Bob Mook

STATE BILL COLORADO
The Denver Business Journal, which added a second legislative reporter after the Rocky Mountain News closed in 2009, will go back to a single reporter — at least for now — with the departure of health-care reporter Bob Mook.
Mook, a Capitol presence for four years, wasn’t at the legislature full-time in 2010, according to DBJ Editor Neil Westergaard. “He did cover health care and insurance so he was up there often,” Westergaard said. “(Former Rocky Mountain News reporter) Ed Sealover is our main legislative reporter.”
The DBJ won’t immediately replace Mook but expects to later this year, Westergaard added.
Mook took a position at the Colorado Health Foundation.
Colorado’s capitol press corp has dwindled in the recent past as papers including The Pueblo Chieftain, The Fort Collins Coloradoan, The Longmont Times-Call and The Colorado Springs Gazette have closed their statehouse bureaus or cut back. The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel went without a legislative reporter for the second half of the 2009 session after Mike Saccone joined the Colorado Attorney General’s office, but it has since replaced him.
The Denver Post, which had four reporters at the end of the last legislative session with the addition of News reporter Lynn Bartels, has fallen back to three reporters for 2010.