DENVER — Neil Westergaard — who spent more than 30 years reporting and guiding the news of the Denver area and served for 18 of those years as the editor of Denver Business Journal as the paper transitioned from a print-focused to digitally focused product — died late Sunday.
He was 67, having retired just one year ago.
Westergaard, who mentored a generation of journalists that have gone on to local and national prominence, was a reporter’s editor as well as a publisher’s editor, friends and colleagues remembered Monday — someone who inspired fierce loyalty among reporters as he pushed them to get the whole story but also increased the community relevance of both DBJ and, before that, The Denver Post as he guided their newsrooms.
He was in many ways a “straight-out-of-central-casting” newspaper editor, as Pete Casillas, former DBJ publisher and current VP of local markets for American City Business Journals, described him — hard-driving and irascibly news-focused, but also someone who offered a gentle teaching hand to his staff and loved to get away to sail or ski.
Westergaard, who had received the Colorado Press Association Newspaper Person of the Year just this April, went into the hospital not long after getting that honor and died due to complications from heart surgery and kidney failure.
“He was a mentor to me. He brought young writers on board. He maintained that talent and helped people to succeed,” said Mark Harden, who worked under Westergaard at both The Post and DBJ, serving as the news editor at DBJ until shortly before Westergaard’s retirement. “There are so many people who really owe their careers to him and who are in a happier place now professionally and personally because he took the time to take people under his wing.”
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