Will Post owner get handed monopoly without showing his JOA cards at all?

The days of the nearly free Denver daily newspaper are over.

The Denver Rocky Mountain News’ deep discounting and penny-a-day deals, accordin

g to Justice Department investigators, only brought the Rocky closer to financia

l disaster, with the paper showing an operating loss of $19.73 million in the fi

rst half of this year.

It’s dismal numbers like these that has the proposed Joint Operating Agr

eement (JOA) between the Rocky and The Denver Post zooming through Justice check

points while just barely slowing down for investigators to look under the seats.

This month antitrust regulators gave their go-ahead…