…We asked and you voted for your favorite Colorado businesses, restaurants, hikes, parks and more. Thanks to everyone who participated. The “best of” categories are segmented by region. So click here, find your home region, (that’s where we’ll all start first, right?)…
— Excerpt from an email from ‘The Colorado Sun’.
One of the most professional news websites in Colorado is The Colorado Sun… available online without having to buy a subscription… sort of like the Pagosa Daily Post, except they don’t have a humor columnist.
And some other differences. (Like, for example, they won 10 awards in the annual Colorado Press Association contest this year.)
When the Sun got started in 2018, I had high hopes that — with their excellent staff of experienced, college-educated journalists — they would be able to make me laugh now and again. Alas, it seems that experienced, college-educated journalists don’t know how to tell a joke. (And, gosh, there are so many funny things going on, lately.)
But the Sun did try to amuse us, with their recent “The Best Of” contest, covering the whole state of Colorado, segmented into five ‘regions’.
Because it wouldn’t be fair for the rest of Colorado to try and compete with Southwest Colorado, right?
A few of the categories that got nominations, and votes, in ‘Southwest Colorado’ were:
- Best Book Store
- Best Brunch Spot
- Best Burrito
- Best Organization to Give Back To
- Best Pet Rescue Shelter
- Best Tacos
- Best Town or City to Live In
- Best Vintage Store
The Sun didn’t reveal the number of people who actually submitted nominations, or who actually voted, but it would appear that very few people from Pagosa Springs — very few — participated in the contest. Because here are the results of “Best Town or City to Live In, Southwest”:
Obviously, whoever voted in this contest gave the wrong answer. Pagosa Springs didn’t even get third place.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Okay, sure, Telluride is a pretty cool town, if you’re a millionaire, or billionaire. But does anyone even know where the Town of Norwood is? Does anyone actually live there?
Maybe you can tell that I was unimpressed with the Sun’s contest results. Not a single “Best Of” was located in Pagosa Springs. Not even the best “Vintage Store”. If you want to believe the Sun’s “Best Of” voters, pretty much anything worth anything in Southwest Colorado is located in Telluride or Ridgway.
I don’t really want to blame the Sun, but I don’t know who else to blame.
So I decided the Daily Post should take matters into its own online hands, so to speak. I talked with our Daily Post editor (yes, I did most of the talking) and convinced him that we needed to do our own “Best Of” contest, focused on Pagosa Springs, since the Sun (and its readers) had left us totally out of their contest results.
The first step in creating a meaningful “Best Of” contest is to solicit nominations from the relevant experts — the folks who really know the Pagosa Springs community — which, in this case, would be you, our Daily Post readers, and any friends they want to drag, kicking and screaming, into the nomination process.
There are some very special ways that Pagosa Springs stands out, among the towns in Colorado. Things that we do “best”.
Once we have a list of nominations (which you are going to provide) we can publish the finalists on a ballot and allow our online community to vote on their favorites.
I’ve created a list of key social and environmental factors that — in my humble opinion — make Pagosa Springs “The Best Town or City to Live In, Southwest Colorado”.
Move over, Norwood.
My list of “Best Of” categories, in need of your nominations:
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.