This month, The Denver Post newsroom is moving out of its curvaceous white building across from Civic Center at the top of the 16th Street Mall. The lion’s share of our journalists are leaving the city to headquarter nearby at our printing plant in Adams County.

I won’t sugarcoat it: No one at The Post that I know of wants to leave downtown. Besides the convenience the location offers, we’ve loved the symbolism: Colorado’s largest news organization visibly standing watch over the seats of local and state government, commerce and culture.

But the watchdogs can no longer afford the rent. Instead, Denver city workers, protected by their small army of media relations professionals, will enjoy the views.

So yes, it’s a sad time for us, another insult after years of downsizing.

But it’s not all bad news.

To begin with, not all of us are leaving the city. Our parent company, Digital First Media, will remain atop the iconic location at 101 W. Colfax. Our editorial board, city hall reporter, politics team and others with Denver-centric beats are already ensconced next door in the historic Petroleum Building.

Also, we’re starting a new business strategy that I’m completely excited about: One that should help keep us in notebooks and pens and on the job.

That’s right. Starting Monday we’re all done giving our content away. Those who read us online will have to pay.

Time to put a ring on it.

In recent weeks we’ve tested how this might work by alerting those who employ ad blockers that, if they don’t subscribe already to our print edition, they must either buy a digital subscription or shut down the blocker. (Subscribe and we no longer mind the blocker.)

But Monday is show time for the big change. Any online reader who hits a certain per-month threshold — soon to be ratcheted down to a handful of views — will be asked to support local journalism and purchase a digital subscription. Print subscribers need only log in without paying anything extra.

For those who don’t have any kind of subscription already, the cost will be $11.99 a month, which is way, way, way less than you’d pay to support even the mildest of coffee habits.

I’ve long advocated requiring subscriptions. In a 2016 column I argued that the financial support of consumers of news is critical.

It takes a lot of money to run a newsroom. If you read a lot of news, the quality of that news depends upon your support. It ought to be a given: a condition of the social contract.

A community needs strong newsrooms, as the journalists in them pursue the loftiest of goals. Our journalists seek to give voice to the voiceless, hold Big Power accountable, report on things worth doing and present ideas worth considering.

Most readers know backward and forward the reason for our decline. The internet took away many money-making aspects of our former business model.

For years our owners believed like so many others that moving to digital platforms would make up enough of the loss through the ads we could offer to our greatly expanded audiences.

But the reality is that behemoths like Google and Facebook that we helped create and continue to sustain with our content take practically all the money available for digital ads.

How I have hated the enormous amount of time we’ve spent trying to get page views in the empty belief the digital ads would save us. In that pursuit we’ve drained precious time and resources that could have been focused on doing even more real journalism, like fact-checking political claims, investigating government spending or crafting a better read.

Returning to our fundamentals will be better for readers and journalists alike.

Critics will point to reasons why they believe our demise is our own fault, as no doubt the comments and letters that follow this column will attest.

But for those who value the public institution that is a dedicated newsroom and editorial board, our new insistence that we get paid for what we do should matter.

Who knows? Ours is a city and state on the move, growing and thriving and filled with educated folks. With enough support, maybe The Post can not only stop the bleeding, but recover and grow again.

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