The newshounds at the Rocky Mountain News began sniffing out the news of their own demise bright and early Thursday.

A source at the airport tipped off reporters: E.W. Scripps' top men were arriving on a flight from Cincinnati just after 9 a.m.

Rumors buzzed. Staffers huddled, comparing the latest tidbits. They surfed the Web, where Michael Roberts, Westword.com's media watchdog, reported that radio talk show host Peter Boyles had two sources confirming that the Scripps honchos were in town.

Humor and denial pervaded the room, two coping mechanisms that have served staffers well since Scripps announced in December that the Rocky was up for sale.

"Two sources?" quipped one reporter. "Peter Boyles' idea of two sources is him talking to himself in the mirror."

Minutes later, Finance Editor David Milstead, who had covered every step of the newspaper's apparently imminent closure, confirmed the bad news. The Cincinnati bosses really were in Denver.

Several Rocky employees "knew" before others.

M.E. Sprengelmeyer, the paper's Washington correspondent, flew to Denver because he had a haunting feeling and a reporter's instinct that the end was near. He arrived just before Thursday's announcement. "This is my family," Sprengelmeyer said. "I'm going down with my family."

All day, he fielded calls from members of Congress and political junkies with whom he spent 20 months covering the 2008 presidential race, from tiny press conferences in Iowa cornfields to Barack Obama's frigid inauguration.

Sprengelmeyer answered his perpetually ringing phone Thursday with a little political message: "Hello. Rocky Mountain News. Colorado's First Newspaper. It should be the last. May I help you?" Then he paused and said several times, "Oh, hello, Congressman."

As Scripps CEO Rich Boehne delivered the official news of closure, staffers joked about hurling their shoes at him. But restraint and resignation pervaded the room instead. Tears flowed, but many employees hid in bathrooms to cry so the countless cameras capturing the news wouldn't capture their grief.

Laura Frank and her husband, Jeff Legwold, both worked at the Rocky, she as an investigative reporter, he as the Broncos beat reporter. Frank has been hoarding cash, bracing for double unemployment.

"The last two months have been like sitting bedside with someone who's dying. Now the death comes," Frank said.

She mourned the stories she and others wouldn't write, including one about oil and gas development in western Colorado. Earlier this week, Frank endured a frightening encounter with a semi-truck on a narrow, mud-slicked road while digging for that unwritten story.

"There are so many stories Denver will never read," Frank said. "That's what makes me so sad."

For David Montero, the news hit hard,though he hopes to reinvent himself as a Hollywood script writer and filmmaker.

"I've covered a lot of funerals for soldiers who have died in Iraq," he said. "Prior to the body coming home, there's this sense that it's not real."

While the loss of a job is nothing like the death of a loved one, Montero compared the reality of Thursday's news to seeing the casket. "It's the finality of the moment," he said. "I'll miss all the people I'm not going to meet."

Like many Rocky staffers, Montero is a sole provider who is worried about supporting his wife and two young children.

"The least they could have done is brought beer," Montero quipped to Rocky columnist Mike Littwin.

"The general feeling is sad, angry or sick to your stomach," Littwin said. "I'm all three."

He and fellow columnist Tina Griego were in the uncomfortable position of being among 10 Rocky employees who will move to The Denver Post. Long before the Rocky corpse had cooled Thursday afternoon, Post managers issued a press release and sent an e-mail to subscribers touting the Rocky staffers who would be joining their ranks.

"I think it's tremendously sad," Griego said. "I felt sick to my stomach. You look around at all of our colleagues. There's such a reservoir of talent."

Several staffers took one last opportunity to use their newspaper-issued credit cards. Reporter Sara Burnett was interviewing six 80- and 90-year-old men who teased her about the Rocky missing their story for decades:

"Hey, the Rocky has been around for 150 years. How come they never wrote about us?"

Burnett apologized and paid the lunch tab - a whopping $48.

By afternoon, technicians from KCNC Channel 4 swooped into the newsroom to reclaim cameras they had installed for up-to-the-minute analysis from Rocky reporters. Near the elevators, managers were using a sledge hammer, power tools and a knife to cut into a wall. Officially, they were unearthing a time capsule.

But, Rocky sports columnist and resident comedian Sam Adams had the perfect explanation: "They've already locked us out. We're trying to cut a hole in the wall and crawl back in."

As evening approached, the newsroom was on fire like a fast-paced election night.

"Look around," said Mark Wolf, host for the Rocky Web site, as co-workers raced to blog, shoot and write the newspaper's obituary. He joked that the room was full of "guys on the way to the gallows, twittering at every step."

Wolf, himself, shot video during the first five minutes of the announcement, then posted it immediately to the paper's Web site, where he elicited comments from mournful subscribers all day.

As for his co-workers, Wolf wasn't surprised at the manic pace Thursday.

"They're going to fight this thing to the end," he said. "It's what we do."

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