The Boulder Daily Camera is Baghdad-by-the-Flatirons' largest, chain-owned paper. The commercial successor to a line of Boulder papers going back a century, the Camera strives to cultivate a folksy home town air. It obviously relishes schmoozing with the town's fromages grandes, but its uncritical willingness to puff the myriad health-nutrition-spirituality fads and snake oil peddlers who beguile Boulderians does nothing to enhance its credibility.
Characteristic stunt: The Camera devoted a full page, including an eight and a half by eleven inch color photo with swirly special effects to puffing a book by a local author describing how to leave the body and commune with the spirits of the dead. Boulderians were invited to spend an evening out of their bodies for $30 or an out of body weekend for $150. Another: When the Camera omitted a daily horoscope, it ran the entire thing the next day as a correction, presumably because its readers would otherwise be unable to tell what actually happened to them the day before. If Mr. Rogers took up spiritualism and started a newspaper aimed at grownups, it would read like this.
But don't get the idea the Camera isn't award-winning. In 1999, the paper won the General Excellence Award and other assorted honors of the Colorado Associated Press Editors and Reporters for the second year in a row. The Camera modestly broke the news to its readers with a full-page announcement. Journalists sometimes seem to exceed even politicians in giving each other awards. "Some suggest we should excuse our self-congratulatory excesses," cautiously opines Camera columnist and former Colorado Daily editor Clint Talbott.
Primary form of humor: self-indulgent chuckle.