Can we blame E.W. Scripps, which is reportedly losing more than $1 million per month on the Rocky Mountain News, for putting the newspaper up for sale, a move that will likely lead to the Rocky's closure? Especially since Scripps apparently sees little chance the Rocky will be making money any time soon?

Yes, we can.

But for some strange reason, we have yet to see criticism in the dailies that Scripps owes it to our community to hang on longer.

It's as if Scripps' scary-sounding losses, and the much-covered downward spiral of big-city newspapers, negate legitimate questions about the ethics of the sale.

Even Westword - whose in-depth coverage of the Rocky's plight included a heartless list of five Rocky journalists (out of more than 200) who should be hired by The Denver Post to lure soon-to-be-former Rocky readers - hasn't aired the view that Scripps, after 102 years in Denver, has a civic obligation to suck up its losses and stick it out longer.

I mean, here's a big company that I think can afford to lose money in Denver, while it sorts out how - and whether - it can earn more online or through creative changes like those unveiled this week in Detroit, where newspapers will be delivered three days a week, leaving subscribers to find news on the papers' Web sites the rest of the week.

In a November news release that announced, among other things, Scripps' losses in Denver, company president Rich Boehne said Scripps is a "healthy company built upon a collection of solid media businesses in attractive local markets."

You can safely assume that Scripps, a $2 billion business until its split earlier this year, was still healthy on Dec. 4, when Boehne announced the Rocky's sale and said that dumping the Rocky was "absolutely unthinkable just a short time ago."

Even if Scripps has been worried about the newspaper for a few years, as reported elsewhere, Scripps should take more time before it sells or closes a 149-year-old institution like the Rocky, particularly after the company has apparently made big money here.

It's impossible to pinpoint just how much Scripps, which went public in 1988, has earned in Denver. But over 102 years in an overall profitable industry, the earnings were significant, according to newspaper analyst John Morton of Morton Research, even if you include losses along the way, like during the newspaper war here in the 1990s. He estimates Rocky profit margins in the "mid-teens or so" through the 1970s and 1980s.

In his blog April 29, the Rocky's David Milstead makes a rough estimate that the Rocky even made $25 million in profit from 2005 through 2007. So it doesn't look like the red ink has been flowing for very long at all.

More broadly, the company's profit from all its newspapers was $223 million in 2005, $196 million in 2006, and $147 million in 2007, according to annual reports. Profits were $270 million in 2002 with a 40 percent profit margin!

You notice a downward trend, but Scripps says all its newspapers, other than the Rocky, remain profitable.

"They're doing what most capitalists do - responding to current market conditions," says Morton. "The difference here being that most capitalists don't publish newspapers that a community or city and readers depend on." He says newspaper publishers have an "obligation to their communities" to hold on.

Exactly. Newspapers are too important to be abandoned like a soap factory.

Scripps, meanwhile, is almost certainly healthier than Post owner Dean Singleton's private company, Media- News Group.

Bad news continues to trickle out from MediaNews, including last week's announcement by Moody's Investment Services that MediaNews is more likely to default on its loans. Then there was Singleton's subsequent announcement that he needs to make $20 million in cuts and his request to the Denver Newspaper Guild to renegotiate its contract.

Singleton has said he's committed to Denver because he expects his business to turn around. Morton also thinks business for big city dailies will improve eventually, though he thinks future profits will be lower.

I'm not saying Scripps, which features an image of the Rocky's Pulitzer Prize- winning "Final Salute" edition on the "newspapers" segment of its Web site, is a dishonorable company. Here I am being allowed to criticize Scripps in its own newspaper, after all.

Plus, no final decision has been made to close the Rocky.

But Denver journalists should look for all legitimate criticism of Scripps' ominous announcement to sell it.

Jason Salzman, president of Effect Communications, is the author of Making the News: A Guide for Activists and Nonprofits. Reach him at salzmanj@RockyMountainNews.com.