The Denver Post editorial board has taken the unusual step of calling out its own hedge-fund owners in a scathing opinion package.

In a six-page editorial section published Sunday, which first appeared online a few days ago, the Denver daily decries deep cutbacks by owner Alden Global Capital that have shriveled its newsgathering staff from about 300 several years ago to fewer than 100 today. Some two dozen staffers are exiting Monday.

“Denver deserves a newspaper owner who supports its newsroom,” the editorial states. “If Alden isn’t willing to do good journalism here, it should sell The Post to owners who will.”

The piece calls on “our community and civic leaders … to demand better.” It includes a 2013 staff photo with the bodies of dozens of since-departed journalists blacked out.

Accompanying the Post editorial board’s manifesto are supportive opinion pieces by former Post staffers, including ex-editor Gregory L. Moore, as well as by Independence Institute President Jon Caldara, who writes a column for the paper.

The protest is unusual enough – even in an era of shriveling newspaper staffs nationwide – that it drew a front-page story in Sunday’s New York Times, which begins: “The Denver Post is in open revolt against its owner.”

The Times credits Chuck Plunkett, The Post’s editorial page editor, for masterminding the package.

Plunkett said he did not give advance notice of the protest to executives at Digital First Media, the Alden-owned holding company for The Post and dozens of other newspapers, or to The Post’s editor, Lee Ann Colacioppo. (Digital First is the business name of Denver-based MediaNews Group.)

Under the paper’s management structure, Colacioppo does not oversee the Post editorial pages, nor is she a member of the editorial board. She told the Times that she and Digital First chief operating officer Guy Gilmore agreed that Plunkett would “stay on as editorial page editor” following the insurrectionist incident.

The Alden cuts have come despite the fact that parent company Digital First is “solidly profitable,” according to a memo last year from its then-CEO. In fact, the company recently bought the Boston Herald daily.

Denver Mayor Michael Hancock applauded the Post editorial board’s move:

“Denver is so proud of our flagship newspaper for speaking out. … For a New York hedge fund to treat our paper like any old business and not a critical member of our community is offensive. We urge the owners to rethink their business strategy or get out of the news business. Denver stands with our paper and stands ready to be part of the solution that supports local journalism and saves the 125-year-old Voice of the Rocky Mountain Empire.”

Full disclosure: Mark Harden was an editor and reporter at The Denver Post from 1993 to 2007 before taking a voluntary buyout in a staff cut.