* E.W. Scripps Co.'s president and CEO

In his early days in the news business, Rich Boehne found himself in Colorado to cover some controversial stories: a King Soopers labor strike and an attempt to unionize the Coors Brewery in Golden. His most recent trip to the state put him face to face with another set of workers - his own employees at the Rocky Mountain News.

This time, the questions were aimed squarely his way. Despite the message the Rocky would publish its last issue today, plenty of reporters, editors and photographers still wanted lots of answers from E.W. Scripps Co.'s president and chief executive officer about what went wrong.

The following represents brief excerpts from Boehne's question-and- answer sessions held throughout the day.

1

How did we get to this point?

It's certainly nothing you (employees at the Rocky) did. While you were out doing your job, the business model and the economy changed. Denver can't support two newspapers any longer. It's too expensive to publish two morning newspapers with the amount of revenue available in this market.

This has not been a moneymaking venture for Scripps.

Recent economic circumstances only made matters worse. There's so little room to take risk now and there's so much downside risk in this business.

2But didn't you realize the business had changed long before the economy began tumbling late last year?

Yes. We ran different models showing revenues continuing to slide, models that our peers beat us up about because we were so pessimistic. Shame on us for being the most pessimistic. It turned out we were way too optimistic. We were the most pessimistic and we were still way off.

There's going to have to be a dramatic restructuring of the newspaper business.

3Wasn't there any way to cut costs to save the paper?

We couldn't find a way to make it work. We would have had to cut both newsrooms (the Post and Rocky) in half and then come to those who were left to ask for wage concessions and other cutbacks.

We still wouldn't have been able to generate enough revenue to cover the expense of operating a newsroom in a market like this. The math just doesn't work.

4Is Scripps going to continue to sell off or close all its newspapers?

This was a hard decision about an unprofitable business in Denver.

This is one of America's great newspapers. You're the example. The thought of this paper going under is one of the great tragedies.

But let me be clear. Scripps is not getting out of the newspaper business. The future may not be in print. It may be all online. But we intend to stay in the game.