In an Oct. 11 piece about the court case that will determine the shape of Colorado’s congressional districts, The Denver Post reported:

“The legal challenge pits a map from Democrats that drastically changes the current boundaries to create more competitive districts against a Republican map billed as ‘minimum disruption’ because it follows the status quo.”

I noticed in that paragraph The Post stated, as a point of fact, that the Democrats’ maps were “more competitive” and the GOP maps were “billed” as minimally disrupting the status quo.

Did this mean that  The Post had done an analysis and determined that the Dem districts were found to be more competitive than the previous ones? I asked Post reporter Lynn Bartels, who wrote the piece, and she responded via email:

What happened is the editor rightly sent the story back to me saying the top was a little dry and I didn’t set up the point counterpoint between Republicans and Democrats.

I quickly dashed off a new sentence and sent it in. It should have said that creates districts that Democrats maintain are more competitive …

You might think that a reporter should be able to tell us whether the Democrats’ proposed districts are more competitive than previous districts, even if reporters don’t want to say that any one district is objectively “competitive.” Post stories certainly did lay out the issues at play, but, still,  maybe that’s something to strive for when this story repeats itself 10 years from now.

It’s been bugging me that The Denver Post’s Spot blog runs The Post’s editorial opinion without any other opinions to balance things out.

What about offering a little more diversity of views on the Spot? Or, better yet, scrub the opinion from the blog.

So I sent an email to Post Editorial Page editor Curtis Hubbard:

I notice that you occasionally place Denver Post editorials on the blog. And Alicia Caldwell posts there occasionally.

I don’t think this is fair because readers of the Spot get The Post’s opinion without getting the range of opinion they find on the commentary pages. So, for example, they hear your side on the paid-sick-days initiative but not other views. (Caldwell’s pieces are usually more informational than opinion.)

Even if you argue that The Post’s in-house editorial is centrist, you’d admit that it’s consistently anti-union and, for that matter, pro gay rights.

So I think you should throw Littwin’s and Carroll’s columns onto the blog, if you’re going to offer opinions there, so readers get a range of views.

Hubbard’s response makes you think we may be seeing a new opinion blog emanating from The Post soon:

We originally envisioned that The Spot would need both opinion and news content in order to thrive. Turns out, the politics team is more than capable of producing a popular blog with little help from the opinion side of the building.

Several of the posts you point out were done as part “beta testing” for opinion blogging, which I hope to have more to say on soon.

I’d love to see The Post take a serious shot at opinion blogging.  It’s track record (Gang of Four, Spot misfires) isn’t good, but it appeared that those past efforts were never loved and cared for.

I’m looking forward to seeing what’s coming, if anything.

For about two weeks now, I’ve been calling Scott Gessler’s office most every day, trying to find out if he really believes there’s fraud in Denver elections.

It’s a pretty serious accusation, given that we like to think we live in a functioning Democracy and all.

Gessler made the fraud accusation once, for sure, on Oct. 2, when he claimed that “there’s a pretty high incidence of fraud in inactive-voters returned ballots” in Denver. And he may have said it last year, when as candidate he asserted there wasn’t “massive fraud” in the Denver elections office, but implied that there appeared to be a little bit of fraud happening.

You can’t assume your Secretary of State plays fast and loose with the “F” word, so if I were Gessler, I would have jumped at the chance to return my call, to make sure I had it right, even if I’m a lowly blogger.

And if I were a reporter at a legacy media outfit, I’d be chasing this story, as a public-interest matter.

In any case, it was good to see The Denver Post’s Sara Burnett tweet on Friday that the chief of Colorado’s elections office apparently disagrees with Gessler about fraud in Denver elections.

Here’s Burnett’s tweet:

sara_burnett: Head of SOS elections div says he’s not aware of any fraud regarding ballots mailed to inactive voters. #COpolitics

That’s a relief.

It’s also a relief that Denver Clerk and Recorder Debra Johnson denied Gessler’s fraud accusations categorically.

But you have to take it seriously when Colorado’s Secretary of State cries fraud and then won’t talk about it.

I know it’s been a really busy week for Gessler. In fact, it seems like every week is really busy for him.

 But still, I’m hoping his office returns my call. It’s not like I’m trying to find out if Gessler buys fancy dog food with his public-sector salary.

His accusation is disturbing. It was made in a public forum. It’s not too much to ask him to explain himself.

I may disagree with Rep. Mike Coffman about some things, but he has a lot of guts to call for Pentagon cuts, like he’s been doing, especially since he represents a district near Colorado Springs.

It’s a truism that most politicians who represent communities anywhere near a military facility won’t suggest defense cuts, even if the cuts are unrelated to the military activities in their districts. It’s one for all and all for one, even if a tiny slice of the defense budget could change the world for millions and millions of people.

Pentagon spending now accounts for about half of the federal discretionary budget, which is the portion of the budget that’s the focus of most beltway debate.

Current Pentagon spending is $696 billion, with $118 billion going to the Iraq and Afghan wars (our closest “enemy” China, spends about $120 billion, Russia $70 billion, Iran $7 billion).

Contrast this, if you feel like getting really depressed, with federal spending on clean energy development ($4 billion), Head Start ($8 billion), humanitarian foreign aid ($27 billion), and k-12 education ($43 billion). The entire EPA budget is about $10 billion, give or take a few billion.

The lives of millions of starving kids could be saved by spending $10 billion a year on basic health needs. Amory Lovins had written that we could rid ourselves of our dependence on oil in 10 years with a $20 billion per year investment. About $10 billion more would cover poor kids in America who are eligible for Head Start but don’t get it. The list goes on.

Against this backdrop, even the briefest look at the federal budget shows that Pentagon spending, even without the Iran and Aftghan wars, is way out of control.

Up steps Coffman, with the Tea Party mostly looking the other way, and suggests cuts in overseas bases, reductions in the active-duty force, and other idea, some of which have serious value.

He points out:

In early 2004, Osama bin Laden said one of his goals was to “bleed America to the point of bankruptcy.” In some ways, our strategy of counterinsurgency has played into his hands. Our current doctrine is a high-cost nation-building strategy that has worn out our military.

Coffman might derive his inspiration on this issue from the fact that he served in Iraq.

And by the sound of it, you have to think he believes the war wasn’t worth it, and he wants to spend tax dollars differently so America is less likely to repeat the mistake.

Ironically, when you go to The Denver Post’s website and look for a way to pay for the content, instead of lapping it up for free, you have to get out your microscope and look in the upper right hand corner (and the way bottom of the page) to find the word “subscribe.”

I’ll make it easy by providing the subscription link here.

The Post should enlarge its “subscribe” button so its squinting aged readers don’t have another excuse, as if they need one, not to subscribe to the newspaper, which  is downsizing its newsroom once again.

Obviously The Post, like other outfits that try to practice serious journalism, is hurting. You might think it’s their own fault. You might think they’re doomed. You might think they don’t add as much to civic debate as they used to. And you might be right, but please think about subscribing anyway, especially if you use the content, to try to help keep the state’s best journalistic organ alive.

It may already be in the death spiral, but there’s still hope that if the newspaper industry can make it through the recession and, at the same time, get better at making money online, it can maintain the expertise and staff needed to inform us idiots out here.

The people who say that The Denver Post is useless at this point can’t be reading the newspaper.

If everyone in Colorado actaully read The Post, we’d have the most informed and educated state in history. I know the newspaper sucks compared to what it was, but think about how bad it could be, and how much worse the state would be without it.

The newspaper still covers the grind of politics and civic life, entertainment, business, even sports, unlike anything we’ve got and will probably ever have.

So do us all a favor and subscribe.

I had a hard time believing it, when the Denver Daily News closed back in June.

The free daily seemed to be growing and doing well.  I was thinking its chances of survival were greater than The Denver Post’s.

Then it was gone, with no real explanation of why it bit the dust so suddenly.

Westword’s Michael Roberts interviewed Denver Daily News publisher Kristie Hannon at the time, and she told him that, in terms of profit, the newspaper “had seen ups and downs.” Hannon told Roberts and other media outlets, it didn’t look like the Denver Daily News was sustainable.

I wondered why. Was it in the black? Was it really headed off a cliff before long?

You might ask, who cares? The paper had about 25,000 readers, 20 people on the payroll, and just three workhorses in the editorial department.

But, still, the Denver Daily News, usually ran daily stories about local politics, at a time when this type of content is in shorter and shorter supply.

When you think about it, on a daily basis, the Daily News was easily among the top ten media outlets in the entire state, if not the top five or so, covering the legislative session. Correct me if I’m wrong, please.

So it would be nice to know whether the DDN model, of a free print daily, mostly with original and wire-service coverage of news and sports, is anything close to viable in Denver.

Michael Roberts tried to get at this question in his interview with Hannon back in June, when the newspaper closed:

WW: Is there still a market for a print publication like the Denver Daily News? Or are such projects cost-prohibitive in today’s market?

KH: I know the price of print just increased again last week, and I don’t know if there is an end in sight for that. Competing against the Internet in that regard (print costs) is tough, but I believe ROI in this print format is far higher than most other mediums when you really do the math. As far as profitability, it’s tough to make a buck.

It was tough, it turns out, but possible.

I asked Hannon this month to talk to me more about why the DDN closed, and she agreed with me that it was worth clarifying that her newspaper was in the black when it closed, and she thinks a DDN type of newspaper could succeed.

“There were months that we lost money, but it wasn’t significant because other months would make up for it,” Hannon told me. 

The newspaper was treading water in a tough economy, and Hannon was done. She declined to say whether she and owner, Jim Pavelich, who owns the Palo Alto Post, tried to sell the Denver Daily News before shuttering it. (Pavelich, who’s developed successful newspapers but has been accused by former employees of not caring much for journalism, closed the Vail Mountaineer the same day.)

“You get to a certain stage,” Hannon told me, “and you say, does this make sense? As a business model, and personally? I was running myself into the ground.”

Hannon may have been running out of steam, but at least her editorial staff wasn’t.

“That’s the nature of the business,” said Tad Rickman, former Denver Daily News’ Editor, who often worked from dawn till dark during his decade at the newspaper. “I didn’t mind putting the hours into it.”

He says the long hours were about the same at the Lafayette News, which he left in 2001. He’s currently looking for work.

Hannon says that even though the paper ran on cash and was in the black, the future looked bad, especially with print costs rising.

“It was swimming upstream,” she told me. “We didn’t see the growth component.”

“The future always looks bad,” said Peter Marcus, the former assistant editor of the Denver Daily News, who’s now freelancing for the Colorado Statesman. “The future never looked good for that newspaper. For a decade they were beating the odds. They were doing it. But it sounds like they didn’t want to put up a fight.”

Like Hannon and Rickman, Marcus is happy to have worked at Denver Daily News, and he doesn’t fault the owner for selling the newspaper.

But he thinks management should have, among other things, given the staff notice of the closure and published a final issue, as a show of respect. As it was, the newspaper was shut down with no notice at all, he says, not even a news release on the day of the shuttering.

“They didn’t even archive the stories,” he points out. ” The website exists, but it’s blank. For some reason they decided to delete the entire legacy of the Denver Daily News. To me, that’s the epitome of the disrespect.  They don’t care that the stories have disappeared. But for us, it matters.”

That’s undoubtedly part of the reason the Denver Daily News survived for 10 years and maybe why someone will give it another shot someday.

You could probably think of a lot of ways I could spend my time more productively than debating  KOA’s Mike Rosen about whether The Denver Post has a “liberal bias.” 

I mean, I could check Twitter. Then I could check Twitter again. And again. Or I could pet my unbelievably annoying cat. Or there’s a podcast of  Grassroots Radio Colorado on KLZ 560 AM waiting for me.

But I exchanged emails with Rosen anyway.

I started the thread by sending him a post I wrote about his former KOA colleague Steve Kelley.

Rosen: Jason, Just curious: have you ever complained about the left-wing line-up on AM 760? Mike

Jason: Hi Mike. I hope you’re well. I’ve praised the diversity of opinion on The Post’s editorial page. J

Rosen: I don’t think u answered my question.

Jason: Right. I didn’t. Sorry. I have not criticized AM 760 for its lineup. I think it provides a bit of balance in a talk radio world that tilts way right. But I don’t like all the talkers on AM760. I like Sirota, but he’s too hard on Obama and the Dems, even though I relate to him having voted for Nader myself in 2000. I don’t really like Ed Schultz. I think Thom Hartmann is generally excellent.

I’ve pointed out that talk radio on the major stations is dominated by right-leaning shows. I’ve suggested trying more left-leaning shows, maybe a Caplis-and-Silverman type show with a real lefty to counter a rightie like Caplis, though I would not dump Caplis and Silverman because I think it’s a good show. Nor would I suggest dumping your show, though your print column could go.  (I think you’re better on the radio than in print.)

I like diverse opinions, but the far right gets more air across the media spectrum these days than the far left. I don’t think that’s good. I’ve complimented the news department at KOA for its spot news coverage. I also support local programming, so KOA gets credit from me in that regard, even if the lineup is far from perfect for me. J

Rosen: I’d agree that there are more conservatives on talk radio than liberals. But that’s because they tend to attract larger audiences than left-wing hosts.  On the other hand, so-called news programming on network TV is dominated by liberals hosts and a liberal agenda.  Fox’s 3 million cable viewers is overwhelmed by the more than 20 million viewers of evening news shows on ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS.  Have you ever called for more balance there? The lineup on AM 760 isn’t just liberal, it’s radical left; farther left of center than the average conservative on talk radio is right of center.

Jason:  I don’t believe the mainstream media has a liberal bias. You make this accusation about local media, like The Denver Post, all the time, and you don’t have a credible study to back it up. You just assert it based on anecdotes, just like a leftie could do based on anecdotes. I’d say the lineup on AM 760 closer to the center than the lineup on KNUS.

Rosen:  That just says a lot about how far left you sit. For a credible, scientific study, read Tim Groseclose’s new book “Left Turn – How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind.” I’ll make a prediction.  Now that you have the study you’ve asked for, you’ll dismiss it.

Jason: So are you saying that book proves to you that The Denver Post has a liberal bias?

Rosen: No.  Groseclose’s study proves that, what you call, the “mainstream media” have a liberal bias, which you deny.   “Studying” the Denver Post is too small a target to justify a “studier’s” time.  Might be a good project for a grad student who doesn’t have a liberal bias. My thirty-year personal, informal study satisfies me about the Denver Post’s liberal bias.  It’s obvious.

Jason: So, again, you prove my point that your assertion that The Denver Post has a liberal bias is based on nothing, except because you say it it’s so. And you have anecdotes. Someone on the left could say The Post has a conservative bias, and point to anecdotes. You’re not better.

Rosen: That’s right.  It’s based on my credibility and personal observations over many years, which isn’t a formal “study” but it’s based on much more than “nothing.” That you would deny the obvious liberal bias of NBC, ABC, CBS, NPR, PBS, NY Times, Time, Newsweek, etc. doesn’t say much for your credibility.  That those radically to the left of the liberal media, perhaps you,  regard them as balanced or conservative doesn’t make them balanced or conservative. Here’s a quote you might find instructive from Evan Thomas (a liberal and grandson of Norman Thomas, six-time Socialist Party candidate for president) when he was Newsweek’s Washington bureau chief in 1996: “About 85 percent of the reporters who cover the White House vote Democratic.particularly at the networks, at the lower levels among the editors and so-called infrastructure, there is a liberal bias.  There is a liberal bias at Newsweek,  the magazine I work for.(then ABC White House reporter, now Fox News anchor) Brit Hume’s bosses are liberal, and they’re always quietly denouncing him as a right-wing nut.” He didn’t conduct a study either.

Jason: So what if they vote Democratic. They can still be fair and accurate as reporters, just like a Republican could be. Judges can be fair, regardless of party. There may be exceptions, but these are professionals. In fact, reporters or judges could over-compensate for their personal view and tilt their coverage in the other direction. So you have to look at the content of the Post’s news pages.

Your view does indeed count for more than “nothing.” Sorry about that. But both right- and left-leaning readers can find anecdotes to prove their point about bias. So why is your opinion more valid than a leftists, unless you can support what you say with data? If you can’t, with due respect, you should tone down the destructive rhetoric and focus on your specific concerns about specific stories, rather than overstepping and asserting overall bias.

Rosen: Newsroom cultures are uniformly liberal and it does influence what they write and how they edit. We’re not getting anywhere. Read Groseclose’s book, then dismiss it just as you would any “study” I’d on the Denver Post’s news pages.

These days, Republicans in the Colorado Assembly are facing a question they’re not used to being asked: how will you pay for that?

In 2009, state Republicans and Democrats were both saying they wanted to pass legislation to upgrade Colorado’s roads and bridges. The Dems’ plan, the FASTER legislation that passed over GOP objections, was funded by increased vehicle registration fees and a $2 fee on rental cars.

Speaking for the Republicans, Rep. Mike May said: “The Republican plan is: Building roads, not bureaucracies.”

Yet reporters couldn’t bring themselves to writing, plainly, that the GOP had no plan to fund road construction. Instead reporters mostly regurgitated vague GOP notions to sell bonds, maybe raise vehicle fees way lower than Dems’ proposed, or leverage the “value of state buildings.”

In the last few years, reporters have gotten better at stating that Republicans have no plan, when they don’t have one for paying for tax cuts or pet spending increases.

For example, the headline on a Spot blog post July 21 stated, factually, that House Republicans wouldn’t say how they would pay for restoring a property tax break for seniors, which is set to take effect in 2012, after being suspended for two years by Democrats in 2010, generating about $100 million for the state.

The Post quoted House Speaker Frank McNulty as saying that the days of balancing the state budget on backs of seniors were gone.

But the article pointed out that the reality that relieving the back ache would require cuts to other programs.

And so The Post did what you, I, or any sane journalist would do. It asked McNulty about how he’d adjust the state budget to pay for the tax break, but the House Speaker refused to tell The Post where these cuts would be made.

A day after The Post piece appeared,  the Durango Herald covered Gov. John Hickenlooper’s response to McNulty’s plan to restore the property tax break for seniors. Hick said more budget cuts were likely and so the only way to pay for a tax cut for seniors would be to make even deeper cuts to the state budget.

But unlike The Post, the Herald didn’t get a direct response from McNulty on how he planned to pay for the tax break.

Neither did the Pueblo Chieftain, in its article about Hickenlooper’s response to McNulty. The Chieftain reported:

“McNulty said he is optimistic that a rebound in state revenue will enable Colorado to restore the tax break to seniors.”

I’m glad McNulty is optimistic, but the Chieftain should have asked the follow-up question: What if the rebound doesn’t materialize? What’s McNulty’s plan? What would he cut?

A Denver Post article June 17 reported that both Rep. Ed Perlmutter and Rep. Scott Tipton have stock investments in industries that could be affected by the lawmakers’ votes in congressional committees.

The Post quoted experts who stated that both Congressmen’s stock investments were ostensibly legal.

But while one expert quoted in the The Post said that the Congressmen’s behavior was unethical, the article didn’t offer a clear countervailing view, namely that neither Representative is necessarily acting unethically.

Bill Allison of the Sunlight Foundation, which advocates for public disclosure by public officials, told me today that neither Perlmutter nor Tipton was necessarily engaging in unethical behavior:

“What Congress has done is to say that disclosure is the best way to handle these questions. Congress is not going to force people to divest themselves of all of their stock, and basically separate themselves from the economy and have no interest in the economy. So disclosure is the way to go, but it’s got to be a lot better.”

He added:

“As long as it’s disclosed, they are not in violation of any kind of ethics laws.”

Allison was quoted in The Post article saying:

“Do you want them not to have investments, like regular Americans do? When you think about the case-by-case basis, the farmer who comes to Congress, are you saying he shouldn’t be involved in the Agriculture Committee?”

In my interview today, Allison answered his own question by saying it depends on the situation, but he hadn’t seen evidence of unethical behavior.

Asked about this, Luis Toro, Director of Colorado Ethics Watch, said via email:

 “While there is evidence that the portfolios of Members of Congress have performed better than those of the general public, there is no evidence that either Rep. Tipton or Rep. Perlmutter have taken advantage of their position to gain an advantage. Neither one of them has changed their portfolios once they got into Congress. For us the ethical concern is when members are buying or selling stock on inside information about the industry they regulate, and there is no evidence that this happened here. In fact, Rep. Perlmutter’s office pointed out that his family has owned that banking stock for a long time.”

The  House Ethics Manual states plainly that neither Perlmutter nor Tipton were acting unethically according House ethics rules :

“No statute or rule requires the divestiture of private assets or holdings by Members or employees of the House upon entering their official position….The speaker would not rule that a Member owning stocks in breweries or distilleries should be disqualified in voting on the proposed amendment to the Constitution concerning prohibition of the manufacture and sale of liquor.”