Former editor of Post, DBJ dies at 67
Neil Westergaard, the former longtime editor of the Denver Business Journal who also led The Denver Post as the newspaper surpassed the Rocky Mountain News in total daily and Sunday circulation in the 1990s, died Sunday night. He was 67.
“It is with great heartbreak and sadness that I let you know the love of my life, Neil, passed away last night at the (University of Colorado Medical Center) hospital,” Westergaard’s wife Cindy said in a statement released Monday. “Neil was a great man who loved his family, his friends and his community. He was happiest when he was stirring up the waters in Denver and Colorado politics.
“We’ve lost a great journalist.” Westergaard is survived by his wife, his son, Ben, and daughter, Rachel, said Mark Harden, managing editor of the Colorado Springs Gazette’s Colorado Politics site and a longtime colleague of Westergaard’s at both The Post and the Denver Business Journal.
Westergaard was in a rock band in high school, became a ski bum in Winter Park after graduating and met his wife while they were writing for the Mirror at the University of Northern Colorado. They married on Sept. 17, 1977, in Colorado Springs. Ben was born in 1983 and Rachel in 1987, Harden said.
“Neil was the kind of editor who not only wanted the newspaper to be better, but the people who worked at the paper to be better,” Harden said Monday. “He was a remarkable man who loved the news and who loved talking about the news. He loved getting into the community and talking to people about things that mattered to him.”
Westergaard’s family will hold a private funeral for him as well as a remembrance service sometime after a family wedding in August, Harden said.
“Our daughter Rachel is getting married in August and we want to celebrate that event with joy as Neil would have wanted,” Cindy Westergaard wrote.
Harden said Westergaard, who was born on May 1, 1952, in Chicago, died of complications following heart surgery and kidney failure.
Westergaard graduated from UNC in the 1970s and worked for several newspapers in Colorado Springs and Greeley, Harden said. He rose from reporting and editing positions during a 14-year stint at The Post to become the newspaper’s executive editor from 1993 to 1996.
Westergaard quickly refocused the paper’s mission to focus on beat, local and breaking news reporting, a strategy, Harden said, that helped The Post overtake the rival Rocky Mountain News in Sunday and daily circulation for the first time in many years. While running the newsroom, he made the work environment enjoyable and went out of his way to recognize the achievements of his staff, Harden said.
Retired Post reporter Pete Chronis said Westergaard rebuilt a classic car with his son, played a mean blues guitar, had a close relationship with former President Bill Clinton and was easy to talk to.
“He wasn’t stuck up or anything like that. The atmosphere he created in the newsroom was very positive. He had a way to get the best out of people,” Chronis said Monday. “It’s really sad that he died.”
Tributes to Westergaard flooded a Facebook page devoted to him.
“Stunning sad news. A great guy. A reporter’s editor. A humane, decent, gregarious, funny, smart editor and friend,” wrote former Post assistant editor Frank Scandale.
Colorado Springs Gazette Editor Vince Bzdek, a former Post editor, recalled an instance when Westergaard took him to see the printing presses after he helped revive the newspaper’s Empire magazine because he knew how much it meant to Bzdek.
“An editor with a heart, that was Neil. Always thinking of his troops. Once when I asked him for his single, most important piece of newspaper management advice, he said simply: ‘Take care of your people.’ “
Former Post assistant editor Janet Day recalled a hard learning experience she had with Westergaard on her birthday when she had plans to celebrate with friends. He ordered her to tear up the business pages and re-do them — on deadline.
“I was on the verge of tears and complaining loudly. He calmly, gently walked me through why what I had done didn’t work and what I still had to learn to be a skilled editor. It is one of the career-changing moments that have stuck with me for decades,” Day recalled.
“He was a giant of journalism and one of the kindest people I’ve ever met,” wrote Barbara Ellis, who works in The Post’s features department.
Westergaard resigned from The Post in 1996 and worked as a spokesman for what is now Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield of Colorado in the late 1990s.
He joined the Denver Business Journal in 1999 and for 18 years served as the newspaper’s editorin-chief, until he retired last year. Under his leadership, the Denver Business Journal won journalism awards including national honors from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers.
In 2007, Westergaard received the Colorado Society of Professional Journalists’ Lowell Thomas award for career achievement. He was inducted into the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame in 2010, joining the ranks of the city’s most renowned journalists.
In 2018, the Society of Professional Journalists awarded him the “Keeper of the Flame” award, a lifetime achievement honor, Harden said.