Sun set on rival in 1986

Springs became one-paper town after 39 years

It was no small-town newspaper skirmish. It was an all-out war, every bit as intense as newspaper battles fought in places like Detroit, Denver, Dallas and Los Angeles.

In one corner, the long-standing Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph. In the other, the upstart Colorado Springs Sun, a paper started in 1947 as the Free Press by striking International Typographical Union printers.

Though the papers engaged in healthy competition for three decades, it wasn't until 1977, when the deep-pocketed Edward L. Gaylord of Oklahoma Publishing Co. purchased the Sun, that the war turned particularly fierce.

``That's when the struggle got pretty serious,'' said Tom Mullen, the GT's executive editor from 1981 to 1991. ``It was certainly rock 'em, sock 'em, and rock 'n' roll for awhile.''

Born in Denver, Gaylord, who is now majority owner of The Broadmoor hotel, had a fondness for Colorado. He believed the Gazette Telegraph and its parent company, then called Freedom Newspapers Inc., would be easy prey and that he could wrest control of the Springs newspaper market.

Few in the newspaper industry could figure out why Gaylord -- one of the nation's most successful businessmen -- would buy the Sun, a newspaper that had never made a profit. In its early days, the paper was subsidized by the ITU. It later was purchased by the family of former U.S. Sen. Bill Armstrong (R-Colorado), who owned the paper for two years before selling it to Gaylord.

When Gaylord bought the paper, it was losing $100,000 a month -- an amount that eventually swelled to the $350,000-$450,000 range. The Sun tried every gimmick imaginable to stomp out the Gazette Telegraph. It tried to build circulation through heavy promotions and cut-rate pricing. It cut its weekday street-sale price to 10 cents from 15 cents and its Sunday rate to 25 cents from 35 cents.

At times, as many as half of its subscribers were paying less than the already dirt-cheap monthly subscription rate of $2.50 for seven-day home delivery. Year after year, the paper gave free classified advertising to all non-commercial want-ad users. In 1983, the Sun converted from broad-sheet format to tabloid.

But none of the Sun's strategies could narrow the circulation and advertising gaps. In fact, The Gazette gained ground and at one point sold 57,000 more newspapers a day than the Sun.

``Basically, our strategy was to build around and enhance what advantages we already had,'' Mullen said. ``We were the dominant newspaper in the market and they were always viewed as the second in the market. We always had a larger news hole and a larger staff. We tried to outsell them and outhustle them.''

But the Sun's mere existence made the job tougher for The Gazette's staff. It forced the paper to offer inordinately low advertising and circulation rates for a newspaper its size. And though the Sun was losing piles of money, The Gazette remained in the black.

``We made money, though not much by industry standards,'' said Mullen, now publisher of Freedom Communications' Lima (Ohio) News.

On Jan. 22, 1986, Gaylord signaled defeat -- but he didn't go without a price. It cost The Gazette's parent company $30 million to eliminate its rival. For that sum, The Gazette acquired the Sun's presses and other production equipment, subscription list, newspaper clip library -- and the Sun's name. The buyout did not include the Sun's building at Colorado and Cascade avenues.

While no figures were made public, the Sun's financial loss was speculated to be astronomical. Some industry analysts at the time believed the Sun lost $4 million to $5.5 million annually. With its initial purchase in June 1977, and almost $10 million invested in a new plant, it is likely Gaylord pumped $50 million into the Sun.

It wasn't enough. The Sun published its last edition Feb. 28, 1986, and a day later, Colorado Springs became what it had not been in 39 years: a one-newspaper town.

Within months after the Sun closed, Freedom's president, D. Robert Segal, visited the offices of the Gazette Telegraph.

Mullen said, ``In a meeting with Roy Smith (then the publisher) and with me, he said, `You guys might be wondering what's next and what is expected of you now. We are not going to rest on our laurels. Redouble your efforts. The goal is to put out the best 100,000 circulation newspaper in the industry.'

``And he said, `In the long term, bring some glory on yourselves. Maybe someday you'll win a Pulitzer Prize.' ''

Mullen asked Segal to relay that message to The Gazette's newsroom supervisors.

``We came out of that meeting energized and fired up,'' Mullen said.

That wasn't the only reason to be excited. Freedom also had plans to expand the news staff, raise salaries, add new technology and continue to offer readers more news stories than ads. In fact, when Mullen arrived in 1981, the newsroom had 70 employees; 10 years later, that number had grown to 125. Today, The Gazette employs 435 full-time workers, including 123 in the newsroom.

Within a year after the Sun closed, The Gazette had boosted its newsroom budget by 30 percent. In 1987, the paper launched a radical new design with colorful section fronts, wider columns, ragged-right body type, reader-friendly labels and story capsules, and a color photograph in the A1 nameplate. The design earned national renown within the industry -- and so did the content.

``Between 1987 and 1991, we were largely recognized in the industry as one of the best, if not the best 100,000-circulation paper in the country,'' Mullen said.

The Gazette's crowning glory during that era came on April 12, 1990, the day Dave Curtin won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing -- a prize that delighted staffers, who celebrated by drinking beer and champagne at their desks.

``The community, in that period from 1986 until the present, has seen the GT continue to improve in quality and in service,'' Mullen said. ``The absence of the spur of that competition did not work to the disadvantage of the community.''

During and after the newspaper war, there was plenty of news to cover.

New technology -- especially the computer industry -- turned the Pikes Peak region into another Silicon Valley, attracting computer-chip manufacturing industries like Digital, Kaman, Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard and Apple. Colorado Springs had the third-highest growth in high-technology jobs in the nation from 1980 to 1986, but the city quickly found out the industry was volatile, as ever-changing as the technology itself. Several of the companies that moved to the area in the 1980s closed, leaving hundreds out of work.

The military presence in Colorado Springs also continued to grow. Space had become an important defense element and Colorado Springs became its ``nerve center.''

In 1983, as millions of Americans watched on television, President Ronald Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative, better known as Star Wars, would be located in the city's back yard, at Falcon Air Force Base. But the program never materialized. The Challenger space shuttle exploded in 1986 and a year later, the Pentagon canceled plans for the military shuttle control center at CSOC -- the Consolidated Space Operations Center. The reason: budget cuts and the shuttle disaster.

It was about this time, in the mid- to late-1980s, that the city's economy soured, thanks greatly to the savings-and-loan industry crisis and the unpredictable high-tech market. Colorado Springs went from one of the fastest-growing cities in the nation to one given the dubious distinction of being called the foreclosure capital of the nation.

Nevertheless, the rush for land in Colorado Springs created urban sprawl: the city grew from 103 square miles in 1980 to 181 square miles in 1990.

The early '90s featured a resurgence of growth. Home sales were up; foreclosures dropped to a new low; and MCI Communications Corp. announced plans to move to Colorado Springs. The city also became a mecca for international humanitarian and religious organizations -- more than 50 such groups settled in the Springs, infusing 2,400 new jobs and a $33 million payroll into the area.

Colorado for Family Values sponsored a measure in the 1992 election to ban laws prohibiting discrimination against gays, lesbians and bisexuals based on their sexual orientation. Amendment 2's passage sparked debates and generated lawsuits, boycotts and more. In 1996, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Amendment 2 unconstitutional.

Throughout the '90s, Californians and other ``transplants'' from around the nation moved to the region in record numbers, diversifying the Springs with new faces and new ideas.

And as the city has evolved, so has The Gazette. In the past three years, under the leadership of publisher N. Christian Anderson and editor Steve Smith, the paper has embraced modern technology, starting editions on the Internet and on interactive television.

But The Gazette also hasn't forgotten its community-oriented, ink-and-newsprint roots -- and it never will.