iwantmyrocky.com

A new look for InsideTheRockies.com was unveiled late Friday and after two years, the first website I launched following the closure of the Rocky now meets the standards I would propose for clients.

When a group of Rocky Mountain News staffers launched IWantMyRocky.com in late 2008 to try to save the newspaper, we did so fully understanding that it was likely a lost cause. There were many good reasons (and some bad ones) to do what we did, and foremost for nearly everyone was to simply not go quietly. But when we launched it, we also considered it a likely launching pad for new projects should the newspaper close.

Today, Kim Humphreys is relaunching the web site IwantmyRocky.com. After the Rocky closed, we temporarily used the site to post news -- primarily from Kevin Flynn, the Rocky's Spotlight staff and a group of copy editors who were dedicated to seeing something emerge from the wreckage. When the group became involved with INDenverTimes, we shut down the site. Now, Kim is picking up where we left off back in March. We may have lost our paper, but we still need to save the news. What happened in Denver, happened in Seattle and Tucson, and it will happen more places before the end of the year. IwantmyRocky.com was always about more than saving our jobs, it was about saving what our jobs meant.

Many see what happened here in Denver as the last battle between the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News. We here at America's Fish regard it as the first domino in a long row of bad things to happen to media and democracy in the country in the next year.

Steve Myers at Poynter wrote a piece about the web site IwantmyRocky.com, which we are still maintaining, and InsidetheRockies.com and after talking to now-former Rocky transportation reporter Kevin Flynn and America's Fish.