I have read a lot of fitting tributes to Lynn Bartels over the past several hours from people who knew her far better than I did.
I still want to throw in my two cents’ worth.
Long before I met Lynn, I knew her work. I remember reading her articles when she was with the Rocky Mountain News. Actually, “reading” is too small a word. I studied them.
I have never cared much for The Denver Post. That is not exactly breaking news. But the Rocky was different, and Lynn’s reporting was one of the reasons. She had the thing real reporters have and too many modern media creatures only pretend to have. She wanted the story. Not the narrative. Not the party-approved version. Not the tidy little activist pamphlet dressed up as journalism.
The story.
There is a difference. A big one.
Lynn was a true reporter, a journalist in every sense of the word. Sadly, those are getting harder to find. We have plenty of content producers, influencers, talking heads, partisan stenographers, laptop prosecutors, and brave resistance poets with ring lights. Actual journalists are scarcer.
Colorado will miss Lynn because Colorado needs more like Lynn.
People willing to work. People willing to ask one more question. People willing to know both sides well enough to annoy both sides. People willing to dig past the press release, the talking point, the committee hearing theater, and the polished quote somebody’s communications staff spent three hours sanding down until it had no fingerprints left.
That was Lynn.
Now, I have never claimed to be a journalist. I’m just an opinion hack with better equipment than judgment. But I am, at heart, a communicator. A media person. And game recognizes game.
There is an unspoken bond among communicators and media people. It is an odd little club. Not fancy. Not formal. No jackets. No dues. Just people who have sat behind a microphone, stood in front of a camera, or stared at a keyboard five minutes from deadline wondering how in the world they were going to make the words arrive before the clock did.
It includes people who have needed to get the story to print, the news on the air, the transmitter back up, the segment filled, the paragraph finished, the quote confirmed, and the facts straight before some producer, editor, or clock started screaming.
That world wires people differently. Maybe God does it. Maybe deadlines do it. Maybe caffeine and panic do it. Probably all three.
The advent of online media and social media has both intensified and cheapened that bond. Everything moves faster now. Everyone publishes. Everyone reacts. Everyone has a take. Half of them should have left it in drafts and gone for a walk.
But the real thing still exists.
Lynn had the real thing.
I will never forget the first time I met her.
I was in my first term as Weld County Commissioner and had gone to the Capitol to testify on a bill. I parked in the lot across North Grant, just east of the Capitol, and started making my way in. I noticed a woman standing outside, and then it hit me.
Oh my God. That’s Lynn Bartels.
I fan-boyed a little. I tried to be cool, which is usually the first sign a man is about to be deeply uncool.
I smiled and said, “Good morning.”
“Good morning, Commissioner,” she replied.
Wait. What?
She knew who I was?
I stopped, extended my hand, and said, “Lynn, I don’t know if we’ve ever met. I’m Scott James.”
She said she had heard me testify on a few bills and had followed me some. Then she said she appreciated my work.
That was one of those small moments that sticks. Not because it was grand. Not because there was a marching band. But because someone whose work I respected had noticed mine. And not just anyone. Lynn Bartels.
We chatted for a bit about the current state of the state, and that media-person bond formed almost immediately. I hate to sound snobby about it, but those are stripes people earn. You can tell when someone understands the rhythm of it. The deadline. The instinct. The smell of a story. The difference between noise and news.
Lynn understood all of it.
We exchanged contact information. Over the years we occasionally texted back and forth. We had wonderful quick conversations whenever we bumped into each other at the Capitol. Nothing dramatic. Nothing self-important. Just those little exchanges that become more valuable after you realize there will not be another one.
She was whip smart. She was earnest in her work. She was funny. And she was a fully lovely person.
A media person, through and through.
There are still a few left.
Shaun Boyd. Marianne Goodland. The folks at BizWest. And now I have made the mistake of starting to name names, which means I will inevitably leave people out. They know who they are. The real ones always do.
We need more of them.
We need more people who care about getting it right before getting applause. More people who know public life is serious, but not everyone in it deserves to be treated like a marble statue. More people who can hold powerful people accountable without pretending every mistake is a felony or every opponent is a monster.
Lynn Bartels covered politics the way it ought to be covered: with curiosity, humor, toughness, fairness, and a working knowledge that politicians are people, which is both comforting and terrifying.
Colorado lost a good one.
And those of us who work in communication, journalism, media, public life, or whatever messy intersection of all four we happen to inhabit lost something too.
We lost a reminder of what the job is supposed to look like when it is done well.
Rest in peace, Lynn.
Colorado will miss you. More than it probably knows.
Source: Colorado Public Radio
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