“Five Years Later: The Denver Newspaper War and Life After the Rocky” is the topic of a program at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 24, at the Denver Press Club, 1330 Glenarm Place.

The program, sponsored by the Colorado Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, is free and open to the public.

Former Rocky Mountain News executive Denny Dressman will moderate the panel discussion. Dressman retired from the Rocky in 2007, two years before the newspaper ceased publication. He served as president of the Colorado Press Association in 1993 and was inducted into the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame in 2008.

The former Rocky panelists are assistant managing editor Mike Madigan, staff writer Mark Wolf, investigative reporter Laura Frank, and television and radio columnist Dusty Saunders. Frank is now executive director of I-News, the Rocky Mountain News Network at Rocky Mountain PBS. Saunders writes a weekly sports media column for The Denver Post.

The Rocky started on April 23, 1859, and folded on Feb. 27, 2009, less than two months shy of the newspaper’s 150th anniversary.

The Post and the Rocky were locked in a fierce newspaper war that featured circulation battles and reporting competition in one of the last two-daily cities in the nation. The two newspapers entered into a joint operating agreement in 2001 and the Denver Newspaper Agency was formed to provide advertising and circulation services for both papers. Their news departments remained separate.

The Rocky won four Pulitzer Prizes beginning in 2000 under the direction of publisher/editor John Temple. The last two Pulitzers were awarded in 2006 for feature writing and feature photography.

The front page headline in the final edition of the Rocky read “Goodbye, Colorado.”