Two questions:

Who the hell is leaking all of these internal e-mails and memos to Westword?

And with employees like that, who needs enemies?

who needs enemies when we've got reactionary, brittle web vultures like you, jim?

So, does Westword have any such policy? Or is all pretense of objectivity abandoned there?

I'm sorry, did I miss the part where being a journalist means giving up your right to be a citizen? What a load of crap. It's also insulting to reporters. It basically is saying you can't separate yourself from the story. +

Wait, the Post is objective? Coulda fooled me.

Seeking an answer to the question posed by Ken, I checked with Westword editor Patricia Calhoun to find out if the paper has a policy about caucus participation. She said that in the thirty years of the Westword's existence, no employee had ever shown the slightest interest in taking part -- an indication of how pointless the process seemed prior to the date change to Super Tuesday. However, she has no problem with an editorial employee joining in the fun as long as there isn't a direct conflict of interest related to a current or upcoming story. She added that such conflicts would be considered on a case-by-case basis.

The Rocky is forbidding everyone from participating.

As a 36-year Denver Post employee and a sometime target of barbs in Westword myself, let me answer Jim's question by saying that an employee who leaks memos to Westword is in no way disloyal. Our business is founded on the public's right to know -- and we should be willing to practice what we preach. Indeed in crafting our ethics policy, Greg justifiably sought and received public input.
Now, if any employee of Westword wants to leak some embarrassing stuff to The Post, let me assure you that turnabout is also fair play!

These are twitchy times in America's newsrooms, especially newsPAPER newsrooms, over matters of ethics and conflict-of-interest and such. So it's not much of a surprise that both papers would heavily restrict or bar altogether their journalists from participating. (Moore's list of exceptions reads more like a list of almost every news-related employee, except maybe for some sports writers and such.)

But I think I'm with Chinanski on this one, at least in a qualified way. Merely raising your hand at a caucus and choosing not to engage in whatever debate takes place is a basic and non-controversial way of participating in the political process as a plain ol' citizen.

If someone present actually says, hey, aren't you Joe Blow from The Post?, then you acknowledge it and if pressed, say that just because you work for a newspaper doesn't mean you can't participate. As I said, you're not leading the debate -- you're not IN the debate.

And by the way, as a practical matter, unless you're a high-profile staff writer or a columnist, how many people at your caucus will know you're from The Post anyway? And again, why should it matter?

When I worked for a local paper, I once attended a caucus just because it was a novel thing for me, not having been to one before. It was a block away from where I lived. I attended but did not debate or discuss. I voted (I think we raised our hands or moved to one or another side of the living room; I'm fuzzy on details now). And we all went home. No big deal.

OK, to summarize:
• Anybody at the Post editorial side with any kind of opinion (at least with the opportunity to publish it) is banned from a caucus.
• Anyone from the Post editorial side who covers any political body, whether it's partisan or non-partisan, is banned from a caucus.
• Anyone from the Post editorial side who is allowed to go to a caucus is essentially instructed to keep their mouth shut. ("A simple raising of the hand would seem adequate to me." -- Greg Moore)
• Anyone from the Post editorial side who is allowed to go to a caucus needs to report their intentions to a supervisor.
Perhaps it's time to stand away from the Vestal Virgins' doorway and look at this as citizens and real people. Caucuses are not clandestine meetings of regional soviets looking to sack the courthouse. These are gatherings of local people -- neighbors, really -- offering their individual guidance and selection on candidates and issues.
During my 20-some years of participating in the Colorado electoral process, I never saw a major political movement even catch fire at a caucus. Everyone attended to exercise their right as a citizen to do so (even if some called it pointless, as one person's political caucus is another person's Nuggets game).
Just how paranoid are newspaper editors? Do they really think that, because someone who covers Arapahoe County sewer districts says a kind word about Barack Obama or Mitt Romney in someone's living room while munching on some homemade oatmeal cookies (refreshments are often the best part of a caucus, by the way) that people will see this as a implication of an entire newspaper's editorial bias? This kind of thinking may come from a skyscraper executive office, but it's still bunker mentality.
And why do newspaper editors assume they need to protect reporters from sullying a newspaper's reputation? The ethos of news is to observe objectively and report accurately. It's not to withdraw into a neutral shell from life. It's okay to have opinions; you don't let those opinions overshadow and bias your work.
This kind of memo to what we can assume are reasonably intelligent and experience journalists is over-the-top and, well, insulting. Perhaps a "caucus only, no campaign work, remember who you work for" would accomplish the goal. The painstaking prose and painful length of the memo is, to me, the evidence of its indefensibility.

I can understand the papers' concerns in journalists participating in the caucus. I dont buy into the Post being non-bias, or the News for that matter since thier owned by the Post. The only paper I do trust is the Westword, while they do tend to lean to the left more often then not, they also print stories that matter to the well being of the community that both dailys either dont write about or repress. My one question is this, with the concern of public opinion in regards to these publications and thier writers stances, would it not be feasable to set up a entirely separate caucus location for journalists to participate in? Perhaps use secret ballots so that these people cant dish out dirt on eachother? Something along those lines would not only allow journalists to participate, but it would also allow the newspapers to protect thier interests, just and idea.