When voters approved the construction of Denver International Airport in 1989, the initial plan was to turn Stapleton Airport’s 4,700 acres into a major film and TV studio. A contest was announced seeking pilot scripts for a Denver-based sit-com to be the first big thing produced there.

I entered a spec script called “Dirty Little War,” based on the everyday absurdities of working in the sports department at the Denver Post, which was then locked in perhaps the last great newspaper war with the rival Rocky Mountain News. One that would roil on for another 20 years in, at times, stupidly funny ways.

I was a part-time clerk tasked with typing in the night’s “agate” – that’s all the tiny type ranging from box scores to the next day’s dog-racing entries at the Mile High Kennel Club. As Archie Bunker sang, those were the days. There was never – ever – a dull night cranking out three editions of the next day’s sports section. Sometimes four. 

We went through a revolving door of sports editors. One was easily distracted and rumored to be an alcoholic, but we joked that he lacked the discipline and commitment all that heavy drinking requires to be an actual alcoholic. The Rocky had not long before fired its editor in chief for erratic behavior resulting from legendary cocaine abuse. 

Everyone was a made-for-TV character.

One day, one of them called into the newsroom. I picked up the phone, and what he said became what those in the biz call the “cold open” for the pilot episode. (That’s the opening exchange before the credits.)

The call was from a harried, eccentric (and legit brilliant) sports writer also named John. (We had so many Johns that I was simply “MooreJohn.”) It went a little something like this:

John: “MooreJohn, are you from California?”

MooreJohn: “No, John. I’m from Arvada.”

John: “(Five successive profanities all spoken as if one word.) I need to find someone from California! Who else is in the office right now?”

MooreJohn: “It’s just me right now, John. Most of the crew don’t get here till 4.”

John: “(Five successive profanities all spoken as if one word.) It has to be someone from California!”

MooreJohn: “What is your question, John? Who knows? Maybe I can help you.”

John: “No, you can’t, but thanks anyway. (Five successive profanities all spoken as if one word.)”

Then, almost as a defeated aside, John muttered: “I need to find someone who can spell ‘jacuzzi.’”

He hung up before I could tell him that land-locked dictionaries in Colorado include the word jacuzzi, too.

“Dirty Little War” was a pretty funny script. It mostly followed the adventures of an up-and-coming rock star Denver Broncos beat writer in the vein of Adam Schefter and a mysterious female copy editor who lives a double life as a superhero savior of the dying English language. She goes by the nickname G.P. You would have to wait a few episodes to learn that stood for “Grammar Psycho.”  

I came to think of the series as “Arrested Development” before “Arrested Development.”

But alas, like just about everything connected to the newspaper industry these past 40 years, it fell apart. And by that, I mean the plan to turn Stapleton into Denver’s own Universal Studios, and with it the contest that would never name a winner. Today, what was once Stapleton is home to 30,000 people, a Sam’s Club, a few hundred retail stores (it seems), and the FBI.

‘The Paper’ trail

I couldn’t help but think of “Dirty Little War” last week when, with great nostalgia and expectation, I watched the celebrated launch of “The Paper,” a TV show 12 years in the making. That’s the Peacock Network’s long-awaited reboot of “The Office,” a classic sit-com whose popularity has grown exponentially since it ended in 2013.

“The Paper” is not really a reboot. More like a long-delayed spinoff where for some reason the same documentary crew that meticulously chronicled the demise of Dunder Mifflin over nine years is now recording the slow death of another kind of paper: a struggling Ohio newspaper called the Toledo Truth Teller.

I figured this series could go one of two ways: Maybe (I hoped), it would be a love letter to those embattled remaining journalists still fighting the fight to Make America Informed Again. That seemed consistent with creator Greg Daniels’ warm-hearted TV legacy, which includes “Parks and Recreation” and the animated series “King of the Hill.”

Or it could be a viciously funny takedown of the corporate greed and industry incompetence and societal ambivalence that have all contributed to the steep decline of a U.S. newspaper industry that is losing jobs faster than coal. The decaying newspaper here is owned by a toilet-paper company called Enervate, after all, and its two worker divisions are now sharing office space. That should be a savagely funny premise. But it’s not. It just … is.

I was all-in for either approach. But strangely, weirdly, disappointingly, “The Paper” is both love letter and satire – and neither. It’s hard to get a fix on what it is trying to be, exactly. After taking in the first four of 10 episodes, it’s already squandered its opportunity to be a meaningful story about journalism in 2025.

The show teased its potential to dig into the real challenges facing the field today, like shrinking newsrooms, corporate consolidation or the impact of digital media. Instead, it leans more into familiar workplace comedy tropes and its roots in “The Office” rather than offering a sharp, grounded take on the industry’s state.

Its creators made a few fatal initial story choices right from the top. Namely: Not one person in this newsroom is an actual journalist – not even the newly arrived idealistic editor who is determined to give credible information-gathering for the people of Toledo one last go. His staff are all company volunteers. That’s like “Ally McBeal” satirizing the quirkiness of the legal profession without having anyone on the show playing an actual lawyer. 

Where is the comedy to go after you establish that the kids from the local high-school newspaper have more experience than the “reporters” on the Truth Teller? Our scribes don’t know what they are doing because they’re not supposed to. They’re not journalists.

I kept waiting for the real journalists to show up so the real show could begin. It never happens. Without actual journalists, the show can’t realistically engage with the profession’s urgent existential issues. 

The two strangely drawn opposing lead characters don’t represent anything of any ideological significance given their shared lack of connection to their field. The incoming editor, Ned (Domhnall Gleason), is a nepo baby with no journalism background. His inadequately explained arrival bumps the standing managing editor down a peg. She’s an eccentric Italian diva named Esmerelda Grand, who apparently was hired based on her previous role as a social media beauty-product endorser. Now rightly deposed but strangely not fired, her entire reason for being on the show is reduced to playing Ned’s garden-variety foil. It makes no sense.

A very likable Mare (Chelsea Frei) is clearly here only to resurrect the Pam-Jim “Office” vibe with Ned. Which is perfectly welcome but … none of any of this adds up to a satisfying explanation for why this show exists. Which is hugely disappointing given the times we are in and the consequences to our democracy if we continue to fritter away our press freedoms. A show with some actual journalism stakes could have made for a real zeitgeist cultural moment.

This is not that. “The Paper” is not exactly pointless, but it is lacking a consistent point of view. Worse than that: It’s dull. Which is exactly what any honest-to-God newsroom is in 2025: Dull. So why would anyone want to set a show in one?

Ironically, “The Paper” occasionally springs to life with excerpts from a documentary shot in 1971 that shows The Truth Teller in its glory days. These clips reveal all the energy of a typical old-school American newsroom back in the day. They make plain the impact daily journalism had on life in every small town across America. The most moving moment in all the early episodes comes when the 1971 editor looks at the paper’s then glistening printing press, holds out his arms and says: “I worship at the altar of this machine!”

Chills. And that’s when it hit me: That is what “The Paper” should be: A show set in 1971 that is full of life and shows us a time when newspapers really mattered. When everything newspaper reporters wrote would be consumed and digested and often brought on meaningful consequences.

Real-life not so funny

If you are reading this, you are, in your way, fighting the good fight along with us in the face of steadily falling revenues and widespread newspaper closures – more than 3,200 since 2005. I am writing these words just moments after learning that the 127-year-old Limon Leader will soon become the next Colorado newspaper to close. I am also writing these words just after having attended an expectedly ghoulish (but lively!) panel about the state of Denver journalism held Wednesday at the Denver Press Club.

Someone asked the panel to name the most important journalist in Denver history. Denver Post co-founder Frederick Bonfils was mentioned. And Damon Runyon, who reported for both The Post and the News before inspiring the Broadway musical “Guys & Dolls.” Bonfils, colorful Denver author Phil Goodstein said, “was a thorough pirate. Totally unscrupulous. But he knew what it took to go and dig out dirt and publish the dirt along the way.”

Boy, could “The Paper” use a modern-day character like him.

Several in the Press Club crowd nominated Westword founding editor Patty Calhoun, who sat on the panel and talked about widening news deserts in places like, now, Limon.

“This is a town that needs a newspaper, and it’s dead,” Calhoun said. “And that is the case across Colorado in many rural and mountain areas. We have to accept the print is going to die in a lot of these places, and we have to figure out what’s replacing them.”

Forget what they say about angels. Every time a newspaper folds, it leads to reduced civic engagement, a rise in misinformation, increased political polarization and less government accountability. A failing U.S. newspaper industry has profound societal consequences.

“The Paper” is not really about any of that. It’s about the director of the local high-school musical being a narcissistic bully. It all makes for a wasted storytelling opportunity. 

What I fully realized after seeing those early episodes of “The Paper” is that I really don’t want to see “The Paper.” I want to see “Dirty Little War.” A story with juice and heft and larger-than-life characters and healthy adversaries and robust competition. I’d rather see stories about dinosaurs in their glory than stories about dinosaurs after they have gone extinct. Telling a story about a time gone by is a tried-and-true way of telling people about their world now. 

“The Paper” seems to be dying on the same vine as “the paper” it portrays. And the biggest bummer: It’s taking the legacy of “The Office” down with it.