gessler statements in the Statesman’s Gessler article, which is well worth taking a break from Twitter to read.

I’ll stick to Gessler’s media criticisms here, because they’re so sophisticated, but, please, you’ll love everything he has to say.

Gessler: “What I have found is, there is a status quo, there is a way of going about things in this state and oftentimes in this country, and there’s a reason it’s there. And if you look, probably the perfect embodiment of that is The Denver Post editorial board. I mean if you called up Central Casting and said, “I’d like a liberal mainstream media establishment, can you send one to me?” they would send you the Denver Post editorial board. And I think within my first three weeks they’d written six editorials against me, either about me or against me. None of them were favorable.”

See what I mean about how sophisticated Gessler is when it comes to media criticism?

I’d always thought Vince Carroll, who sits on The Post editorial board, was part of the conservative media establishment, but Gessler blows this up by lumping him into the “liberal mainstream media establishment.” Good media criticism should challenge your thinking, and Gessler hits a home run here.

I can think of only one Colorado media critic who showed more depth, and that was Doug Bruce when he kicked an annoying Rocky Mountain News photographer.

In case you missed Gessler’s bold point about the liberal media’s unfair treatment of him, he returned to it again in the Statesman article, lumping together news reporters, editorial writers, and Democrats (and therefore socialists) in one nasty army out to get him.

Gessler: “And remember our Central Casting mainstream media, The Denver Post? They editorialized against this law and they said, “It’s a power grab by Gessler and he already has the authority to do it.” Now if you think about that, those are two mutually exclusive… I mean if it’s a power grab then I don’t have the authority, and I’m grabbing power. And those sentences were right next to one another.

So we lost last year’s legislative battle.”

If you take a look at The Post editorial that he’s talking about, titled “Voter Integrity or Power Grab?” you’ll find that The Post thought Gessler was grabbing power because his bill would have given him the authority to run amok. In other words, a true power grab. The editorial didn’t mention anything about Gessler already having the authority he needed to do his job. That came out later, in a news article.

The Post made this radical observation in its editorial:

If people who are ineligible to cast ballots in Colorado are on voter registration rolls, they need to be removed.

On that point, we agree with Secretary of State Scott Gessler.

However, we’re concerned that the power he is seeking from the state legislature to conduct such investigations is overly broad and undefined.

That opinion is so conservative, it must come from the “embodiment” of the “liberal mainstream media establishment.”

From one side of The Denver Post yesterday, Political Editor Chuck Plunkett told me that The Post doesn’t like to “cry in public about having a rough time getting someone to talk to us.”

Then, from the darker side of The Post, Editorial Page Editor Curtis Hubbard, wrote on The Post’s Spot blog, that he has a “hunch” that FOX 31’s Eli Stokols’ strategy of calling Mitt Romney out for avoiding the press in Colorado will pay off. Hubbard wrote:

Eli throws a bomb: I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a reporter publicly criticize a campaign for their media strategy/declining interview requests. Fox 31′s Eli Stokols didn’t hold back in his criticism of the Romney camp today. Just a hunch, but I bet his strategy pays off.

So I asked Hubbard, via email, why he didn’t use Stokols’ tactic, when he had Plunkett’s job.

I also asked whether Hubbard expected more journalists to be inspired by Stokols and call out hiding politicians more often, and whether he’d give it a try himself, on the commentary page. Hubbard replied:

It’s an interesting discussion, but my job (whether it was in the newsroom or in this position) is not to be a media critic. As the editorial page editor I certainly have more leeway to comment on media coverage, but I try to keep in mind that more of our readers care about news than how the sausage gets made.

I commented on Eli’s post yesterday because, in my nearly 20 years in the news biz, I couldn’t recall a reporter doing anything like it.  Eli has demonstrated through his strong work on the beat that he shouldn’t be ignored, so it’s probably a pretty safe bet on his part. Then again, a thin-skinned campaign or a cut-throat competitor, might very well use it against him.

The trouble is, the line between the news and how it’s made isn’t so clear. In the case of Romney ignoring Denver journalists, the two are one and the same. It’s a news story that Romney is ignoring the press in favor of conservative talk-radio hosts. (Or at least it deserves a mention in a news story.)

But my takeaway from Hubbard’s blog post is that he thinks the tactic could work. I’d love to see him try it. (And if it backfired, I’d love to see The Post blow up the retribution.)

Hubbard (or Plunkett) could create a little chart showing which candidates actually take questions from journalists when they pass through town.

It could be called the “Howard Beale Index.”

Each time the Howard Beale Index is updated, a short Eli-Stokols-type letter could be published.

If I’m a Post subscriber, and I am, I’d be proud of my newspaper for going after those candidates, and trying to hold them accountable publicly.

Reporters are having a real hard time sorting out Mitt Romney’s position on personhood. Here’s a quick and easy way for journos to think about the issue, and Romney’s evolving stance on it.

Personhood has two tracks: federal and state. At the federal level, proponents are trying to pass a law giving fertilized eggs (or zygotes) the legal rights of a “person,” under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. constitution. At the state level, the personhood campaign wants to pass amendments to state constitutions defining life as beginning at conception.

Romney on federal personhood. Romney has made it clear that he’s currently against federal personhood. This is a flip from his position in 2007, when he stated on national TV that he favored a GOP platform position supporting a “human life amendment” to the U.S. Constitution, which would ban abortion at the federal level. When Romney said this, he believed, like he does now, that life begins at conception, so Romney’s federal ban on abortion, based on his definition of “life,” would have met the requirements of Personhood USA for a national personhood law. But last year at a GOP prez forum, Romney abandoned this position because now thinks adding personhood to the U.S. Constitution could set up a “constituional crisis.”

Romney on state personhood. In October, Romney told Fox News’ Mike Huckabee that he “absolutely” would have signed an amendment to the Massachusetts constitution establishing that life begins a conception. Later, Romney’s spokespeople backed up this position by telling Politico’s Ben Smith and other reporters that Romney supports “efforts to ensure recognition that life begins at conception” and that “these matters should be left up to states to decide.”

Summary:  Romney isn’t completely clear on this issue (I’m rolling my eyes as I write that), but  it’s fair to say that Romney has flip flopped on personhood during his career. It’s also a fact that he’s currently against a federal personhood law but for state-based personhood amendments (consistent with his “life-begins-at-conception” belief and his statement to Huckabee).

One prominent journalist who’s clear on Romney’s personhood stance is Curtis Hubbard, editorial page editor of the centrist-right Denver Post. He qualifies as an expert on personhood, having directed news coverage of the personhood ballot initiative in Colorado in 2010. He recently stated on Colorado Public Television, KBDI, “Romney already came out for personhood at the state level.”

Reporters nationally will have a chance to clarify Romney’s views on personhood Saturday, as they report on Florida’s Personhood USA-sponsored presidential forum. Gingrich, Paul, and Santorum will attend.

Romney will not attend the event, replicating his pattern of skipping such forums in South Carolina and Iowa, but reporters can contrast his views with personhood promoters Gingrich, Paul, and Santorum.

Personhood USA may also hold a prez forum in Colorado, prior to its Feb. 7 caucus. Personhood USA legal analyst Gualberto Garcia Jones emailed me yesterday, in response to my query, that Colorado is a “definite candidate” for a personhood forum.