Recent editions of the Colorado “newspaper of record” have descended to new lows in editorial/opinion endeavor. A subscription is $800+ per annum for daily/Sunday delivery — more than The Wall Street Journal. For that bogey The Denver Post readership is delivered Perspective a mere five days per week. Apparently weighty events occurring on Monday and Tuesday can hang in the fire before opinion staff weighs in.

The Post has a long, albeit not recent, history of excellence on its Editorial pages. Lee Olson, Penelope Purdy, Willard Hasselbusch and more recently Dan Haley delivered incisive commentary on headline issues of the day. A recent Sunday edition of The Denver Post featured a lead Perspective essay that consumed one-fourth of the entire section. Under the heading “Sound the alarm” the Post wasted “valuable” space including a large photo of the White House and another of President Trump signing executive orders. Neither photo had any relevance to the story — essentially the equivalent of TV news video of printing presses with sheets of $100 bills rolling by in a story about the IRS.

This lead piece was authored by Karrin Vasby Anderson, a respected professor of communication studies at Colorado State University under the auspices of The Conversation. This entity self identifies as a publisher of “trustworthy and informative articles written by academic experts for the general public and edited by our team of journalists.” A similar outfit is Writers on the Range, mostly left leaning resource types lamenting multiple use of public lands.

The use of these canned columns and essays can be debated, especially in view of The Denver Post subscription rate that exceeds nearly every other domestic daily. These can be viewed as a welcome relief from the usual scribblings of the Post editors, or they can be viewed as a cop-out reflecting justifications for Post editorial positions without editorial writers having to put fingertips to the keyboard.

But that effort or lack thereof, will be examined later. The column under scrutiny takes not just column inches, but column FEET to — hold your breath! — examine why journalistic outlets have yet to label Donald Trump an AUTHORITARIAN! CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?! To be fair, as a journalistic/communication exercise the essay goes to great lengths on how and why a journalist can/should label Mr. Trump as an authoritarian. Fine — for practicing journalists and other wordsmiths whose command of language and nuance is paramount. But such a journalistic exercise as a lead opinion piece in a Sunday newspaper?

The average reader is well aware that Donald Trump has been at various times labeled a Nazi, a fornicator, a blowhard, a fascist, a dictator and a liar, among other epithets. So, on a recent Sunday, The Post determines fully one fourth of the Perspective section, is to be devoted to an academic exercise that will serve as an example of its rectitude and righteous justification for labeling Trump an authoritarian.

“Words matter,” the essay’s author concludes. “And how a democratic society responds to its leaders can make the difference between a free society and one in which a leader increasingly suppresses the voices, rights and will of the governed.” So if we understand correctly, certain journalistic outlets who don’t label Mr. Trump an authoritarian are party to suppression of the governed. And the Post believed this was worthy of the lead in its Sunday Perspective.

Such depth of insight from the editorial staff is further evidenced in that same edition with an original editorial entitled “Colo. voters are dissatisfied with Democrats. Polis, Hickenlooper and Bennet can’t hide.” Colorado has voted blue but its voter demographics paint a less partisan picture than election results indicated. Of the 4+ million registered voters in the state, a tad more than one million are Ds, a bit than 900,000 are Rs, less than 100,00 are members of other parties and just under two million are Unaffiliated. That’s nearly half the electorate, an electorate that has consistently voted blue, in some measure due to infighting and poor candidate recruitment by Rs.

When not running columnists from the New York Times, the LA Times and even the Boulder Camera, left-leaning all, the Post Editorial Board runs a warning to Ds that because the Rs have a viable candidate (finally!), the Ds might LOSE! Oh horrors! A divided statehouse?! A check on the unbridled proclivity to spend, and spend, and spend some more? Could this one party domination have anything to do with in-migration slowing dramatically and a moribund job market?

This editorial ends with an admission that the leaders the Post endorsed have failed the electorate. “Finally, Democrats will win safe seats in 2026 with their heads in the sand, but if the party wants to gain ground in swing districts its politicians are going to have to step up to the challenge at hand — restoring faith in and favorability in the party. Can that be done without rehashing many of the missteps of the past four years? We would like to see elected officials accountable and transparent. If Democrats want to stop losing ground, they’ve got to appeal to voters as far more than an alternative to Trump.”

Where to begin — hmmm. Several conclusions jump out, The Post is willfully solid Left, essentially ignoring a substantial portion of the state’s electorate. It does offer a token conservative voice in Krista Kafer. Beyond that, political cartoons, letters to the editor and guest columnists’ left-leaning bias far outweigh any conservative opinions or any pretense of editorial balance. When an opinion writer declares those for whom they advocated have erred, one might perceive a change in viewpoint is worth considering. Scolding miscreant Ds and a classroom journalism exercise are hardly a start.