Symons, editor in chief of Denver Biz Journal forerunner, dies at 90

Cle Cervi Symons, who was editor of Cervi’s Rocky Mountain Journal, the predecessor to the Denver Business Journal, died Dec. 30 at the age of 90.

An obituary states, “She attended St. Mary’s Academy; received her BA in Journalism from the University of Colorado Boulder in 1956; and spent a decade in Manhattan after graduation. When stardom didn’t pan out, she moved back to Denver and worked at the weekly business newspaper her father had started – Cervi’s Rocky Mountain Journal (today known as the Denver Business Journal). She met her husband Bill Symons at the Denver Press Club, they were married on January 15, 1972 and had two daughters. Clé lived a life of service to others. She mentored writers through the Denver Woman’s Press Club, journalists at small papers, and students through The Bridge Project.”

Symons was inducted into the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame in 2006.

She took over the paper, one of the first business newspapers in the country when it started in 1948, in 1966. In 1957, Time magazine called it a “thriving $12-a-year Denver paper is a sassy, fact-crammed compendium of personals, local business transactions (including almost every new car sale in town) and well-honed gibes at such unlikely targets as the Chamber of Commerce, complacent businessmen, Scripps-Howard’s Rocky Mountain News and the powerful Denver Post.”

The publication is now part of American City Business Journals.