By the time I attended the University of Denver, I’d accepted my mother’s notions that cartooning was not a decent way to make a living, and decided to study graphic design instead. A funny thing happened, though. My design teacher, the late Bill Sanderson, became a fan of the cartoons I was drawing for the campus newspaper, and made it his mission to convince me that my true calling was cartooning. It took him a while, but by the time I graduated, I wanted only to give Pat Oliphant, then the resident editorial cartoonist at the Denver Post, some competition.

I left the Rocky Mountain News almost a dozen years ago, so you’d think I’d be over it. But when I saw the news that Scripps put the paper up for sale, I grieved, too.

I never intended to work for a newspaper. But intention has had little to do with my path in life. At age 34, I found myself working for the Pinedale Roundup, a weekly newspaper in Pinedale, Wyoming, population 1,000. Pinedale didn’t have a traffic light, moose wandered the streets and winter lasted for about eight months.

At the roundup I was the staff photographer. I also sold classifieds, developed half-tones, shot pages, did paste up, covered the town hall and wrote sports stories (the editor said it was like having a Martian do it), wrote an editorial every other week, drove the the paper 90 miles to the press that printed it and on the way back kicked bundles out at the post office, put papers in the racks and collected the quarters from the previous week’s sales. That was my introduction to journalism.

I am an Austrian journalist and had the pleasure of visiting the Rocky Mountain News during a U.S.-Austrian exchange program last September. I first came across the Rocky Mountain News about a year ago, when I read a story about the blog of a fallen U.S. officer. The space for the blog was provided by the News. I googled a little bit and found the Rocky. And I was deeply impressed by the four Pulitzer Prizes they had won over the last years.

When I got a U.S.-Journalism Fellowship three months later and was asked which U.S. newspaper I wanted to visit for five weeks, I spontaneously answered: The Rocky.

My first published newspaper story didn’t even have my byline on it, but it led to having a bounty being placed on my head.

The story was about my experience working undercover in a garment sweatshop, where I detailed labor law violations and unsafe working conditions.

It was part of a weeklong series that ran in my hometown newspaper, and it was an assignment that I worked on while on winter break from journalism school.

At the risk of sounding a bit corny, maybe it was my destiny to someday work at the Rocky. Fate allowed me to move to Denver and settle down with the woman who would become my wife. This year, Michelle and I will celebrate our 13th wedding anniversary and the arrival of our third child. No matter what my birth certificate says, I am a Colorado native and the Rocky will always be an important part of my life.

It’s always great to hear from fans about the history of the team. I grew up in Albuquerque during the Nuggets’ early NBA days (they entered the league in 1976-77), so I certainly have a sense of the history. I’ve made a habit over the years of talking to many of the team’s legends, including Hall of Famers Alex English, David Thompson and Dan Issel.

I didn’t want to be a reporter when I was growing up. I had a paper route, but no interest in working for a newspaper. Instead, I planned to be an engineer, like my Dad. That plan changed soon after I started classes at Colorado State.

Why? Let’s just say the engineer gene skipped me and hit my younger brother instead. I began searching for a major and took Journalism 101 as an elective. Soon after came a reporting job at the college newspaper, and I was hooked by the adrenaline rush that comes with working on deadline.