My friend Lynn Bartels is ailing. That means Colorado is ailing. For decades at the Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Post, Bartels wrote stories no one else could unearth and kept people across the state informed about what happened under the Golden Dome.
Last week she celebrated her birthday surrounded by family and close friends gathered to support and comfort her. And probably to laugh. A lot.
My favorite Bartels story involved me appearing in print as a raccoon. Bartels covered the 2011 Colorado Reapportionment Commission meetings relentlessly. As a member of the commission, I always noted when Bartels would set herself up in the audience, notepads out.
As the commission divvied up the state into legislative districts, she wrote substantive pieces about the testimony, arguments and process. But it would not be Bartels if she did not have a little fun with it.
As the maps went to the Colorado Supreme Court for review, she saw an opening. In her Puckish way, she knew there was an opportunity for mischief.
Bartels somehow found out that former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb and I had made a gentleman’s dinner bet on the outcome of the case. How she knew, I never figured out. But she knew. Bartels always knew. And so she called me up and told me she knew.
I could hear that devilish, wry smile forming from the other end of the line. She asked where I was going to take Webb for dinner (I had lost). In a flip comment, I told her it would be his choice because I was like a raccoon, I’d eat anything.
The next morning, in her regular quick-hit briefing column, a picture of a raccoon appeared with the caption “Mario Nicolais, ‘I’ll have the crow.’” Even as the butt of the joke, I could not help but chuckle. I cannot imagine how tickled she must have been.
I would later recount that story in a column I wrote in the Denver Post — part of an editorial page dedicated to their newsroom being dismantled — and Bartels was my muse. When then-editorial page editor Chuck Plunkett asked me to write about what news meant to me, it meant Bartels. She represented the very best in journalism.
As I wrote then, “Bartels had her inky thumb on the pulse of politics in Colorado.”
The entire section is framed and hung on my wall, a constant reminder looking over my shoulder when I write my own columns. It reminds me to do better, write clearly and be funnier. Channel my inner Bartels.
I have plenty of other Bartels stories. And I treasure each one. From the interview she did with me close to midnight when civil unions died in 2012 to her spending time with my then-girlfriend, now wife, when I launched an ill-fated state Senate campaign in 2013. I know and like a lot of reporters. But I loved Bartels.
When she accepted a buyout from the Denver Post years ago, I felt gutted. As much as I loved my personal interactions with her, I relied on her reporting even more. As someone engaged in Colorado politics, I considered her reporting must-read material. If you had not read the latest Bartels article, you simply were not up to date.
More than once I saw conversations stop when someone admitted they had not seen what she wrote. It made more sense to take a break and let that person read the article and get caught up than trying to explain it third hand.
That was how important Bartels was to Colorado politics.
Other reporters have tried to fill the spaces left behind by her to varying degrees of success. Those with more longevity and institutional knowledge, like the Colorado Sun’s Jesse Paul, have picked up the most slack. Other, younger journalists have worked hard to establish their own voices. The news still gets reported.
Bartels did not go far, though. She became a communications consultant for elected officials. Like many other casualties of the fall and decline of the newspaper industry, she put her pen to paper for the folks she had reported on for so long.
And she was really good at it. Annoyingly so. People like me spend careers honing our skills, hoping to prove valuable to clients. Bartels just stepped in and instantly showed the rest of us up.
Not that we minded. Even if she was not in the press corps, Bartels still delighted us with her sharp wit, unsettling questions and knack for nailing a quote. She also legitimately liked hanging around with all of us. People leaving an event early often found themselves among the last to go because they got drawn into a conversation with Bartels.
I know I am not the only one who feels this way. Mine are not the only or best stories. To the contrary, they represent a few words or phrases in the longform history of Colorado politics she drafted over so many years. She kept the receipts and fostered the relationships. She may well have forgotten more than the collective rest of us ever actually knew.
Which is all to say I could never anthropomorphize Bartels as she did to me, whether as a sly fox or a wise owl. Instead, she has been the beating heart of Colorado politics.
Mario Nicolais is an attorney and columnist who writes on law enforcement, the legal system, health care and public policy. Follow him on BlueSky: @MarioNicolais.bsky.social.
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