Dave Perry, the Editor of the Aurora Sentinel, is having a bad time at work. The Denver Post is downsizing again and cutting costs to make ends meet. Conservatives hate the Denver Post because they think the paper leans left, though the paper has endorsed some Republicans. Liberals hate the Denver Post because it occasionally calls out leftists and has endorsed some Republicans. But what seems pretty clear from Dave Perry’s column on the downsizing is that the reason the Denver Post is failing is because so much of the printed press hates its readers and think they are indispensable.

Just check out the concluding paragraph:

So sneer all you want about the misfortunes of the Post and our industry. But I promise you that without it, Denver, and Aurora, and all of Colorado, will be a far lesser place than it is. I very often don’t agree with many news and non-news decisions the Post makes, but I have no hesitation in insisting that the mission and product of the Denver Post — and the Colorado Springs Gazette, and the Durango Herald and the Aurora Sentinel — is critical to the region’s well-being and success. In any way you can, you should support the Post and other media, and tell them what you like and hate. But if you dismiss them, and all of us, you dismiss the only real defense society has against everything you spend so much time complaining about — that matters.

Got that? The existence of the Denver Post “is critical to the region’s well-being and success.”

Now knell before Dave you stupid readers.

This is the problem with a lot of the dinosaurs of the media. They value themselves and think you must, not should, as well. Not only that, but they have decided they are the arbiters of truth and but for them bad things will happen, truths will not be told, and cat listicles will reign supreme.

They refuse to adapt, refuse to change, and as the world changes around them they decide it is you, not them, that is the problem.

Finally, after enough ridicule and needling, they lash out in columns like this where you can get the real sense of them. The Editor at the Aurora Sentinel believes that but for him and his precious newspaper and the other newspapers of the area, you’d be dumber, less successful, and be poorer in spirit.

And you know what? He may be right. But the fact that he has to announce it in a such a condescending and demeaning fashion, instead of proving it through reporting, suggests more cuts are coming in the future because they don’t really get it after all. Any Coloradan can set up a blog and claim the “freedom of the press” as his own. That freedom does not belong to the Aurora Sentinel, Denver Post, etc. and those who work there. It belongs to anyone and everyone.

Maybe one day Dave Perry and his newspaper will realize that and adapt instead of condescend.