Boulder Report

Get out of Iraq, Afghanistan, Turner tells CU audience

Ted Turner spoke at the University of Colorado as part of the Entrepreneurs Unplugged series by Silicon Flatirons Center and the CU Law School.

BOULDER -- Ted Turner’s been called lots of things in his career – media mogul, entrepreneur, philanthropist, billionaire, rancher, environmentalist, peacenik and “Mouth of the South.”

He brought a little of all of those to a packed room at the University of Colorado Friday as part of the Entrepreneurs Unplugged series organized by CU’s Silicon Flatirons Center and the Law School.

Before his interview, Turner was presented with Silicon Flatiron’s inaugural Entrepreneurs for Good Prize, a crystal award that appropriately encased a buffalo.

Having just returned from a pheasant hunting trip in South Dakota, home to part of his 2 million acres of ranch land, the founder of CNN and author of “Call Me Ted” told the campus audience that if he were looking for a job today, it would be in “clean, renewable energy.” It will be a growth industry, Turner predicted, because “we’re going to win because we are right.”

Next stop on his travels, in fact, is the nation’s capital, where he’ll be lobbying for a clean energy bill.

Despite the tough odds of overcoming objections of the powerful coal and oil industries, Turner compared his new environmental mission to the’80s when he was trying to convince Congress to open up the nation’s TV airwaves to new satellite technologies.

At the time, he said, all three major TV networks were happy – carving up major sports events like the NFL between them, producing just 2½ hours of live news each day and reaping hefty profits.

“I wasn’t happy,” he said, “because I wasn’t one of them.”

Turner said he knew he was gambling everything on his vision for a 24-hour news channel at CNN, but “I knew with certainty that it was going to work.” Just getting your news at 6 p.m. was “inconvenient” if nothing else.

As a hard-working businessman for all of his life -- working for his father’s advertising billboard business when he was 12 -- Turner admitted that the 1996 merger of Turner Broadcasting System with Time-Warner came about partly because he was just “tired.” As a large Time Warner stockholder, he lost billions when the stock collapsed after Time Warner merged with AOL.

When he owned both the Atlanta Braves and the Hawks, he would leave his TV business offices and head straight to the games, which turned into 18-hour days. “So I got too tired so I said screw it – I’m done!”

Co-chairman of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, Turner minces no words calling for the United States to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Now chairman of Turner Enterprises, which oversees all of his current businesses, including the Ted’s Montana Grill restaurants and ranch land across 12 states, Turner said customers always must be important if you’re running a business for the long term.

“I became a peacenik,” he said, because when he was running CNN and the U.S. started bombing people around the world, they were “bombing my customers.”

The Silicon Flatirons format is an initial interview by Brad Bernthal, entrepreneurship director for the center. And Bernthal had his hands full trying to keep his guest on track with several questions as Turner would launch into new subjects.

At one point, Turner said if the U.S. just has to be at war, why not go with an entrepreneurial spirit and attack Canada. They would surrender quickly, he joked, and double the land mass of the U.S.

To anyone in the media, Turner said, “I really was just joking about attacking Canada.”

Turner reads the Economist every week to stay up on world events, and he likes newspapers. But he also said the newspaper industry model is similar to the polluting coal industry – “it’s an obsolete technology.” He wondered aloud who’ll eventually be able to pay to gather the news. “The bloggers don’t have news organizations,” he said.

In the next 50 years, Turner said, “we have to be smarter than we’ve ever been.

“If we heat up the world seven to eight degrees, we’re toast.”

When it comes to new technologies, Turner drew laughs admitting he’s an old “fuddy-duddy” struggling with too many dials on TV to figure out how to watch it. But at 70 years old, he admits he’s feeling pretty good, running his ranches, fly-fishing and campaigning to protect the environment.

 

 

 

 

 

Imagine! SmartHome architect recognized with Colorado Sustainable Design Award

The new Imagine! SmartHome on Iris in Boulder was recognized with a 3rd place award in the residential category of the Colorado Sustainable Design Awards. 

Boulder's PEH Architects was honored in the the Colorado Sustainable Design Awards for their design of the Imagine! SmartHome in Boulder, a highly energy efficient one-story group home for people with cognitive and physical disablilities.

The awards, announced in the current issue of ColoradoBiz magazine, discusses how the home's renewable energy systems include solar PV panels powering geothermal heat pumps, and super-heaters on the heat pumps for additional hot water to supplement the solar hot water panels.

Other features include orientation and roof slope to maximize solar exposure, roof overhangs to shade large windows in the summer but allow passive heat gain in the winter, clearstory windows throughout the home for natural light and an energy rating score of 24, representing a 76 percent reduction in energy use relative to code. 

Other Boulder architects winning awards included a first place award in residential by Rodwin Architecture for the Edge House, a zero energy home, and Wolff Lyon Architects, with a 3rd place award for its Wellington Neighborhood in downtown Breckenridge. 

Heavy snows hit Boulder right before Halloween

 

With 18 to 24 inches of snow falling on Boulder Wednesday, a light snow continuing on Thursday, it will be some cold and wet trick or treating for Halloween. I took these pictures at about 9 p.m. Wednesday night on my front yard, and another of my patio with deck furniture buried.

Some power outages were reported in the west part of the city as tree limbs started to fall, but generally the streets were OK since road crews had good warning about the storm and seemed to be prepared.

Full house packs Tesla Motors' new Boulder gallery for cocktail party

Tesla Roadster the center of attention at Boulder gallery's opening cocktail party.

Andre Pettigrew, left, Denver eco-devo director, was on hand to see Colorado's new business. With him is Geoff Cooper, CEO of CaraSolva in Boulder.

BOULDER -- The doors didn't open until 8 p.m., but invited guests were lining up much earlier on the Pearl Street sidewalk to get the first glimpse inside of the new Tesla Gallery Boulder -- part of a new regional hub the electric sports car manufacturer is setting up across the U.S. Kimbal Musk, CEO of OneRiot and owner of the Kitchen, as well as a Tesla Roadster owner and Tesla Motors board member, helped organize and get the word out about the Friday evening party. I found myself with a party ticket after "retweeting" news about the gallery opening. So what was more fun? Seeing fellow Boulderites rubbing shoulders in the line like it was a Studio 54 disco all over again? Deciding which of the Kitchen's cocktails to order up -- the Sparkling Hemingway (rum and grapefruit Izze), Lychee Martini (Tito's handmade vodka and lychees), The Brazilian (Vodka 14, limes and sugar) or Persian Lemon (Ketel One Citroen, Pama liqueur, splash of pineapple and lemon juice)? Or getting a test drive in one of the Tesla Roadsters parked in front of gallery? Answer: Probably the test drive but I can't say for sure because after a Sparking Hemingway, I thought it was a good idea not to drive a $100,000 plus sports car. Tesla says the Roadster will go from zero to 60 in 3.9 seconds with a top speed of about 125 mph. Now I certainly would have liked to test that theory straight up Boulder Canyon, until I remembered the Justice Center is directly along on the way. Another interesting angle for Tesla is that they are creating Mobile Service Rangers -- teams that will make house calls for a buck a mile. Boulder's gallery will be part of that program. The gallery itself was put together in just about 11 days, according to Phil Shull, owner of Deneuve Construction Services, which did the job. Phil was sporting his own Tesla jacket, a popular conversation piece at the party since no one else seemed to have one. The Tesla Gallery has a lease right now in the former retail building at 915 Pearl St. that was slated to be a new home for Boulder's Frasca restaurant as well as some high-end condos on top. Initially Frasca had wanted to put their own garden on top of the new building. But apparently that project is on the back burner for now. The Roadster gets its juice from its Energy Storage System -- made up of several thousand consumer-grade lithium ion cells. Not really being a gear head, I'll admit you can read this same information just like I did on the Tesla Web site.. And Tesla got a very good business page writeup in the Boulder Camera just before the gallery opened with news that a Colorado buyer could get a $42,039 tax break, or about a 39 percent discount on a new $109,000 Roadster. Seems the Colorado Legislature has now put a $6,000 cap on how big of a tax credit you can get for buying a hybrid or electric car, but it doesn't go into effect until 2010. Also spotted at the party was Andre Pettigrew, executive director of Denver's Office of Economic Development, who was there to check out the new business arriving in Colorado. Tesla has said it picked Colorado because of Gov. Bill Ritter's commitment to make the state one of the most environmentally friendly states in the country. And that may be true. But having Boulder resident's Kimbal Musk's pull certainly helped on just where the new Gallery would be located in the state.

Boulder man's antique advertising collection a history time capsule

Rick Sinner, a retired Boulder High teacher, has an extensive collection of thousands of old advertising items from Boulder County businesses. 

Old bottles like this one from the Crystal Springs Brewing & Ice Co. offer a glimpse into Boulder's business history.

Stonewear jugs usually held whiskey but also water, vinegar, molasses or other liquids. 

Rick Sinner’s collection of advertising is an incredible time capsule of Boulder business history.

Being an amateur collector of ‘50s pottery and various “collectibles” myself (some friends describe it as slightly fanatical), Sinner’s devotion to collecting and the in-depth research he puts in to verify business names and owners is remarkable.

I’ve wanted to visit Sinner’s home since we met while planning for Boulder’s Sesquicentennial, when he provided the 150 committee with a well-researched list of Boulder companies still in business and at least 50 years old.

That list was impressive, but after a few hours looking at his collection – some 4,000 items indexed and identified, with another 1,000 or so awaiting his database, I feel like I just toured the Boulder Smithsonian.

In a basement collection room, items are painstakingly displayed in glass-enclosed cases, with an eye to detail of a museum curator. Old whisky, beer and drug bottles line the shelves, adjoining calendars, stoneware jugs that held liquor, vinegar, molasses and water, buttons, signs, medals, spoons, match covers, shoehorns, trays, fraternal lodge ribbons and photos.

Antique advertising plates hang on one wall, with scenes of Boulder County’s original Victorian courthouse, built in 1882, and early CU buildings. Most were hand-painted in Austria and Germany as advertising giveaways, usually with the business name on the back.

 “I don’t collect anything that doesn’t have a business name on it,” Sinner says, although I think he does. A date, of course, is really good. A find sends him to Carnegie Library on Pine Street where he sorts through city directories and newspaper archives on microfiche.

 Picking up item after item, he reads off business names and I jot down notes as fast as I can. “You’ll never get them all,” he jokes. He’s right.

 He’s framed beautiful Victorian-style art illustrations and hung them around his home. A calendar from Maxwell and Greenman’s University Book and Drug Store at Broadway (then 12^th Street) and Pearl.  A calendar with a Remington Western scene from Boulder Lumber Co.  Two huge calendars are from the Berkhimer Insurance Agency, each with art of Will Rogers and the simple slogan “Dependable.” A calendar for the Alba Dairy, 2718 Pine St., has art by Charlotte Becker, an illustrator who painted for calendars, children’s books and magazines.

Sinner likes his Christmas Santa operating  a hot air balloon on a calendar for The Department Store, 1223 Pearl St.

 I asked to see something he’s really loves, and he takes down a colorful “corner sign,” which would attach to the corner of a building, for Boulder’s Crystal Springs Brewing & Ice Co.  It’s totally cool.

Sinner, 58, is retired after teaching pottery and photography for 31 years at Boulder High, and is a 1969 grad of the school himself.

 One year, the city started digging near the school for flood plain work along Arapaho, and unearthed the city’s original 1880s dump. Things like this send bottle collectors into a tizzy, and Sinner was no exception. He borrowed the school’s photography lights for night digging, and occasionally would send students out to check up on other collectors.

 Holding up a desirable cobalt blue bottle, with raised date of 1887-1888, he estimates he has about 100 items from that site that either he or others found. Other discoveries took place when the city built both libraries along the creek. Sinner’s also the president of the Antique Bottle Collectors of Colorado.

Sinner says one woman collector swooned after seeing he had a silver spoon celebrating the “Texas Colo.”  Chautauqua opening on July 4, 1898 in Boulder. I enjoyed his Bing Crosby Ice Cream box, from Valley Farm Diary in Longmont, and his antique map table with drawers full of ledgers, mine stock certificates and old letterheads and ledgers. There’s a story behind each one.

His collection of postcards shows area landmarks and historic buildings like the Masonic Temple Building that housed the Temple Drug Co.  He showed me razors and razor straps from the Western States Cutlery Mfg. Co. in Boulder.

This month, you’re in luck. A display at the Carnegie Library through October commemorates Gold Hill’s 150^th, the same as Boulder’s, and two cases of items, including brochures and photos from the Blue Bird Lodge (next to the Gold Inn Hill), are from Sinner’s collection.

You also should do a little of your own history digging on Boulder’s Sesquicentennial site at www.boulder150.com. Photos from Sinner’s collection are next to the 50-year business list under Boulder History. I like the yellow “Worms That Squirm” can from the Bios Earthworm Hatchery in Boulder. I’m watching for one of those at my next yard sale.

Smoke a cigar or watch 'stars' dancing Oct. 15 to support charities

Sometimes, it's best to get out of Boulder for a bit, and smoking a cigar is one of those things in a city that prides itself on smoke-free environments. Boulder does have at least one cigar bar -- Johnny's Cigar Bar -- in One Boulder Plaza downtown, but here's a chance to relax with a quality stogie and do some good.

Barlow's Premium Cigars & Pipes, at 2770 Arapaho Road in Lafayette, is taking part in the Toast Across America charity this Thursday, Oct. 15. The evening, which starts around 5:30 p.m., includes an auction with all proceeds going to the Cigar Family Charitable Foundation, which supports eco-friendly business ventures in the Dominican Republic and helps provide self sufficiency to communities in the country.

Now I know cigars are usually a "guy" thing, but Barlow's is a comfortable setting where a woman who might want to enjoy a cigar is certainly welcome. 

The event will include representatives of the Fuente Newman Cigar company, and a special limited commemorative cigar pack -- one Fuente Opus X and one Diamond Crown Maximus -- will be available at the event for $50, again with proceeds at the toast going to the foundation.

If smoke gets in your eyes, there's another fun fund-raiser Thursday night -- the 3rd Annual Dancing with Boulder Stars at the Boulder Theater, benefiting the YWCA of Boulder County. It runs 7:30 to 10 p.m., with doors opening at 6:30.

Local leaders have been going through a 10-week rehearsal, learning a ballroom dance, and will perform in the fundraiser modeled after the popular TV show. Audience members will be able to vote for their favorites with $1 per vote.

The local dancers this year are:

Ceal Barry, associate athletic director for Student Services, University of Colorado; Peter Baumgartner, wealth management adviser and vice president, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney; Frances Draper, executive director of Boulder Economic Council; Kelly Wyatt, community volunteer; David Kuosman, partner, Faegre & Benson; Dan Pirrallo, general manager, Millennium Harvest House; Claire Pearson, senior tax manager, Clifton Gunderson; and Lee Shainis, executive director, Intercambio de Comunidades.

CU panels Oct. 16 include 'Why we're not in a Great Depression again'

"Deja Vu? Why We're Not in a Great Depression Again" should be an interesting panel at the University of Colorado Friday, Oct. 16, as part of CU's Family Weekend. Although many events are sold out, these panels are free and open to the public.

Here's info from CU public relations:

The University of Colorado at Boulder will present three panel discussions and celebrate its outstanding faculty and students during the fourth annual Fall Convocation on Oct. 16. The event will take place as part of Family Weekend.

The convocation will be held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the chapel of Old Main, and will include the Provost's Achievement Awards ceremony. All the events are free and open to the public.

"Fall Convocation provides us with an opportunity to recognize the incredible work of the faculty and the impressive accomplishments of our students," said Jeff Cox, associate vice chancellor for faculty affairs. "Throughout the day, we will provide visiting families with an opportunity to get a sense of some of the innovative scholarship and creative work being done on campus."

During the Provost's Achievement Awards ceremony from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m., six assistant professors, six associate professors and 10 students will be recognized for an array of accomplishments and service to CU-Boulder. The ceremony also will celebrate faculty who recently received tenure or a promotion to full professor. CU-Boulder Chancellor Philip P. DiStefano will make welcoming remarks.

The panels will take place before and after the awards ceremony with the following lineup:

-- 10 to 10:50 a.m., "Deja Vu? Why We're Not in a Great Depression Again," a panel organized by William Kaempfer, professor of economics and vice provost, and featuring Associate Dean Richard Wobbekind and professors Kenneth Bickers, Sanjai Bhagat and Ann Carlos.

-- 11 to 11:50 a.m., "Arts at CU -- The Digital Connection," a panel organized by Professor Mark Amerika of the department of art and art history and featuring associate professors Julie Carr and Michael Theodore.

-- 3 to 4 p.m., "From Bench to Bedside: How Science is Shaping Medicine," a panel organized by Professor Leslie Leinwand of the department of molecular, cellular and developmental biology and chaired by Russell Moore, interim vice chancellor for research. The panel will feature assistant professors Amy Palmer and Hubert Yin.

The Fall Convocation is part of the larger Family Weekend series of events being held at CU-Boulder Oct. 16-18. The popular Family Weekend enables parents and other family members to visit students on campus and to participate in a variety of activities. More information on Family Weekend is posted on the Web at www.colorado.edu/familyweekend/ .

Other city leaders’ advice to Boulder: Confront ‘affordability,’ better relations with CU

Left to right, Madison Mayor Dave Cielewicz; Chris Wilson, professor of Cultural Landscape Studies at University of New Mexico; Phil Keisling, former Oregon secretary of state; and Aspen Mayor Mick Ireland.

BOULDER -- Affordable housing, transportation, town and gown relations and economic worries. Familiar issues to most of us in Colorado, and certainly here in Boulder.

And on a recent evening, four leaders from cities with a “kindred” relation to Boulder came here to share their own political experiences and offer up a bit of advice.

Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz (it’s easier to just call him Mayor Dave than try to pronounce his name – chess LEV ich); Aspen Mayor Mick Ireland; former Oregon Secretary of State Phil Keisling, discussing Portland; and Chris Wilson, a professor of Cultural Landscape Studies at the University of New Mexico with views on Santa Fe joined a public forum on “Insights from Kindred Communities” as part of Boulder’s Sesquicentennial celebration.

At the end of an engaging hour and a half discussion, several points stood out in my mind:

* Portland, in ways Boulder sometimes tries to emulate, has a national reputation of being a “green” city. Its urban landscape is easy to navigate with public transportation, and that attracts a young, mobile population, Keisling said. Unfortunately, many come looking for jobs. And since the recession hit, the city has had to question its efforts for economic growth. “Green” has not yet translated to “jobs,” and Oregon’s unemployment has soared to nearly 12 percent, the second highest in the U.S. after Michigan. Metro Portand’s jobless ranks have swelled faster than most major cities.

*  Madison, home to the University of Wisconsin, often draws comparisons to Boulder, home to the University of Colorado. Also similar to Boulder, Madison is sometimes called “55 square miles surrounded by reality.” Today, Madison has expanded to 77 square miles. “Madison is growing, reality is shrinking,” he said.

* Aspen Mayor Ireland talked about how many of his city’s wealthy residents “come from a lot of achievement,” and with his short two-year mayoral term, “It’s difficult to govern.”  How many people does it take to change a light bulb in Aspen? he asked. 10. One to change the bulb, and nine to reminisce about how good of a bulb it was.

* Santa Fe’s devotion to cultivating its identity of historic preservation and maintaining a strong tourism base with museums and art do have drawbacks, Wilson noted. He said there is an overriding “ambivalence” to other business development and ideas that could attract jobs.

At the end of the evening, all four leaders reluctantly offered up words of caution to the city that  has celebrated its 150^th birthday this past year. Panel moderator Patty Limerick, faculty director for the Center of the American West, asked the panelists for what advice they could leave.  All seemed impressed by Boulder’s scenic foothills beauty and devotion to open space policies.

“Respect how important the university is to you,” Madison Mayor Cieslewicz told the audience. Much like Madison, he said, “You wouldn’t be Boulder if you didn’t have the university.”

Wilson urged people to consider that “green” may not be the only factor in “sustainability.” New urban designs, perhaps more dense but keeping amenities close and allowing residents to get around without a car, will start to make a lot of sense in the age of “peak oil.”

The most urgent opinion came from Aspen’s Ireland.

“There’s no Western fantasy,” he said. No one will ride to a city’s rescue for affordable housing. Developers, he said, are not going to buy $500,000 lots and put in affordable duplexes for schoolteachers.

If a city does not have a place for people to live with median incomes of $40,000, it runs a great danger. “You will have a university, but will you be a community?”

“Where is the vitality? Where is the heart?” he said. “You need to confront that.”

And speaking from what is Colorado’s most expensive city to live, he probably should know.

 

Officials from 'Kindred Cities' of Boulder to speak at Sept. 23 public forum

Dave Cieslewicz, mayor of Madison.

Chris Wilson, J.B. Jackson professor of Cultural Landscape Studies at University of N.M.

Phil Keisling, executive director of business development at CorSource Technology Group, Portland.

Mick Ireland, mayor of Aspen

BOULDER -- Four prominent leaders from Aspen, Colo., Madison, Wis., Portland, Ore. and Sante Fe, N.M. will share their experiences and thoughts in an evening forum, Wednesday, Sept. 23, titled "Separated at Birth: Insights from Kindred Communities."

The free event, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. on the University of Colorado campus in the Wittemyer Courtroom, Wolf Law Building, continues the year-long celebrations of the Boulder Sesquicentennial, its 150th anniversary. 

The idea was to bring representatives of cities that share similar values and economic traits to Boulder for a public forum. The room could fill up fast, so I would recommend getting there a little early if you want a good seat. Another Boulder 150 forum in the spring that invited long-time residents of Boulder to reflect on the city was nearly a full house.

The forum is organized by the Boulder Sesquicentennial Celebration, the University of Colorado Center of the American West and the Boulder History Museum. 

All four cities share some interesting ties to Boulder, and panel moderator Patty Limerick, chairwoman of the board of the Center of the American West at CU, will be directing questions on several topics, including:

* How a city's image or "narrative" affects growth both positively and negatively.

* How university cities navigate issues of "town and gown."

* How cities work regionally, integrating community issues within larger growth areas.

* How cities develop sustainable "green" policies.

* How a city's success can lead to an increasing lack of economic diversity.

 Panelists for the forum are:

Chris Wilson, J.B. Jackson professor of Cultural Landscape Studies at the University of New Mexico and founding director of its Historic Preservation and Regionalism Program. He has written widely on architecture, tourism and the politics of culture in the Southwest. 

Phil Keisling, executive vice president of business development for CorSource Technology Group. Prior to joining the company in February 2000, Keisling served 15 years in the public sector and six years as a journalist. His public sector experience includes nine years as Oregon secretary of state (1991-99); one term in the Oregon House of Representatives (1989-91), and as a staff assistant to Oregon House Speaker Vera Katz (1985-88).

Mick Ireland, mayor of Aspen. He practiced law in Aspen for five years before being appointed to serve as a Pitkin County commissioner in 1993. He served three terms as a commissioner and was elected mayor in June 2007. In addition to his two-year term, Mick is an attorney, consultant and substitute teacher in the Aspen School District.
 

Dave Cieslewicz, mayor of Madison, Wis. Elected mayor in April 2003 and re-elected to a second term in April 2007, Cieslewicz has focused primarily on public safety and provision of quality basic services for Wisconsin's fastest-growing city. He is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Name pronounced (chess LEV ich)

Dr. Patty Limerick, panel moderator. Limerick is faculty director and chairwoman of the board of the Center of the American West at CU, where she is also a history professor and MacArthur Fellow. Limerick has dedicated her career to bridging the gap between academics and the general public and to demonstrating the benefits of applying historical perspective to contemporary dilemmas and conflicts. 

Publishers want their slice of ‘linked-in’ economy

If you’re reading this column, then you’re officially part of what Huffington Post founder and Editor-in-Chief Arianna Huffington calls the “linked-in” economy.

Huffington and this new Denver-based Internet newspaper are the newest players in the intensely competitive Colorado media wars. This is Huffington’s third news site after launching in Chicago and New York. Next up is Los Angeles.

 I’ll be as curious as you to see what happens.  According to Wikipedia, the HuffPost as it is known, has more than 3,000 bloggers.  And all 3,000 of us share at least one thing in common.

 We’re both counting on you, the news consumer, to pass along news or commentary that you like to someone else. You might post a link on your Facebook page, you might give me a friendly tweet on Twitter (and someone else might retweet), or you could digg this to the social news site digg.com, where people link and vote on their favorite content. If all else fails, you might just copy and paste it into an e-mail.  But that is so passé these days.

 The more shared links (six in this post so far), the merrier for Web traffic numbers of both the Huffington Post, which counts its visitors in the millions, and my blog, the Boulder Report, which counts visitors in … well, let’s just say considerably less than millions, more like hundreds (and that’s in a month, not a day).

I got several interesting comments (another desirable thing in the blogging world) to a column I wrote in May called “Will screen staring be the demise of the printed news?” In it, I said readers might want to look at the HuffPost to see how blogs and videos can join with news coverage to create this new brand of journalism. Only four years ago Huffington started combining her own opinions with “as many interesting voices as possible,” and now bloggers on the site have included everyone from Barack Obama to TV host Bill Maher and Colorado’s Gary Hart. You can look at the sites Blogger Index to see who’s getting the most views.

Colorado’s been no stranger to the fast-paced changes in the newspaper business, particularly the demise of the Rocky Mountain News and Scripps’ exit from the Denver Newspaper Agency.   That also resulted in my hometown newspapers, the Boulder Camera and Colorado Daily, moving entirely under ownership of the MediaNews Group, owner of the Denver Post.

As a news junkie, having run the Boulder County Business Report for 18 years, I access news online more than ever but still send out my Lab every morning to retrieve the Camera, Post and the Wall Street Journal from my driveway. He would absolutely hate retrieving my laptop. After selling the Business Reports in Boulder, Northern Colorado and Wyoming to Ohio-based Brown Publishing in early 2008, I do a lot of my writing at the Laughing Goat, an east Pearl Street coffee house where I also dig into free copies of the Daily, the Boulder Weekly, Denver’s Westword, Boulder’s Nexus and whatever else happens to catch my eye.

Recently I drove to downtown Denver, where at Common Grounds I got the chance to meet Katharine Zaleski, senior editor for the HuffPost organization, and Ethan Axelrod, the new editor of the HuffPost in Denver.  Both were at the end of a long day and still setting up meetings with Colorado publishers from Grand Junction to Aspen, explaining how news organizations could “opt-in” to add their content to the new HuffPost site here. Response, they told me, had been very good.

Much of what they shared with me was strikingly similar to Huffington’s recent online interviews with Jon Friedman of MarketWatch.

“The future of media,” Huffington said, “is going to be social media.

“The way to make money now is to follow the consumer … to embed your product in multiple sites.”

And counter to speeches by many newspaper publishers about creating more “paid” online content, Huffington says she doesn’t see “content behind walls succeeding unless you’re offering very specialized content.”

Compare her view to that of MediaNews owner Dean Singleton, also current chair of the Associated Press board.  In interviews with Westword and others, he has advocated a business model to lock up much of his newspapers’ current free online content, giving it instead to only paid subscribers. 

Fewer people accessing that content (the Post has about 254,000 subscribers daily and 704,000 on Sundays), of course, means fewer “links” — a 180 turn from the linked-economy strategy of the HuffPost.

One thing for sure, the Denver Post is watching closely what happens with this Internet-only Huffington Post. I don’t think it was a coincidence that the Denver Post just announced a new advertising campaign called “I want to know” that will be on billboards, TV, radio and even Facebook and Twitter.

The pay-for-Web content debate is raging online, and it’s not just newspapers.

Monetization is the word investors and venture capitalists love to hear.

Google’s YouTube wants a deal in Hollywood to sell movie downloads right when they’re going to DVD release.  Facebook and MySpace are battling for more paid display advertising, with about one of every five Web display ads now viewed on social networking sites. National ad buys into the HuffPost sites have included national advertisers like Starbucks and Volkswagen.

In her Marketplace interview, Huffington marvels at how fast her online news venture has made inroads and captured market share. Analysts believe the company is nearing a “break even” point, not bad in a recession.

“We are lucky that we don’t have to deal with the legacy costs of an old business,” she says. “And we are lucky that we are the new kid on the block. We didn’t even exist five years ago. YouTube didn’t exist five years ago.

“It used to take 20 years to become a brand,” she continues. “Now you can do it in a year if you tap into a need.”

I’ve been increasing my own time spent on blogging and social media, but I don’t really expect it to pay my bills.

My blogging competition? Something like 112 million other blogs according to blog search engine Technorati, and that number is a year old. China alone has 50 million bloggers, but fortunately here in Boulder not that many people read Chinese.

I also haven’t collected a dime yet via the Google Adwords on my own blog, but I’m working on it. I need to go with better display ads, other bloggers advise.

If I ever make it to page one of the HuffPost, maybe your “links” will help me out. With an average $3 per cappuccino per column, I’m far from breaking even.