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Kevin Flynn, the former transportation reporter for the Rocky Mountain News, is unemployed. So how did he publish a news story Monday on a Good Samaritan who was ticketed for jaywalking? And why was he on deadline Tuesday night?

The home for Flynn's three stories since the Rocky closed on Friday is I Want My Rocky, a Web site created by Rocky employees in December to advocate saving the paper. They also envisioned the site as a gathering place for former Rocky employees if the paper ended up closing. And now, just days after the Rocky printed its final edition, I Want My Rocky is a nascent local news site, publishing and linking to the work of its former transportation, arts, and sports reporters.

"A lot of people are looking at it to launch what's next. We don't know what's next," said Steve Foster, a former assistant sports editor and one of the creators of I Want My Rocky.

Foster and the former journalists posting to I Want My Rocky are making a similar argument as before -- that Rocky journalism is worth saving, even if it's not printed under that distinctive masthead anymore and distributed to a couple hundred thousand people around Denver.

When the paper was for sale, "the fact that was constantly hammered home to us, whenever we asked, is that the newspaper has no value. It has negative value; it's worth only what someone is willing to lose on it," Foster said. "I believe I have value. There's reporters who have real value."

Tuesday night, Flynn wrote a story about a funding crisis facing the regional rail system. Wednesday morning, he had another one on the city of Denver's decision to change how its traffic lights operate, a move spurred by his previous reporting. Both are classic beat stories from a specialized reporter who is familiar with ongoing issues and can provide context to readers.

For now, he's publishing his work on I Want My Rocky, but he plans to set up a transportation reporting site with breaking news and analysis. "I am discussing revenue models with some folks this week, have a domain reserved and hope to launch it soon," he said in an e-mail Tuesday night as he was at home waiting for a conference call on the rail system.

Similarly, Foster has teamed up with the two reporters who covered the Colorado Rockies for the paper to create a baseball news site called Inside the Rockies. That site launched Monday.

While there are plenty of blogs, many with good content, about Denver's professional baseball team, "none of those people writing those blogs can call up Bud Selig anytime they want. Tracy Ringolsby can," Foster said.

The group of former employees who run I Want My Rocky decided over the weekend to start using it as a landing page for reporting, reviews and other work by ex-Rocky journalists, Foster said. While he wishes the site had more content, and it's a work in progress, he said traffic this week is up about 40 percent since its early days in December.

The navigation at the top of I Want My Rocky has been changed to reflect its emerging focus, with news and sports and arts and entertainment categories. On the left side is the heading "Where are we now?" followed by the names of about 20 former employees with links to their online homes. Some of those links are personal blogs, others are work-related. If Flynn's transportation news site and Inside the Rockies take hold, perhaps more of those links will lead to niche news blogs, Foster said.

"This gives people a chance to show that they're still willing to do this," Foster said.  "Just because their newspaper has folded, doesn't mean they're not still willing to cover this stuff. And there are stories still left untold."

Flynn is a good example. "Kevin is breaking news and was breaking news up until the day he was told, 'Don't do it,'" Foster said. "He's really serious about it. He has the opportunity now to use the site to remind people, 'I cover a valuable beat.'"

As for Inside the Rockies, Foster said the trio of him, Ringolsby and Jack Etkin should be able to cover all of the Rockies' home games and about half of the away games. The site should benefit from the writers' established followings, Foster said.

More than a temporary home for out-of-work journalists, Flynn said he wants to see whether I Want My Rocky can be an aggregator of local, beat-based niche sites that, alone, couldn't sustain audiences large enough to be viable.

"What needs to happen is finding a way to reach the general-interest audience, like printed newspapers do," he said in an e-mail. "Until then, local information is being disseminated online in such a fragmented fashion that the people who follow education on, say, ednewscolorado.org never stumble across my transportation coverage -- even though there's a great deal of cross-cutting impacts, especially regarding funding choices."

"I know the technology and even the interest exists, but so far the revenue model doesn't, at least in a way that would support an actual newsroom full of specialists."

The financial future is uncertain. While Inside the Rockies is "absolutely a for-profit model," Foster sees I Want My Rocky as a nonprofit home for any former Rocky journalist. He does need to offset some of the cost of running it, so at the least he plans to sign up for some automatic ad placements. 

Foster said he hasn't decided how long he will go down this path. He's still looking at job listings. But considering how the last two newspaper jobs worked out -- he was laid off from the Chicago Sun-Times 14 months ago -- starting at another one isn't appealing.

He suspects that many of his former colleagues "feel, like me, that they want greater control of their destiny now. ... I'm not necessarily a free agent forever, but for right now, in this situation, it feels good to have something to do," he said.

"I had a busy day. And when you're suddenly unemployed, having a busy day is a good way to feel good about yourself."