by Mike Hall, Nov 6, 2007

In Colorado, anti-union publisher Dean Singleton seems to be trying to turn a Rocky Mountain High into a Rocky Mountain Hysteria. After Gov. Bill Ritter (D) signed an executive order Friday allowing some 30,000 state employees to participate in a modern working partnership with their managers, you’d think the mile-high sky was falling, judging by Singleton’s rare front page editorial in the Denver Post last Sunday. 

Singleton, who has a long record of  union-busting, according to the employee advocacy group American Rights at Work, says Ritter’s action is the end of the world and will drive business from Colorado and ruin the state’s economy. Wow! (Of course, the screed ignored the fact that studies show unions are actually good for business, productivity and the economy).  

Former Post columnist Jim Spencer writes on the news blog Colorado Confidential that editorial page editor Dan Healy called the editorial a “collaborative decision between the publisher and myself” but that Singleton ordered it placed on the front page.

The day before Ritter signed the order, he extended the courtesy of letting Singleton and Haley know he would do so. Spencer says Ritter spokesman Even Dryer told him:

It was apparent that two minutes into the conversation  that Mr. Singleton was not happy. The language used and in the placement [of the editorial] demonstrate a certain hysteria  that stems from Mr. Singleton’s personal dislike of unions. I think the degree of personal attacks  is a bit surprising for a newspaper of this caliber. To stoop to this level is  unbecoming.

The Columbia Journalism Review gives a glimpse of Singleton’s union-busting history:

In 1981 Singleton found himself enmeshed in a labor dispute at The Paterson News, where the unionized typographers and drivers were restive. In the course of the strike, the workers were swiftly vanquished. “We were losing money, and had to fix it, so we took on the unions and threw ‘em out,” Singleton recalls. The strike got ugly, and for six months Singleton lived in a spare room inside the newspaper. “I told them if they walked out that I’d never let them back,” he says. “They walked out and they never came back.” Asked if he has any regrets, Singleton grins. “No. When they left, we started making money.”

Singleton, who reportedly earns millions a year, is CEO of the privately held MediaNews Group, the seventh-largest newspaper company in the nation, with 48 dailies (and 121 nondailies) in 11 states, according to the Review. His Denver mansion includes 11 bathrooms and an elevator, and he owns four cattle ranches in Colorado and a home on Cape Cod. He is buddies with George W. Bush, with whom he has shared his desire for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to overturn rules that limit cross-ownership of media—so he can control major media markets like Denver with ownership of newspapers and broadcast outlets.

Jerome Armstrong at MyDD says Singleton’s editorial

is the type of hyperbolic and vitriolic screed that belongs more on some backwater comment of the blog pages of the Post, instead of the front page of their Sunday edition.

The folks over at Square State dissect the editorial and show it ignores the facts about the executive order “that have been reported by the same newspaper on the same front page!”

What do ordinary Coloradoans say about the Post’s foaming-at-the-mouth editorial? Here’s some samples from the paper’s E-Letters to the Editor page.

Helen Kern from Aurora writes:

I have just one word for today’s front page editorial: Horse Hockey. Okay, two words…I don’t belong to a union, but I believe unions and government are the only entities powerful enough to make businesses behave themselves. The average American worker bee certainly has no say in his work processes. So if this allows government workers a voice, more power to them.

Says Larry Welsh of Conifer:

Yesterday’s front page editorial slamming Governor Bill Ritter’s state employee’s pro-worker stance was full of rant and bore little respect for facts.

Writes Gladys Foster of Centennial:

Opposition to it [the executive order], although in error, would be quite acceptable, but assuming such a sneering, sarcastic, contemptuous tone is more outrageous than I have words to describe. The extreme disparity in income between upper and lower income brackets in America deserves, even demands, immediate correction for the health of the economy as well as for the welfare of workers. About the only correctives I know of are governments and labor unions.

But it is Seth Masket of Denver who may have found the real reason for the screaming screed:

As a long-time subscriber to your fine paper, I am concerned about the security of your computer system. In case you missed it, some unhinged hacker apparently broke into your server Sunday morning and posted a poorly argued tirade against labor unions—on the front page, no less.

Good luck tracking down the perpetrator.

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