When I get my weekly copy of Colorado Politics, my mind is boggled over why its owner, billionaire GOP donor Phil Anschutz, produces a print edition of the newspaper.
Making money is almost certainly not the reason. The newspaper has few ads and, apparently, is mailed to only 700 people as of mid-May, about half of whom are in Denver, according to a person who picked up the phone in the advertising department.
Ads in print editions of newspapers can still be profitable, but there’s no way, it seems, that Colorado Politics’ ads justify its existence.
So, to document the obvious, I looked at the six months of advertisements in the publication, from June 2024 through January of this year.
That’s 1,088 total pages, which contained about 123 pages of ad content. That includes ads for political debates co-sponsored by Colorado Politics and four full-page ads for the Washington Examiner, which is also owned by Colorado Politics’ parent company, Anchutz’s Clarity Media. “REAL REPORTING. THOUGHTFUL COMMENTARY. Available for the first time nationwide,” reads the Washington Examiner ad.
A handful of advertisers ran the same one-eighth-page ads in most issues: Aponte and Busam, the Colorado Farm Bureau, the Colorado Automobile Dealers Association, the Colorado Civil Justice League, the Kyle Group, and HB Strategies. The Colorado BioScience Association ran some full-page ads, stating that “drug price caps are the wrong solution for patients — as did an outfit called Let My Doctors Decide, stating that “Colorado’s drug board overlooks patients and doctors.” All are either lobbying firms or lobbying entities for a particular industry.
In theory, Colorado Politics‘ display ads are purchased for a narrow audience, like legislators, advocates seeking lobbyists, or perhaps specific readers or managers/owners, like Anschutz and his family. Overall, the ads feel insular, stale — or placed for reasons that are not evident (freebies? favors?). The fact that there aren’t more ads makes me think they aren’t effective, but maybe they are.
Then there are the “public notices,” which are required to be printed in Colorado newspapers, despite opposition from Gov. Jared Polis. They constitute the vast majority of the ads in Colorado Politics, about 77 pages of the 123 pages of ads that appeared during my six-month review — or close to two-thirds. My very rough calculation is that they bring in about $1,200 per page, based on different rates charged for different types of legal ads, as quoted to me over the phone.
The ads in the newspaper — both the legal and the display ads — cover only a fraction of the industrial-age costs of printing and mailing the newspaper, says Bob Sweeney, the co-publisher of Villager Publishing, which serves Cherry Hills Village and Greenwood Village and is known as an expert on rules and pricing of public notices and print newspaper advertising.
“They gotta be losing a ton of money, because they have hardly any advertising in there, very little,” Sweeney told the Colorado Times Recorder last month after reviewing sample editions, adding as an aside that some of the legal ads from Jefferson County should be printed in a newspaper with a Jefferson County address and should not, according to the law, be published in Colorado Politics.
Sweeney praises the journalism in the newspaper, though he says it leans conservative. But even if the journalists’ salaries are shared among Anschutz’s other platforms, he says the dead-tree publication is losing an “awful lot of money” just on the printing, mailing, and related costs.
So why does Colorado Politics publish this print newspaper?
“Much like the Gazette in Colorado Springs, we’re committed to printing Colorado Politics as long as our customers want us to,” said Chris Reen, publisher of Colorado Politics and president of Clarity Media, which owns Anschutz’s media platforms. “Colorado Politics is the preeminent political publication in print and online in the state, and we’re fortunate to be able to scale that award-winning content across all of our Gazette publications. Not surprisingly, our growth comes from our expanding digital audience and advertising, and current and future events.”
Some think Clarity Media, which also owns the Denver and Colorado Springs Gazette, has other reasons for mailing the newspaper.
Sweeney’s view, shared by other media observers, is that Colorado Politics’ executives and owners want people at the Colorado Capitol to see Colorado Politics. It floats around the offices of influential people and the cafeteria there. It gives publication credibility and makes owners “feel important,” as Sweeney said.
Others speculate that Anschutz himself, an older guy, likes to read a print newspaper and believes news should be on paper — and therefore, he orders the presses to roll (in the tradition of the Colorado Statesman, which Anschutz purchased in 2017 and renamed Colorado Politics).
Propaganda for political campaigns?
Another explanation: The Anschutz poo bahs think that the print edition of Colorado Politics is effective propaganda for the newspapers’ conservative political agenda. There’s plenty of credible evidence that the Anschutz’s publications are a tool to boost conservative causes and candidates. When the editorial page endorses a candidate, it acts like an arm of the candidate’s campaign, releasing multiple opinions at key moments. The news platform pays for advertisements that align with GOP political campaigns. And there’s no doubt that — even though you see a lot of good journalism in the paper — news content itself has been twisted in favor of Republican candidates.
So, under this view, the print edition of Colorado Politics is like an advertising mailer or flyer that’s intended (now and/or in the future) to find its way to the hands of a targeted elite audience with the hope they will read the conservative content — especially opinion — within. (Reen did not comment on who receives the publication for free.)
Whatever their strategy is, Colorado Politics executives really want you to buy the print edition.
It’s actually cheaper to purchase the digital version plus the print newspaper of Colorado Politics, which is mailed to you, than just the digital edition with no paper mailed to you ($189 versus $199).
This seems senseless, but it can’t be. Billionaires aren’t billionaires because they lose money. Anschutz has a plan — and it’s not one with a happy ending for progressives or Colorado. And he has plenty of money and patience to execute it.
