Ed Quillen: another dead columnist.

June 4, 2012 10:12 PM

Sadly, a great and little known columnist from Salida, Colorado, has just passed away. His work remains online. His small-town values were the best of small-town values. His political views were well-considered, but not always doctrinaire. Check out his final column for an example of his wit and common sense. I will miss him immensely. (Another Denver columnist I love just checked out - of work, not life, and not voluntarily - Tina Griego: this is her goodbye column.) Our newspaper grows thinner and shriller.
posted by kozad (12 comments total)

P.S. He was a huge Linux fan.
posted by kozad at 10:13 PM on June 4, 2012

I didn't realize the Denver Post was particularly shrill.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 10:17 PM on June 4, 2012

Oh no! This is my friend's father. I must call her right away. He was, by her endearing accounts, a lovely man and great dad. How awful and what a strange way to find out. Poor Quillen family.

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posted by but no cigar at 10:22 PM on June 4, 2012

Shrill? Maybe I'm just too progressive, but their main stable of columnists, Rosen, Carroll, and Harsanyi, (from hysterical conservative to unpredictable libertarian) are pretty sad reading. They got rid of their one token liberal (Mike Littwin) just a few months ago.
posted by kozad at 10:26 PM on June 4, 2012

Ed was one of the few reasons I keep reading the Post. He will be missed.
posted by jazon at 10:58 PM on June 4, 2012

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posted by brundlefly at 11:18 PM on June 4, 2012

I love this sort of thing (the writing, not the death), particularly since I ever so briefly wanted to work for somewhere like the High Country News, so I read a few of Ed's columns in that period of my life.

There's an economy of words (sometimes folksy, othertimes not) I like. But I liked the Olive Garden review from a few weeks back for the same reason.

I'm a bit sad his last column was on Obama's birth certificate issue (albeit quiet and reasoned, and we need for of that) because I thought that was dead and buried.

My job is putting one word after another and The household also contains several obnoxious cats. probably could be done with needlepoint and mounted on my wall.

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posted by Mezentian at 1:29 AM on June 5, 2012

Denver Westword, May 3, 2012 — Denver Post layoffs estimate: 16 copy editors, nearly tenth of staff.

Newspaper Death Watch, December 20, 2011 — Can 1,400 Dailies Die in 5 Years? Yes.
posted by cenoxo at 4:40 AM on June 5, 2012

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posted by jquinby at 5:14 AM on June 5, 2012

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I've been reading Ed Quillen's columns for years, and lately, they've been about the only thing I've wanted to read in the Post. I appreciated that there was a voice on the editorial page representing the parts of Colorado that weren't in the Front Range Urban Corridor, particularly when that voice was so distinctive, well reasoned, and often really funny. I saw him speak a few years ago on the topic of "Is Denver Worthwhile?" (or some title like that). He more or less argued that it wasn't, except that we had the number 15 bus, and that made us distinctive.

Now how will I know what's going on in Salida?

(As a former Post staffer, it makes me really sad to see the steep decline in the paper's size and quality. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a journalist more than anything else in the world, and moreover, I wanted to work at the Post. But when I started working there in the late 1990s, it seemed like the writing was on the wall then -- everyone above me told me to get out while I still could. Then the worst thing that could really happen to the Post happened -- it won the newspaper war, leading slowly to the eventual demise of the Rocky Mountain News. Large-scale changes in newspaper readership and economics have hurt the Post as they've hurt other papers, but winning took the fire out -- the main motivation of Post writers, year after year, day after day, was not only putting out a good paper, but beating the News while doing it.)
posted by heurtebise at 6:42 AM on June 5, 2012

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Ed Quillen was always the first thing to read in the Post for me, stuck here in the land of evangelicals and libertarians. His High Country News writing was always on spot,too. He will be missed.
posted by Isadorady at 11:08 AM on June 5, 2012

This is what happens (not Quillen's death, but the other stuff) when this and this happen. It's a disaster for democracy.
posted by mojohand at 1:00 PM on June 5, 2012