Holy Cow! So the Gazette Telegraph has now extended a print version of The Hub to every community West of Interstate 25! It will cover the Westside of Colorado Springs, Manitou Springs, Cascade, Green Mountain Falls, and Woodland Park.
Well now. I don't know whether they should be praised or pitied. The Gray Old Lady Gazette which has put out a sedate newspaper for 125 years now - ever since General Palmer made Colorado Springs a teetotaler place while Colorado City was still a wild frontier town, with its own paper, is showing its age. As are print-only newspapers all over the world. So the Gazette is trying a facelift by joining the Internet Revolution. The net is where people increasingly get their news, talk to each other, and gather around their virtual community blogs more than they access print publications across their home towns. Its an era where people know people across the world better than they know their next door neighbor. I know the feeling - one of my close friends I frequently chat with over the Internet is a Sherpa on Mount Everest.
So I guess the GT's publisher and editors have tried to take a swig from the Electronic Fountain of Youth and hope to take their green eye shade journalism from the Gutenberg-only past and launch it into the digital, as well as hybrid-print, future.
Now I think I understand what they are trying to do. They started with their Online Hubs, each tailored to different neighborhoods across sprawling Colorado Springs. They made it so anyone with a computer and Internet connection could post illustrated stories, start blogs, announce events, and get feedback comments. Community reporters. I have tried putting Old Town history in the YourHub subsection called Old Colorado City. Other 'neighborhood' reporters have posted things that interest them, and they hope, other immediate-area locals. It's an interesting experiment, even though they have a ways to go.
As one who was online long before most local people - including the Gazette - even knew the Internet existed, I have seen many efforts come and go. It's a long way between my putting up the first dial-up computer Bulletin Board in 1980, called 'Roger's Bar' where we discussed local political issues via telephone modem on Radio Shack computers, while I acted as the 'Electronic Bartender' and getting to YourHub wirelessly to stimulate Internet community reporting. A very interesting experiment. I hope people don't just end up talking to themselves.
Now this paper version of YourHub will be even more interesting to watch, because it covers five of the most diverse 'neighborhoods' imaginable. The Westside is not Manitou Springs. Green Mountain Falls and Cascade, the inhabitants of Ute Pass, are not too much like growing Woodland Park with its head in the clouds.
So can neighborhood reporters post, first online and then see it in the Print edition, stories that are interesting enough to read by their neighbors, even ones without computers? Can the Hubs flourish? And eventually even make money for the newspaper - which is certainly one of its goals. For there's no free-lunch in this publications business. Either on or offline.
Lets wish them well and give it a try. But remind them that the Gazette was not always friendly to the Westside. It looked down its uppity nose at our blue collar folks, from hard drinking railroad workmen to Minnie the Gambler in the Oxford Club. Its somewhat ironic, that now, parts of the westside and the people up Ute Pass are technically way ahead of traditional downtown Colorado Springs folks. Maybe we can help teach those old dogs, new tricks.
Dave Hughes
dave@oldcolo.com