Peters had become a folk hero for a faction of the political right who say they believe Joe Biden stole the presidential election from Donald Trump in 2020.

A Western Slope judge and jury had sent Peters, a white-haired septuagenarian election denier, to the slammer in 2024 after she orchestrated a security breach of her county’s own election system in 2021. She did so as part of a “failed attempt to uncover voter fraud,” according to the Colorado Sun.

Republican President Donald Trump had been demanding that Colorado leaders release Peters. He even offered her a “pardon,” though it was merely symbolic.

Some of Colorado’s Democratic politicians have accused Trump of punishing Colorado over the imprisonment of Peters by dismantling the National Center for Atmospheric Research and by withholding funds for Colorado’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, among other things.

For months, Trump’s allies in Colorado, some of whom are known to use particularly violent rhetoric, seethed into podcast mics about how “Hero Tina” must go free.

As pressure mounted, Polis indicated in media interviews that he might offer Peters clemency, citing her age, health, the severity of the sentence, and whether she showed contrition.

He finally did it last Friday.

Peters was among more than three dozen other commutations and pardons. The governor said in a series of statements and media interviews that he chose to commute her sentence because he believed her “free speech” had led in part to a “disparate” and “unusual” sentence that was too harsh for a first-time nonviolent offender.

Because of this clemency, Peters could walk free on parole June 1.

“This is not a pardon. It’s really making sure that her free speech was not a criteria for her overly harsh sentencing,” Polis said, according to Colorado Public Radio. He added: “In this case, there is absolutely both the appearance and, frankly, I believe the likelihood, that her speech was considered in her sentencing.”

In another interview, Polis said while Peters has “crazy” and “conspiratorial” viewpoints that aren’t true, “that is not a crime in our country or in our state.” People, he said, are “allowed to believe whatever you want to believe and say what you want to say.” He said it is a “core tenet that people should not be penalized for free speech.”

The governor said he agreed with an April decision by the Colorado Court of Appeals that found the judge in Mesa County, Matthew D. Barrett, had “obviously erred” by imposing a sentence “at least partially based on Peters’s protected speech.”

From that unanimous 78-page opinion:

Peters contends that the trial court violated her First Amendment right under the United States Constitution and her right under article II, section 10 of the Colorado Constitution because it punished her based on her protected speech regarding allegations of election fraud. We agree.

Much of the decision, which was rendered by a panel of three judges who former Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper had appointed, centered on what trial court Judge Barrett said from the bench when he took Peters to task during a blistering sentencing hearing.

“There are many things in my mind that are crystal clear about this case. You are no hero,” Barrett told Peters in court. “You abused your position and you’re a charlatan who used and is still using your prior position in office to [peddle] a snake oil that’s been proven to be junk time and time again. In your world, it’s all about you.”

The “damage” Peters caused, Barrett said, “is just as bad, if not worse, than the physical violence that this court sees on an all too regular basis.” He called it “particularly damaging when those words come from someone who holds a position of influence like you.”

“Every effort to undermine the integrity of our elections and public’s trust in our institutions has been made by you. You’ve done it from that lectern,” Judge Barrett continued. “The voting public provided you with everything you’ve done has been done to retain control influence [sic]. The damage is immeasurable. And every time it gets refuted, every time it’s shown to be false, just another [tale] is weaved.”

The appeals court cited Judge Barrett’s soliloquy and ruled that his “comments about Peters’s belief in the existence of 2020 election fraud went beyond relevant considerations for her sentencing.”

The appeals court remanded Peters to a lower court for resentencing. That’s when Polis stepped in — and, to hear his critics loudly proclaim, stepped in it.

In the days after he commuted Peters’ sentence, nearly 90% of the Colorado Democratic Party’s central committee voted to censure Polis. “As part of the censure, the party will bar Polis from being a featured speaker or honored guest at official Democratic functions,” the Colorado Sun reported.

Both the state’s Democratic attorney general and secretary of state ripped into their fellow statewide officeholder and harshly condemned his decision.

Colorado U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, who is running for governor, said on CNN that he would not consider Polis as his replacement in the Senate, calling what Polis had done “disqualifying.”

When the governor showed up on Tuesday at an event hosted by the nonprofit Colorado Sun news site, he said he believed he would be remembered “fondly” for his decision. Protestors later interrupted the gathering with a large banner reading “EAT SHIT POLIS.”

Colorado’s most prominent nightly news anchor, Kyle Clark of 9NEWS, reported that Polis had done something disparate of his own when he commuted Peters. He said on air that the governor “knows he gave Tina Peters special treatment.”

Clark was referring to a paragraph that has appeared in “every other one of his commutation letters” that did not appear in the one for Clerk Peters. That paragraph was about the subject taking “full accountability” for their actions, being “remorseful,” and how Polis believes the incarcerated individual will “be successful” upon their release.

Polis, Clark said, better hope that Peters is not successful.

“Because if Tina Peters is successful upon her release in helping President Trump overthrow American elections,” he said, “that commutation letter is the only thing Jared Polis will ever be remembered for.”

In Peters’ backyard, the editorial board of the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel opined that their former elections clerk was ready to “fit Gov. Polis” with a clown nose.

Taking up for the embattled governor, though, was the Denver Post editorial board, which includes opinion page editor Megan Schrader, the paper’s top editor, Lee Ann Colacioppo, the paper’s vice president of technology, Bob Kinney, editorial administrator Monica Brewer, and systems editor TJ Hutchinson.

“We cannot look at the 9-year sentence and not consider the importance of the First Amendment and our deeply held commitment to free speech,” the board wrote in its May 16 editorial.

More from the editorial:

We fear, given the courtroom record, that it was in part her protected speech about stolen elections that elicited such an unusually harsh sentence, and a three-judge appeals court panel that reviewed her case agrees.

In that sense, while Tina Peters is dangerously wrong about Colorado’s election security, Gov. Jared Polis is right to offer her clemency.

Nationally, Jeremy Schulman, the senior editor of the liberal Mother Jones magazine, published a piece under the headline “Jared Polis Did the Right Thing,” sticking largely to the free-speech angle. Schulman wrote that he has “no doubt that Peters will continue spreading damaging election conspiracy theories in the years to come. But prison is not the solution to that.”

Concerns over the First Amendment and free speech aside, beyond a social media post by Colorado Newsline’s Chase Woodruff, I haven’t seen much in the reporting and commentary thus far about Polis saying why exactly he stepped in before Peters’ resentencing.

The very reason the appeals court ordered a lower court to resentence her was because of the same reasons Polis gave for offering her clemency — her free speech and First Amendment rights.

Republican Mesa County District Attorney Dan Rubinstein told his hometown TV station this week that he was disturbed by the governor’s actions, which he called irresponsible.

“I disagreed with the Court of Appeals,” he told KJCT, “and I was and will continue to have conversations with the Attorney General’s office because I believe we are going to cross-petition to the Colorado Supreme Court to overturn that conclusion that there were First Amendment implications.”

In other words, those free speech concerns might have had another opportunity for legal adjudication.

“The system exists to have an appellate process be functional. That was subverted,” Rubinstein said. “It exists so that we make sure that people are treated fairly and equally. And whether it’s true or not, the optics of this are terrible that an upper middle class white woman who has powerful friends had the governor step in on her behalf and change the sentence.”

One Colorado-based reporter who spoke to Polis told me that the governor said he believed Peters could stay in prison for perhaps the next year or more until a resentencing took place. Because her lawyers are appealing other issues related to her conviction to the Colorado Supreme Court, the reporter said, they’d need to resolve them before a resentencing. “By the time they did, she’d probably be eligible for parole and would have likely been released,” the reporter said.

By many accounts in news coverage this week, Colorado’s self-styled libertarian-minded Democratic governor, who is term-limited and will leave office next year, certainly did something to his legacy.

Alan Franklin, the deputy director of Progress Now, Colorado’s largest progressive organization, said that nearly a week later, he still hadn’t seen a good answer for why Polis got out in front of Peters’ resentencing.

“I’d like to know,” he said. “In light of this it seems like needless self-inflicted political pain on Gov. Polis’ part. But I haven’t seen those calling for Polis’ impeachment acknowledge this either. Must be inconvenient for them too.”

➡️ This newsletter is proudly sponsored by The Colorado Health Foundation. As a proud funder of Colorado Media Project, the home of Press Forward Colorado, the CHF understands that healthy communities need a healthy news ecosystem.

This year, The Colorado Health Foundation is working to combat disinformation and misinformation, and helping nonprofits build media literacy.

• ⛰ The Colorado Health Symposium in Keystone is open for registration. You don’t want to miss one of the best events of the year in Colorado.

The Colorado News Collaborative called our annual Pulse Poll a “trove of information useful to reporters.” The Colorado Health Foundation’s Katie Peshek talked to journalists across the state about the poll results, which you can watch here. We also have Pulse Poll slides here, showing how you can use what we found to guide your reporting on topics and bring facts and data to your stories. ⬅️

As Denver Post workers get a union contract, the paper offers a round of buyouts

Following months of contract negotiations, workers for the Denver Post won raises for staff.

The new contract gives workers a 3% pay increase this year, and another 3% next year. The Post is financially controlled by the Alden Global Capital hedge fund.

The 37-page contract, posted to the website of the Denver Newspaper Guild, states it is effective April 19 and was signed April 24.

One notable provision in it involves artificial intelligence. The upshot is that the newspaper company agreed that within the next year it would not lay off a unionized worker as a result of replacing that worker’s job “in its entirety with AI technology.”

Another provision states that the company can modify its use of AI as it sees fit as long as it makes the policy more restrictive. But, if the company intends to modify its AI policy in a way that is less restrictive, or requires “bargaining unit employees to utilize AI,” then the newspaper “will provide the employees and the Guild with notice of such proposed changes.”

This newsletter previously reported on the Post’s AI policy last April.

Elsewhere in the contract, it states that a Denver Post employee’s byline “shall not be used over their protest.” Another provision states that workers are “free to engage in any activities outside of working hours, provided such activities do not consist of services performed for media in direct competition with the Employer and provided further that without permission no employee shall exploit their connection with the Employer in the course of such activities. The employee must consult with a senior editor prior to performing any work for other media.”

Weeks after the new contract was signed, however, the overlords asked for buyouts. That would be the first time in about a decade I can recall that happening. I’m told the company is looking for four of them, and the newsroom labor union’s unit is currently 40 people.

“We’re deeply disappointed by the decision of our corporate owners to further shrink our hardworking, award-winning newsroom,” the Denver Post newsroom unit leadership said in a statement to this newsletter. “The buyouts were offered to the most senior journalists at the paper. Those eligible, combined, have worked for the Denver Post for more than 300 years. Those who choose to take the offer will be deeply missed by their coworkers and our readers.”

The newspaper is currently running a special promotion: $2 for two years.

Brian ‘Scoop’ Nemeth launches podcast to uplift neurodivergency & physically disabled

Denver media personality Brian “Scoop” Nemeth, who once aspired to be the Black Bill O’Reilly, has started a podcast about disability and the media.

Called the Fierce and Fearless Podcast, the show is built like “old-school talk radio,” the host said in a launch announcement. “This isn’t inspiration porn,” he said, “this is real-mother-fucking talk.”

Nemeth was a known fixture in downtown Colorado Springs throughout the early 2000s when he would sell his writings to passersby up and down Tejon Street. In 2015, the great former KRCC podcast “Wish We Were Here” profiled what the hosts called the “man with high-functioning autism” and his ambitions to become a news anchor. In 2011, after graduating from Pikes Peak State College, he moved to Denver to pursue journalism at Metro State.

For his new show, Nemeth promises a diverse roundup of guests and panelists. If you’ve ever felt “underestimated or being straight-up given the cold middle finger by the world, this podcast is for you,” he promised.

On his April 10 debut episode, Nemeth said when it comes to disability and the media, he wanted to talk about an elephant in the room.

“Let’s be honest for a second,” he said. “Neurodivergency and physically disabled hosts don’t exactly have an easy path into commercial talk radio.”

He then ran down a list of several Denver talk-radio hosts and said he wasn’t trying to criticize them.

“It’s about the system around them,” he said. “Radio runs on strict clocks, rigid formats, and very specific expectations about how a host is supposed to sound, react, and perform in real time. If you communicate differently … or have physical needs, those differences are often treated as problems instead of just differences.”

Nemeth said he believes that often, the problem is not with the audience, but the people involved in media companies.

“Even if a disabled or neurodivergent host is smart, engaging, and talented, it isn’t usually the audience” that has issues with it, he said. “It’s the behind-the-scenes producers, program directors, engineers, and sales teams. If the people running the booth don’t understand your disability, then pauses become dead air, processing time becomes awkward, and differences become risk.”

That’s why, he said, you often don’t see neurodivergent or disabled people on talk radio with the stars of the show. “Not because we lack ability,” he said, “but because commercial radio isn’t comfortable with how we communicate.”

That’s in part why Nemeth started the Fierce and Fearless Podcast.

Find out more about it here.

KUNC merger with Rocky Mountain Public Media moving forward

Last month, this newsletter reported that KUNC and Rocky Mountain Public Media were exploring a merger.

“Recent federal funding cuts have created a unique challenge and uncertainty for public media,” KUNC wrote in a statement at the time, “and this partnership presents an opportunity to strengthen the ecosystem while remaining deeply rooted in the communities they serve.”

This week, the heads of both outlets said the link-up is moving forward.

“Our Boards of Directors are expected to approve the merger this summer, and FCC approval is anticipated by the end of 2026,” they wrote in a joint column published in the Colorado Sun.

More from the piece:

Coverage will remain focused on issues of importance to Colorado, such as housing costs, water, government, agriculture, growth and community development — all while using local voices and content rooted in each community we serve. Being united, this effort will serve as a force multiplier, allowing us to reach new audiences and cover our region with greater breadth and depth than ever before.

What will change is our ability to do more and do it with strategic changes behind the scenes.

By aligning operations, not newsrooms, the combined organization can reduce duplication, operate more efficiently and reinvest resources into journalism, music programming and community engagement, while maintaining editorial autonomy and distinct local brands. Greater collaboration across teams, from reporting to sponsorships to events, will allow for broader reach and deeper impact than any one organization can achieve alone.

Mergers and acquisitions have become a defining theme of 2026 in Colorado’s local media scene.

Consolidation this year has hit commercial TV, public radio, and print newspapers.

➡️ As a board member of the Society of Professional Journalists Colorado Pro chapter, I’d like to invite you to join the nation’s foremost organization for journalists. SPJ is a fierce national advocate for First Amendment rights, journalistic ethics, and other values important to a free and vital press. The Colorado Pro chapter offers professional training programs and events, including the four-state Top of the Rockies competition, the region’s broadest platform for honoring journalism excellence. Each year, the chapter provides thousands of dollars in scholarships to the young journalists of tomorrow. At a time when journalists are under fire from all sides, joining SPJ is your chance to make a stand for journalism. Learn more about the chapter here, and find out how to join here. ⬅️

More Colorado media odds & ends

👀 The City of Denver and the parent company of the Denver Post “have reached a tentative agreement to resolve a months-long, multimillion-dollar lease dispute over the iconic downtown building that bears the newspaper’s name, CBS News Colorado has learned,” according to reporting from Brian Maass.

📚 🚫 Colorado libraries “recorded a 25% decrease in challenges to their books, materials, events and exhibits in 2025 compared to the previous year,” Elizabeth Hernandez reported for the Denver Post. “Last year, public libraries across the state reported 43 challenges to their books, materials, events and exhibits and two challenges to Internet policies, according to data from the Colorado Department of Education’s Library Research Service.”

🏷 A “leading LGBTQ+ publication” in Colorado is apparently for sale for $250,000. “As one of the nation's longest-running LGBTQ+ publications, it plays a vital role in connecting businesses with the community through dynamic event activations, targeted print and digital advertising, and strategic long-term partnerships,” the listing reads. The publication has a stated yearly revenue of $300,000.

⚕️ Colorado Sun columnist Mario Nicolais wrote a tribute to the ailing longtime former Colorado politics reporter Lynn Bartels. “Other reporters have tried to fill the spaces left behind by her to varying degrees of success,” he wrote. “Those with more longevity and institutional knowledge, like the Colorado Sun’s Jesse Paul, have picked up the most slack. Other, younger journalists have worked hard to establish their own voices. The news still gets reported.”

🏆 The Denver Press Club inducted five more people into its Hall of Fame. They include Denver Post Editor Lee Ann Colacioppo; Alan Kania, the Club’s historian and author of “The Denver Press Club: 150 Years of Printer’s Devils, Bohemians, and Ghosts”; Sharon Linhart, who founded Linhart Public Relations; Jim Trotter, associate editor of the Gazette in Denver and Colorado Springs, and Linda Carpio Shapley, the interim CEO of Rocky Mountain Student Media at Colorado State University.

✍️ Joshua Kendall wrote this week about how Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau “pissed off Hunter S. Thompson.”

☀️ The nonprofit Colorado Sun statewide news outlet, founded in 2018, has hired its 30th employee. One of the recent hires is Justin George, who comes from the Washington Post and is returning to Colorado, where he grew up. He will edit the Sun’s public policy team and help lead its political coverage.

🔎 Colorado’s Thy Vo is one of 11 journalists ProPublica selected for its 2026 cohort who “will receive intensive training and mentorship from ProPublica editors and staff.”

📡 A new full-time reporter, Hannah Weaver, “has been hired for the Aspen Public Radio Women’s Desk, which was created in 2025 to better understand the status of women through economic, sociocultural, regulatory, technological, and news-making contexts,” the outlet reported.

🪦 “Over the weekend the news community in Colorado lost a fierce journalist: Raetta Holdman from CBS Colorado died on Sunday,” Michelle Griego reported for CBS Colorado. “Raetta wasn’t someone you saw on air, but she was a force behind the scenes.”

📺 Hope Vanderburg is joining KRDO TV in the Springs in June after graduating from the University of Texas at Austin.

📲 Colorado Democratic Attorney General Phil Weiser, who is running for governor, urged a federal appeals court “to lift a block on a law mandating cigarette-style warning labels for social media.”

I’m Corey Hutchins, manager of the Colorado College Journalism Institute, advisor to Colorado Media Project, and a board member of the state Society of Professional Journalists chapter. For more than a decade, I’ve reported on the U.S. local media scene for Columbia Journalism Review, and I’ve been a journalist for longer at multiple news organizations. Most recently, I’ve been contributing to Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab and The Conversation. I also write the twice-monthly Community Newswire newsletter for the Center for Community News at the University of Vermont. The nonprofit Colorado Media Project is underwriting this newsletter, and my “Inside the News” column appears at COLab. (If you’d like to underwrite or sponsor this newsletter, hit me up.) Follow me on Bluesky, reply or subscribe to this weekly newsletter here, or e-mail me at CoreyHutchins [at] gmail [dot] com.

Colorado lawmakers have done what they are constitutionally obligated to do: they passed a balanced state budget.

The roughly $47 billion spending plan came after “months of painful cuts to programs and key services across the government to make up a massive budget shortfall,” Sara Wilson reported for Colorado Newsline.

Notably, part of this budget signed by Democratic Gov. Jared Polis contains language that could help bolster the local news industry.

A footnote in the now-signed budget reads:

It is the General Assembly’s intent that any agency or department that receives an appropriation for marketing, advertising, or public outreach implement a plan to prioritize expending the appropriated money with Colorado-based members of the media and to ensure that the plan includes specific strategies for prioritizing print, broadcast, and digital news organizations primarily serving Colorado’s local communities.

Colorado Press Association President and CEO Tim Regan-Porter lauded the development.

The language in the footnote matters because “trusted local news outlets remain one of the best ways to reach and inform communities across our state,” he wrote in a statement on LinkedIn. “Strong local journalism helps communities stay connected, engaged and informed.”

He also said it happened because people showed up.

“Thank you,” Regan-Porter said, “to everyone in the broad-based coalition who helped make this possible through planning meetings, coalition discussions, conversations with legislators, outreach, advocacy and showing up for Local News Day at the Capitol.”

Local News Day took place in Colorado in March.

This year, public policy to support local news took root in multiple state legislatures. Channeling state advertising dollars toward local news outlets was one way.

Last month, Maryland became the first state to pass a law requiring state agencies to “direct 50 percent of their advertising budgets to eligible local news outlets and mandate public reporting of their ad spending,” according to the national group Rebuild Local News.

More from RLN:

A comparable measure in New York City – pioneered by the Center for Community Media at CUNY – redirected $72 million to community media over five years. As a result of this groundbreaking work, San Francisco and Chicago have instituted similar set-aside policies.

Rebuild Local News has since helped refine the approach and developed model laws for government advertising set-asides and transparency requirements, which it now advocates for across the country.

The next state to do something similar could be New Jersey. Might Colorado follow, or is this footnote enough? Watch this space.

Elsewhere on the legisaltive front, Jeff Roberts of the Colorado Freedom of Inforamtion Coalition offered an end-of-session wrap-up.

“Efforts to weaken the Colorado Open Records Act and give an open meetings law exemption to the state Public Utilities Commission fell short during the 2026 session of the General Assembly,” he wrote. “State lawmakers also restored access to funeral home inspection reports, addressed the opaqueness of municipal courts and reinforced a requirement that all criminal court proceedings be livestreamed. But they rejected an attempt to increase the transparency of their own legislative caucuses and watered down a bill intended to make sure parolee assessment records remain open for inspection.”

Find out what else lawmakers did here.

➡️ This newsletter is proudly sponsored by The Colorado Health Foundation. As a proud funder of Colorado Media Project, the home of Press Forward Colorado, the CHF understands that healthy communities need a healthy news ecosystem.

This year, The Colorado Health Foundation is working to combat disinformation and misinformation, and helping nonprofits build media literacy.

• ⛰ The Colorado Health Symposium in Keystone is open for registration. You don’t want to miss one of the best events of the year in Colorado.

The Colorado News Collaborative called our annual Pulse Poll a “trove of information useful to reporters.” The Colorado Health Foundation’s Katie Peshek talked to journalists across the state about the poll results, which you can watch here. We also have Pulse Poll slides here, showing how you can use what we found to guide your reporting on topics and bring facts and data to your stories. ⬅️

Did Denver police ‘knowingly’ target journalists during 2020 George Floyd protests?

Denver police have admitted that they “did something wrong” during the George Floyd protests of 2020.

That’s according to local news coverage this week in response to an appeals court’s decision in a lawsuit. The ruling upheld a $14.75 million verdict in favor of George Floyd protesters who sued over claims of police excessive force.

Denver “has admitted its police department violated protesters’ civil rights,” Kyle Harris reported for Denverite.

From his story this week:

The complaint, filed in 2022, names 13 plaintiffs and makes sweeping accusations about police conduct during the protests:

• Denver police knowingly targeted journalists and others recording the Denver Police Department’s violent behavior.

• The department also used an “overwhelming use of force without any reasonable basis” against thousands of people.

• Officers intentionally shot people in the head.

The 13 plaintiffs were “brutalized for their political expression.”

In its own reporting, FOX31 hedged more than Denverite when the TV station broke the news on May 7.

“Denver appears to admit liability in court filing as trial over police actions during George Floyd protests starts Monday,” read the headline of a story by Vicente Arenas.

• A note: Both outlets reported a trial was set to take place this week, beginning Monday, but there has been no local coverage of a trial. The last court filing on the docket available for review through the paid PACER court document service, posted May 8, reads: “Please be advised that the parties, through counsel, have agreed upon terms to settle this matter for all Plaintiffs. Undersigned counsel certifies that he has conferred with counsel for Defendants and that counsel for Defendants has no objection to this Notice. The parties request that the trial set for May 11, 2026 be vacated.”

At issue in the reporting last week was a May 5 pre-trial federal court filing from the City and County of Denver that stated in part that “Denver has conferred with Plaintiffs extensively, and the parties have reached an agreement on Denver’s admission of liability.”

Denver’s “stipulation of liability will save significant time and resources,” the filing stated. “No longer will the jury need to clear their schedules for a three-week trial. The jury will consider evidence of Plaintiffs’ injuries and damages, not of Denver’s liability, which will expedite trial.”

The spring of 2020, in the midst of a destabilizing global pandemic, was already tense when video emerged of a police officer kneeling on the neck of an unarmed Black man in Minneapolis and killing him. Protests exploded.

In cities across the country, police fired projectiles at journalists covering the demonstrations. In plenty of documented cases, cops attacked, gassed, harassed, and arrested members of the press who were reporting. Making for a particularly sick metaphor, one photographer was blinded in the eye from a shot she says came from the direction of a police line.

Journalists in Denver took heavy fire as they covered protests downtown. At the time, this newsletter documented the various ways in which local law enforcement gassed, sprayed, and shot members of the press corps with pepper balls.

This section of the 2022 legal complaint from those who sued the Denver police outlines reports of police attacks on the press in Denver, though none of the ones named are plaintiffs in the case:

Throughout the Denver George Floyd protests, Denver police officers targeted accredited members of the press along with a multitude of individuals seeking to record police conduct. Time after time, they shot at individuals recording, seeking to limit the opportunity for those outside the protests to see their actions. And as we have seen over the past decade, the filming of police officer’s using excessive force has played a critical role in building a movement to stem the worst abuses.

On May 28, 2020, while he was covering the protests at the State Capitol, Hyoung Chang, a credentialed press photographer for The Denver Post, was struck two times by pepper-ball rounds fired by law enforcement personnel. One round cut Chang’s arm. The other shattered his press badge that was hanging around his neck. Mr. Chang was quoted after the event as saying, “If it was one shot, I can say it was an accident. I’m very sure it was the same guy twice. I’m very sure he pointed at me.”

On May 29, 2020, John Cameron attended the George Floyd protests in Denver in order to record footage as a member of the press. When DPD officers noticed him recording, and without warning, officers started firing pepper balls and rubber bullets. He turned and ran and they continued firing at him, hitting him in the back.

On May 29, 2020, at approximately 8:15 p.m., a credentialed cameraman for KMGHTV/Channel 7, was struck four times in the chest by rubber bullets fired by DPD officers. Officers also fired paintballs, hitting the front lens of his conspicuous professional-grade video camera, which was at head level when DPD officers fired on him. 37. On May 30, 2020.

On May 30, 2020, Jeremy Jojola, an on-air correspondent for KUSA-TV/9News was shot with a less-lethal projectile round while standing beside a professional cameraman from that station. The round struck Mr. Jojola’s backpack.

On May 31, 2020, Alex Burness of The Denver Post, was fired upon, without warning, by law enforcement and shot in the head and abdomen with rubber bullets. DPD officers fired at Mr. Burness just after he yelled out “PRESS.” He sustained a contusion on his head and right abdomen.

On May 31, 2020, DPD officers shot at Trevor Hughes face with rubber bullets without warning. Mr. Hughes was photographing and recording the protests near Colfax and Emerson at approximately 8:30 p.m. While recording, with the camera near his face, DPD officers shot Mr. Hughes in the hand with a rubber bullet. The shot broke and severed Mr. Hughes’s right ring finger, leaving it dangling. Mr. Hughes immediately left the protest and went to urgent care. Mr. Hughes had to have his finger surgically repaired.

Colleen Slevin of the Associated Press reported in 2022 that the trial was “believed to be the first for a lawsuit challenging the tactics of police during the protests that erupted across the United States nearly two years ago.” (The report didn’t say who believed it.)

This newsletter reached out to a Denver police spokesperson this week with a request to talk about local media reporting that authorities might have knowingly targeted journalists.

The Denver Police Department “does not comment on open litigation,” spokesman Doug Schepman said in an email. He also passed along a link to a document that laid out changes to policy and practice the department made following the 2020 protests.

One of them is that the department “discontinued” its use of “rubber-ball grenades” during crowd-control operations. Policy also now dictates the “direct-fired applications of pepperball during crowd control situations only in response to circumstances in which a person is displaying active aggression or aggravated active aggression.”

Colorado College students spotlighted in ‘Student Press Report’

If you’ve followed this newsletter long enough, you know the financial realities of local journalism can be a challenge, and the industry is in a constant state of flux.

This week, Colorado College journalism student Sydney McGarr, a student I advise, authored a piece in the Student Press Report about why some higher-ed students are still choosing journalism as a future career.

From the story:

Layoffs ripple through major U.S. newsrooms, local papers shutter at an alarming rate, politicians sharpen their attacks on the press and AI technology threatens to make journalists obsolete.

Yet, 10,073 students graduated with journalism degrees in the U.S. in 2023, according to a report by Data USA. What keeps these graduates motivated?

In this season of graduations, here’s what college journalists from around the country had to say about their career plans and their ideas about the future of the field.

“Democracy needs reporters,” Colorado College student Veronica Bianco, another advisee of mine, told McGarr for the piece. “If we turn away from the profession, the federal government wins and democracy erodes.”

Read what other college journalism students from around the country told McGarr for her story in the Student Press Report at the link above.

🌿 This week’s newsletter is proudly supported by PR firm Grasslands: A Journalism-Minded Agency™, founded by Ricardo Baca (ex-Denver Post, ex-Rocky Mountain News, and current Colorado Public Radio board of directors). We understand journalists because we were journalists — and we’re here to help. Need expert sources or compelling stories? Our diverse client roster includes beloved Colorado institutions (Naropa University and Illegal Pete’s), innovative wellness brands (Boulder County Farmers Markets, Naturally Colorado, Eden Health Club), bold natural products businesses (Wild Zora, Flatiron Food Factory, Flower Union Brands), and other purpose-driven organizations. As creators of the Colorado Journalist Meet-Up and longtime champions of quality journalism, Grasslands recognizes the essential role reporters play in our communities. Our team is ready to connect you with sources, data, and unique perspectives that elevate your reporting.

Have a story you’re working on? Email Ricardo directly: ricardo@mygrasslands.com. Together, we’re crafting better narratives — one story at a time. 🌿

More Colorado media odds & ends

💰 The Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley is launching a “new media fellowship supporting high-quality reporting on bridging and belonging in Colorado.” The center “will award up to 15 one-year grants ranging from $5,000 to $25,000, for a total of up to $150,000, to Colorado-based content producers working across a range of media, including radio, TV, newspapers, magazines, websites, podcasts, and social media. Fellows will join a community of practice which begins with an in-person convening.”

🎒 A journalist at Colorado State University was inspired by a Steve On Your Side investigation into prices at Denver International Airport by Steve Staeger at 9NEWS. So, Lauren Jones did price compaisons for food on campus and off. “Her story, published last month in the Ramspondents newsletter, found restaurants inside the Lory Student Center on CSU’s campus charged the same or less than their comparable locations off campus. The biggest surprise – the Subway on campus was priced about 20% less than at least two off campus locations.”

⚖️ A Denver activist who was sentenced to jail time for violating Colorado’s anti-doxing policy “raises questions about First Amendment rights,” Ava Kian reported for Colorado Public Radio.

💸 There’s a broad movement among policymakers and media advocates across the country “to shine a light on where public ad dollars actually go,” Rebuild Local News reported, adding that “early data from Minnesota and Colorado show that much of that spending flows to Big Tech and out-of-state platforms rather than local news organizations.”

🤞 The MATCH Lab at Colorado News Collaborative has been named a national finalist in the 2026 Next Challenge for Media & Journalism. “This is a big deal,” COLab director Laura Frank said. “The Next Challenge, from American Public Media, is the largest competition open to nonprofit and for-profit media startups in the entire country — and we’re in it! Five finalists. One winner. And we have a shot at $50,000!”

🆕 Kate Kampner is “headed to Vail, Colorado to be a general assignment reporter with Vail Daily,” she said on social media.

🏆 SPJ Colorado Pro’s friends at the Denver Press Club are honoring five media legends “with induction into its Hall of Fame. Tickets are available for two extraordinary evenings this week recognizing five luminaries who have shaped Colorado’s stories.”

🏔 Andrew Maciejewski, the regional team editor of the Colorado mountain newspaper group that includes Summit Daily News and its sister papers, wrote a personal column this week about trust and the media.

🏔 The nonprofit Ark Valley Voice newsroom has struck a unique partnership with the nonprofit Colorado Firecamp for affordable housing in Salida and is looking for an intern to live and report there this summer. Get in touch with founder Jan Wondra if you’re interested or might know of someone who is.

⚙️ Analisa Romano, a senior reporter at the Denver Business Journal since 2022, has left, “and is now freelancing,” Talking Biz News reported. “Romano covered the airport and airlines, economic development, money, health care and other professional services.”

🏆 The Colorado Springs Gazette chose Pine Creek High School valedictorian Emma Luu, a journalist, for its “Best & Brightest.” Luu “has always been fascinated by stories about overlooked moments and lives. In childhood, she lovingly chronicled the lives of the bugs and insects in her family’s garden, beginning a lifelong passion for journalism,” Rachel Wright wrote.

🆕 The Alamosa Citizen is welcoming its fourth cohort of interns to its online newsroom. “We are grateful to the funders of this year’s cohort, including the Robert Hoag Rawlings Foundation,” the outlet stated. “The Rural Journalism Institute of the San Luis Valley is the nonprofit partner of Alamosa Citizen and helps us raise critical dollars to grow a new generation of journalists working in small communities.”

🥊 They’re still trading jabs, folks: A Denver Post headline from January: “Attorney General Phil Weiser, U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet trade jabs.” Four months later from the same publication: “Michael Bennet, Phil Weiser trade jabs.”

🆕 Jessica Sachs is joining the Summit Daily News after graduating from the University of Colorado in Boulder. “Since moving to Colorado as a teenager, I’ve made it a point to grab a copy of the Summit Daily’s newspaper every time I found myself in the area,” she wrote on LinkedIn. “I’ve always been so inspired and impressed by the amazing work they put out. It’s so surreal and exciting to know that now I’ll be seeing my byline on those very same pages.”

I’m Corey Hutchins, manager of the Colorado College Journalism Institute, advisor to Colorado Media Project, and a board member of the state Society of Professional Journalists chapter. For more than a decade, I’ve reported on the U.S. local media scene for Columbia Journalism Review, and I’ve been a journalist for longer at multiple news organizations. Most recently, I’ve been contributing to Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab and The Conversation. I also write the twice-monthly Community Newswire newsletter for the Center for Community News at the University of Vermont. The nonprofit Colorado Media Project is underwriting this newsletter, and my “Inside the News” column appears at COLab. (If you’d like to underwrite or sponsor this newsletter, hit me up.) Follow me on Bluesky, reply or subscribe to this weekly newsletter here, or e-mail me at CoreyHutchins [at] gmail [dot] com.

Among those whose work the Pulitzer Prize board this week bestowed the nation’s highest journalism honors was Kevin Mohatt, a freelance photojournalist in Denver.

His photojournalism was part of a portfolio submitted on behalf of the Reuters news organization that took home a finalist nod on Monday in the Breaking News Photography category.

Judges said photos from the Reuters team were deserving for their “coverage of wide-ranging immigration enforcement actions across the United States, a portfolio distinguished by its breadth, power and immediacy.”

Shortly after last year’s inauguration, Republican President Donald Trump ordered widespread immigration crackdowns — and he specifically name-checked Aurora, Colorado, as a target.

Mohatt moved into gear.

“I wanted to show what the impact was on people,” he said over the phone this week. “On families, and on children.”

To do so, he spent several nights inside an apartment complex sleeping on couches in the homes of families who were anticipating federal ICE agents roaming the hallways and knocking on doors.

“It was exhausting work,” he said. Being able to be there took time. He cultivated the trust of a source who introduced him to others.

The point was to show through news photography how rhetoric from the nation’s top officials was at odds with the reality on the ground in communities.

“The message at the time was, ‘We’re just going after the criminals,’ which is what they said throughout the campaign,” Mohatt said. “And I wanted to show that that’s not what was really happening — that they were going after families, children, and specifically people that had documentation that are here legally that have work permits.”

From the homes of those who let him in, he documented panic and uncertainty: families loading up cars or hunkered down, waiting anxiously for roving patrols. He sometimes had to find creative ways to not show someone’s face or easily recognizable characteristics, like tattoos.

“People were terrified,” he said. Others told him they had done nothing wrong, so had nothing to hide.

The cutline of his Pulitzer-honored photo reads: “With his bag packed, a Venezuelan man peeks out the window of his apartment looking for any signs of federal agents after hearing reports that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will be coming to detain immigrants for deportation in Aurora, Colorado, January 30, 2025.”

One evening, sure enough, it happened.

While Mohatt was inside one apartment, the tell-tale signs came in quick succession: crowded footsteps in the hallway, fists pounding on doors, and loud voices in English: “Police, please open the door.”

In early February, photos he took and audio he recorded from inside an apartment at a raid in Aurora made it into a Reuters special report, not included in the Pulitzer package, titled “Inside Trump’s immigration crackdown as net widens.”

Mohatt also photographed police in ICE vests walking a man in handcuffs from Cedar Run apartments in Denver, an image that earned plenty of play across the news wires that day.

Mohatt has lived in Colorado for two decades and has been freelancing for Reuters since around 2019. He also shoots for outlets ranging from Colorado Public Radio, Colorado Newsline, 5280 magazine and the Denver Post to the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal.

This comes from a portion of his personal website: “I became a journalist because I want to help tell the whole story.”

This week, Mohatt is on assignment in Alabama, where he’s covering the impacts of a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that weakened Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

In recent days, plenty of accolades have come his way since his name and the word Pulitzer appeared in the same sentence.

He’s grateful for it, he said, adding, “I would be proud of this work regardless.”

➡️ This newsletter is proudly sponsored by The Colorado Health Foundation. As a proud funder of Colorado Media Project, the home of Press Forward Colorado, the CHF understands that healthy communities need a healthy news ecosystem.

This year, The Colorado Health Foundation is working to combat disinformation and misinformation, and helping nonprofits build media literacy.

• 🗣 Read our latest post: “How Public Comment Shapes the Policies That Shape Our Health.”

The Colorado News Collaborative called our annual Pulse Poll a “trove of information useful to reporters.” The Colorado Health Foundation’s Katie Peshek talked to journalists across the state about the poll results, which you can watch here. We also have Pulse Poll slides here, showing how you can use what we found to guide your reporting on topics and bring facts and data to your stories. ⬅️

Colorado lawmakers are scrambling to pass a softer AI law

Once poised as a pioneer for regulation in the new frontier of artificial intelligence, Colorado’s Democratic lawmakers might have bent for the tech industry in the final days of their legislative session.

That’s according to reporting by Chase Woodruff for the nonprofit Colorado Newsline digital site.

From the piece:

Colorado’s landmark 2024 legislation to protect consumers from discrimination by artificial intelligence systems couldn’t withstand the “massive amounts of money” being spent by technology companies to influence AI policymaking, the law’s architect told fellow lawmakers Tuesday.

“We could have probably built a wing here at the Capitol — built us our own ballroom — with the amount of money that’s been spent on this topic,” Sen. Robert Rodriguez, a Denver Democrat and the state Senate majority leader, told members of the Senate Business, Labor and Technology Committee.

Two years ago, Rodriguez was a sponsor of Senate Bill 24-205, a first-in-the-nation legal framework that aims to protect consumers from bias in AI-powered decisions relating to employment, housing, healthcare, insurance and more. Under a new bill sponsored by Rodriguez and other top Democrats at the Capitol, however, much of that framework would be scrapped in favor of a scaled-down compromise, negotiated behind closed doors by a governor-appointed task force.

“It’s not as comprehensive, and I am not happy with that,” said Rodriguez, who Woodruff reported characterized the new bill as responding to the reality that President Donald Trump’s administration has “decided to go a different direction on regulating AI.”

Here’s what the bill does, according to Ed Sealover of the Sum & Substance, a news arm of the Colorado Chamber of Commerce, which supports the bill:

SB 189 scraps the risk-assessment requirements in favor of transparency, mandating that AI deployers inform affected parties when the systems help to make a consequential decision and then report what information it used to reach that decision. Consequential decisions include those involving employment, housing, financial or lending services, insurance, healthcare services, education and essential government services, and those unhappy with the outcomes can ask to review and change the factual data on them.

Axios Denver’s John Frank reported that the American Civil Liberties Union and Colorado Chamber of Commerce “expressed support for the AI measure, despite often being on opposite sides of major issues.”

The new regulations “are largely the product of a task force convened by Gov. Jared Polis to make the AI rules he signed in 2024 more workable for businesses using the technology,” Frank added.

The legislation still has to clear both legislative chambers before the end of the session next week.

Comcast/Xfinity blackout resolved for Colorado TV news customers

Comcast and a company that owns Colorado local TV news stations reached an agreement this week that brought local broadcasts back for Xfinity customers.

Last month, on April Fool’s Day, nobody in Colorado could watch a local TV news channel if it was owned by the E.W. Scripps Company and they subscribed to Xfinity as their provider.

In Colorado, those stations include Denver7 in the state’s capital city and KOAA in Colorado Springs.

“We’ve reached a new agreement with E.W. Scripps Company, and their content is once again available on Xfinity,” Xfinity wrote to customers on Tuesday, May 5. “We appreciate your patience as we worked on a resolution with Scripps that allows us to continue offering their content at a fair price.”

The blackout had stemmed from a contract dispute.

“We’re pleased to have reached a new agreement with the E.W. Scripps Company and thank our customers for their understanding during the negotiations,” a Comcast spokesperson told Matthew Keys of The Desk news site. “We will continue providing credits to eligible customers for the period when the channels were temporarily unavailable.”

The dustup had marked the second Colorado TV news distribution SNAFU in a month.

In March, residents in Colorado Springs and Grand Junction who use a Dish Network satellite and streaming service lost access to TV stations owned by Gray Media after the two companies failed to come to a renewal agreement.

‘That is new’: How Colorado’s meteorologists are using AI to help report the weather

Last month, a handful of meteorologists from 9NEWS convened for a public panel hosted by the state SPJ chapter where they talked about “T-Storms, Trends & Trolls.”

This week, a group of different weathercasters presented about their craft at the annual SunFest hosted by the Colorado Sun. During the discussion, they spoke about how artificial intelligence tools are helping them with their work.

From Olivia Prentzel in the Colorado Sun:

The real advantage of AI isn’t necessarily more accurate forecasts, but speed — allowing meteorologists to run far more model simulations than was previously possible, said Joel Gratz, founding meteorologist of OpenSnow.

“Instead of running that forecast one time, five times, 10 times, you run it 50 times, 100 times, eventually you run it 1,000 times and see what those probabilities are,” Gratz said during a panel discussion with local forecasters.

9News meteorologist Chris Bianchi said as he forecast one of Colorado’s driest winters on record, marked by historically low snowpack and a late-March heat wave, he watched AI models improve in real time, delivering sharper guidance than traditional forecasts.

“I now look at the AI model over the numerical models, the old models — and that is new as of probably two months ago,” Bianchi said.

Within five years, Bianchi expects AI to significantly improve short- and medium-range forecasts, increasing the reliability of five-day outlooks and beyond.

Read the full story at the link above.

State deep-sixes a potential ‘Right to Know’ ballot measure

After state officials slapped away the proposition of a ballot measure that would ask voters to add a “Right to know” transparency proposal into the Colorado Constitution, a broad group of advocates appealed.

The Independence Institute and the League of Women Voters of Colorado requested a rehearing at the title board. That’s the state body that decides if a measure can make it on the ballot and voters will get a chance to give it a thumbs up or down.

But that board on April 24 voted 2-1 to deep-six the idea.

“The board’s decision centered on the initiative’s potential to disrupt current laws. [Board Chair Theresa] Conley said the measure’s impact on the status quo is too vague to summarize clearly for voters,” Sherrie Peif reported for the Complete Colorado digital site, which is the news and commentary arm of the Independence Institute.

From her story:

For now, the measure is dead, as proponents have decided not to appeal the decision to the Colorado Supreme Court. According to Shayne Madsen, legal counsel for Independence Institute, the group is confident they can rework the language of the amendment and get it past the Title Board for a future election.

Read the full piece at the link above.

🌿 This week’s newsletter is proudly supported by PR firm Grasslands: A Journalism-Minded Agency™, founded by Ricardo Baca (ex-Denver Post, ex-Rocky Mountain News, and current Colorado Public Radio board of directors). We understand journalists because we were journalists — and we’re here to help. Need expert sources or compelling stories? Our diverse client roster includes beloved Colorado institutions (Naropa University and Illegal Pete’s), innovative wellness brands (Boulder County Farmers Markets, Naturally Colorado, Eden Health Club), bold natural products businesses (Wild Zora, Flatiron Food Factory, Flower Union Brands), and other purpose-driven organizations. As creators of the Colorado Journalist Meet-Up and longtime champions of quality journalism, Grasslands recognizes the essential role reporters play in our communities. Our team is ready to connect you with sources, data, and unique perspectives that elevate your reporting.

Have a story you’re working on? Email Ricardo directly: ricardo@mygrasslands.com. Together, we’re crafting better narratives — one story at a time. 🌿

More Colorado media odds & ends

🙏 The Colorado Senate on Thursday honored longtime Denver Post bureau chief Fred Brown with a “ceremony as distinctive as the journalist himself, donning masks bearing his likeness and celebrating his five decades of shaping political reporting and ethical standards in the state,” Marianne Goodland reported for Colorado Politics.

📰 Arlene Solis “found her passion for journalism between art class and room 3352, home of the school newspaper at Boulder High School — and now she's helping bring the school's student paper, The Owl, to life,” Mike Castellucci reported for Denver7. “In the Owl’s April edition, Solis earned a front-page byline for her story on Boulder High School’s 150th anniversary, a milestone the school shares with the state of Colorado.”

💰 Gov. Jared Polis this week signed a law “requiring parents to set up trusts for children who appear on social media,” Marissa Ventrelli reported for the Denver Gazette. “Under House Bill 1058, parents must create a trust for their child if the family earns at least $40,000 a year from online content, the child appears in 30% or more of that content each month, and the content generates at least 10 cents per view.”

⚖️ On Wednesday, the Department of Justice announced DISH Wireless LLC, located in Englewood, Colorado, “would pay $17,280,240 for violations related to the Federal Communications Commission’s affordable internet program,” Bryce Patterson reported for KKTV.

💥 “A former Denver Post editor and veteran journalist was among the guests inside the White House Correspondents’ Dinner when gunfire erupted, triggering chaos and a lockdown at one of the most high‑profile events in Washington, D.C.,” reported Kelly Werthmann for CBS Colorado. “Ricardo Baca attended the annual dinner Saturday night at the Washington Hilton with his wife, representing Colorado Public Radio. Not 48 hours later and back home in Denver, Baca spoke with CBS News Colorado about the moment when shots were fired outside the ballroom, just feet from where they were seated.”

📺 Brett Forrest is wrapping up his role as a senior reporter and anchor for KOAA News5 in the Springs in July and said he is “beginning the search for what’s next in Denver or beyond.” Over the past few years, he built his career “covering high-stakes stories in real time—from wildfires and elections to breaking news situations where accuracy and clarity matter most,” he wrote on LinkedIn. “If you’re hiring—or know someone who is—I’d welcome a conversation.”

❌ An item in last week’s newsletter transposed which station would absorb another in Colorado Springs. The E.W. Scripps-owned KOAA would absorb the Gray-owned KKTV.

🆕 The Denver Post this week took advantage of a new Google feature that allows users to “deepen your understanding of current events and news by selecting your preferred source.” The Post emailed subscribers with instructions about steps they can take “to see the Denver Post content more frequently in your searches.” The email subject line read “Make sure trusted sources appear first in your search results!”

🎬 A free event featuring a screening of the documentary “Truth Be Told” by filmmaker Brian Malone “and a discussion that includes Colorado journalists will give readers a peek behind the curtain of local news,” the Summit Daily News reported. “The event will be held from 5-8 p.m. Thursday, May 14, at Silverthorne Pavilion.”

🏆 The digital nonprofit progressive news site Colorado Times Recorder won an honor in the “Top of the Rockies” contest for a story headlined “Five CO Springs News Outlets Scrub Their Websites of an Article About the Arrest of Former GOP Council Member.”

📧 Alice Brooker of the Press Gazette reported on the expansion of the Axios Local daily email newsletter empire and noted it had expanded into Colorado Springs and “its 36th and 37th newsletters will launch in Arapahoe County and Douglas County, both in Colorado, this month.”

I’m Corey Hutchins, manager of the Colorado College Journalism Institute, advisor to Colorado Media Project, and a board member of the state Society of Professional Journalists chapter. For more than a decade, I’ve reported on the U.S. local media scene for Columbia Journalism Review, and I’ve been a journalist for longer at multiple news organizations. Most recently, I’ve been contributing to Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab and The Conversation. I also write the twice-monthly Community Newswire newsletter for the Center for Community News at the University of Vermont. The nonprofit Colorado Media Project is underwriting this newsletter, and my “Inside the News” column appears at COLab. (If you’d like to underwrite or sponsor this newsletter, hit me up.) Follow me on Bluesky, reply or subscribe to this weekly newsletter here, or e-mail me at CoreyHutchins [at] gmail [dot] com.

Tensions can be high in the final days of Colorado’s legislative session, and on Tuesday morning they flared on the Senate floor about a bill over newspaper carriers.

At issue was legislation that would allow Colorado newspaper companies to classify those who deliver their papers as independent contractors instead of full-time employees.

“Throughout the state, almost every paper operates and employs them as independent contractors,” Colorado Springs Democratic Sen. Marc Snyder, who is the former mayor of Manitou Springs, said from the well of the Senate.

He said the bill was meant largely to help smaller newspapers — or even some larger ones like his hometown newspaper, the Gazette — and that he believes some of those who deliver papers don’t want to be classified as full-time employees.

“They like doing this work as an independent contractor,” he said.

Democratic Sen. Lisa Cutter of Jefferson County, who has a background in public relations and communications, reminded her colleagues that she supports workers’ rights. But the bill is narrow, she said, and is aimed at helping the state’s struggling newspapers with their bottom lines.

“I have a deep concern about local news and newspapers being able to continue to thrive,” she said. “I think that’s a key tenet of democracy; it’s something that’s really important to all of us, especially in some of these smaller communities.”

If newspaper companies had to classify delivery people differently than independent contractors, she said, it would be “incredibly costly” for an industry with a business model that’s already in jeopardy.

But not so fast, said Denver Democratic Sen. Julie Gonzales, who told her colleagues that the AFL-CIO labor union opposes the bill. The measure, she said, was an example of how “corporate power, yet again, seeks to change the rules to benefit themselves.”

Gonzales, who is running against U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper in the Democratic primary, called the Denver Post a “behemoth” within the newspaper industry and said she worried it could be seeking to advance policy that would favor it instead of compensating its workers fairly. She rattled off the well-documented history of the Post’s hedge-fund owner gutting newsrooms around the country to juice its shareholders.

If lawmakers shift who becomes an independent contractor when it comes to newspaper carriers, she argued, what’s next?

“I understand wholeheartedly that the billionaires who own the Denver Post don’t want to pay their workers fairly,” she said. “I get that. Why would we then change the law to allow that to continue?” She said lawmakers are being told that “journalism is starving” and she questioned whether the answer to that for paper carriers is, “let’s ensure that they get paid the least.”

Back at the podium, Snyder said the Denver Post was never a part of the legislation. He acknowledged that he had heard the newspaper’s third-party vendor has had to cough up back pay for not paying their delivery people correctly.

“But that has nothing to do with our bill,” he said. “Our bill is dealing about the truly independent contractors from the small papers in Grand Junction to Durango.”

As for unions, he said he had spoken to the Teamsters who have a contract with the Denver Post, and said other labor groups have only taken issue with the legislation recently.

“I think we have to recognize that we all know the existential threat independent news is facing in today’s world,” he said. “What we’re doing with this bill is saying that this is a system that works for them. We just want to put it into statute so they have some certainty and know that they can continue operating the way that they historically have.”

Back on the mic, Cutter told the assembled senators that there’s no way she and the other sponsors of the bill would have done something to support the “venture capital firm that bought out the Denver Post.” Someone who throws papers for two hours in the morning, she said, shouldn’t be considered a full-time employee with all the benefits that would entail.

The bill has the support of the Colorado Press Association, whose president and CEO, Tim Regan-Porter, said in an interview that there have been inconsistent rulings about whether paper carriers were contractors or not.

There is general confusion about state laws regarding the issue, he said, and “we just wanted some clarity.”

Following speeches from a handful of other senators for and against the bill, some of whom spoke nostalgically about their childhoods hurling newspapers for money to buy baseball cards, the Senate approved it.

The legislation has headed to the House. If it passes out of there, it could go to the governor’s desk.

➡️ This newsletter is proudly sponsored by The Colorado Health Foundation. As a proud funder of Colorado Media Project, the home of Press Forward Colorado, the CHF understands that healthy communities need a healthy news ecosystem.

This year, The Colorado Health Foundation is working to combat disinformation and misinformation, and helping nonprofits build media literacy.

• 👀 Our new legislative district profiles provide 2025 data and insights for every House, Senate, and congressional district in the state.

The Colorado News Collaborative called our annual Pulse Poll a “trove of information useful to reporters.” The Colorado Health Foundation’s Katie Peshek talked to journalists across the state about the poll results, which you can watch here. We also have Pulse Poll slides here, showing how you can use what we found to guide your reporting on topics and bring facts and data to your stories. ⬅️

FCC approves Colorado TV news station swaps: ‘we haven’t been told anything’

Republican President Donald Trump’s FCC has given the green light for more TV news consolidation in Colorado.

The so-called station swaps involve E.W. Scripps and Gray Media and would affect stations in Colorado Springs and Grand Junction and would create a duopoly.

The move means that the Gray-owned KKTV will be absorbed into the Scripps-owned KOAA in Colorado Springs. In Grand Junction, the NBC affiliate KKCO will merge with the ABC affiliate KJCT.*

This newsletter warned of the possibility of this in July and later reported on it in the context of broader potential consolidation deals and how they might affect Colorado.

“Like the $6.2 billion merger of Tegna and Nexstar, Scripps’ trade with Gray Media raises worries about market concentration,” wrote Nicole Vap for the Colorado Sun.

“How the duopolies will impact Colorado remains to be seen, but the subject tends to raise strong feelings,” Alex Edwards reported in the Gazette.

Brett Forrest, a journalist for KOAA, wrote on social media that a Scripps corporate email stated the deal still needs review by antitrust regulators.

“Until then, timeline is unclear on when the community might see any changes,” he wrote. “As far as what newscasts will look like or how many jobs might be lost in the acquisition, we haven't been told anything.”

Another newspaper merger, this time in the San Luis Valley

The Valley Courier, which serves the Alamosa area, is the latest small newspaper in the San Luis Valley to merge into the SLV Journal.

This week, the papers announced they are “combining operations to create a single newspaper with stories from all 6 counties, including some stories we haven’t covered outside of Alamosa before.”

From the announcement:

This newspaper will reflect what the San Luis Valley has always been - not six totally different counties who have nothing to do with each other, but an entire valley made up of six different, yes, but connected counties.

The new publication experiment begins April 29 and will adopt a community-size format, a design shift driven by reader preference. Research shows 83% of U.S. readers prefer a community-size publication over a traditional page size. This change also allows for an expanded availability of color pages.

Last fall, five newspapers in the valley, all owned by Valley Publishing, Inc., consolidated into a single newspaper called the SLV Journal.

In 2023, eight newspapers that included five of those impacted in this rollup changed hands when the maverick millennial Wyoming newspaper publisher J. Louis Mullen bought them from an Illinois company that had previously owned them.

Publisher Brian Williams framed the news as a “great opportunity” for the communities to have one large publication to serve what he called “expanded” areas.

“We are focusing on engagement with our readers and communities as a top priority, and this move gives us the strongest go-to-market strategy,” he said in a statement. “We are listening to how our communities and readers respond to this new project.”

The move reflects a broader trend in Colorado towards more consolidation in the local news industry, whether it be in commercial TV, public radio, or newspapers. These mergers have become a defining characteristic of 2026.

Creating ‘space for more community voices to be heard’: Toni Tresca rising

If you follow arts, culture, and entertainment in Colorado, you have no doubt seen the byline — multiple times, probably — of Toni Tresca in various publications.

The young and prolific journalist, who earned a Master of Business Administration and Master of Arts in Theatre and Performance Studies from the University of Colorado, Boulder, is fast becoming a go-to source for information on the beat.

National journalistic tastemakers have taken note. This month, the 25-year-old who serves as editor of Bucket List Community News in Denver made Editor & Publisher magazine’s list “25 Under 35.”

Here’s some of what he told E&P for its writeup of what the magazine calls “Tomorrow’s News Trailblazers”:

What impact do you hope to make on journalism and the media landscape?

Through my editing work, I hope to help bring more hyperlocal stories to light and elevate the voices of the communities they come from. Local journalism is at its strongest when it reflects the daily lives of the people who live there and delves into the neighborhood-level stories that shape a community’s identity.

At Bucket List, much of my role as an editor involves helping writers identify and develop stories that might otherwise be overlooked. That can mean coverage of neighborhood initiatives, local arts organizations, small businesses, civic issues or community-led events. These stories may not always make national news, but they are often the ones that matter most to the people who live there.

Editing gives me the opportunity to help amplify those voices. My goal is to work with reporters to make sure the people at the center of these stories are heard clearly and represented accurately. Sometimes that means helping shape a reporter’s idea into a stronger narrative; other times it means encouraging them to dig a little deeper to capture the perspectives that make a story truly reflective of a community.

I believe hyperlocal journalism plays a critical role in helping people feel connected to the places they live. If my work as an editor can help surface more of those stories and create space for more community voices to be heard, I feel like I’m contributing to a stronger, more inclusive local media landscape.

In October, Tresca sat for an interview with Bucket List Community News for its “5 Questions” series. Read it here to learn more about a shining young Colorado talent.

Colorado journalists and news outlets collected ‘Top of the Rockies’ awards last weekend

The Colorado chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, of which I’m a board member, handed out some hardware to journalists in four Western states last Saturday at the Slate Hotel in Denver.

The chapter presented scholarships to 13 Colorado journalism students.

Jeremy Jojola of 9NEWS took home the Journalist of the Year award; Linda Carpio Shapley won Keeper of the Flame, Doug Cosper won a posthumous Educator of the Year honor, and the Sentinel Colorado newspaper won this year’s First Amendment award.

A full list of winners is here. Watch individual videos of speeches by the nominators and award winners here.

The Colorado SPJ chapter also announced it would add a new annual individual category called The Ethical Fred.

Perhaps in a few years, journalists will seek to win what they call a “Fred.” And perhaps a few years after that, it will simply be known as a “Freddy.”

🌿 This week’s newsletter is proudly supported by PR firm Grasslands: A Journalism-Minded Agency™, founded by Ricardo Baca (ex-Denver Post, ex-Rocky Mountain News, and current Colorado Public Radio board of directors). We understand journalists because we were journalists — and we’re here to help. Need expert sources or compelling stories? Our diverse client roster includes beloved Colorado institutions (Naropa University and Illegal Pete’s), innovative wellness brands (Boulder County Farmers Markets, Naturally Colorado, Eden Health Club), bold natural products businesses (Wild Zora, Flatiron Food Factory, Flower Union Brands), and other purpose-driven organizations. As creators of the Colorado Journalist Meet-Up and longtime champions of quality journalism, Grasslands recognizes the essential role reporters play in our communities. Our team is ready to connect you with sources, data, and unique perspectives that elevate your reporting.

Have a story you’re working on? Email Ricardo directly: ricardo@mygrasslands.com. Together, we’re crafting better narratives — one story at a time. 🌿

More Colorado media odds & ends

*❌ CORRECTION: The emailed version of this newsletter misstated which station would absorb another.

🙏 Friends of Lynn Bartels, a longtime former political reporter who spent 16 years at the Rocky Mountain News followed by six at the Denver Post before going into public relations in 2015, are sending thoughts her way after someone controlling her Facebook account wrote this week that she “underwent surgery to remove a large brain tumor.”

📲 Hannah Metzger of Westword profiled Matthew Beem, “the 29-year-old is the biggest YouTuber in Colorado, with more than eight million subscribers and nearly 1.5 billion cumulative views” who “runs the content operation out of Colorado Springs, in a large warehouse with over a dozen full-time, in-house employees.” Beem “says his company generates around $2 million per year from brand deals and ad revenue. Last year, it made approximately $120,000 in profit; most of the money goes back into the videos and employees, according to Beem, who says he often does not receive a paycheck himself.”

📺 Attorneys General from five more states have joined the antitrust lawsuit that’s challenging FOX31 owner Nexstar’s acquisition of its rival broadcaster, Tegna, which owns Denver’s 9NEWS, after a judge put a temporary hold on the deal. One AG said his Republican colleagues in Indiana, Kansas, and Pennsylvania were joining the case, according to Reuters.

⏩ Colorado served as a case study for the national Press Forward local journalism support initiative for the way in which one foundation chose to lend money. The entity is the Gates Family Foundation in Denver, which took on the task of helping to support Colorado’s media scene.

💨 Merry Matthews, a longtime meteorologist, “who delivered forecasts at KRDO for more than seven years” in the Springs recently joined Peaks 2 Plains, the weather venture “launched by former Fox 21 weatherman Matt Meister in January,” O’Dell Isaac reported for the Gazette. “The longer you’re in television, the more you are aware that you are constrained to a certain amount of time,” Matthews said in the story. “When you are covering almost one-third of the state, you need more than four to five minutes.”

📺 Peter W. Choi is leaving KOAA in the Springs for Denver7. “15 years ago, I came to Colorado with one goal: to learn English as an exchange student,” he wrote on LinkedIn. “When I returned to this state 2 years ago, I knew I had made my younger self proud by doing what I love and working to help rebuild trust in the media, one story and one community at a time.”

🆕 Carol Wood is the new board chair of the nonprofit Pikes Peak Bulletin newspaper. “Carol is one of the rare few who has worked on both the content and business sides of the news business,” an announcement read. “She began her journalism career as a reporter in Denver before transitioning into media business operations and strategy.”

❌ Last week’s newsletter incorrectly reported that Colorado Sun Editor Dana Coffield and her siblings wrote an obituary for her mother. While her byline was mistakenly on the piece at the time, it was journalist Alison Osius who wrote the essay. (The mistake helped the Sun identify numerous stories and columns with incorrect bylines because of a WordPress problem, Coffield said, that randomly converted bylines based on who created a file. So, if you use WordPress for your CMS, check your bylines.)

🪦 “Ann Elizabeth Schrader O’Neill, a leader of the Denver Post team that won a Pulitzer Prize, died April 29. She was 75, Billie Stanton reported for the Post. “The chemotherapy she had for breast cancer 15 years earlier prompted heart failure, an ironic outcome for a woman renowned for her big heart.”

⚙️ Reporter Sage Kelley has left the Denver Gazette for Westword.

🗣 Speaking from the floor of the Colorado Senate this week, Democrat Marc Snyder said, “I wish we could be like New Mexico. They’ve got a wonderful tax credit program that’s really supporting journalists and small newspapers. Obviously we’re not in a position to do that, but I think it’s incumbent on us to recognize and to protect free and fair press.”

I’m Corey Hutchins, manager of the Colorado College Journalism Institute, advisor to Colorado Media Project, and a board member of the state Society of Professional Journalists chapter. For more than a decade, I’ve reported on the U.S. local media scene for Columbia Journalism Review, and I’ve been a journalist for longer at multiple news organizations. Most recently, I’ve been contributing to Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab and The Conversation. I also write the twice-monthly Community Newswire newsletter for the Center for Community News at the University of Vermont. The nonprofit Colorado Media Project is underwriting this newsletter, and my “Inside the News” column appears at COLab. (If you’d like to underwrite or sponsor this newsletter, hit me up.) Follow me on Bluesky, reply or subscribe to this weekly newsletter here, or e-mail me at CoreyHutchins [at] gmail [dot] com.

The legal maneuver, known as a preliminary injunction, prevents FOX31’s owner Nexstar Media Group from taking over Tegna, which owns 9NEWS.

The move last week “puts the merger on hold while the antitrust case moves forward in court,” the Associated Press reported.

From the story:

In the 52-page ruling, [District Judge Troy] Nunley outlined multiple reasons for his decision to keep the two companies separate, including that it would cause “irreparable harm” to DirecTV and eight states, including Colorado, the plaintiffs in the case.

The harms outlined in the ruling include job cuts and a decrease in the quality of news in markets impacted by combined stations, and price hikes in the form of increased retransmission fees to companies like DirecTV.

Here’s one key part of the judge’s order:

Defendants shall use all reasonable efforts to maintain — at 2025 levels or 2026 levels that were approved prior to the Transaction, whichever are higher — all station operations, staffing, promotional, advertising, sales, technical assistance, marketing, and merchandising support for the Acquired Stations.

That’s likely some good news for potentially impacted journalists.

“The judge’s order says the expected loss of newsrooms and journalists is one reason why the deal should be paused while an antimonopoly lawsuit proceeds,” 9NEWS anchor Kyle Clark reported on air.

Colorado’s Democratic Attorney General, Phil Weiser, had joined a lawsuit with seven other Democratic attorneys general to stop the deal.

“The proposed merger of 9News & Fox31 is on hold because we challenged it in court & won a preliminary injunction,” Weiser said in a statement about the latest news. “Our case will prevent cable price hikes, keep in place quality broadcast programs and news offerings, and protect diversity of views.”

Nexstar said that it will appeal the ruling, “but that it has taken steps to comply with the court order,” the Los Angeles Times reported.

Republican President Donald Trump has said he wants the Nexstar-Tegna deal to go through.

According to Wall Street Journal media reporter Joe Flint, Nexstar CEO Perry Sook said the eight states with Democratic AGs suing to block the merger are playing politics. “It’s easy for me to say this was all political, appeal to a base in an election year,” he quoted Sook as saying.

Mergers and acquisitions hit Colorado TV, radio, and print media all at once this month from the Front Range to the Western Slope.

➡️ This newsletter is proudly sponsored by The Colorado Health Foundation. As a proud funder of Colorado Media Project, the home of Press Forward Colorado, the CHF understands that healthy communities need a healthy news ecosystem.

This year, The Colorado Health Foundation is working to combat disinformation and misinformation, and helping nonprofits build media literacy.

• 👀 Our new legislative district profiles provide 2025 data and insights for every House, Senate, and congressional district in the state.

The Colorado News Collaborative called our annual Pulse Poll a “trove of information useful to reporters.” The Colorado Health Foundation’s Katie Peshek talked to journalists across the state about the poll results, which you can watch here. We also have Pulse Poll slides here, showing how you can use what we found to guide your reporting on topics and bring facts and data to your stories. ⬅️

Newsrooms offer guidance to journalists about use of prediction markets and online betting

This week, news made the rounds that NPR had updated its ethics guidelines to include language about prediction markets and sports betting.

“NPR editorial employees are not allowed to use prediction markets or similar sites to place bets on developments of news events, or anything else we might cover, or on things NPR controls (ie next Tiny Desk guests, anything involving NPR personalities or hosts etc.) whether or not the employee is involved in covering that event,” New York Times media reporter Ben Mullins posted on social media, citing the guidance.

Indeed, it turns out you can wager on the platform Kalshi about who might appear on NPR’s Tiny Desk concert series.

The new guidance comes after Mia Sato reported for the Verge how some newsrooms are making deals with prediction market companies — as they ban their own employees from using them.

“Because prediction markets allow users to monetize news, journalists are caught in the crosshairs: what they report (and the information that goes into reporting) suddenly has a dollar amount attached to it,” Sato reported.

The powerhouse investigative news outlet ProPublica recently updated its policy to mention prediction markets specifically.

Here in Colorado, Rocky Mountain Public Media President and CEO Amanda Mountain said in an email that she expects the statewide outlet to update its publicly available policy to reflect NPR’s guidance.

Some other newsroom managers in the state also weighed in when I sent out some inquiries asking how or if they are discussing it.

“We have not talked about that yet,” said Quentin Young, editor of the nonprofit digital Colorado Newsline. “But our newsroom is expected to be impartial and avoid conflicts of interest, and insofar as prediction markets overlap with the news we cover, journalist engagement with them would constitute a conflict of interest.”

Colorado Sun Editor Dana Coffield said she supposes her news organization might have to add such things to the list of technology “advancements” that must be addressed in ethics policies along with “don’t use generative AI to create stories or images.”

Jason Salzman, who runs the progressive nonprofit Colorado Times Recorder site, had a more contrarian take on the matter, saying this week that he believes NPR’s policy is overkill.

“To the greatest extent possible, journalists deserve to be as free and have as much fun as anyone else,” he said. “They should be allowed to participate in politics like any other citizen. If they’re betting on something they control at work, they should disclose it, not be prohibited from betting on it.”

Salzman said he isn’t sure how a news organization could put parameters around a prohibition or a disclosure requirement for betting on all the news that a big outfit like NPR is covering — because that would include, at least tangentially, just about everything.

“So I think I’d go for a disclosure for betting narrowly on news events covered by the journalists themselves, not their employer,” he said.

Some Colorado journalists are old enough to remember when the veteran Denver Post sports reporter Jim Armstrong got caught up in a county prosecutor’s 2011 gambling bust as a “named customer.”

Not long ago, the MSNOW TV host Chris Hayes posted about learning there was a nearly $1 million market on Kalshi for predicting what he would say when his pre-taped appearance on the Stephen Colbert Show aired.

Hayes said in the post that he “obviously” wouldn’t place a bet himself on the outcome or tip off his friends because “that would be unethical.”

A few years ago, the Denver Gazette was running a “Best Bets” column. (And, if you’ll recall, wound up costing this reporter money when he blundered around trying to follow the advice of the paper’s sportswriters.)

Like AI and online sports betting, the prediction market industry is becoming big business, and it will be interesting to track how news organizations incorporate it into their business models — whether or not they let their journalists in on the action.

Colorado TV news stations still blacked out from DISH and Comcast service

Disputes between the owners of some local TV stations in Colorado and the satellite and streaming companies DISH and Comcast are still leaving some viewers in the dark.

And now it’s making news beyond coverage in this newsletter.

“Colorado Springs TV stations remain dropped by satellite and streaming providers,” read a headline in the Gazette by reporter Alex Edwards.

From the story:

DISH Network dropped KKTV in early March and Comcast cut KOAA from programming March 31. Both appear to be the result of ongoing contract negotiations, according to published sources.

KKTV and DISH were negotiating for about three months but did not reach an agreement, according to a report from the local CBS affiliate. As of April 13, the impasse remains, according to KKTV and a press release from DISH.

It is not clear how long KOAA’s parent company, The E.W. Scripps Company, and Comcast have been negotiating, but it appears no agreement has been reached.

The contract between KKTV and DISH expired March 10. As of noon Friday, representatives from Scripps, Comcast, Gray Media and DISH network had not responded to Gazette’s request for comment.

Watch this space for whether these corporate titans can eventually straighten this one out.

Charles Blow in Denver next week: ‘Reimagining Local News’ docuseries screening and convo

Author and journalist Charles Blow, who spent years as a columnist for the New York Times, will appear in Denver next week for a screening of the docuseries “Reimagine Local News” that focuses in part on Colorado.

From an announcement from Colorado Media Project, which underwrites this newsletter:

Local news and information is changing. Charles Blow traveled across America to find out what comes next. On April 30, Colorado Media Project and Press Forward Colorado are bringing that conversation to Denver for a live screening of the Reimagining Local News docuseries and a fireside chat with Charles Blow.

A new movement is emerging that treats local news and information the way we treat roads, schools and public libraries. As essential infrastructure that every community deserves access to. This is not another story about the death of local news. It is a story about rebirth, innovation and possibility. Come be part of the conversation.

Following the screening, I’ll sit down with Blow for a conversation about what he has learned throughout this project and about models in Colorado specifically.

The event will be April 30 at 7 p.m. at the Buell Public Media Center in Denver. Register for it here.

“This is more than a screening,” CMP stated. “Attendees will leave with real, actionable ways to strengthen local news and information in Colorado.”

Find episodes of the docuseries, including the one focused on Colorado, here.

Colorado will now keep youth name-change records secret

Colorado courts “will now need to suppress name change records for minors” under a new law signed by Democratic Gov. Jared Polis, Nick Coltrain reported for the Denver Post.

From the story:

Polis signed Senate Bill 18 into law administratively on Monday, without a signing ceremony. The law, which takes effect July 1, will require courts to keep records of petitions for a legal name change from public view if the petitioner is younger than 18 at the time of filing.

The law is aimed at protecting the privacy of trans youth and their families.

Colorado Newsline’s Sara Wilson reported on the bill in February.

“Because name changes come in a civil court petition, they are relatively easy for the public to search in an online e-filing system,” she wrote. “Parents file petitions on their child’s behalf, and the record often has personal data including the former name and address. Other cases that involve minors, such as juvenile delinquency cases, dependency and neglect cases and adoption cases, suppress the minor’s information, according to Erika Unger, the legal director of Bread and Roses Legal Center.”

🌿 This week’s newsletter is proudly supported by PR firm Grasslands: A Journalism-Minded Agency™, founded by Ricardo Baca (ex-Denver Post, ex-Rocky Mountain News, and current Colorado Public Radio board of directors). We understand journalists because we were journalists — and we’re here to help. Need expert sources or compelling stories? Our diverse client roster includes beloved Colorado institutions (Naropa University and Illegal Pete’s), innovative wellness brands (Boulder County Farmers Markets, Naturally Colorado, Eden Health Club), bold natural products businesses (Wild Zora, Flatiron Food Factory, Flower Union Brands), and other purpose-driven organizations. As creators of the Colorado Journalist Meet-Up and longtime champions of quality journalism, Grasslands recognizes the essential role reporters play in our communities. Our team is ready to connect you with sources, data, and unique perspectives that elevate your reporting.

Have a story you’re working on? Email Ricardo directly: ricardo@mygrasslands.com. Together, we’re crafting better narratives — one story at a time. 🌿

More Colorado media odds and ends

🆕 The Colorado Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, of which I’m a board member, is “launching a mentorship program designed to connect working journalists with Colorado college students,” the organization announced. “Doug Bell, SPJ Colorado Pro’s education chair, says the program will pair mentors and mentees for one year, and the pairs will meet twice a month virtually or in person for feedback and career advice. Mentors and mentees will be matched based on interests and expertise.”

🏆 Angie Chuang, an associate professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, “has won a national book award for her look into how news stories represent immigrants and people of color,” Elaine Tassy reported for Colorado Public Radio. “American Otherness in Journalism: News Media Representations of Identity and Belonging” won the Frank Luther Mott/Kappa Tau Alpha Research Award.

✂️ The University of Colorado Boulder “will discontinue graduate degrees in journalism entrepreneurship and in electrical and computer engineering due to program redundancy and a lack of enrollment,” Olivia Doak reported for the Boulder Daily Camera. “Dissolving the two degree programs will have little to no impact on students and faculty, according to the university. The University of Colorado Board of Regents approved the degree discontinuance requests at its regular meeting on April 16 at CU Denver.”

🎙 Colorado Public Radio has announced that Bazi Kanani has been selected as the new local host of “Morning Edition.” Kanani “first joined CPR as a host and reporter in 2024 and will hit the airwaves in her new role on weekdays beginning April 27,” the announcement read. “Morning Edition has been part of my own daily routine for decades, so I personally know how much value the program provides for keeping people informed on what’s happening in our world and right at home, in our local communities,” Kanani said in a statement. “I’m honored to be part of carrying on this important work with my colleagues at CPR News.”

🔗 Conservative columnist Cory Gaines said in a piece for the Complete Colorado digital that he believes some in local media are “crying wolf” over the KDVR-9NEWS merger “when they themselves have made sharing resources and content a team sport in Colorado, and a couple big-name outlets appear to be on the verge of consolidation themselves.”

😳 What a headline this week: “Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office generates AI photo of missing hunter to aid search and rescue.” That was from 9NEWS. Here’s more from a different outlet: “A request for clarification to the Sheriff’s Office by The Gazette on whether the items were facts of Sites’ appearance or erroneous output by artificial intelligence was not responded to immediately. The caption on the post with the AI-generated image does not provide any specifics on what he possessed.”

💨 “It’s been nearly five years since I walked into the Westword office for my first day as the new food editor, following in the footsteps of Mark Antonation, my friend and colleague,” Molly Martin wrote for Westword. “Now, I’m handing the reins to Antony Bruno, a talented writer who should already be a familiar name to Westword’s readers — he’s been a freelance contributor to our food section for the last year and a half, spending much of that time eating his way up Aurora’s Havana Street.”

🎉 Thursday, April 9 was National Freedom of the Press Day, “and the celebration continues through April. Ark Valley Voice led the celebration here in Chaffee County, hosting the documentary ‘Truth be Told’, telling the story of five of our fellow journalists spread across this state ‘doing what we do,’” the nonprofit digital site reported.

🤖 Clayton Sandell wrote a Substack post this week titled “A Colorado fire department is manipulating images posted to social media. Here’s why that’s a problem.” (Spoiler: they’re using AI.)

🗣 Tennessee Watson will be speaking at the Denver Press Club on April 24 at 6:30 p.m. Based in Laramie, Wyoming, Watson is the managing editor for WyoFile. “An award-winning journalist, Watson’s work has appeared on NPR, Reveal, the Heart and the Modern West. She will be joined in conversation by Esther Honig, independent journalist and StoryCorps producer,” an announcement states.

✍️ Journalist Alison Osius wrote a personal essay about writing her mother’s obituary. “My siblings were alarmed when I first said our mother and I were putting her obit together,” she wrote. “Yet it was a reflective and companionable task. Do it ahead of time.” (Note: a previous version of this item misstated who wrote the piece.)

⚙️ The Denver Business Journal is looking for a reporter and will pay up to $80,000. “The ideal candidate brings exceptional journalism and storytelling skills, including source-building, sharp news judgment and analytical and investigative reporting experience,” the outlet states. “These skills will be put to the test on one of our most valuable beats: economic development.”

👺 “Hail Satan? A young member of the Satanic Temple was granted a religious accommodation from the Elizabeth School District, arguing that the district’s digital hall pass system conflicts with her beliefs,” Hannah Metzger reported for Westword. “The parents of the Elizabeth High School student had requested that she be exempted from the system, but their request was initially denied, according to TST. That’s when the Temple’s lawyers stepped in.”

I’m Corey Hutchins, manager of the Colorado College Journalism Institute, advisor to Colorado Media Project, and a board member of the state Society of Professional Journalists chapter. For nearly a decade, I reported on the U.S. local media scene for Columbia Journalism Review, and I’ve been a journalist for longer at multiple news organizations. Most recently, I’ve been contributing to Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab and The Conversation. I also write the twice-monthly Community Newswire newsletter for the Center for Community News at the University of Vermont. The nonprofit Colorado Media Project is underwriting this newsletter, and my “Inside the News” column appears at COLab. (If you’d like to underwrite or sponsor this newsletter, hit me up.) Follow me on Bluesky, reply or subscribe to this weekly newsletter here, or e-mail me at CoreyHutchins [at] gmail [dot] com.

We’re luckier than most on this front because of a 2021 state transparency law that requires Colorado employers to publish salary ranges with their job postings.

“If we’re talking about a journalist in Colorado who could be employed by a Colorado publication or a national publication, the pay has to be posted for a job in Colorado,” said Scott Moss, who was then the director of Colorado’s Division of Labor Standards, at the time.

Back then, the Equal Pay for Equal Work Act was relatively new, and not every newsroom was saying what they were willing to pay journalists — despite the possibility of a $10,000 fine per posting and additional financial penalties if a company doesn’t shape up. (The state agency in charge of enforcing the new law was working with companies as employers adjusted to the new regulations.)

By now, employers should know the rules, and it has become custom on social media for those who see Colorado newsroom job listings that don’t include a pay scale to publicly call it out.

Since Colorado is a relatively rare state where newsrooms must publicly say what they’re willing to pay, it might be useful for those in other states if they want to know what’s what out here — with all the relevant caveats.

Below is an idea of Colorado newsroom wage offerings based on job listings from the site JournalismJobs, Andrew Hudson’s Jobs List, Indeed, or elsewhere within the past month or so.

I’ve ranked them from the highest-paying to the lowest, starting with news director and executive roles, then editor and anchor positions, and followed by reporting jobs.

While the listing is now closed, Denver7 in February posted a job for a senior news director at the E.W. Scripps-owned outlet that put the salary range at $220,000 to $245,000. (That one might be unique given some recent turnover at the top of the news team and other factors.)

The Rocky Mountain Student Media Corporation at Colorado State University in Fort Collins wants a president and CEO and is offering up to $129,000.

KRDO, the ABC affiliated TV station in Colorado Springs, is hiring a chief meteorologist and will pay $110,000 for the job.

Colorado Public Radio has a job opening on its website for a public affairs supervising editor and is offering up to $101,641. They’ll pay a climate news fellow $21.59 per hour.

Denver7 will pay a chief photographer up to $100,000.

On the academic side, the University of Colorado in Boulder is seeking an assistant director for its Center for Environmental Journalism and will pay up to $100,000.

CBS Colorado had a posting up for an anchor and multimedia journalist that paid up to $90,000.

The nonprofit Boulder Reporting Lab will pay up to $85,000 for a director of newsletters to “lead a core editorial product and help shape how our journalism is framed, presented and delivered to readers.”

Colorado Politics, the Clarity Media-run statewide digital and print publication owned by the Denver billionaire Phil Anschutz, is offering up to $85,000 for a hybrid position it calls a reporter who will provide “legislative intelligence.”

High Country News, the Paonia-based magazine, needs a “partnerships editor” who it will pay $81,329 for a role that involves overseeing and expanding its collaborations with other media outlets, including its new Western Environmental Reporting Collaborative.

The Lever, an investigative digital outlet founded in 2020 by Denver journalist David Sirota, will pay up to $80,000 for an associate editor who can also telecommute. The outlet focuses on national politics, “business corruption,” Big Tech, climate change, health care, and more.

Aspen Public Radio is hiring a Morning Edition host and education reporter and will pay up to $80,000 for the role.

The Aspen Times, owned by Ogden Newspapers of West Virginia, says it will pay up to $75,000 for an “assistant editor/senior reporter” to help lead the newsroom.

The Aspen Daily News, now run by Hoffmann Media, which is owned by a Florida billionaire, will pay a senior reporter up to $70,000.

Denver’s alternative weekly Westword is looking for a staff writer who it will pay up to $60,000.

The nonprofit Colorado Sun statewide digital news outlet is looking for a temporary politics reporter on a full-time four-month contract for up to $6,600 per month.

The Gunnison Country Times newspaper, recently purchased by O’Rourke Media Group, will pay up to $53,000 for someone to take on the editor role.

Vail Daily, owned by Ogden Newspapers, will pay a copy editor up to $26 per hour. A reporter will get $24.75.

For some comparisons in the communications field, Xcel Energy is looking for a “principal communications consultant of wildfire” who it will pay up to $138,600.

Jefferson County is hiring a public affairs and digital communications manager and is offering $105,000.

Riot, a “Bitcoin-driven industry leader in the development of large-scale data centers and bitcoin mining applications,” is seeking a marketing specialist in Denver and will pay up to $90,000.

➡️ This newsletter is proudly sponsored by The Colorado Health Foundation. As a proud funder of Colorado Media Project, the home of Press Forward Colorado, the CHF understands that healthy communities need a healthy news ecosystem.

This year, The Colorado Health Foundation is working to combat disinformation and misinformation, and helping nonprofits build media literacy.

• 👀 Our new legislative district profiles provide 2025 data and insights for every House, Senate, and congressional district in the state.

The Colorado News Collaborative called our annual Pulse Poll a “trove of information useful to reporters.” The Colorado Health Foundation’s Katie Peshek talked to journalists across the state about the poll results, which you can watch here. We also have Pulse Poll slides here, showing how you can use what we found to guide your reporting on topics and bring facts and data to your stories. ⬅️

‘We are journalists’: Colorado meteorologists talk ‘T-Storms, Trends & Trolls’ at public panel

Earlier this month, three local TV weathercasters talked about the job on a panel at the Denver Press Club sponsored by the Colorado chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.

SPJ board member Marco Cummings of the Denver Post moderated the panel, which included Jaden Knowles and Chris Bianchi of 9NEWS as well as Mike Nelson, who retired from the station last year.

Cummings started with an interesting question: Are meteorologists journalists? And what is the difference between the two?

“We are journalists,” Nelson, who was famous for his explanations of climate change in his broadcasts, said. “We may not have all of the same background in terms of our education in journalism, but study after study has shown that the meteorologist is the most trusted person on the news team.”

Bianchi said they attend news meetings at the station and are held to the same standards as the rest of the news team.

“Short answer: yes, we definitely are,” Knowles said. “Monday through Friday, I’m basically a reporter, so my job is to go out and figure out the weather angle and talk about a weather report.” His job, he added, is to make sure they get the truth out.

Watch the whole panel discussion here:

Denver Post on local TV merger: 'Younger viewers may have already moved on from TV news’

The Denver Post’s John Wenzel took a fresh look at the local TV consolidation news in the Mile High City this week.

For an April 14 story, he reported on details of the merger in the context of what it could mean for young audiences. Those young people “are increasingly getting their news from TikTok, YouTube and other sources,” he wrote.

Here’s the opening of the piece:

Robert Sides grew up watching Colorado news, sports and weather in his Fountain home in much the same way TV viewers have for decades: as a captive audience member who relied on local network affiliates to deliver the stories that mattered to him.

But as a 20-year-old, Sides also knows young people are … just as comfortable, if not more so, getting their news from TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit and X. So when it comes to the future of 9News-KUSA in Denver, whose parent company, Tegna, is being purchased by Texas-based Nexstar Media Group — owner of Denver’s Fox31 — he’s not concerned.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen to 9News, good or bad, but whoever the owners are or whatever the politics behind these deals, it doesn’t change my values,” said the Colorado State University junior, who reports and anchors news at CTV, a student-run station in Fort Collins that streams live on YouTube. “I’m not afraid of any of it.”

At issue is Nexstar, which owns KDVR FOX 31 in Denver, taking over Tegna, which owns 9NEWS.

Though currently held up in the federal courts, the move has been possible because Republican President Donald Trump signaled to those he has appointed to regulatory positions that he wanted it done.

Some nuggets from the story:

• “Only 15% of adults aged 18-29 say they follow the news all or most of the time, according to Pew Research, which gauges media trends. More than three-quarters of that demographic also said they get their news, at least some of the time, from social media. And younger people are more likely to be regular news consumers on TikTok, Instagram, Reddit and X, Pew Research found.”

• “As of December 2025, streaming accounted for nearly half of all TV viewing, outstripping broadcast and cable combined, according to a Nielsen survey.”

• “Angelica Kalika, who teaches journalism and digital media at the University of Colorado Boulder, said part of that comes from innovative programming that stretches the boundaries of TV; for instance, 9News’ Jeremy Jojola offers vertical videos on TikTok, which are formatted specifically for smartphones.”

• “9News has often boasted the best ratings and awards of any TV station in Colorado, according to past Nielsen reports. But the station last year lost ground to Fox31-KDVR, which dominated ratings in several time slots for local TV news. That’s despite 9News anchor Kyle Clark garnering national attention with his nightly “Next” program, which regularly invites donations for good causes and directly, humorously addresses viewer feedback and criticism.”

• “We may be more resilient to the collapse of editorial voices here in Colorado, with the variety of hyper-local news outlets that have rushed in. But we’re not immune,” said Laura Frank, who runs COLab and teaches at the University of Denver.

Read the full story at the link above.

Colorado officials slap away ‘Right to Know’ ballot measure – for now

State officials this week put on ice the proposition of a ballot measure that would ask voters add a “Right to know” transparency proposal into the Colorado Constitution.

From Jeff Roberts at the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition:

Title Board Chair Theresa Conley said Initiative #286, proposed by Jon Caldara of the Independence Institute and Beth Hendrix of the League of Women Voters of Colorado, is too broad and therefore doesn’t meet the statutory and constitutional requirement that initiative titles concern a single subject.

Signature gathering for a ballot petition cannot begin unless a ballot title and a petition form are approved.

“Voters don’t know what they’re voting yes or no on,” Conley told Caldara and Hendrix. She said there are no protections in the proposal for law enforcement and the attorney-client privilege, “and this seems not just about open meetings and open records but also about information and knowledge that is beyond public documents.”

The transparency measure, which would amend the state constitution’s Bill of Rights, is the product of several months’ work by a diverse alliance of groups that also includes the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition, Colorado Common Cause, the Colorado Broadcasters Association, the Colorado Press Association and the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado.

The board’s 2-1 vote to deny a title “isn’t necessarily the end of the proposal,” Roberts wrote, adding that its proponents could file a motion for a rehearing by April 22.

CMP’s Kimberly Spencer: ‘Vetted information is a tool for safety and self-defense’

Bucket List Community News, the hyper-local digital Denver media outlet, checked in this month with Kimberly Spencer for its Five Questions section.

Spencer is the executive director of Colorado Media Project, which underwrites this newsletter and recently got a revamped website.

She spoke with Bucket List about Local News Day, which took place April 9.

“I am passionate about ensuring that all communities, especially those in rural and traditionally underserved areas, have the critical news and information required to make decisions for themselves, their families, and their neighborhoods,” she said at one point. “In a country divided and plagued by misinformation, access to vetted information is a tool for safety and self-defense.”

Here are some more takeaways from the Q-and-A:

• “Local news is a public good, much like sidewalks and streetlights. To meet this moment, we must shift from being consumers to being active investors in our civic infrastructure.”

• “Support Directly: If you have a local reporter you like, share their stories within your networks. If there is a local outlet you trust, support them directly through a subscription or donation.”

• “By standing behind local news, we are securing a future where information is accessible, safety is prioritized, and power stays with the community.”

Read the whole Five Questions at the link above, or listen to Spencer talk about Local News Day on a radio show with journalist Toni Tresca here.

Colorado Sun’s ‘SunFest’ set for May 1

The nonprofit Colorado Sun statewide digital outlet is once again partnering with the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of Global and Public Affairs on its annual SunFest event.

Sessions include panels about Colorado’s weather, how residents are feeling in a big election year, housing in the High Country, “exploring 150 years of Colorado statehood,” basic income program, artificial intelligence, and more.

This year’s keynote address speaker is Dean Baquet, the former editor of the New York Times. Publicity materials for the event indicate he plans to discuss “the current attack on the freedom of the press, the role journalists play in our democracy and will entertain questions from the audience.”

Sun Publisher Larry Ryckman recently spoke with him ahead of his appearance in Denver. “I do think we were surprised and got caught a little flat-footed by this president,” Baquet acknowledged at one point in the conversation.

Asked about a spate of media consolidation under Trump, including here in Colorado, Baquet said Americans should be concerned “because news organizations that are owned … by companies that are dependent on the government for regulation and for other things are harder to act independently.”

🌿 This week’s newsletter is proudly supported by PR firm Grasslands: A Journalism-Minded Agency™, founded by Ricardo Baca (ex-Denver Post, ex-Rocky Mountain News, and current Colorado Public Radio board of directors). We understand journalists because we were journalists — and we’re here to help. Need expert sources or compelling stories? Our diverse client roster includes beloved Colorado institutions (Naropa University and Illegal Pete’s), innovative wellness brands (Boulder County Farmers Markets, Naturally Colorado, Eden Health Club), bold natural products businesses (Wild Zora, Flatiron Food Factory, Flower Union Brands), and other purpose-driven organizations. As creators of the Colorado Journalist Meet-Up and longtime champions of quality journalism, Grasslands recognizes the essential role reporters play in our communities. Our team is ready to connect you with sources, data, and unique perspectives that elevate your reporting.

Have a story you’re working on? Email Ricardo directly: ricardo@mygrasslands.com. Together, we’re crafting better narratives — one story at a time. 🌿

More Colorado media odds & ends

🎬 Colorado Media Project, which underwrites this newsletter and is the home of Press Forward Colorado, is hosting on April 30 a special screening of “Reimagining Local News,” a documentary series hosted by journalist and author Charles Blow. A Harvard fellow and former New York Times columnist, Charles “travels across America to surface the people and models proving that local journalism can thrive,” according to an announcement. “This is more than a screening. Attendees will leave with real, actionable ways to strengthen local news and information in Colorado.” Register for it here.

📡 The Colorado Broadcasters Association brought together more than 400 industry professionals recently at the Ritz-Carlton Denver “for its annual Awards of Excellence Gala, spotlighting the strongest work in Colorado radio and television.”

⚖️ A recent court case filed by xAI challenges a Colorado AI law’s “algorithmic discrimination” requirements and its impact on speech,” Jennifer Huddleston wrote for the Cato Institute. “This case could have a significant impact on our understanding of AI, the First Amendment, and the broader constitutionality of state-level AI regulations.” The lawsuit was filed “at a time when the Trump administration looks to preempt state regulation of AI models through executive fiat,” Robert Davis reported for the Colorado Sun.

🎒 Rampart High School in Colorado Springs is “being honored for its broadcast journalism program,” Carl Winder reported for KOAA. “The school won the Future Broadcaster's Award for Best High School Television at the Colorado Broadcaster's Association (CBA) Awards of Excellence last week.”

⛰ The American Journalism Project has appointed Coloradan Amalie Nash to its board of directors. “A veteran newsroom leader with nearly three decades of experience, Nash currently serves as vice president of journalism at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, where she leads national investments in local news.”

👀 Five years in “and still no one at Axios Local can quite put a number on what its expansion ambitions are,” Kari McMahon wrote for A Media Operator. (Axios has expanded in Colorado from Denver to Boulder, Colorado Springs and the Denver suburbs.”)

🆕 The Society of Professional Journalists has renamed its national award for ethics in journalism in recognition of Fred Brown, a “veteran Colorado journalist, educator and analyst; champion of high ethical standards for journalism; and a longtime state and national SPJ leader who died April 1.”

🏈 “I know firsthand the mountain that female sportswriters must climb before gaining the respect of their sources and colleagues. Women are still viewed as being outsiders in the boys’ club,” Cindy Brovsky, who worked as a newspaper reporter in Colorado for 20 years, wrote in a guest column in the Boulder Daily Camera.

🗣 Colorado’s loss in the Supreme Court’s Kaley Chiles case “marked the third time in recent years the justices have rebuked the state in a major culture-war dispute, adding to a growing pattern of high-profile reversals in cases over speech, religion and anti-discrimination law,” Ashley Oliver wrote for the FOX TV channel’s website.

📺📡🗞 Media mergers hit Colorado TV, radio and print all at once.

🎬 A new film series that features Colorado-related movies “will bring dozens of titles to dozens of theaters starting in June as part of the state’s sesquicentennial,” John Wenzel reported for the Denver Post. “The ambitious festival, titled The CO150: 150, highlights the biggest and best films that were set or shot in Colorado — or that featured notable Colorado actors — since 1876, said co-presenters Switchboard Strategies and Denver Film.”

📲 Colorado law enforcement “will soon have faster access to digital evidence after Gov. Jared Polis signed a pared‑down bill requiring social media companies to acknowledge and respond to search warrants on a tight timeline, a shift from a broader proposal he vetoed last year,” Marissa Ventrelli reported for Colorado Politics.

I’m Corey Hutchins, manager of the Colorado College Journalism Institute, advisor to Colorado Media Project, and a board member of the state Society of Professional Journalists chapter. For nearly a decade, I reported on the U.S. local media scene for Columbia Journalism Review, and I’ve been a journalist for longer at multiple news organizations. Most recently, I’ve been contributing to Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab and The Conversation. I also write the twice-monthly Community Newswire newsletter for the Center for Community News at the University of Vermont. The nonprofit Colorado Media Project is underwriting this newsletter, and my “Inside the News” column appears at COLab. (If you’d like to underwrite or sponsor this newsletter, hit me up.) Follow me on Bluesky, reply or subscribe to this weekly newsletter here, or e-mail me at CoreyHutchins [at] gmail [dot] com.

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The ways people get their news and information are changing rapidly, and keeping a running tag on it is a constant process.

The Colorado News Mapping Project is one way researchers, including myself along with this newsletter, are trying to do so in our own state. The project and this newsletter represent our own version of initiatives like it taking root across the country.

One limitation in our efforts here thus far has been assessing the landscape of so-called influencers, content creators, and individuals or organizations building large audiences around whatever they are doing online on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and the like.

Recently, Denver-based nonprofit consultant Nancy Watzman spent some time researching Colorado’s content creator landscape for Colorado Media Project, an organization I advise that underwrites this newsletter.

“To better understand this landscape, we undertook research to identify Colorado influencers,” she wrote this week in a post at her consultancy website. “We identified a list of 80+ creators — almost all on Instagram and TikTok.”

Her findings are helping to inform an experimental training course and certificate program for Colorado content creators we’re working on that began this week. The initiative involves CMP, Colorado State University in Fort Collins, the Colorado College Journalism Institute, and the media literacy company Ad Fontes Media.

I’ve heard that multiple other organizations in Colorado might be working on similar research about influencers and content creators.

I got a peek at Watzman’s examination about Colorado-based content creators and talked to her about what she has learned so far. Excerpts from our conversation have been rearranged and edited for length and clarity, right after this message from a sponsor…

➡️ This newsletter is proudly sponsored by The Colorado Health Foundation. As a proud funder of Colorado Media Project, the home of Press Forward Colorado, the CHF understands that healthy communities need a healthy news ecosystem.

This year, The Colorado Health Foundation is working to combat disinformation and misinformation, and helping nonprofits build media literacy.

• 👀 Our new legislative district profiles provide 2025 data and insights for every House, Senate, and congressional district in the state.

The Colorado News Collaborative called our annual Pulse Poll a “trove of information useful to reporters.” The Colorado Health Foundation’s Katie Peshek talked to journalists across the state about the poll results, which you can watch here. We also have Pulse Poll slides here, showing how you can use what we found to guide your reporting on topics and bring facts and data to your stories. ⬅️

Inside the News in Colorado: Why is this kind of research about influencers and content creators important?

Nancy Watzman: Increasingly, as we all know, where folks are getting their information has changed, and we’ve gotten used to the idea that, especially among young people, there’s more emphasis on getting content online from video content.

There was just a Reuters survey out this week that said, in the 18-to-24 set, first dibs for young people is TikTok, Instagram, those kinds of places, and also increasingly chatbots.

So, this is the future. Increasingly, this is where the audience is, and so folks in the news business, but also people in nonprofits, people in government — really anyone who’s trying to get their information out to the world— need to grapple with how people are getting their information now and the means by which they’re getting it.

I’ve been reading some of this research and going to conferences where people are talking about various experiments, working with influencers or working with organizations that are doing it. So, I thought, I’m just really curious to know what’s going on in Colorado. Who are the content creators here?

I was able to hook up with Colorado Media Project and just kind of dip a toe into the water of seeing what the whole landscape is of the sorts of folks that are out there.

How do you describe Colorado’s landscape of influencers and content creators?

First and foremost, what was interesting to me was it felt very Colorado. There was a lot of local flavor. The kinds of folks I was finding couldn’t just be, you know, copied and pasted into another state.

For example, a very large cohort of folks here are from the mountains, talking about mountain lifestyle, or skiing, or outdoors. That’s very much part of the fabric of our environment here that you wouldn’t find somewhere else. And that extended to some other folks clustered around these sorts of activities.

To what extent are these creators being approached by organizations that might be behind ballot initiatives or other forms of public policy in Colorado?

What I ended up doing was creating a kind of taxonomy of how to classify these influencers. There’s a million ways you can do it, right? But what I did for the purposes of the research I did was — and folks could be more than one of these categories — but roughly, “activist,” “lifestyle,” “commercial,” and “news.”

What I’ve found in some of the lifestyle influencers, and those tend to be ones that what they’re selling is the way they live their life — I’m a snowboarder, I’m a skier, I’m a mom, I’m a dad, whatever — they’re kind of selling that.

Their model seems to be that they probably get sponsorships from companies. That’s part of why they’re doing it. Obviously, some creators are doing it just for the love of self-expression, but for a lot of folks, this is part of their income stream. So those influencers will get product endorsements or folks to sponsor them.

I didn’t necessarily find proof about the ballot initiative sponsorships. I found fingerprints of it, because what I saw was there were some, again, kind of mountain lifestyle types of folks who were talking about ballot initiatives who otherwise didn’t necessarily have a lot of other political content.

So that’s a story for a reporter to follow up on.

(Editor’s note: Some Colorado journalists have tracked this phenomenon in the lead-up to Election Day.)

You found some interesting influencers and content creators that work in particular industries, like real estate or even a sports bar?

This was the thing that surprised me.

I found a number of folks that fit into this category where they weren’t selling their own lifestyle the way I think we’re more used to thinking about a lot of content creators. They had their own business that they’re basically marketing, but as part of that, to get attention to it, they’re also becoming purveyors of news.

The example of the sports bars was so interesting because they’re place-based. These are actual bars where people go, and it was actually my own sons who told me I should look at that — they’re 21 and 16 — so credit to them.

There’s a Denver sports bar where they post a lot about local teams and up-to-date sports, but they’re also a place where people gather.

Want to name any names for us?

I pulled out a few examples of folks who I just thought were emblematic of different types of content creators that are out there in Colorado. They aren’t fully vetted, so these aren’t endorsements or anything.

So, one I found is I70Things. (476,000 followers on Instagram).

This is a different way of thinking about news than I’m used to, having grown up and worked in the media industry. News is not necessarily the main focus of the site. There might be a lot of other things, but there’s also news there.

This is one that I already followed and was, for example, the way I saw the news that there was a swastika posted somewhere in the foothills. I saw it there before I saw it anywhere else. Most of the time when I’m looking at it, oh, it’s just I’m in traffic, so I’m seeing what else people are posting in traffic, and it’s kind of a source of knowing what’s going on on I-70. But in fact, that was a case where I found out about that local news story before I saw it in local media.

Another is one called Jim Morris Tees on Instagram (835,000 followers). This is a Boulder-based activist who posts a lot about the environment, but also sells t-shirts. So, it’s kind of a mix of a lifestyle and a commercial channel.

There’s quite a collection of these mountain influencers and one of them is BigBails (128,000 followers on Instagram), a snowboarder, a skier, and is one of the ones who commented on a Colorado ballot initiative.

Another one is Logic and Liberty (156,000 followers on TikTok), a conservative-libertarian point of view in Colorado.

These folks have a range of followers. They’re not all up in the millions. But one of the things that’s important with content providers is it’s not so much necessarily the raw followers, it’s the engagement rate.

What else should the ‘Inside the News in Colorado’ audience know?

Everyone’s looking at these folks in different ways, depending on who you are, right?

I was reviewing a recent Press Forward report. Obviously, funders and folks who are interested in getting good information out to people are very interested in this universe in terms of figuring out how to work with them to help make that information even better, or perhaps figuring out how to make it more viable to do that kind of work.

A lot of content creators and influencers are operating on a shoestring. It’s not like everybody is making a gazillion dollars. So, the fact that folks are relying on it for civic information makes it an area of interest for people in the civic philanthropy space to be interested in figuring out how to help with that just as they do with local news media that are more formal organizations.

So, that’s one thing. But then I would say nonprofits often have a different use case.

So, as we sort of touched on with the ballot initiatives and sponsoring, one of the nonprofits that I work with, I know that they were experimenting with an ambassador program where they developed a kind of criteria for how they could work with influencers so it fit with their own model of change, and also ethics, and transparency, and working together, and trying to learn things from that to see how it could work. Because everybody’s interested in getting more attention.

Clearly, folks are not only going to websites anymore or reading newsletters for attention, and so people are trying to figure this out. But I think everybody has a bit of a different use case. And then if you’re a content creator or an influencer yourself, you might have all kinds of motivations, some of which coincide with those other things, and some of which don’t. Some folks have a business that they’re trying to sell, some people are augmenting another full-time job.

I attended a session at a conference where there was a discussion between the Houston Chronicle and a food blogger, and they had done a pilot experiment through American Press Institute, and the food blogger was talking about how this was, you know, he has another job, he’s got a 40-hour-a-week job, and then he does this about 20 hours a week.

I think that there’s a lot more still to learn about just who all these people are, how all these different groups who are all together trying to get attention for worthy causes or various things, are able to work together comfortably and to everybody’s benefit.

🌿 This week’s newsletter is proudly supported by PR firm Grasslands: A Journalism-Minded Agency™, founded by Ricardo Baca (ex-Denver Post, ex-Rocky Mountain News, and current Colorado Public Radio board of directors). We understand journalists because we were journalists — and we’re here to help. Need expert sources or compelling stories? Our diverse client roster includes beloved Colorado institutions (Naropa University and Illegal Pete’s), innovative wellness brands (Boulder County Farmers Markets, Naturally Colorado, Eden Health Club), bold natural products businesses (Wild Zora, Flatiron Food Factory, Flower Union Brands), and other purpose-driven organizations. As creators of the Colorado Journalist Meet-Up and longtime champions of quality journalism, Grasslands recognizes the essential role reporters play in our communities. Our team is ready to connect you with sources, data, and unique perspectives that elevate your reporting.

Have a story you’re working on? Email Ricardo directly: ricardo@mygrasslands.com. Together, we’re crafting better narratives — one story at a time. 🌿

More Colorado media odds & ends

🎉 Jared Polis, Colorado’s Democratic governor, declared April 9 “Local News Day.” Access to trusted local news and information “strengthens civic participation, supports transparency and accountability in government, and fosters a culture of informed citizenship,” it reads in part. View the full official proclamation he made here.

🎬 Colorado Media Project, which underwrites this newsletter and is the home of Press Forward Colorado, is hosting on April 30 a special screening of “Reimagining Local News,” a documentary series hosted by journalist and author Charles Blow. A Harvard fellow and former New York Times columnist, Charles “travels across America to surface the people and models proving that local journalism can thrive,” according to an announcement. “This is more than a screening. Attendees will leave with real, actionable ways to strengthen local news and information in Colorado.” Register for it here.

🤖 Writing for the Sentinel newspaper in Grand Junction, Kalen McCain reported on how local TV station KREX/KFQX FOX4, also known as Western Slope Now, is using artificial intelligence for its journalism. The station’s manager “declined to answer questions about AI in the outlet’s newsroom,” McCain reported, but did provide a statement, saying, “We’ll let the disclaimer speak for itself. All reporting on stories with this disclaimer is done by human beings on our staff. AI is used only for formatting the story for use on a digital platform.”

📺 John Moore of the Denver Gazette wrote an evocative piece about his journalist parents who played roles in their community beyond that of a dispassionate observer and chronicler. “Over time, the appropriateness of journalists’ participation in a community’s civic life has evolved more toward detachment — because active civic engagement might be seen by some as a forfeiture of journalistic objectivity,” he wrote. “To my dad, that’s abdication of duty.” For the column, he interviewed anchor Kyle Clark of 9NEWS about a micro-giving campaign he runs that has raised $18 million for Colorado causes. “Clark says he has received little negative pushback from the community. If anything, he added, it’s come from fellow journalists,” Moore wrote. “What do they tell him? ‘That it’s not your role,’ said Clark, who tells his contrarians: ‘I respect if you don’t want to make it your role — but you’re not going to define what my role is.’ I can hear my dad’s words interjecting (he did that a lot): ‘It’s not only your role, it’s your obligation.’”

🤬 A serial fabulist seems to have been able to land local journalism jobs at newspapers in multiple states in the Mountain West, including Colorado. Sam Tabachnik of the Denver Post has the sordid, wild story of someone who has become a horrible representative of an industry that is already facing enough skepticism and mistrust. The headline: “A Colorado newspaper fired a journalist for making up quotes. She changed her name, got back in the game — and now she’s facing prison.”

🚔 Not grrrrreat: Authorities on the Western Slope arrested a worker at the Montrose Daily Press printing plant after they say they found a package of meth weighing about a pound that was stuffed into a Frosted Flakes cereal box had been mailed to the facility. “Employees who had noticed the suspicious package opened it and made the discovery of suspected drugs,” the Sentinel newspaper, which owns the printing plant, reported.

⚖️ Colorado’s Law Enforcement Integrity Act “does not permit agencies to charge fees as a condition of releasing body-worn camera footage depicting possible misconduct by police officers, the Colorado Court of Appeals decided Thursday,” wrote Jeff Roberts of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition. “The underlying lawsuit concerns the shooting and killing of 51-year-old Jeanette Alatorre by Boulder police in 2023. The city required Yellow Scene Magazine to pay $2,857.50 before it would release bodycam footage of the incident, arguing that the video is still a criminal justice record subject to the CCJRA’s fee provision.”

👻 Last week, this newsletter pointed to a story in the Denver Post that included this line about someone who works for a sitting U.S. congressman: “A spokeswoman for Evans’ campaign who declined to give her name called the Democrats’ stance on gas prices ‘hypocritical’ in a statement.” That’s all I put in the item last week, but Jon Murray, the paper’s senior editor for public affairs, said I should have included the entire quote from the unnamed spokesperson, which was: “For years, they have pushed radical climate policies and overregulation, banning natural gas for residential heating, eliminating jobs for hardworking families, and handcuffing the very oil and gas workers who ensure reliable and affordable resources for Coloradans.” Murray said for last week’s item that the paper’s goal is to push back consistently as its reporters interact with campaign representatives “who are used to DC rules of engagement that default to too much unnamed sourcing. In this instance, facing a tight deadline, we thought the Evans camp’s overall statement was worth including as a matter of fairness but we intend to push for attribution in the future.” (He’s right that I should have shared the full quote; my mistake, lest readers think the paper would offer anonymity for a one-line zinger.)

🤔 Colorado Springs Mayor Yemi Mobolade this week tapped his former opponent, Wayne Williams, as his new chief of staff. At least one Springs journalist found it strange that the pair would sit for what Denver’s 9NEWS called an “exclusive interview” when the politicians represent a city an hour south in a different media market. Jason Strickland, the chief communications officer for the Springs, said in an email that Williams “has reach throughout the state and especially in Denver, so we pitched a couple of outlets up there.”

💸 Lawyers for Nexstar have asked a federal court judge in California “to force DirecTV and the attorneys general of eight states, including Colorado, to fund a $150 million bond to cover the losses it claims it will incur if the merger is further delayed. Nexstar took on a reported $5.1 billion in debt at closing,” Nicole Vap reported for the Colorado Sun. Meanwhile, “A federal judge on Friday extended an emergency restraining order” on the deal for a week “while he decides whether a longer block on the deal is needed,” the Associated Press reported.

⚙️ Denver’s alternative weekly Westword is looking for a staff writer whom it will pay up to $60,000.

⚖️ Lucy Schiller at Columbia Journalism Review wrote about the three Colorado radio stations that won their case with NPR against President Donald Trump. “It’s too late to recover lost funds,” she wrote, “but their court victory sets an important precedent.”

🟥 Jason Salzman of the progressive Colorado Times Recorder digital site that doesn’t disclose its donors did a deep dive into what he called a “stealth conservative news site” called Center Square that’s backed by the Franklin News Foundation, which he wrote “may try to hide the names of their contributors.” Salzman’s reporting got BLOX Digital, formerly TownNews, “which provides thousands of media organizations across the country with an online platform designed to make the complex job of publishing an online newspaper easier,” to change some statements on its website. He also found some local news outlets that were unknowingly publishing Center Square content on their sites. One editor even told him, “I’ve got enough to do without reading other people’s articles, even though they are on our site.”

📺 Former Channel 7 Denver midday anchor Katie Trexler wrote an evocative Substack post about leaving journalism. “A short six months ago, during this time of day, I had been living a very different life. I recalled those memories with deep nostalgia and grief,” she wrote. Later, she describes her day: “The life and career that had once defined me, and brought me great joy, were gone. And now here I was— picking up dog shit.”

👀 The conservative-aligned Peak News radio show in Colorado Springs is offering what it calls “state-funded tuition-free education” and internships in broadcast and podcast journalism through a “Homeschool Enrichment Program.”

🍺 Denver’s KUSA 9NEWS offered a tribute to longtime journalist, editor, and SPJ Colorado board member Fred Brown who died at 85. The broadcast mentions reporting Brown once did that found the lobbyist for the Colorado Beer Distributors Association had “reported spending $140 a month keeping the Capitol press room’s refrigerator stocked.”

💨 Longtime Colorado Public Radio Classical host and manager Karla Walker has hung up her headphones “after nearly four decades in public broadcasting,” Ryan Warner wrote for CPR News. “She has a radio and television degree, which, says Walker, her mother once declared, ‘the most useless she could have gotten.’ While we rarely delight in proving moms wrong, we're glad Karla persisted in the profession.”

📡 Thanks Bazi Kanani of Colorado Public Radio for having me on the Colorado Today podcast to talk about last week’s newsletter — on Local News Day, no less.

I’m Corey Hutchins, manager of the Colorado College Journalism Institute, advisor to Colorado Media Project, and a board member of the state Society of Professional Journalists chapter. For nearly a decade, I reported on the U.S. local media scene for Columbia Journalism Review, and I’ve been a journalist for longer at multiple news organizations. Most recently, I’ve been contributing to Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab and The Conversation. I also write the twice-monthly Community Newswire newsletter for the Center for Community News at the University of Vermont. The nonprofit Colorado Media Project is underwriting this newsletter, and my “Inside the News” column appears at COLab. (If you’d like to underwrite or sponsor this newsletter, hit me up.) Follow me on Bluesky, reply or subscribe to this weekly newsletter here, or e-mail me at CoreyHutchins [at] gmail [dot] com.

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It’s mergers and acquisitions all the way down in Colorado this week.

Fresh off big news that FOX31 owner Nexstar closed on its purchase of 9NEWS owner Tegna (more on a snag in that one later) is an announcement that the NPR station for northern Colorado, KUNC, is exploring a merger with Rocky Mountain Public Media.

Meanwhile, on the Western Slope, the largest regional newspaper in the area is gobbling up two smaller ones.

That’s what’s filling this week’s newsletter, and more.

Now, onto it…

➡️ This newsletter is proudly sponsored by The Colorado Health Foundation. As a proud funder of Colorado Media Project, the home of Press Forward Colorado, the CHF understands that healthy communities need a healthy news ecosystem.

This year, The Colorado Health Foundation is working to combat disinformation and misinformation, and helping nonprofits build media literacy.

• 👀 Our new legislative district profiles provide 2025 data and insights for every House, Senate, and congressional district in the state.

The Colorado News Collaborative called our annual Pulse Poll a “trove of information useful to reporters.” The Colorado Health Foundation’s Katie Peshek talked to journalists across the state about the poll results, which you can watch here. We also have Pulse Poll slides here, showing how you can use what we found to guide your reporting on topics and bring facts and data to your stories. ⬅️

Rocky Mountain PBS and KUNC are exploring a merger

KUNC public radio in northern Colorado is exploring a merger with a large statewide public broadcaster — and it’s not Colorado Public Radio.

The community radio station is looking at linking up with Rocky Mountain Public Media, the large statewide public TV broadcaster.

“Recent federal funding cuts have created a unique challenge and uncertainty for public media, and this partnership presents an opportunity to strengthen the ecosystem while remaining deeply rooted in the communities they serve,” KUNC wrote in a statement this week.

In September, KUNC laid off 10 people — or 26% of its staff. “There are no plans to reduce staff,” KUNC stated in its announcement this week.

Alongside news about a potential merger, KUNC announced it had “secured a no-cost 10-year lease” for a building in Fort Collins thanks to a donation from the Fort Collins-based Bohemian Foundation founded by the liberal billionaire Pat Stryker.

“Bohemian also supports KUNC’s journalistic mission through the Colorado News Philanthropy Lab, a cohort that focuses on developing sustainable funding models for local journalism,” BizWest reported.

BizWest reporters Dallas Heltzell and Christopher Wood “spoke to several current and former KUNC staff members who asked to remain unidentified” for a March 26 story.

One source for BizWest questioned the merger and another said they “felt very discouraged as a staff over the past few years” and questioned the station’s leadership.

Some worried about KUNC losing its independence, according to the story.

“KUNC and The Colorado Sound will continue their history of service to Northern Colorado and now have an opportunity for that service and our community connections to grow and deepen. We remain committed to our audience and supporters. This potential merger allows public media to be stronger and more resilient for all,” Tammy Terwelp, President & CEO of KUNC, said in a statement.

Meanwhile, newspapers are consolidating on the Western Slope

Not to be outdone by their TV and radio counterparts, a family owned newspaper company on the Western Slope is getting in on the media consolidation game.

From an announcement this week:

Seaton Publishing Company, which owns the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, is acquiring the Montrose Daily Press and the Delta County Independent. The deal is expected to close Friday, finalizing the transaction.

The Daily Press and the Independent are currently owned by Wick Communications, but the Seaton Publishing Company — which owns other newspapers in other states such as the Manhattan Mercury in Kansas — made the move to have the region’s three largest newspapers operate under shared ownership for the first time.

”We are tremendously proud to be entering the Montrose and Delta communities. These are truly special places in Colorado,” said Sentinel Publisher Jay Seaton in a statement. “We see synergistic opportunities for both news reporting and advertising reach through this arrangement. I want to thank the Wick organization and the Wick family for this opportunity and for being such good stewards of these important community assets.”

He added that the newspapers will continue to operate independently beyond newsroom and advertising synergies.

The Montrose Daily Press operates a printing press in Montrose. The Sentinel retired its own printing press in 2021.

Seaton told his own paper’s reporter that he thought he had sworn off buying newspapers and acknowledged that it’s a tough business these days.

“But community newspapers are a community trust. They’re an institution,” Seaton said. “We owe it to these communities to commit to excellent journalism, and we’re going to find a way to remain sustainable. The days of 30% profits are long behind us, but we can continue to serve our mission here, and that’s a First Amendment mission.”

On TV, Comcast Xfinity customers in Colorado lose access to Scripps stations

Whatever happened between the E.W. Scripps Company, which owns local TV stations around the country, and the cable and internet provider Comcast Xfinity must not have gone well.

As of Wednesday – April Fool’s Day — nobody in Colorado could watch a Scripps-owned channel if they subscribe to Xfinity as their provider.

In Colorado, those stations include Denver7 in the state’s capital city and KOAA in Colorado Springs.

“Our contract with E.W. Scripps Company has expired,” Xfinity wrote to customers in an email viewed by this newsletter. “Despite our best efforts,” the company added, “we have not been able to reach a new agreement.”

As for Scripps, the stations were telling those who want to watch their news programs to buy an antenna, stream their apps, or try other options like YouTubeTV.

The news was news even to those who work for Scripps.

“Thing is, nobody in our newsroom was aware this dispute was even happening and the only reason we learned anything was when viewers began emailing and calling our newsroom,” a Colorado source familiar with the matter told me. “Seemed very sudden and abrupt and our newsroom (non-managers at least) were caught very much off guard. We had to deal with customer service on top of getting our work done.”

This is the second Colorado TV news distribution SNAFU in a month.

Just a few weeks ago, residents in Colorado Springs and Grand Junction who use a Dish Network satellite and streaming service lost access to TV stations owned by Gray Media after the two companies failed to come to a renewal agreement.

Colorado radio stations win lawsuit with NPR against Trump. But it won’t restore lost funds

A federal judge has sided with three Colorado radio stations and NPR in their lawsuit against Donald Trump over an executive order the Republican president signed that aims to cut funding for NPR and PBS.

“The First Amendment draws a line, which the government may not cross, at efforts to use government power — including the power of the purse — ‘to punish or suppress disfavored expression’ by others,” wrote U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss in his ruling this week.

He issued what is called a permanent injunction that stops the Trump administration from implementing the executive order.

“It is difficult to conceive of clearer evidence that a government action is targeted at viewpoints that the President does not like and seeks to squelch,” Moss wrote in his ruling.

The ruling, however, “will not reverse the Trump-led campaign to strip NPR and PBS stations of federal funding,” Brian Stelter reported for CNN. “Last summer, Republicans in Congress rescinded federal support over objections from public media advocates.”

Still, NPR and the Colorado stations are doing a victory lap because of the implications.

Colorado Public Radio, Aspen Public Radio, and KSUT tribal radio in the Four Corners region had taken a risk with their lawsuit when they became the tip of the spear for local public media against Trump and his attacks on the press.

Here’s what some of the station leaders had to say this week about the news in statements to media:

• “While we are thrilled to have this Executive Order overturned, it will unfortunately not restore the federal funding Aspen Public Radio has lost, so we need the continued strong support of our listeners,” clarified Nicholas Bowen, chair of the Aspen Public Radio Board of Directors. “Thanks to this community, Aspen Public Radio continues to receive unprecedented levels of funding from members, which will be required to keep the station reporting on the news we need and providing the emergency broadcasting services we all rely on.”

• “KSUT’s mission has always been rooted in service to our listeners,” said Tami Graham, Executive Director of KSUT Public Radio. “Today’s ruling protects access to trusted news for rural and tribal communities who depend on it.”

• “This ruling makes it clear that the government has no role in directing, impeding or punishing independent journalism,” said CPR’s President and CEO Stewart Vanderwilt. “The First Amendment exists to prevent exactly this kind of interference.”

“The Constitution does not permit the government to punish journalists or broadcasters for coverage it disapproves of,” First Amendment attorney Steve Zansberg, who represented the stations, told Aspen Public Radio. “We made that clear in our argument, and today the court protected the editorial decisions of a free press.”

Gazette editor pounds the drum for more state support for local journalism in Colorado

The editor of a large Colorado news organization with a conservative owner whose opinion pages favor Republican politicians is once again advocating for more state support for local journalism.

In an opinion column in the Denver Gazette this week, executive editor Vince Bzdek praised New Mexico for passing a law that provides tax credits to businesses that employ local journalists and prints newspapers.

He urged Colorado lawmakers to take a cue from their neighbor. From the column:

Let me point out right here that the government has always underwritten journalism to some degree exactly because it is so essential to the smooth working of democracy. A lot of us have just forgotten how essential.

To make their brand-new of-by-for the people democracy succeed, our founders knew they had to get information out to every citizen in the country so they could run it themselves. So the founders passed the Postal Service Act of 1792, which created deeply discounted mail rates for newspapers, about 1-1.5 cents per copy versus 6.25 cents for letters. And they allowed free exchanges between publishers.

So my question is this: When is our state going to do its share to make sure democracy doesn’t crumble further into dust?

Bzdek lauded the idea of business tax credits to help support the state’s local news industry.

The column came less than two weeks after the Sentinel newspaper in Grand Junction similarly praised New Mexico and argued that “Colorado should do something similar.”

Somewhat relatedly, this week Tim Regan-Porter, who runs the Colorado Press Association, sent a note to members saying that the Joint Budget Committee at the Capitol had unanimously approved a footnote to the state budget that “directs departments to spend their marketing budgets with local news outlets.”

That’s a modest but notable step for sure.

Legendary SPJ board member, journalist, and editor Fred Brown has died at 85

Fred Brown, a longtime Colorado journalist who helped craft the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics, died this week at 85 after suffering a stroke.

Brown, whose email address was EthicalFred@aol.com, worked at the Denver Post from 1963 to 2002 where he was a politics reporter, editor, and columnist.

From an obituary by Elliott Wenzler in the Denver Post:

After his retirement, he went on to leave his mark on the next generation of journalists in his role as a media ethics instructor at the University of Denver. He has also influenced media ethics nationally, with his name appearing on the cover of the Society of Professional Journalists’ ethics guidebook.

More from the obit:

• “Brown was remembered as a kind, witty gentleman who dressed well and kept spirits high, even when tensions rose in a fast-paced newsroom.”

• “Mark Harden, who also worked with Brown at The Post and sat on the local SPJ board with him, said he was a “deeply centered guy” who kept the newsroom grounded and cared greatly about the journalism profession.”

• “When it came to journalism ethics, Fred was true north on the compass,” said Doug Bell, the immediate past president of the local chapter. “He literally wrote the book on it, and he was the first phone call for many of us when faced with a sticky ethical situation.”

Indeed, he had taken phone calls from me for this newsletter and other reporting throughout the years, and I’m humbled to have served with him on the state SPJ board for about a year. (Check the SPJ Colorado website for more tributes to Brown.)

On a personal note, when I’d first arrived in Colorado and was working on a year-long project for the Center for Public Integrity that assessed Colorado’s risk for corruption, Brown served as a respected peer reviewer and offered helpful institutional knowledge and memory.

In 2019, he visited my Politics, Ethics & Journalism class at Colorado College where he went around the room asking each student to describe their dream job.

He sounded very much like he had lived his own.

Judge temporarily halts FOX31 from taking over 9NEWS, Denver Press Club opposes merger

A federal court judge in California has pumped the brakes on a merger between Nexstar and Tegna, who own KDVR FOX 31 and KUSA 9NEWS respectively in Denver.

U.S. District Court Judge Troy L. Nunley issued a temporary restraining order “to stop all actions of consolidation, continue operating as separate companies (including employees), and continue control of all retransmission fees,” Nicole Vap reported for the Colorado Sun.

The move comes after Democratic attorneys general in eight states, including Colorado, filed suit to block the merger they say would be bad for the people of their states.

The judge didn’t rely on their lawsuit, but instead one filed by DirecTV. The attorneys general, however, have the same judge and similar arguments.

The Denver Press Club, which recently elected a new board of directors, released a statement opposing the merger, saying Denver is among the markets “most affected” by the consolidation.

“The Denver Press Club urges federal regulators and lawmakers to examine the consequences of this merger and to uphold policies that protect competition, local ownership, and the long-term sustainability of journalism,” the statement read.

Whether this is merely a brief positive development in an otherwise inevitable shit-show situation or will actually stop this megamerger choo-choo from coming down the tracks remains to be seen.

Gov. Jared Polis to declare April 9 ‘Local News Day’ in Colorado

Here’s the proclamation Colorado’s governor plans to make on April 9, calling it ‘Local News Day’ in Colorado.

Folks will gather at the Denver Press Club at 5 p.m. that day to honor local media.

🌿 This week’s newsletter is proudly supported by PR firm Grasslands: A Journalism-Minded Agency™, founded by Ricardo Baca (ex-Denver Post, ex-Rocky Mountain News, and current Colorado Public Radio board of directors). We understand journalists because we were journalists — and we’re here to help. Need expert sources or compelling stories? Our diverse client roster includes beloved Colorado institutions (Naropa University and Illegal Pete’s), innovative wellness brands (Boulder County Farmers Markets, Naturally Colorado, Eden Health Club), bold natural products businesses (Wild Zora, Flatiron Food Factory, Flower Union Brands), and other purpose-driven organizations. As creators of the Colorado Journalist Meet-Up and longtime champions of quality journalism, Grasslands recognizes the essential role reporters play in our communities. Our team is ready to connect you with sources, data, and unique perspectives that elevate your reporting.

Have a story you’re working on? Email Ricardo directly: ricardo@mygrasslands.com. Together, we’re crafting better narratives — one story at a time. 🌿

More Colorado media odds & ends

🎊 Thanks to Denver’s alternative weekly newspaper Westword for honoring this “Inside the News in Colorado” newsletter you’re reading with its award for “Best Journalism About Colorado Journalism” in its annual “Best Of” awards.

🗓 Colorado’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis, is set to declare April 9 “Local News Day” in Colorado with a proclamation. I’m told it will call the day “inclusive and nonpartisan” and will invite “people across Colorado and the nation to come together in support of local news and the role it plays in strengthening communities.”

💳 Beginning in April, Summit Daily News “will ask our most frequent readers to subscribe in order to maintain unlimited access on SummitDaily.com,” Nicole Miller wrote this week. “This news marks a significant change in our business model, which has been 100% advertiser funded since our inception in 1989. The reason is simple: innovation is key for sustainability.”

🍻 The Denver Press Club elected Nathan Fernando-Frescas as its new president. It also elected to the board: Matt Larsen (treasurer), Cass Ballard (secretary), Danny Zimny-Schmitt, Marques Haley, Jody Beck, Tori Mason, Tim Jackson, and Joe Boven.

📺 Longtime Colorado Springs progressive activist and politician Richard Skorman has sold his venerable Poor Richard’s bookstore, cafe, and toy store to “former FOX21 News Anchor and News Director Joe Cole, alongside his wife, Sarah Gibeau-Cole,” FOX21 reported.

⚖️ Five years after the Colorado Sun and 9NEWS sued the state Department of Human Services, the Colorado Supreme Court “ordered the agency to disclose to the news organizations aggregate child-abuse hotline statistics from three residential care facilities,” Jeff Roberts wrote this week for the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition.

🔀 The Denver local news site Bucket List Community Cafe has rebranded to Bucket List Community News. “We’ve outgrown our origin story and this makes our mission more clear,” founder Vicky Collins said in a statement.

⚙️ COMINGS & GOINGS: Manny Sotelo is retiring after 42 years as a photojournalist at 9NEWS. McKenna Harford, who had bylines in Colorado Community Media and City Cast Denver, is joining Sentinel Colorado to cover Aurora and local governments.

🚫 🤖 Denver Post reporter John Wenzel wrote about Denverse Magazine, which launched in 2024 and is calling itself “the first magazine with an AI-free guarantee.” The promise that “humans created all words and images runs counter to the bro-tech culture of artificial intelligence that has infected and degraded Hollywood and social media like brain-eating amoebae,” Wenzel reported. “The Denver Post and other publications are currently suing generative AI companies OpenAI and Microsoft for stealing copyrighted work for their plagiarism machines, so you can imagine why Denverse’s message appealed to me,” he added.

🐯 Three Colorado College students, Veronica Bianco, Sydney McGarr, and Bella Houck, won top awards from the Society of Professional Journalists chapter. This year’s contest was the most competitive in recent memory, said SPJ Colorado’s immediate past president, Doug Bell, who oversaw the awards. Find all the student scholarship winners winners here.

⚙️ Denver journalist Scott Carney is looking for a managing editor and producer to hire for his independent investigative journalism YouTube channel. “If you are ready to help navigate the frontiers of investigative journalism and human potential, let’s talk,” he said. Send a brief intro, your resume, and any examples of content you’ve had a hand in creating (writing, video, or social) to scott[at]foxtopus[dot]ink. Use the subject line: “Second in Command.”

🆕 “Veteran marketing pro and journalist Claire Lardizabal Moser has joined Sentinel Colorado as its new advertising and marketing executive,” the Aurora-based weekly announced.

📈 An anecdote about the Colorado Sun led a story in Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab by Joshua Benton headlined “Nonprofit news outlets had a strong traffic month in January.”

🗞 Jim O’Rourke, who runs the O’Rourke Media Group that owns a string of local newspapers in Colorado, sketched out a local media playbook that explains why he’s still buying newspapers and how he’s building a scalable platform.

👻 A story in the Denver Post this week included this eyebrow-raising line about someone who works for a sitting U.S. congressman: “A spokeswoman for Evans’ campaign who declined to give her name called the Democrats’ stance on gas prices ‘hypocritical’ in a statement.” The unnamed spokesperson continued: “For years, they have pushed radical climate policies and overregulation, banning natural gas for residential heating, eliminating jobs for hardworking families, and handcuffing the very oil and gas workers who ensure reliable and affordable resources for Coloradans,” her statement read. “Now they expect us to believe they care about gas prices?” Jon Murray, the paper’s senior editor for public affairs, told me the paper’s goal is to push back consistently as its reporters interact with campaign representatives “who are used to DC rules of engagement that default to too much unnamed sourcing. In this instance, facing a tight deadline, we thought the Evans camp’s overall statement was worth including as a matter of fairness but we intend to push for attribution in the future.”

I’m Corey Hutchins, manager of the Colorado College Journalism Institute, advisor to Colorado Media Project, and a board member of the state Society of Professional Journalists chapter. For nearly a decade, I reported on the U.S. local media scene for Columbia Journalism Review, and I’ve been a journalist for longer at multiple news organizations. Most recently, I’ve been contributing to Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab and The Conversation. I also write the twice-monthly Community Newswire newsletter for the Center for Community News at the University of Vermont. The nonprofit Colorado Media Project is underwriting this newsletter, and my “Inside the News” column appears at COLab. (If you’d like to underwrite or sponsor this newsletter, hit me up.) Follow me on Bluesky, reply or subscribe to this weekly newsletter here, or e-mail me at CoreyHutchins [at] gmail [dot] com.

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Caren Ermel, 75, who is the former CEO of Sangre de Cristo Hospice and Palliative Care, grew up in the small valley hamlet of Beulah.

That’s an unincorporated community in Pueblo County with a population of roughly 700, about an hour south of Colorado Springs. Her family has owned the local general store there for more than 50 years.

Working in hospice, Ermel realized how easy it was — and often necessary — to find information on Facebook about immediate public safety issues like road closures during emergencies in the Wet Mountains.

So, addressing what she saw as a limited news-and-information scene in her part of the valley, she started a Facebook page called Beulah Colorado News and Events. After a small monthly newspaper that served the village disappeared about a year ago, the Facebook page, which counts 4,400 followers, is a place where locals look to see what’s going on.

Recent posts have included information about area events, local job listings, a call to attend a community meeting about an arts festival, and a school’s science team heading to the state championship. There was a video dispatch from a local protest — “Neighbors stood shoulder to shoulder to voice concern about growing threats to rights, freedoms, and the health of our democracy” — mixed with alerts about where to get firewood or how to attend a free CPR training. Plenty of posts about missing cats and dogs.

“It is the best way to get information out to the local community,” Ermel said over the phone this week. “People check it on a daily basis to see what’s going on or who needs anything. It works well in our small town.”

The Facebook page operator, who is also a local real estate agent, has created something of a de facto digital public square for her community — and one that plenty more people than actually live there year-round seem to care about.

Ermel, who doesn’t have a background in journalism, is an example of someone who found themselves evolving into what a report last year from Commoner and Press Forward might call a “community catalyst.” Not a self-identified reporter or publisher, but a significant steward of local news and information who can also control the flow of it.

“I don’t let just anybody post; you get the folks who post inappropriate things,” she said in an interview, adding, “I do take comments off, and from time to time I need to block somebody.” (Often it might be a bot.)

The founder of the Beulah Colorado News and Events Facebook page is even writing obituaries. In Beulah, Ermel said, people seem to die in threes. A recent obit about Jack Hunter, who she wrote once appeared on the cover of American Quarter Horse Journal magazine, racked up more than 100,000 views, she said. The post sports 25 shares and nearly 55 comments.

As for local civic information and what area government is up to, she says she tries to stay on top of it. She has posted live feeds from controversial school board meetings and has been alerting locals to a zoning issue involving a proposed Yogi Bear-themed Jellystone RV resort in the valley. When she posted about a local utility wanting to install a row of power lines along part of a highway with picturesque views that already had lines running along one side of it, she said it led to community concern and the effort getting scrapped.

“They got so many calls,” she said. “The only place that was really covering that was the Facebook page.”

Ermel said she needs to do better about taking photos to publish with posts.

“Gossip is still a biggie,” she acknowledged. “And I know who I can call to get the latest gossip and what’s going on. There are some that seem to be info hubs.”

For plenty in Beulah, she might serve that role pretty well herself.

➡️ This newsletter is proudly sponsored by The Colorado Health Foundation. As a proud funder of Colorado Media Project, the home of Press Forward Colorado, the CHF understands that healthy communities need a healthy news ecosystem.

This year, The Colorado Health Foundation is working to combat disinformation and misinformation, and helping nonprofits build media literacy.

• 👀 Our new legislative district profiles provide 2025 data and insights for every House, Senate, and congressional district in the state.

The Colorado News Collaborative called our annual Pulse Poll a “trove of information useful to reporters.” The Colorado Health Foundation’s Katie Peshek talked to journalists across the state about the poll results, which you can watch here. We also have Pulse Poll slides here, showing how you can use what we found to guide your reporting on topics and bring facts and data to your stories. ⬅️

What happens ‘Next’ for 9NEWS?

Viewers of Denver’s KUSA 9NEWS have begun to notice something new at the end of TV news broadcasts: a logo for the company Nexstar.

That’s the brand behind the mega media merger that gobbled up Tegna, which owns 9NEWS. Nexstar also happens to own FOX31 in Denver.

What might this actually mean for coverage? Hopefully nothing like what happens in that movie from the ‘80s if you feed a Mogwai after midnight.

Last week’s newsletter reported on this Trump-backed TV deal and a lawsuit to block it. But now, writing for the Colorado Sun this week, Nicole Vap, who spent two decades producing the 9NEWS investigative team and directed investigations for Tegna, reported about what this could mean for the Mile High City.

Here are some nuggets from her excellent piece, titled “Tegna-Nexstar megamerger drama has national implications, but seismic impact on Denver news”:

• “There’s never been anything like this before,” said Roger Ogden, who spent most of his career in newsroom and TV management starting at 9News in the 1960s. “I don’t think there’ll be two news operations,” he said. “It’ll be combined, and Channel 31 and their news director will be calling all the shots.” “Ogden predicts deep cuts will be needed to make the finances of this merger work. He expects to see 80 to 90 journalists laid off in Denver.”

• The 9NEWS “Next” anchor Kyle Clark “has cultivated a huge and loyal following of viewers who routinely make small-dollar donations to the program’s microgiving that benefits nonprofits and charitable causes,” Vap wrote. “But he’s also been the target of conservative critics who say he’s too liberal. The criticism has added to speculation the show and Clark will not fit into Nexstar’s future, especially after the merger received public support from Trump.”

• “‘It’s not just the journalists who lose their jobs who will suffer,’ said Lynn Valencia, who was vice president of community relations at 9News for nine years. ‘It’s definitely going to hurt the community,’ she said. 9News has already shed community outreach events like the in-person 9Cares Colorado Shares food drives, the 9HealthFair, Buddy Check9 and the Shred-a-thon.”

• “‘Maybe the day of the food drive is over,’ Valencia said, adding that she fears the merged stations will have even fewer incentives to invest in large community events. ‘Stations aren’t doing anything to try to connect to the real local community, and I think that’s their strength.’”

Vap reached out to me for a comment for her story, and I sought to consider how anything positive might come from the turmoil.

“I think the fallout from all this chaos at the TV stations in Denver could offer an opportunity for any person, group or organization that might be thinking about how to revolutionize broadcast news in the streaming and social media era to consider Colorado as a pilot,” I told her.

If you think about it, in 2018, when a hedge-fund owner self-harmed the Denver Post with mass layoffs, it wound up catalyzing a years-long movement that has significantly reshaped Colorado’s print and digital local media scene.

It was out of that trauma that we now have outlets like the Colorado Sun and nonprofits like Colorado Media Project and the Colorado News Collaborative along with a strong cultural ethos of collaboration over competition — not to mention resources and initiatives each year to help sustain and support the state’s local news and information ecosystem.

Whether something similar emerges after the corporate carpet bombing of Denver’s TV news market remains to be seen.

CPR News, Sentinel, and Denver7 featured in ‘Last Week Tonight’

Colorado news outlets have once again made their way into John Oliver’s popular “Last Week Tonight” show on HBO.

The satirist this week trained his 30-minute monologue on the ways some law enforcement agencies bait people into committing crimes.

Oliver ripped through horrific stories about undercover cops posing as new friends who pressure special needs kids into buying weed from homeless people and agents using confidential informants to cut corners.

The segment also mocks the way some local media, typically local TV news, covers these so-called stings. “Cops Bust Massive Drug Ring,” Oliver said, is a “much cooler story” than “Cops Manipulate/Arrest Autistic Teen.”

Toward the end, Oliver went off about an ATF sting operation in Aurora, Colorado, in which he said undercover agents offered guns and drugs to Venezuelan immigrants. For the clip, he relied in part on footage from KMGH Denver7 and coverage from Sentinel Colorado.

Oliver then cited reporting from last month by Colorado Public Radio’s Allison Sherry that showed how despite aggressive talk from prosecutors, members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua have so far produced only plea deals with authorities failing to “back up the hype surrounding TdA as a major threat to the public.”

From the story:

Defense attorneys say that rather than serving to expose the deep reach of a criminal gang directed from Caracas and bent on poisoning Americans with drugs, the pleas have shown the group’s local operation for what it really is: A ragtag bunch of minor criminals desperate for cash whose offenses often started with meetings with informants, undercover local law enforcement and federal agents, not dictated by a leader in South America.

“Nothing that was done here is new,” said Jason Schall, whose client Jonathan Jose Ocopio-Villalobos pleaded guilty in late December to conspiracy to possess and distribute a methamphetamine mixture and a conspiracy to use a firearm during a drug trafficking crime. “If there was something new about it, it is how quickly resources were targeted towards a particular community.”

[U.S. Attorney Peter] McNeilly had no comment on the plea deals or the way the case is now playing out seven months later. He said through a spokeswoman that he stood by his earlier comments about the takedown of Tren de Aragua in Colorado.

“The point here is, the long history of police stings has far too often left us with a bunch of fake crimes from manufactured criminals resulting in very real punishments,” Oliver said in his HBO segment. “I am not saying the crimes you’ve seen people arrested for tonight don’t happen — of course they do … and those crimes should be investigated. The problem with stings is they’re an easy way for police to rack up arrests and sell the illusion that they’re addressing the crimes even when that may not actually be the case.”

Those who have followed this newsletter for the past decade might recall one of the worst Colorado police-sting blunders in recent memory that happened in Trinidad, in 2014.

That dragnet, which relied on paid confidential informants to make alleged small-time drug buys with some 40 people, ended up with charges being dropped — but not before it ruined the lives of some of the accused after local media reported on it and one newspaper published their mugshots in print.

In his monologue, Oliver urged members of the media to question what role law enforcement might have played in creating a crime when they hear from authorities about the next big “sting” in their community.

Axios expands to ‘South Denver’ and hires a veteran of 5280 magazine to write it

This newsletter recently reported how Axios Local has expanded to Colorado Springs and was also moving into the Denver suburbs.

This week, Robert Sanchez, a nearly 20-year veteran of Denver’s 5280 magazine, is taking on the role of South Denver Axios reporter for the daily morning newsletter empire known for its trademarked Smart Brevity style.

“I’ll be covering Arapahoe and Douglas counties, two communities I’ve called home for roughly 40 years,” Sanchez wrote on LinkedIn. “Getting the chance to build a hyper-local newsroom here is a dream job for me. I’m especially thrilled to help create something useful for readers and to help Axios develop a model for great suburban coverage nationwide.”

The long-form magazine writer called the transition bittersweet.

“Early this month, my 18-plus years at 5280 magazine came to an end,” he wrote. “I’m deeply grateful for the reporting, writing and relationships that shaped those years. I’ll always be thankful for that chapter in my life.”

A recent Axios Boulder item included this disclosure: “Axios and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement that allows OpenAI to access part of Axios’ story archives while helping fund the launch of Axios into four local cities and providing some AI tools. Axios has editorial independence.”

City of Colorado Springs lauds the work of local journalists

Last Thursday, news organizations were swarming the Capitol in Denver for Local News Day. That morning, Colorado lawmakers passed a resolution recognizing the importance of journalism.

An hour south, Jason Strickland, the chief communications officer for the City of Colorado Springs, offered his own tribute. This is what he sent to local journalists in the state’s second-largest city:

Dear Leaders and Members of our Local News Media,

On behalf of the City of Colorado Springs, I express my sincere appreciation for the work you do every day to keep our community informed. Local journalism remains one of the most important pillars of a healthy civic life, and your dedication demonstrates the strength, vitality, and community that defines our Pikes Peak region.

Your commitment to trusted, fact-based reporting ensures residents have the information they need to understand the issues shaping our city. In an era when accurate information matters now more than ever, your work fosters transparency, accountability, and meaningful civic engagement.

Our city also recognizes the challenges facing local newsrooms and strongly supports efforts that sustain and strengthen local journalism. A vibrant local press is essential not only for informed residents, but also for a thriving community.

The relationship between our office and your newsrooms is one we value deeply. I sincerely appreciated visiting many of our local newsrooms over the past couple of months to have productive conversations regarding our cooperation and collaboration. Open communication and mutual respect allow us to better serve the public together, ensuring that our community receives clear, reliable information about the decisions and developments that affect daily life in Colorado Springs.

Your role as the “fourth branch of government”—holding institutions accountable while informing the public—is fundamental.

Strickland thanked members of the local media for their “professionalism, dedication, and integrity you bring to this responsibility.”

Westword founder and editor Patty Calhoun is retiring this summer after 49 years

Following nearly 50 years as editor of one of the country’s best alternative weekly newspapers, Westword founder Patty Calhoun is hanging up the spurs.

“On July 1, after 49 years(!), I’ll be retiring as editor,” she wrote in a column this week.

“Know that Westword will be left in excellent hands with our current editorial staff and leadership,” she added. “And this isn’t goodbye; I’ll remain on as editor emeritus, contributing a regular column and helping prepare for another big anniversary: Westword‘s fiftieth, on September 1, 2027. In so many ways, the best is yet to come.”

More from the column:

In the meantime, I’ll be sharing more about my time here at Westword, and what it’s meant to both me and the city; I’ll also be writing the stories I’ve been meaning to get to when I wasn’t distracted by cranky politicians and big protests and projects like the Best of Denver.

I’ll finally finish that article about the status of Rocky Flats today, and why people visiting what’s now a “wildlife refuge” might come out with a certain glow. I’ll dig into why there are so few live music venues downtown, when culture is a key to bringing people back there. And I might even write about the time I met with Joe Rogan — yes, that Joe Rogan — who wanted to be the Westword pot critic.

“Calhoun blazed trails for women journalists at a time when newsroom equality was rare, and women’s voices were often shut out of news media,” John Wenzel wrote in the Denver Post in a tribute this week that included Denver newsmakers and media personalities offering their thoughts. “She bucked those stereotypes, instead appearing as a rough-and-tumble presence at Western events. She also wrung the best from her writers, and as a loyal Denverite who saw trends coming from miles away, gave young writers a chance to influence the city’s conversations.”

This newsletter will hopefully have more to write about the departure of one of the most legendary alt-weekly editors in the nation, so watch this space for that.

🌿 This week’s newsletter is proudly supported by PR firm Grasslands: A Journalism-Minded Agency™, founded by Ricardo Baca (ex-Denver Post, ex-Rocky Mountain News, and current Colorado Public Radio board of directors). We understand journalists because we were journalists — and we’re here to help. Need expert sources or compelling stories? Our diverse client roster includes beloved Colorado institutions (Naropa University and Illegal Pete’s), innovative wellness brands (Boulder County Farmers Markets, Naturally Colorado, Eden Health Club), bold natural products businesses (Wild Zora, Flatiron Food Factory, Flower Union Brands), and other purpose-driven organizations. As creators of the Colorado Journalist Meet-Up and longtime champions of quality journalism, Grasslands recognizes the essential role reporters play in our communities. Our team is ready to connect you with sources, data, and unique perspectives that elevate your reporting.

Have a story you’re working on? Email Ricardo directly: ricardo@mygrasslands.com. Together, we’re crafting better narratives — one story at a time. 🌿

More Colorado media odds & ends

🧐 Did this humble media newsletter scoop an entire Capitol press corps about a vote the Colorado Senate would take? Writing about last week’s Local News Day at the Capitol, Marianne Goodland of Colorado Politics wrote: “The amusing part of this was that not one member of the Capitol press corps knew about this. We found out about it from Corey Hutchins’ Friday newsletter on March 13.” (Read the Colorado Senate’s formal resolution recognizing the importance of local journalism here.)

🏥 The Revolutionist, a socialist newspaper in Grand Junction, reported that one of its contributors, Glenn Greuling, wound up in the hospital after police pulled him over on his bicycle “just twenty feet from his driveway.” Greuling “was formerly unhoused and has long advocated and organized for political, not charity, solutions to homelessness.” The newspaper reported that he is a “regular in the local protest scene. He also takes photographs for the Revolutionist, and he is a major part of the Rev’s monthly distribution.”

🏆 The Colorado chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, of which I’m a board member, has announced its individual winners for its annual Top of the Rockies awards. Find out who won Journalist of the Year, Educator of the Year, Keeper of the Flame, and First Amendment honors here.

🗳 “I am proud to share that I have been elected President of the The Denver Press Club, the oldest press club in the United States, founded in 1867,” Nathan Fernando-Frescas of Colorado Public Radio wrote on LinkedIn.

🍻 After eight years on the board of the Denver Press Club, “and more shoveled walks, frozen pipes, and literal dumpster fires” than he cares to recount, the Club will honor Skyler McKinley on its caricature wall. “It’s a real honor, more than I can express, and I hope you’ll join me at the hanging ceremony on Thursday, April 2 - my 34th birthday,” he said on social media. “And hey, there’s just no way the caricature could look more like a caricature than I already do.”

💬 Glenwood Springs Post-Independent publisher Peter Baumann wrote “10 thoughts from two decades in journalism” for the paper. One of them: “Own your mistakes: No matter how long you’ve been in journalism, it still stings to make a mistake. Corrections are the best remedy. And while it’s never comfortable to stew in the fact that you got something wrong, the correction process will help you grow and people will respect you more for it.”

📽 Journalist and filmmaker Julian Rubinstein, who teaches at Western Colorado University, is “hoping to turn Gunnison’s cinema scene around,” Olivia Reinhardt reported for the Gunnison Country Times. “Rubinstein launched Mountaineer Cinema, using the University Center theater as an outlet for both student-made films and award-winning independent films.”

🐘 Heidi Ganahl, the Republican candidate for governor in 2024 against current Democratic Gov. Jared Polis, said this week on social media that she launched her Rocky Mountain Voice news and commentary digital outlet because she felt “9NEWS spent the entire 2022 governor’s race treating me like public enemy number one.” Now, she says she believes her operation is “one of the fastest growing news sources in Colorado.” (I sent an email to a gmail address for Ganahl asking about how to evaluate that metric, but didn’t hear back.)

🏆 Erin O’Connell, whose open meetings lawsuit against the Woodland Park school board “sent a message to public bodies across Colorado,” is the “newest recipient of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition’s Ruth Anna Citizen Champion Award,” the CFOIC announced.

I’m Corey Hutchins, manager of the Colorado College Journalism Institute, advisor to Colorado Media Project, and a board member of the state Society of Professional Journalists chapter. For nearly a decade, I reported on the U.S. local media scene for Columbia Journalism Review, and I’ve been a journalist for longer at multiple news organizations. Most recently, I’ve been contributing to Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab and The Conversation. I also write the twice-monthly Community Newswire newsletter for the Center for Community News at the University of Vermont. The nonprofit Colorado Media Project is underwriting this newsletter, and my “Inside the News” column appears at COLab. (If you’d like to underwrite or sponsor this newsletter, hit me up.) Follow me on Bluesky, reply or subscribe to this weekly newsletter here, or e-mail me at CoreyHutchins [at] gmail [dot] com.

At issue is a move by Nexstar, which owns KDVR FOX31 in Denver, to gobble up Tegna, which owns Denver’s KUSA 9NEWS. Nexstar said it had completed its acquisition.

News of the approval came just after Weiser announced that he had joined an antitrust lawsuit to try and block it.

The deal, which Trump currently supports, though he had earlier indicated his disapproval, would involve plenty of other local stations around the country.

In Denver, the consolidation would drastically reshape the local market. And according to Weiser, who is also running for governor, not in a good way.

“The proposed Nexstar/Tegna merger would give Nexstar control over an astonishing number of television stations across the nation, including KUSA and KDVR in Denver,” Weiser said in a statement on Thursday.

Such a merger, he added, would reduce competition in local news operations. Colorado viewers would have “less choice in news,” he said, and there would be less diversity in perspectives.

“Not only will this merger reduce the quality of local TV offerings, but consumers will also end up paying more for monthly cable TV or satellite service as a result,” Weiser said. “Competition in the local media market is critical for a healthy democracy, an informed citizenry, and affordable access to sports, news, and prime time shows. For these reasons, we are suing to block the Nexstar/Tegna merger.”

When these kinds of corporate consolidation deals go through, they typically do not lead to expanding newsrooms. They usually mean shrinking newsrooms for the sake of “efficiencies” or “synergies.”

From the 34-page lawsuit filed by the AGs:

…the Proposed Transaction will likely reduce competition in local news operations. Based on Nexstar’s pattern of newsroom closures and its recent statements to investors, the merged entity is likely to consolidate newsrooms of previously separate Big 4 stations, degrading the content and quality of local news broadcasts through the Big 4 stations. A recent study found that Nexstar is the worst offender in “news duplication” in local news, meaning Nexstar stations air local news content that is identical across multiple stations in one location.

In Denver, Tegna’s 9NEWS stands apart for its prolific accountability reporting, while Nexstar’s station in Denver, FOX31, doesn’t particularly get as much attention for that.

Media reported that Perry Sook, Nexstar’s chairman and CEO, said his company is “grateful” to Trump, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, and the DOJ “for recognizing the dynamic forces shaping the media landscape and allowing this transaction to move forward.”

For his part, Carr said on a recent podcast that he is launching a campaign that invites broadcasters to “highlight the great wins of the country and run patriotic programming — maybe starting off with the Pledge of Allegiance, which we used to do.”

The new ownership megadeal has led to anxiety among those at the Denver stations and among close media watchers who worry about potentially less watchdog coverage of politicians on TV.

9NEWS anchor Kyle Clark reported on the developments on air Thursday evening.

“Apart from the general comment that multiple stations in the same market will be combined, Nexstar has not said publicly what will happen with 9NEWS, or when,” he said.

Some of Colorado’s top Democratic leaders, from Gov. Jared Polis to U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, Congressman Joe Neguse, and Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, have condemned the takeover of 9NEWS.

On the right, Jon Caldara, who runs the libertarian-leaning nonprofit Independence Institute and plays an outsized role in conservative politics, policy, and media in Colorado, has criticized the deal from a conservative point of view.

In August, not long after news of the media consolidation attempt broke, Weiser told this newsletter that he would “closely review this proposed merger to determine if it will harm Coloradans.”

Last month, in an interview with this newsletter, Weiser, who is a former telecommunications lawyer, said he is against a move by the FCC to liberalize local TV mergers.

“That is a level of consolidation that is concerning, that warrants careful review,” he said. “And I am prepared to do that review. We’re doing it with other states because this affects other states, not just Colorado.”

Typically, TV takeovers like this might run afoul of federal regulations. But it is not a stretch to imagine Trump welcoming more local TV news consolidation — or any particular broadcast deal — if he believes it might somehow benefit him.

“The deal needed the approval of the Republican Trump administration’s FCC because the government had to waive rules that limit how many local stations that one company can own,” the Associated Press reported.

Proponents of local TV news consolidation, like the National Broadcasters Association, say the FCC allowing ownership deals to go through would offer local stations the scale to compete with large tech giants like YouTube or Netflix, which don’t have similar restrictions.

Last month, Weiser told this newsletter that he believed Trump was against the Nexstar-Tegna TV deal because of comments he had made about it — but he also acknowledged that the president can be on various sides of one issue.

“This is a more capricious, unpredictable, destructive administration than anything we’ve seen, so the normal processes where you actually have rational discourse, that’s out the window,” Weiser said. “So who knows what’s going to happen.”

Weiser noted that he had gone to court when two large grocery stores, Kroger and Albertsons, sought to merge. That consolidation deal did not move forward after a judge temporarily blocked it.

“I have shown my willingness and commitment to stop mergers that would harm Colorado,” he said. “And I have that authority as AG regardless of what the Trump administration does.”

Now he has joined attorneys general in seven other states. They filed the lawsuit with the U.S. District Court in Sacramento, California.

Despite the deal’s approval from the FCC and DOJ, a spokesperson for Weiser said on Friday that the state prosecutors are “pushing on” with their lawsuit.

➡️ This newsletter is proudly sponsored by The Colorado Health Foundation. As a proud funder of Colorado Media Project, the home of Press Forward Colorado, the CHF understands that healthy communities need a healthy news ecosystem.

This year, The Colorado Health Foundation is working to combat disinformation and misinformation, and helping nonprofits build media literacy.

• There has never been a more important time than now to authentically and ethically tell stories that uplift our shared humanity, shared values, and shared emotions as people. So, The Colorado Health Foundation is hosting a two-part virtual series led by our longtime messaging research and strategy partners on the evidence-based Heartwired approach for persuasive storytelling and messaging.

Recently, the Colorado News Collaborative called our annual Pulse Poll a “trove of information useful to reporters.” The Colorado Health Foundation’s Katie Peshek talked to journalists across the state about the poll results, which you can watch here. We also have Pulse Poll slides here, showing how you can use what we found to guide your reporting on topics and bring facts and data to your stories. ⬅️

Will the City of Denver sue the Denver Post over unpaid rent?

Journalists at the Denver Post have once again found themselves in an uncomfortable position with a city administration they are covering.

While the newspaper has reported on a budget crisis at the City of Denver, other local media are reporting that the newspaper itself is racking up a massive bill of unpaid rent to the city for a downtown building at Colfax and Broadway that its journalists vacated years ago.

This is from a March 11 story by Thomas Gounley in BusinessDen:

The Post has a master lease for the 11-story building that runs through October 2029 but no longer uses the space. It stopped paying rent in August and has yet to resume, according to Laura Swartz, a spokeswoman for the city’s finance department.

That brings the total owed to at least $5.2 million, not counting late fees and other charges.

Denver sent the Post a notice of default on Aug. 25, according to Swartz. And in late October — after the situation was reported by the local CBS affiliate — Mayor Mike Johnston told City Attorney Miko Brown to “institute appropriate proceedings in a court of proper jurisdiction.”

But Denver has not sued over the unpaid rent. And Swartz declined to provide an update on what’s happening behind the scenes.

“I also cannot comment further while legal discussions are still ongoing,” she said in an email.

The Post reported in October that the newspaper had offered to buy out its lease. More than $20 million will be owed for future months, not counting the $5 million already owed.

The development has some Colorado journalists wondering what the end game might be, given the unsavory history of the Alden Global Capital hedge fund that financially controls the Denver Post.

This week, Mike Littwin, a former Denver Post columnist who now writes for the nonprofit Colorado Sun, noted the unusual twists and turns of this late-capitalist metro newspaper saga.

“I mean, until a few months ago, the city — which is a tenant at the building — had been paying rent to the Post,” he wrote. “That’s how weird this story is.”

The Littwin column came with this brutal headline: “Denver Post to City: Drop Dead.”

From the piece:

That’s $5 million at a time when Denver has had to lay off more than 150 city workers and defund a too-long list of necessary city projects due to massive budget overruns. That’s $5 million that would at least have paid the one-time, severance-pay price for the laid-off city workers, which, coincidentally, cost the city, yes, $5 million.

Who did pay for it? That’s right, you did, if you live in Denver.

And, by the way, that’s $5 million and counting. Maybe this is the right time to, uh, borrow from the famous 1975 New York Daily News headline when President Gerald Ford refused funds for a struggling New York City — “Ford to City: Drop Dead.” We could just change the wording slightly to “Post to City: Drop Dead.”

So Alden didn’t just indirectly screw you over by leaving the Post and its long-suffering journalists with just enough resources to scrape by each day as a shell of its former self, it is directly screwing taxpayers by refusing to pay its rent of $650,000 a month as the building’s master leaseholder.

Littwin opined that the city made a “bad deal” when it bought the building in early 2024 for $89 million — if it expected the “villains from Alden to keep faith with Denver.”

He speculated that the newspaper and city could work out a plan in which Denver uses the building for city offices.

“Here’s the thing: The Denver Post logo may still stand across the top of the 11-story building, but it’s just a mirage. There’s no there there,” he wrote. “The Post doesn’t own the building. It never did. But it is still the leaseholder.”

Indeed, for the better part of a decade, journalists now work from home or from a printing plant in Adams County.

Part of what might have made local newspapers the targets of hedge funds or private equity over the years could be that newspapers often own prime real estate in downtown city settings.

A newspaper getting sued over back rent isn’t completely unheard of. Owners of an office building in Hudson, New York sued the Register-Star in 2022 for not paying up. A newspaper publisher in Alaska got sued for the same. Last year, media reported a landlord sued the owner of the L.A. Times for failing to pay rent on its vacated printing plant, among other things.

But I haven’t yet heard of a city suing its local newspaper over something like this. Who knows how this sorry situation might end. Hopefully in a manner that allows the paper’s excellent journalists to keep their jobs and continue providing exemplary reporting.

The development once again shows the kinds of headaches certain ownership can cause for local news organizations.

Intellectually honest city leaders, in the meantime, should hopefully be able to separate those ownership issues from the work of the paper’s on-the-ground journalists as they continue to cover the city.

Ex-KOA morning radio anchor Marty Lenz reflects on his job — and his layoff

Marty Lenz, who co-anchored the KOA morning news slot from 5 a.m. to 9 a.m. from 2018 to October of 2025, got laid off in October last year.

The host had a “persistent even-handedness that won him admirers across the political spectrum,” wrote Jason Salzman, editor of the progressive digital Colorado Times Recorder site, this week.

Salzman interviewed Lenz about his time at KOA, which Salzman wrote is “widely known for its conservative talk shows.”

Here are some nuggets from the conversation:

• “When I was hired, I wasn’t given a specific mandate or mission. The show was already in excellent hands with longtime anchor and host April Zesbaugh, and my role was to partner with and support her work. However, my then-boss, Greg Foster, did share one key objective: to help shift the perception that Colorado’s Morning News catered primarily to a conservative audience. He believed that, given my background and experience, I could help position the show as a more traditional, middle-of-the-road news program.”

• “At times, this was challenging, given the structure and perception of KOA — especially during the Covid pandemic. Both April and I often felt as though we were “working against our audience.” For example, we would diligently report the latest information, data, protocols, and guidance from experts, epidemiologists, virologists, and policy leaders — only to have it undercut by other programming.”

• “I was laid off during iHeart’s annual/semiannual reduction in force. While the official explanation cited cost-cutting — a common factor in many of the company’s business and programming decisions — I believe other considerations were also at play. On several occasions, the current local leadership noted that our style of morning news program was uncommon within iHeart, hinting that changes might be forthcoming. When KOA removed my boss Greg Foster in 2022, our corporate news leaders came in to meet with us. Toward the end of my individual meeting, one of the managers suggested there were things we could do to keep KOA a conservative news outlet. I immediately shot back, “We are not conservative news, we are not liberal news — we are news.” I don’t recall his response; I was stunned by his perspective. Looking back now, I see it as a bit of foreshadowing.”

Read the whole interview at the link above.

The Durango Herald scraps its Sunday delivery, will print three days a week

Following several other once-daily print newspapers in Colorado, the family owned Durango Herald in the Four Corners region will cut its printing days.

“Beginning Wednesday, April 1, the Durango Herald will publish print editions Monday, Wednesday and Friday,” wrote John Blais, the paper’s publisher and CEO in a note to readers this week.

The new schedule, he said, will allow the paper to focus its resources on producing “timelier, impactful print editions while continuing to expand the digital coverage readers rely on every day.”

More from that note:

Over the past decade, measurable shifts have occurred in the news consumption habits of the Herald’s readers. Historically, the Sunday Edition had the greatest circulation and was the largest newspaper. In the past eight years, the Friday edition overtook Sunday as the most-read newspaper, with readers using the paper to plan their weekend events and clip coupons for shopping. …

Subscribers will continue to have 24/7 access to our journalism. In addition to our website’s daily reporting and continuous updates, subscribers can also access our e-Edition, a digital replica of the printed newspaper, available online at 6 a.m. on each publication day. The e-Edition allows readers to experience the full newspaper layout and stories in the same format as the printed paper.

Blais said that Herald’s online subscriptions “continue to grow substantially” and that it will launch a new website.

Richard Ballantine, who oversees Ballantine Communications, which publishes the Herald, wrote his own note to readers.

“Habits will change a bit with the above modifications, but we hope they’ll quickly fit and for the better,” he said. “A successful match between readers and advertisers and a local newspaper is critical, so let us know your reactions.”

Why an on-the-record source backed out of a Denver Post story

Here’s one that might raise some eyebrows.

This newsletter has explored what journalists can do when a source who gave an on-the-record interview later decides they want their comments to be “off the record.”

In that case, the source was a public official. Probably an easy call.

But what about someone quite a few rungs down the ladder in officialdom? And what if they might have a good reason to ask to anonymize their comments?

Check out this excerpt from a recent Denver Post story about the city’s troubled transportation department:

The Post had planned to publish a version of this story Tuesday that included comments on the record by a former DOTI employee who is critical of DOTI’s leadership and direction. The Post delayed publication after that person requested Monday night that they no longer be named. [DOTI executive director Amy] Ford had contacted a family member, who is still a staff member at DOTI, about this story and asked for the former employee’s contact information.

The former employee interpreted the outreach by Ford as potentially threatening toward the family member’s employment, but Ford told The Post that was not her intention. The Post agreed to remove the former employee’s name from the story at that employee’s request.

Typically, it would be nice to see an agency critic raising concerns on the record, but the way the Post played it here makes sense — and offers an even more revealing look into the culture of DOTI.

🌿 This week’s newsletter is proudly supported by PR firm Grasslands: A Journalism-Minded Agency™, founded by Ricardo Baca (ex-Denver Post, ex-Rocky Mountain News, and current Colorado Public Radio board of directors). We understand journalists because we were journalists — and we’re here to help. Need expert sources or compelling stories? Our diverse client roster includes beloved Colorado institutions (Naropa University and Illegal Pete’s), innovative wellness brands (Boulder County Farmers Markets, Naturally Colorado, Eden Health Club), bold natural products businesses (Wild Zora, Flatiron Food Factory, Flower Union Brands), and other purpose-driven organizations. As creators of the Colorado Journalist Meet-Up and longtime champions of quality journalism, Grasslands recognizes the essential role reporters play in our communities. Our team is ready to connect you with sources, data, and unique perspectives that elevate your reporting.

Have a story you’re working on? Email Ricardo directly: ricardo@mygrasslands.com. Together, we’re crafting better narratives — one story at a time. 🌿

More Colorado media odds & ends

👁 On April 3, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., professional journalists will be available to review student résumés and portfolios at the Denver Press Club. If you’re a student media advisor or journalism instructor in Colorado and reading this, please pass along the info.

👀 The Sentinel newspaper in Grand Junction published a house editorial that urged Colorado lawmakers to follow New Mexico’s lead in helping to “save newspapers.” In New Mexico, Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham recently signed a new law that includes “two targeted tax credits designed to strengthen local journalism and preserve newspaper printing infrastructure across the state,” the editorial read, adding, “Colorado should do something similar.”

🏛 Brittany Winkfield of the Colorado Ethnic Media Exchange wrote on LinkedIn about attending Local News Day at the Capitol this week. “It was an honor to witness Senate President, James Coleman, read the resolution on the Senate floor,” she wrote. “We also had the opportunity to connect with Speaker of the House, Julie McCluskie, for an intentional conversation about the future of local media and what it takes to sustain a strong, inclusive information ecosystem across our state.”

🚫 Patti Brown, editor of the Estes Valley Voice digital news site, reported this week that an entity of the U.S. Department of State would not allow her or her news outlet to attend a recent event.

⏳ Linda Navarro has marked 60 years at the Gazette newspaper in Colorado Springs. “She has spent her entire career as a reporter, editor and columnist at one paper, one of the most remarkable examples of dedication and longevity in American local journalism​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​,” wrote Gazette executive editor Vince Bzdek in a column about her. “Studies show that the average journalist stays in the same job for six years, while about 30% leave the industry entirely within that time frame.”

☀️ In honor of Sunshine Week, the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition is holding its annual Transparency Slam tonight, March 20, at 6 p.m. at the Denver Press Club.

🗞 Colorado Springs Gazette journalist Doug Fitzgerald spent a day at a career fair for students in the Cripple Creek and Victor area. “Getting the interest of students is a tough job for a newspaper guy,” he wrote in a recent column about his experience. “Fewer and fewer young people read – or even care about – newspapers. They do care about social media influencers and content creators, though.”

💨 KUNC public radio announced this week that Executive News Director Sean Corcoran “will be leaving the organization to accept a new leadership role at a Boston-area nonprofit.”

😬 A person the Boulder Daily Camera had hired as a reporter and later let go in 2021 after having to issue a major front-page retraction for a story about 9/11 has been arrested in Wyoming and “faces 10 felony charges for allegedly forging documents and lying about her credentials while opposing a controversial wind farm,” Clair McFarland reported for Cowboy State Daily.

🔗 The Comercio de Colorado newspaper is joining the Associated Press’s “landmark local news program, growing the total number of participating newsrooms to 100 in this first-of-its-kind civic infrastructure initiative aimed at supporting public service journalism, strengthening the U.S. local news ecosystem, and providing people information and news that supports communities across the country.”

🥳 Colorado Mesa University Assistant Professor Laurena Davis “has earned national recognition for her work in journalism education.” Davis is one of 150 educators who were selected from around the country to “represent their school for the 2026 Faculty Champion for the Center for Community News through the University of Vermont.”

🍻 After eight years on the board of the Denver Press Club, “and more shoveled walks, frozen pipes, and literal dumpster fires” than he cares to recount, the Club will honor Skyler McKinley on its caricature wall. “It’s a real honor, more than I can express, and I hope you’ll join me at the hanging ceremony on Thursday, April 2 - my 34th birthday,” he said on social media. “And hey, there’s just no way the caricature could look more like a caricature than I already do.”

⚙️ The Colorado Press Association is hiring a director of business development, advertising & partnerships to “help build the future of local news in Colorado.”

I’m Corey Hutchins, manager of the Colorado College Journalism Institute, advisor to Colorado Media Project, and a board member of the state Society of Professional Journalists chapter. For nearly a decade, I reported on the U.S. local media scene for Columbia Journalism Review, and I’ve been a journalist for longer at multiple news organizations. Most recently, I’ve been contributing to Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab and The Conversation. I also write the twice-monthly Community Newswire newsletter for the Center for Community News at the University of Vermont. The nonprofit Colorado Media Project is underwriting this newsletter, and my “Inside the News” column appears at COLab. (If you’d like to underwrite or sponsor this newsletter, hit me up.) Follow me on Bluesky, reply or subscribe to this weekly newsletter here, or e-mail me at CoreyHutchins [at] gmail [dot] com.

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Journalists and local news organizations from across Colorado plan to swarm the state Capitol in Denver on the morning of Thursday, March 19.

Dubbed “Local News Day” by organizers, the plan is to “visibly demonstrate the strength, vitality and deep community roots of local journalism.”

That’s according to Kyle Huelsman, who is leading a statewide coalition-building movement for increased public policy to support local news in the state.

Colorado Media Project, which underwrites this newsletter and which I advise on projects, is supporting the Local News Policy Coalition; I haven’t been intimately involved in its work.

Thursday’s rallying is set to coincide with a Senate resolution on the morning of March 19 under the gold dome.

“News outlets from across the state will be at the Capitol from approximately 8:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m., which will include the Senate’s formal resolution recognizing the importance of local journalism in Colorado,” Huelsman wrote to news organizations last week in an email. “Additional brief meetings may occur later in the morning as schedules allow.”

Here’s more from the email:

Local News Day is part of the work of the Local News Policy Coalition, a multi-year effort to strengthen the sustainability of local journalism in Colorado. The long-term goal is to ensure communities across the state continue to have access to trusted, fact-based local reporting. Your participation helps reinforce the importance of this goal and strengthens relationships that benefit newsrooms and communities across the state.

“Local News Day at the Capitol is a chance to remind lawmakers that the people producing local journalism live in their districts and serve those communities every day,” Colorado Press Association President and CEO Tim Regan-Porter said in an email.

“Legislators hear from many interests, but local news is not just another Colorado industry,” he added. “Journalism is a civic good, informing much of the work taking place at the Capitol and across Colorado. Press is the only private industry mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, via the Bill of Rights. This day helps put a spotlight on that unique role.”

Across the country, public policy proposals that could help support local news have been taking root in multiple state legislatures including Illinois, California, and elsewhere.

A proposed new law in Connecticut, for instance, would create a statewide fellowship program to place emerging journalists into local newsrooms. A bill in Maryland would “require state agencies to direct at least 50 percent of their advertising budgets to local newspapers, digital publishers and public media outlets.”

In Washington State, a proposed new law would support local reporting by “creating journalist employment grants for local newsrooms, funded through taxes on search engines and social media companies.”

Colorado’s neighbors have made some recent headlines of their own.

New Mexico recently passed the Local Journalist Employment Tax Credit, which provides a refundable tax credit to cover 30% of a journalist’s wages, capped at $15,000 per reporter each year.

And just last week, the Utah legislature passed a “historic proposal” by Republican Gov. Spencer Cox to “apply a tax on targeted advertising, especially by the largest tech platforms.”

Here in Colorado, where Democrats control state government, the editor of the largest mainstream local news organization that Republicans pay attention to has come out in favor of using more public dollars to support the state’s local news scene.

This is from a recent column by Vince Bzdek, who oversees coverage of Colorado Politics and the Denver and Colorado Springs Gazette, all of which are owned by the conservative Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz:

When is our state going to do something about its own crisis in democracy, i.e., journalism? Fifty-two local newspapers have closed in the last decade. Why doesn’t our legislature care? Why aren’t the politicians in those communities screaming their heads off in panic right now? Can you imagine the hue and cry if 52 schools suddenly shut down, yet journalism is essentially school for adults.

The Gazette editor called on Colorado’s lawmakers to work on legislation that could help.

In hopes for a good showing on Thursday, the Colorado Press Association and Colorado News Collaborative (COLab) have been spreading the word to their members.

COLab’s executive director, Laura Frank, said Local News Day at the Capitol is a “chance for journalists from every corner of Colorado to stand together and show lawmakers that strong, community-rooted local news is essential civic infrastructure for the entire state.”

➡️ This newsletter is proudly sponsored by The Colorado Health Foundation. As a proud funder of Colorado Media Project, the home of Press Forward Colorado, the CHF understands that healthy communities need a healthy news ecosystem.

This year, The Colorado Health Foundation is working to combat disinformation and misinformation, and helping nonprofits build media literacy.

• There has never been a more important time than now to authentically and ethically tell stories that uplift our shared humanity, shared values, and shared emotions as people. So, The Colorado Health Foundation is hosting a two-part virtual series led by our longtime messaging research and strategy partners on the evidence-based Heartwired approach for persuasive storytelling and messaging.

Recently, the Colorado News Collaborative called our annual Pulse Poll a “trove of information useful to reporters.” The Colorado Health Foundation’s Katie Peshek talked to journalists across the state about the poll results, which you can watch here. We also have Pulse Poll slides here, showing how you can use what we found to guide your reporting on topics and bring facts and data to your stories. ⬅️

Axios has expanded to Colorado Springs and hired a Gazette and Indy alum to write it

👋 Happy morning: Today’s newsletter is about 3,000 words, a who-knows-how-long read. This item’s reading time is significantly less.

1 SPRINGS THING: Axios Local has expanded to Colorado Springs and hired Glenn Wallace, who previously worked for the Gazette and the Indy alt-weekly and spent several years prior at Colorado Community Media.

By the numbers: One (1). That’s how many people will write the newsletter. His name is Glenn. Stop skimming and pay attention.

• 🗣 What they’re saying: “I’ve grown up and lived up and down the Front Range, from Cañon City to Westminster,” Wallace wrote in his first newsletter March 9. “I graduated from UNC Greeley, where I met a certain Rampart High School alum. She and I married and moved back to the Springs in 2021 with our two sons, and have been loving it here.”

Why it matters: Colorado Springs, the state’s second-largest city with a metropolitan area population of around 700,000, doesn’t have much of a digital-only local news scene. Axios has made a bet that it can fill that gap while generating enough advertising dollars to pay for a writer.

• More of why it matters (but in a different format to keep you engaged): Along with four TV stations, the daily Gazette newspaper and the KRCC public radio station make up the dominant sources of daily news and information. Two large Facebook groups, “Word of Mouth Colorado Springs” and “The 411 for the 719,” have more than 180,000 members combined.

Between the lines: Axios is known for its “Smart Brevity” style, which this item is aping, but I should probably leave it to the pros. Wallace acknowledged a learning curve after his first week on the job.

• “I have to admit that, as a longtime traditional newspaper guy, there have been some lessons learned,” Wallace wrote in Friday’s edition. He called Smart Brevity a “disciplined approach that takes established journalism rules and cranks them up to 11. I had an old mentor who preached writing ‘tight and bright.’” He said he thought he knew what that meant, but, “Then I saw the condensed edits on my first story. 😳 The point is: it takes a lot of work to write this short.”

Zoom out: The Springs edition is the latest expansion of the addictive hyper-digestible daily morning newsletter after the national company Axios launched one in Denver in 2021 and expanded to Boulder last year. It is also expanding into the Denver suburbs and is partnering with an AI company.

The intrigue: The salary range for the Springs position when Axios first posted it was between $60,000 and $90,000. (The Boulder job listing last year was $65,000 to $100,000.)

What’s next: Wallace promises to put together a “smart and concise local newsletter for you each weekday.” You can sign up for it here.

How a Springs TV reporter’s web-scraper tool helped him break the Erika Kirk Air Force story

By now, news that President Donald Trump appointed Erika Kirk to the board of the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs is well known.

But how Springs TV journalist Brett Forrest at KOAA News5 broke the story on March 8 about this new role of the widow of assassinated conservative activist Charlie Kirk is also newsworthy.

The reporter has been extensively covering the Air Force Academy and its 16-member Board of Visitors for years. “My enterprise reporting is the topic of many of the board’s discussions in recent meetings,” he said in a post on social media.

To help him stay on top of when the board meets, he set up a website scraper tool using Visualping to notify him whenever there's a change to the Board of Visitors web page.

“Lo and behold, over the weekend, I got a notification that Erika Kirk’s name had been added to the list of members,” he said. “Not exactly what I expected to learn when utilizing the scraper tool, but a newsworthy development nonetheless.”

Forrest came into work on Sunday and published the story to the KOAA website, earning himself and his outlet a big scoop.

“A couple other local outlets followed suit yesterday,” he said this Tuesday, “and then, as of today, plenty of national outlets finally caught wind.”

Two Colorado TV stations dropped from Dish Network after renewal dispute

Residents in Colorado Springs and Grand Junction who use a Dish Network satellite and streaming service have lost access to TV stations owned by Gray Media after the two companies failed to come to a renewal agreement.

“DISH pulls KKTV from its service,” read a headline at the Springs TV station.

“Dish drops Gray Media’s stations over unprecedented new demand to reshape the television industry to enrich its owner,” read another at KJCT/KKCO in Grand Junction.

Dish Network, which is based in Englewood, Colorado, said in a statement this week that 226 channels in 113 markets are currently unavailable to Dish customers after Gray Media “chose to disconnect.”

KKTV in the Springs and KJCT in Grand Junction are the only two in Colorado that show up on a map of Gray-owned outlets nationwide.

Local news outlets across the country, including Michigan, Iowa, Missouri, Georgia, New Jersey, and South Carolina, have reported how the fallout will affect TV news watchers there.

From Matthew Keys at The Desk, which covers the TV and streaming industries:

In a press release on Wednesday, Gray Media said Dish Network was violating its legal obligation to negotiate toward a new distribution contract in good faith by insisting on a “materially-adverse provision in the new agreement that is unlike any provision in any distribution agreement with Gray’s roughly 400 other distribution partners.”

Gray Media said the condition was “unprecedented in the several-decade history of the pay TV industry across any cable or DBS (direct broadcast satellite) operator and any broadcaster,” and that the proposal was “flatly inconsistent with marketplace conditions in clear violation of Dish Network’s federal statutory obligation to negotiate retransmission in good faith.”

Gray Media did not say what the onerous term was that Dish Network proposed. Reached for comment on Wednesday, a spokesperson said the broadcaster is “not providing the details of the asked provision.”

Dish Network said Gray was asking for more money for its local TV stations.

“The dispute between Dish Network and Gray Media comes at a time when local TV broadcasters are lobbying federal regulators for looser rules that will allow them to consolidate their operations through mergers and acquisitions,” Keys wrote.

Readers will recall how Nexstar is seeking federal regulatory approval to take over Tegna, which would see KDVR FOX31 subsume 9NEWS in Denver.

🌿 This week’s newsletter is proudly supported by PR firm Grasslands: A Journalism-Minded Agency™, founded by Ricardo Baca (ex-Denver Post, ex-Rocky Mountain News, and current Colorado Public Radio board of directors). We understand journalists because we were journalists — and we’re here to help. Need expert sources or compelling stories? Our diverse client roster includes beloved Colorado institutions (Naropa University and Illegal Pete’s), innovative wellness brands (Boulder County Farmers Markets, Naturally Colorado, Eden Health Club), bold natural products businesses (Wild Zora, Flatiron Food Factory, Flower Union Brands), and other purpose-driven organizations. As creators of the Colorado Journalist Meet-Up and longtime champions of quality journalism, Grasslands recognizes the essential role reporters play in our communities. Our team is ready to connect you with sources, data, and unique perspectives that elevate your reporting.

Have a story you’re working on? Email Ricardo directly: ricardo@mygrasslands.com. Together, we’re crafting better narratives — one story at a time. 🌿

More Colorado media odds & ends

🗓 Save the date: the Top of the Rockies awards reception hosted by the Colorado Society of Professional Journalists will be April 25 at the Slate Hotel in Denver at 5:30 p.m. The SPJ board, of which I’m a member, will also present its annual individual best-of-the-best awards.

🎂 KSUT tribal radio in the Four Corners is celebrating 50 years. “As we reflect on this anniversary year, we also look back on 2025 – one of the most remarkable and challenging,” wrote the station’s executive director, Tami Graham.

🗳 The Denver Press Club has a “competitive election for a few open spots this year,” it announced this week, “so we need members to exercise their judgment and vote to determine who will be guiding the Club for the next few years.” See the candidates here. Ballots are due by 5 p.m. on March 25, said outgoing president Marianne Goodland.

🌪 On March 24, the Society of Professional Journalists Colorado Professional Chapter will present “T-Storms, Trends & Trolls: Broadcast Meteorology in 2026,” a “candid conversation about how weather coverage is evolving in the current climate (no pun intended).”

🚔 Does your local newspaper publish a crime blotter? Read this thoughtful piece about why a Wyoming newspaper got rid of its crime blotter in favor of something better. “Along with the weird and wacky things that show up in a police blotter are numerous inaccuracies that follow people for life.”

🎙 Shay Castle and managing editor Jezy Gray spoke to Abby O’Brien at KGNU about the new Caribou Current, an arts and culture publication covering Boulder County and the Peak to Peak region.

➡️ “As local journalism outlets disappear in many communities, neighborhood social media platforms like Nextdoor are increasingly serving as sources of community information — a shift that may influence how people perceive crime and public safety, according to new research from the University of Colorado Boulder’s College of Communication, Media, Design and Information,” the school wrote.

⚙️ City Cast Denver is hiring a creative producer who it will pay $70,000 to $95,000, stating, “In this role, you’ll help shape the daily local conversation on the podcast, newsletter, and social.” (Peyton Garcia, who is moving on, said on LinkedIn: “I’m forever grateful for my five years there. And working with my teammates in Denver has genuinely been one of the honors of my career. And the idea of no longer working with them was easily the hardest part of this decision.)

📺 Veteran TV journalist Nicole Vap will speak with Laura Frank of COLab for a Sunshine Week event “about Nexstar’s acquisition of Tegna and what it means for the Colorado and national media landscape and the information void it leaves,” according to an announcement from Colorado Press Women. The discussion will be via Zoom on March 18 at 7 p.m.

💨 Lauren Scafidi, a morning anchor and reporter for 9NEWS, has left for a new opportunity after two-and-a-half years. “9NEWS challenged me and trusted me … and helped mold me into the journalist and person I am so proud to be today,” she said in a goodbye message on Instagram.

🎙 “To do journalism, you have to care very deeply,” Denver-based journalist Ann Marie Awad, a podcast host and editorial director at the Institute for Independent Journalists, told Astra Content. “I’ve met very few people in my life for whom it’s just a job, the kind of thing where you’re clocking in from nine to five.” She compared leaving journalism to leaving a religion.

🗣 Carol Leonnig, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter who co-authored the new book “Injustice: How Politics and Fear Vanquished America’s Justice Department,” will be at Rico’s Cafe & Wine Bar in downtown Colorado Springs on March 17 at 6 p.m. to talk about the book.

🆕 Allison Moore will be joining the Summit Daily News on March 22 as a reporter. “After working over a year and a half in Storm Lake and spending the last couple months on an investigative reporting project with the Iowa Newspaper Association,” Moore wrote on LinkedIn, “I welcome this professional and personal transition while feeling bittersweet about moving away from the place where I began my journalism career.”

🪦 Marilyn Starrett, who taught journalism, public relations, and social documentary at Metropolitan State University of Denver, has died, according to the school. “Former colleagues of Starrett remembered her thoughtfulness, professionalism, skill with the language and love for her family.”

I’m Corey Hutchins, manager of the Colorado College Journalism Institute, advisor to Colorado Media Project, and a board member of the state Society of Professional Journalists chapter. For nearly a decade, I reported on the U.S. local media scene for Columbia Journalism Review, and I’ve been a journalist for longer at multiple news organizations. Most recently, I’ve been contributing to Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab and The Conversation. I also write the twice-monthly Community Newswire newsletter for the Center for Community News at the University of Vermont. The nonprofit Colorado Media Project is underwriting this newsletter, and my “Inside the News” column appears at COLab. (If you’d like to underwrite or sponsor this newsletter, hit me up.) Follow me on Bluesky, reply or subscribe to this weekly newsletter here, or e-mail me at CoreyHutchins [at] gmail [dot] com.

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If your social media feeds look anything like mine, then you’ve likely seen Jeremy Jojola of 9NEWS offering consequential reporting via vertical videos from his phone in selfie mode.

The delivery is casual and personal, but it comes with journalistic receipts.

Jojola might be holding up a document he just received from an open-records request while reading parts of it into the cameraphone from the driver’s seat of his car, or perhaps just as often, while walking.

Sometimes he’ll do that ubiquitous content-creator thing where he holds a fluffy microphone in one hand while talking. Sometimes he’s wearing 9NEWS-branded garb but just as often he’s in street clothes, sunglasses on or hanging from his neck.

You might see him on location during an unusual event and his ball cap might blow off in the wind. One vertical video of his that I’d previously flagged in this newsletter about “why Adams County is paying a man $80,000 after a bad arrest” got roughly two million views on TikTok overnight.

Now, Jojola will be doing more of this type of work — “mobile shorts,” the company officially calls them — as he takes on a new role starting this week for Tegna, the parent company of 9NEWS.

“One of the reasons so many people have turned away from TV news is because, frankly, it just doesn’t connect with people,” he said over the phone this week. “You just have people sitting in a studio talking to you at a screen and there’s just maybe a lack of authenticity there at many times. I mean, not to dismiss other reporters, but I do think in the vertical video space there is so much more space for us to be our authentic selves.”

The development is an example of a local news company leaning into meeting people where they are — and away from the linear model of appointment TV news viewing.

“Let’s face the reality here,” Jojola told me. “People are not watching TV news like they used to.”

The longtime TV reporter isn’t the only Colorado journalist or news outlet experimenting with the holding-a-mic-while-doing-vertical-videos form of news delivery. The Colorado Sun’s Tyler Hickman has done it, and the Colorado Times Recorder’s Logan Davis is a frequent vertical videoer.

The aesthetic of people holding their lapel mics instead of wearing them while producing videos is an oft-debated one online. “I hold it when I don’t have anything to clip it to,” Jojola said about his own reasons for doing so.

Jojola transitioned out of his on-air role at 9NEWS on Feb. 27 but continues to work out of the station’s Denver building in his new Tegna-wide position.

I caught up with him this week to talk about his new job and about where local TV news is headed. The following are excerpts from our conversation, rearranged and edited for length and clarity, right after a word from a sponsor…

➡️ This newsletter is proudly sponsored by The Colorado Health Foundation. As a proud funder of Colorado Media Project, the home of Press Forward Colorado, the CHF understands that healthy communities need a healthy news ecosystem.

This year, The Colorado Health Foundation is working to combat disinformation and misinformation, and helping nonprofits build media literacy.

• There has never been a more important time than now to authentically and ethically tell stories that uplift our shared humanity, shared values, and shared emotions as people. So, The Colorado Health Foundation is hosting a two-part virtual series led by our longtime messaging research and strategy partners on the evidence-based Heartwired approach for persuasive storytelling and messaging.

Recently, the Colorado News Collaborative called our annual Pulse Poll a “trove of information useful to reporters.” The Colorado Health Foundation’s Katie Peshek talked to journalists across the state about the poll results, which you can watch here. We also have Pulse Poll slides here, showing how you can use what we found to guide your reporting on topics and bring facts and data to your stories. ⬅️

Inside the News in Colorado: How did this opportunity come about?

Jeremy Jojola: I was really burning out on television news.

I’ve been doing it for 27 years. It wasn’t fulfilling for me anymore. And the reason is the tremendous demands we’re facing as journalists out in the field, having to do more. And for me, I wanted to do something that was more fresh and new.

I’m not afraid to talk about burnout. A lot of other journalists are because they feel that once you start saying that word, you’re going to start getting pushed to the side, but I’ve been around this business for so long that I’m not afraid anymore.

There was a position that the company had already opened up. When it came up, it was almost like a light at the end of the tunnel for me. This is what I want to do and if there’s a job doing this full-time, for the time being, I’m going to go all in. And I feel like my first day on the job as a fresh new reporter in this role.

When did you start doing these and when did you realize they were catching a lot of steam online?

I’ve been making these vertical videos now for maybe two or three years and I love making them. I love the format. I used to be a vertical video snob back in the day, but the fact is, it’s where people are now, watching on their phones. I wanted to be in that space. I think that’s where people are consuming news these days.

Let’s face the reality here: people are not watching TV news like they used to. We’re seeing plummeting numbers of viewership consistently. CEOs of TV broadcast companies, they admit that the industry is headed for a cliff. Even our CEO has said very publicly that our industry is dying and that we need to find ways to stay relevant and as an outlet that is doing journalism.

I think journalism doesn’t really change much, but the container does. And this is just a new container for it, a new method for it. And I think we can still do very good journalism in this method.

We’ve seen people just flock to these social media sites now, it’s just the main way people are getting their information. The company really started encouraging us to make mobile shorts maybe a year and a half or two years ago as part of the main part of our job. It was actually a requirement to generate a mobile short per day.

I understand the journalism process is the same, but what would you say is different about the delivery or the aesthetic?

I started in broadcast news when I was a teenager writing tape decks, then I got my first on-air job in 1999 in El Paso, Texas. Back then we were trained as TV journalists to be stoic, to be absolutely emotionless, to be very boring in ways when we were delivering the news.

But over the years, that has changed so much with social media because I think people online, when they’re looking to make connections with the people who are disseminating the news, not only do they want truth but they also want authenticity and they want human beings to give them the news rather than a robot. And I think when you merge the truth and authenticity together and you have someone who is a trained journalist and can let their guard down and speak like a human being, I think that can really resonate with people.

Look at the people who have huge followings on social media. They’re not robotic like TV news people are. They show their true colors, they’re human beings, they show how they really are. I try to do that online.

I’ve always embraced emerging technologies as a journalist. I think we have to in order to survive and just to stay relevant. And I think that’s how I’ve been able to survive in this industry. This would have been my 27th year being on air as a traditional broadcast reporter. But I love the digital space and I love technology and I love the fact that I can make a video very quickly these days without lugging around heavy equipment, without having to get into a live truck, without having to go through the cumbersome steps to get a conventional TV news story on air. I can create something that still has good journalistic value in a very short time and get it on air and out immediately into the palms of people’s hands.

I think that’s where people are, and if we want to survive as journalists, that’s where we need to be, like now, like yesterday.

What’s your actual setup and how does the process work?

I’m mainly using my iPhone 15 Pro Max to shoot these videos. Sometimes I use a tripod. There are various programs I use to edit, like the editing software by Instagram, which is very simple. I’ll use CapCut, then I’ll use a captions app. If I want to do a little extra production, I’ll use Adobe Premiere on desktop.

With breaking news, I think I can get a decent vertical video out in 10 to 15 minutes, sometimes under 10 minutes. People aren’t really seeking out good production value in those moments. Information becomes top of mind. For me, accuracy is top of mind, too.

The way my new role is designed to work is when I make a vertical video, what my company calls a mobile short, I put it into our system at the station — I work out of 9NEWS, but I’m working for Tegna now — and at Tegna we have an online system where I upload my mobile short usually through a desktop although I can use a mobile app too, and when I upload it my mobile short will instantly go out to every single Tegna station’s app.

Then, I can share those videos on my social profiles. My goal in this new role is to get to a point where I can do maybe up to seven or more per day.

I’m genuinely curious about this. How do you decide whether to hold the fluffy lapel mic or clip it to your shirt?

I hold it when I don’t have anything to clip it to.

I’ve held it in my hand when I’ve worn a crew neck. I use these mics that are Bluetooth enabled and I hold it when I don’t have anything to clip it to, but if I’m wearing a vest or something like that, I’ll clip it to my vest.

To what extent do you worry about being seen as an influencer?

I’ve been in the TV news business now for 27 years and I’ve had so many comments thrown at me over the years, I just don’t think I would pay attention to that too much.

What’s your advice to an aspiring broadcast journalist who might be in school right now and probably doesn’t watch the local TV news?

I think what drives journalism is care for the community and curiosity. And I think those two things really make a good reporter.

A third element is that no matter what happens to our industry, what is going to transcend our industry long after it’s gone is storytelling.

As long as you’re curious, you care for the community, and have a passion for storytelling, I think those three elements can really help be a compass for someone who want to do this.

Tegna is in the process of being taken over by Nexstar. What’s the benefit of staying rather than going out on your own, given that you know how to build an audience for yourself?

I am terrified right now of going out on my own. I’ve thought about it.

I can’t picture myself doing anything else than being a reporter. I could do that on my own, but I also have a mortgage and a 6-year-old little girl, and right now for the time being working for a company that’s providing me benefits and a consistent salary and is stable — I do think if something happens, I do want to explore the possibility of still doing something on my own, and I don’t know exactly what that would look like, but I do know for a fact that I’ll always be a reporter-journalist. And if it’s in this space it will be in this space.

When Nexstar takes over, I am very aware of the fact that there could be some substantial changes. There’s a possibility that my role may not be something that Nexstar wants. But for the time being, this is an opportunity that came up, and I’m going a thousand percent in, and we’ll see what happens.

🌿 This week’s newsletter is proudly supported by PR firm Grasslands: A Journalism-Minded Agency™, founded by Ricardo Baca (ex-Denver Post, ex-Rocky Mountain News, and current Colorado Public Radio board of directors). We understand journalists because we were journalists — and we’re here to help. Need expert sources or compelling stories? Our diverse client roster includes beloved Colorado institutions (Naropa University and Illegal Pete’s), innovative wellness brands (Boulder County Farmers Markets, Naturally Colorado, Eden Health Club), bold natural products businesses (Wild Zora, Flatiron Food Factory, Flower Union Brands), and other purpose-driven organizations. As creators of the Colorado Journalist Meet-Up and longtime champions of quality journalism, Grasslands recognizes the essential role reporters play in our communities. Our team is ready to connect you with sources, data, and unique perspectives that elevate your reporting.

Have a story you’re working on? Email Ricardo directly: ricardo@mygrasslands.com. Together, we’re crafting better narratives — one story at a time. 🌿

Colorado journalists testified against a proposed new law this week. The bill died.

For the third time, some state lawmakers were hoping to give governments up to three weeks to respond to requests for open records.

But the proposed new law, sponsored by Fort Collins Democratic Sen. Cathy Kipp and Grand Junction Republican Sen. Janice Rich, died on a 3-2 vote in the Senate’s State, Veterans & Military Affairs Committee.

The slapdown came after multiple Colorado journalists and others testified against the bill on Thursday during the committee hearing.

Denver Post Managing Editor Matt Sebastian, for instance, urged members of the committee to vote no on the bill, saying it would “weaken” the Colorado Open Records Act.

While journalists do file large and complex records requests, he said he works with reporters who will “pretty routinely” ask for specific records like an email, letter, or report, only to have a government tell the reporter to file a CORA request that can take up to three days or longer to fulfill if the government decides to give itself an extension.

“These are situations when it’s not a wide net that’s being cast, they’re searching for something very specific that’s known to exist and be available,” he said.

Chuck Murphy, investigative editor at Colorado Public Radio, argued against the bill, offering testimony that we might forever remember as the Colorado Open Records Act banana defense.

After reading an opinion from former Democratic Attorney General Ken Salazar about why the open records law is important, Murphy offered this:

“Should this legislation be enacted, access to public records would truly be the only thing in my professional life that actually takes longer today than it did when Ambassador Salazar wrote that opinion in 2001. I can order a banana on my phone from here and it will be waiting for me by the time I get home. But somehow this legislation presumes that governments simply can’t function that way and are incapable of embracing all the technologies that make our lives faster and easier.”

Retired chief Denver7 investigative reporter Tony Kovaleski called open records “the lifeblood of what we do” and offered examples for when he relied on them to hold governments accountable. But sometimes, he said, governments have used how they respond to records requests to “delay accountability.”

Freelance environmental journalist and science writer Robin Ferruggia told lawmakers it has been “very difficult” to get records from a special district.

Here’s more about what went down during the hearing, from Jeff Roberts at the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition:

Multiple representatives of government entities and government associations testified in favor of SB 26-107, saying it was needed because they are dealing with a rising number of CORA requests. Colleen O’Neil, deputy executive director of the Colorado Association of School Executives, said “CORA compliance is incredibly cumbersome for our schools. The volume and complexity of records requests consumes significant staff time, and honestly, it pulls resources away from our mission of educating students.”

But the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition argued that CORA requesters should not face additional barriers to obtaining public records when they frequently deal with delays, exorbitant fees and misapplied exemptions in the law. There is no need for the bill, we said, because not a single court has held a custodian of CORA records liable for not complying with the response deadline.

You can watch the committee hearing here.

The development shows that some local journalists have no problem becoming advocates in the legislative process when they believe a proposed law could impact how they do their jobs.

Ex-publisher in the Central Mountains region writes of ‘demise of regional newsprint’

Mike Rosso of Salida has had a front-row seat to the newspaper publishing industry in the Central Mountains region for decades.

A former photojournalist, web editor, and later publisher of Colorado Central magazine, he wrote a column this week for the Salida-based Mountain Mail as that newspaper mothballs its local printing press.

“The demise of regional newsprint began downriver, at the Pueblo Chieftain, shortly after the Gannett Corporation, who are not only publishers but also involved with venture capital investments, closed those presses in August 2023,” he wrote.

Rosso chronicled his career and circled back to the latest news about the Mountain Mail.

From the column:

Fortunately for Salida’s Mountain Mail, in 2023 it was sold — not to a venture capitalist firm but to a smaller media chain, O’Rourke Media Group, who operates in eight states with more than 58 publications and websites. They are committed to keeping a print newspaper in the hands of Salida residents, if only once a week, and I am grateful for that.

Paper, ink, shipping and other production costs have skyrocketed, making the digital world an easy exit for many in the news business. But for those who want the availability of a tangible product, delivering homegrown news and stories, consider us blessed.

A final note: With the inevitable closing of the presses in downtown Salida, that leaves only one standing, functioning newspaper press in the entire region, the Saguache Crescent. Ironically it also happens to be the last Linotype press still operating in the entire United States. That ancient machine, which employs hot lead, is still used by Dean Coombs, whose family purchased the newspaper in 1917. That press is now 105 years old, and, as no one else is trained how to operate it, the Crescent will eventually go into the ashbin of history when Dean is done, leaving the region without a newspaper press for the first time since the original Anglo settlements.

Read the whole thing at the link above.

More Colorado media odds & ends

🆕 Ben Trollinger is the new editor of Vail Daily. He previously served a stint as editor of the ill-fated Indy alt-weekly in the Springs after a pair of wealthy developers bought it then scrapped it, then for a time helmed its successor the SoCo Insider. Before that he had edited Summit Daily News. He said he plans to offer support and guidance to reporters in the Vail Daily newsroom as they work to bring clarity and fiercely independent journalism to what he calls an increasingly “post-truth world.”

⚖️ The mother of a 23-year-old woman who died in the downtown Denver jail “won a ruling last week against a police department records custodian who repeatedly denied her requests for investigative documents about the death,” Jeff Roberts reported for the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition.

🗣 Local activist Midian Shofner and the City of Aurora “will settle a nearly year-long First Amendment lawsuit, which both sides say will mandate a ‘public invited to be heard’ segment be held during city council meetings for three years,” Cassandra Ballard reported for Sentinel Colorado.

🤢 I’m getting sick of writing updates about Patrick Egan, the 40-year-old taxi driver and Marine who is accused of trying to strangle Ja’Ronn Alex, a young TV reporter in Grand Junction, while allegedly shouting about “Trump’s America.” But Egan is back in the news this week as a judge has set a new seven-day trial date for him in December after declaring a mistrial in January. (I’ll believe it when I see it.) “Since being arrested, Egan has picked up two violation of a protection order charges for allegedly interfering with witnesses in the case, been assigned a new defense attorney, and been also held in contempt of court and sentenced to 55 days in jail by Judge Michael Grattan,” Sam Klomhaus reported for the Sentinel newspaper in Grand Junction.

📺 “Journalists just repeating what the powerful say isn’t news,” 9NEWS anchor Kyle Clark says in a new broadcast message that will air during the NBC Nightly News and other programs. “And it’s not ‘Next.’ ‘Next’ holds power to account offering context and clarity that cut through spin and misinformation. It’s time for truth.”

🎙 Colorado Public Radio host Ryan Warner appeared on the Soul Stories podcast with host Mama Jill, where he talked about trust in journalism and his formative years.

📧 Over the first six weeks of 2026, the Colorado Trust for Local News newsroom “launched six newsletters that are custom-built for email,” the National Trust for Local News reported. “The goal is to provide readers with topic- and community-centric news in a convenient digital format. These free newsletters also allow COTLN to build one-to-one relationships with new readers, reducing reliance on social and search platforms for reaching audiences with the newsroom’s latest reporting.”

👁 Following months of intense public pressure, the City of Denver plans to stop using its network of automated AI-powered Flock license-plate-reading surveillance cameras. “Instead, city leaders hope to install a similar system operated by Axon, a competing provider of automated license plate readers,” Andrew Kenney and Kiara DeMare reported for Denverite.

🌪 Keri Kahn of the Southern Colorado Business Forum & Digest reported this week about “longtime Southern Colorado broadcast meteorologist Matt Meister” who went out on his own and launched the Peak2Plains digital outlet.

I’m Corey Hutchins, manager of the Colorado College Journalism Institute, advisor to Colorado Media Project, and a board member of the state Society of Professional Journalists chapter. For nearly a decade, I reported on the U.S. local media scene for Columbia Journalism Review, and I’ve been a journalist for longer at multiple news organizations. Most recently, I’ve been contributing to Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab and The Conversation. I also write the twice-monthly Community Newswire newsletter for the Center for Community News at the University of Vermont. The nonprofit Colorado Media Project is underwriting this newsletter, and my “Inside the News” column appears at COLab. (If you’d like to underwrite or sponsor this newsletter, hit me up.) Follow me on Bluesky, reply or subscribe to this weekly newsletter here, or e-mail me at CoreyHutchins [at] gmail [dot] com.

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What do a socialist newspaper in Grand Junction and a Western Slope nonprofit that advocates for the Latino community have in common?

Both provided starkly different initial accounts than local TV news stations this week about a local man that ICE said it had arrested.

The development led to what one commercial TV news director called “frequent discussion” in her newsroom and follow-up coverage at a different station that challenged ICE’s version of events. One TV news headline later read, “‘ICE lied about the basic facts’: Family of man detained says ICE post contains misinformation.”

What happened was this: On Feb. 17, ICE Denver posted on X that it had arrested a man in Grand Junction named Juan Carlos Membreno Portillo who the agency called a “known MS-13 gang member.”

Two Grand Junction TV stations, KJCT/KKCO and KREX, ran with ICE’s version of events with simple press release re-writes that included no original reporting.

By contrast, in their own very different write-ups, an activist newspaper and an advocacy group questioned basic facts of ICE’s statements, including major aspects like what ICE said about the man’s background and smaller ones including the location where ICE said it had arrested him.

Here’s the opening from a post at Voces Unidas, a group that describes itself as “the go-to, multi-entity regional organization building Latino power and influence to make Colorado’s Western Slope more equitable and just”:

The Truth About Juan Carlos

Entrepreneur. Brother. Son. Husband. Hard worker who loves soccer and plays it well.

Those are all words family members would use to describe 29-year-old Juan Carlos Membreño Portillo.

But when ICE agents picked up Juan Carlos in Glenwood Springs this week, they described him as a criminal, and a gang member.

It’s not true, the family says. Now Juan Carlos is fighting his detention, hoping to not get sent back to El Salvador, where he fled threats from gang members, organized crime and a corrupt government.

That’s an entirely different framing than what the two TV stations offered.

Brianna Chappie of KJCT reported on Feb. 21 that ICE Denver “said Membreno-Portillo is a known member of the criminal organization Mara Salvatrucha (more commonly known as MS-13), and that he is wanted in the country of El Salvador.”

Reporting for KREX, which also goes by the name Western Slope Now, Andrew Kiser similarly parroted what the government had posted to social media. No original reporting or consultation of outside sources appears in the story.

For what it’s worth, the station’s owner, Nexstar, states on a page about its journalistic integrity that it reaches out to the “subjects or stakeholders of a story.”

The Revolutionist, an anti-capitalist Grand Junction newspaper that editor Jacob Richards has described as doing journalism from an “activist movement media point of view,” took its MSM counterparts to task.

From a Feb. 20 article headlined “Combat Regime Propaganda on our Local News: A Call to Action!”:

KREX, the Nexstar affiliate based in Grand Junction but in theory covers all of Western Colorado, on Friday ran a story about an ICE arrest that occurred allegedly in Grand Junction of Juan Carlos Membreno Portillo, an immigrant with alleged ties to the MS-13 Street gang.

The only source for the story was an infographic posted by ICE Denver on Feb. 17. This is unverified propaganda from the same administration that told us to ignore our own eyes after the state killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.

Publishing unverified regime narratives is journalistically reprehensible, harmful to marginalized people, and qualifies as rank propaganda. …

The Revolutionist too was working on debunking the regime’s lies in this case, and we too had reached out to and did interviews with Juan Carlos’ wife and his employer. And everything we learned supports Voces Unidas’s reporting and discredits the regime and by default KREX’s reporting. Facts matter.

Both Voces Unidas and the Revolutionist mentioned that ICE last year had mistakenly deported a Maryland resident named Kilmar Abrego García to a prison in El Salvador after linking him to MS-13. “There are dozens of innocent Latino men who are wrongly accused of being gang members,” Voces Unidas wrote.

For its part, the Revolutionist called on its readers to reach out to KREX’s news operations manager, Scott Sheriff, and sought an apology, retraction, and more complete reporting on this story and in the future. (Sheriff did not respond to an email from this newsletter.)

Beyond its framing, Voces Unidas indicated in its own post that local TV got a basic fact wrong when reporting that ICE had arrested the man “in Grand Junction.”

“Juan Carlos wasn’t arrested in Grand Junction,” the Voces Unidas post states. “He was in Glenwood Springs, on his way to work in the Aspen-area. Anyone who ever met Juan Carlos knows that he’s a cherished community member, and not a gang member. Getting the facts right matters. When federal authorities spread false narratives, it deepens the harm already inflicted on families being torn apart.”

In its social media post, ICE also stated that it had arrested the man in Grand Junction. The TV stations appeared to take the agency’s word for it without offering any additional reporting. (ICE did not respond to an email from this newsletter seeking clarification.)

Five days after the Revolutionist piece, KREX published a story headlined “‘ICE lied about the basic facts’: Family of man detained says ICE post contains misinformation.”

This time, the single-sourced story relied solely on Alex Sanchez, the president and CEO of Voces Unidas.

Here’s part of it:

Sanchez says it’s important to both Voces Unidas and the family that Juan Carlos’s story is told accurately.

“We want to make sure that in terms of the story of Juan Carlos or the story of any other member of the community that we have the privilege to work with, that their stories are told in the way that they want to share them and that we’re helping to clarify when we clearly see a disconnect between the truth and you know, or the facts and information and narratives that may serve a political agenda but doesn’t serve the truth,” said Sanchez.

In Colorado, ICE Denver itself has pushed back against a newsroom for not giving a more complete picture in coverage of its actions.

“Why do some journalists seem misinformed? In their rush to publish a story they only listen to one side and fail to do basic fact checking,” the agency stated on social media in July about CBS Denver.

Notably, in that case, the TV station had published comments from the family members of someone ICE had arrested and didn’t include a comment from the agency, which had told the outlet it needed up to two days to respond.

In this more recent case on the Western Slope, independent media accused TV stations of single-sourced reporting that dutifully passed along the word of ICE without any comment from the family of the person involved.

Revolutionist Editor Richards said over the phone this week that he believes Voces Unidas and his newspaper, the Revolutionist, pushed KREX to follow up.

The Revolutionist “believes that advocacy journalism, or community based grassroots journalism plays an essential role in both breaking stories but also in holding the mainstream media to account,” he said in an email. “We would love to see a media ecosystem where less traditional news outlets can deepen and improve the reporting done by the mainstream. We believe that seeking truth is a journey; not a competition.”

Kacie Sinton, the digital news director for KJCT, said via email that how this played out led to “frequent discussion” in her newsroom. And she acknowledged a limitation to providing complete initial coverage.

“We have not been approached by any cooperative sources,” she said on Wednesday. “While I certainly don’t doubt his story, none of the information we’ve received has been independently verifiable as it all comes only from Voces Unidas. His family has refused to speak with any organizations other than Voces Unidas, and while we have reached out to ICE, they have been largely uncooperative.”

Sinton said she would “really like to see his identity clarified, but until he or his family agrees to at least speak with us, there’s sadly nothing we can do.”

Sinton also said her station faces “harsh and difficult realities” that are unfamiliar to those on the Front Range and that it has limited resources. She recommended considering that before asserting KJCT’s process is flawed. “We do the best that we can with what we have,” she said.

KJCT might not be alone.

There are some resources available that newsrooms in similar positions could consider. The Poynter Institute, for example, is currently offering a free workshop to help newsrooms better cover crime if any Colorado newsroom might be interested.

And next week, CU Boulder journalism professor Angie Chuang will lead a public discussion at the Boulder Public Library about ICE raids, “America First,” and the question of “Who belongs in this country as a true American — and what role do news media play in excluding or including certain people.”

That could offer an opportunity for discussing how local Colorado newsrooms might better prepare for coverage of ICE’s actions in their communities.

➡️ This newsletter is proudly sponsored by The Colorado Health Foundation. As a proud funder of Colorado Media Project, the home of Press Forward Colorado, the CHF understands that healthy communities need a healthy news ecosystem.

This year, The Colorado Health Foundation will be working to combat disinformation and misinformation, and helping nonprofits build media literacy.

• As diversity, equity, and inclusion rollbacks and funding gaps put pressure on media outlets serving Coloradans of color, the Colorado Ethnic Media Exchange is building collective power for trusted, community‑rooted outlets to thrive. Read how this coalition is strengthening local journalism and why it matters for equity, democracy, and health across Colorado.

Recently, the Colorado News Collaborative called our annual Pulse Poll a “trove of information useful to reporters.” The Colorado Health Foundation’s Katie Peshek talked to journalists across the state about the poll results, which you can watch here. We also have Pulse Poll slides here, showing how you can use what we found to guide your reporting on topics and bring facts and data to your stories. ⬅️

Press group seeks to stop bill to allow governments to post public notices online

The Colorado Press Association this week sent an “urgent” alert to its members, urging newspapers across the state to contact lawmakers in opposition to a proposed new law.

The group’s president, Tim Regan-Porter, said in an email blast that a measure in a bill would allow governments to publish public notices solely on their websites instead of in local newspapers as current state law requires.

He added that the association believed the measure has the support of some committee members who will hear it.

From his Feb. 24 email:

This sweeping change would allow governments to bypass independent, third-party publication based on vague standards like “unavailability” or “adequate notice.” It would declare government website posting sufficient to satisfy all publication requirements — affecting court procedures, affidavits, and numerous statutory obligations.

“While this is being presented as a limited solution for jurisdictions without a local newspaper, the language is sweeping and dangerously broad,” the CPA email read. “This is more than the proverbial camel’s nose under the tent. It’s a direct and immediate threat to the whole public notice framework.”

The state’s largest press advocacy group stated it was a line “we cannot allow to be crossed.” The association is urging its members to contact lawmakers who sit on the House Transportation, Housing & Local Government Committee.

The Press Association is championing what it calls a “narrow amendment,” which “preserves legal newspaper publication and only addresses unpaid online access.”

Regan-Porter said on Friday that he was putting together a new call to action with an editorial. Read more about the bills advancing this legislative session that deal with newspaper public notices here.

Colorado newspaper owner reports getting scammed for $276K

Buried in a news story this week about a man from Cortez losing $600,000 in a cryptocurrency scam was an eyebrow-raising line.

Here it is from Anna Watson in the Cortez Journal, which, like the Durango Herald newspaper, is owned by Ballantine Communications:

Last month, Ballantine Communications Inc., the parent company of The Journal, reported losing $276,000 in a scam in which someone posed as an Alpine Bank representative and obtained account information from a BCI employee.

John Blais, CEO of Ballantine Communications, said the insurance company has settled the claim, calling the outcome “a good thing.” The total settlement came to $271,000 and change, reflecting a $5,000 fee for the wire transfer.

“There’s a whole industry that continues to focus on improving their tactics,” Blais said.

Yikes. Talk about a story hitting close to home.

CU Boulder under ‘FIRE,’ journalist cleared, students talk of ‘chilling’ atmosphere

Last week, representatives from the free speech group Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, known as FIRE, traveled from the East Coast to the campus of the University of Colorado in Boulder.

There, the group’s Student Press Counsel Marie McMullan and a colleague set up a booth to let students know about their rights and hand out literature.

The organization has had CU Boulder in its crosshairs ever since student Ašiihkionkonci Parker, a journalist for the historically Chicano student newspaper El Diario de la Gente, said the university banned Parker from campus after Parker covered a pro-Palestine protest.

Records show CU has since found Parker “not guilty of any student code of conduct charges,” Olivia Doak reported for the Boulder Daily Camera.

In a story about it, Doak reported FIRE’s presence on campus last week.

“FIRE held the event to urge CU Boulder to revise its UMC Film and Photo Policy and inform CU Boulder students and student journalists of their rights on campus,” she wrote.

More from the story:

The organization is specifically calling on CU Boulder to change its UMC Film and Photo Policy, which requires anyone who wants to take photos or video in the University Memorial Center to fill out a form requesting approval at least five business days in advance. The policy came up when CU Boulder Provost Ann Stevens mentioned it in one of the letters she sent to FIRE, even though Parker was not charged with violating that policy. McMullan said it’s “a chilling policy to have” when students are trying to report in one of the main areas of campus.

When asked if CU Boulder is considering any changes to the UMC Film and Photo Policy, Cousins said the university continuously reviews all its policies and guidelines, making updates as appropriate on a rolling basis, including the UMC policy.

“Rules like that mean you can’t be very spontaneous and you can’t really respond to things in the moment as they’re happening,” Radio 1190 student journalist Nicholas Merl said.

Greta Kerkhoff, the editor in chief of the CU Independent, said no one on its team had ever heard of the UMC Film and Photo Policy before this. The UMC is a public place, she said, and CUI reporters have not historically filled out a form to cover events in the building. Nor has the Daily Camera.

CU Independent Assistant News Editor Avery Clifton said that moving forward, she wants to see the university communicate any potentially unknown policies that may affect the freedom of the press on campus.

“The main question that raises for me is, because that policy is specific to that building, I’d be concerned if there are other policies related to other buildings (that we don’t know about),” Clifton said.

Clifton told the Daily Camera that while she has continued her work as a journalist while being a student at CU Boulder, she has felt a “mild chilling effect” from the way her school handled a fellow journalist.

Merl, of the student radio station, explained to the paper how it felt having a dual role as a journalist and student.

“For the discussions I have been a part of with other student journalists that run the station … it’s always understood as a Sword of Damocles kind of scenario,” Merl said. “It’s an unstated reality that’s hanging above us, and even though we haven’t ever been directly approached or intimidated or anything that crass, I think it has made us at times temper our tone or reduce criticism in our articles to avoid rocking the boat too much.”

Here’s more on that front:

John Meylor, also a student journalist at Radio 1190, said there “always is a concern of some sort of blowback from the school,” for example, the university reducing or eliminating the funding the station gets from the College of Communication, Media, Design and Information.

“Sometimes there’s an unspoken understanding that if we push too hard, there could potentially be consequences,” Meylor said.

The university’s spokesperson, Nicole Cousins, threw cold water on such concerns.

“Even if we did (control Radio 1190’s funding), retaliating against a media outlet for its reporting would be a violation of applicable law and university policy,” she told the Camera. “It’s just not something we would do.”

As for Parker, the student who said they were banned from campus for reporting and suffered consequences from it, it doesn’t appear the journalist has been deterred.

“CU hasn’t stopped student journalists with this blatant repression of us,” Parker told the paper, “and it’s frankly motivated us to continue to report the stuff that the university doesn’t want people to see.”

🌿 This week’s newsletter is proudly supported by PR firm Grasslands: A Journalism-Minded Agency™, founded by Ricardo Baca (ex-Denver Post, ex-Rocky Mountain News, and current Colorado Public Radio board of directors). We understand journalists because we were journalists — and we’re here to help. Need expert sources or compelling stories? Our diverse client roster includes beloved Colorado institutions (Naropa University and Illegal Pete’s), innovative wellness brands (Boulder County Farmers Markets, Naturally Colorado, Eden Health Club), bold natural products businesses (Wild Zora, Flatiron Food Factory, Flower Union Brands), and other purpose-driven organizations. As creators of the Colorado Journalist Meet-Up and longtime champions of quality journalism, Grasslands recognizes the essential role reporters play in our communities. Our team is ready to connect you with sources, data, and unique perspectives that elevate your reporting.

Have a story you’re working on? Email Ricardo directly: ricardo@mygrasslands.com. Together, we’re crafting better narratives — one story at a time. 🌿

More Colorado media odds & ends

🛣 This newsletter is in travel mode, so content might be lighter than usual and I might not be as quick to respond to emails, voicemails, or DMs.

🍻 The National Association of Hispanic Journalists Colorado is hosting a mixer at the Denver Press Club tonight, Feb. 27, at 5:30 p.m. “to network with professional and aspiring journalists in TV, print, radio, and more.”

✂️ The local TV news merger layoffs are starting. “A number of longtime anchors at stations in Los Angeles and Chicago have been laid off,” Tom Tapp reported for Deadline. “The cuts come as the stations’ corporate parent, Nexstar Media Group, seeks to cut costs as it pursues a merger with rival Tegna.” (Nexstar owns FOX31 in Denver, which is seeking to take over Denver’s 9NEWS.)

🤦‍♂️ Patrick Egan, the man accused of attacking a former KJCT reporter in Grand Junction in 2024 was arrested again, “sentenced to 55 days in jail for contempt of court,” made an outburst to a judge, and has a new lawyer, according to Western Slope media. A judge last month had declared a mistrial in his case. Who knows if he’ll have another go of it at this point.

🆕 Telemundo Colorado, also known as KDEN Denver, which is part of NBCUniversal Local’s Telemundo Station Group, has appointed Emmanuel López-Capó as news director, effective March 9. “López-Capó joins KDEN from WWSI (Telemundo62) WCAU in Philadelphia, where he most recently was executive producer. He will report to Tatiana Argüello, president-GM of Telemundo Colorado and KULX (Telemundo Utah),” TVNewsCheck reported.

🆕 Tyler Melito has joined Denver7 as a multimedia journalist. He comes from Kentucky.

🗞 State lawmakers are looking into whether they should tweak state law around the role of people who deliver newspapers and how they are classified when it comes to their employment.

⚖️ Citing a landmark Colorado Supreme Court ruling involving the Tattered Cover bookstore, “a judge Monday night granted a temporary restraining order against a police detective who is seeking customer records from Maria’s Bookshop in Durango,” Jeff Roberts reported for the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition.

🚴🏼‍♂️ Gary Robinson, the Colorado-based co-founder and head of Avid Cyclist, a site for the cycling community, is providing his side of the story this week after a video of him confronting a motorist hit the internet.

⚖️ Lawyers for a prison inmate and the Office of the State Public Defender “argued in the Court of Appeals this week over whether OSPD is subject to the Colorado Criminal Justice Records Act or the judicial branch’s records rules,” Jeff Roberts wrote for the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition.

🤔 Lawmakers in neighboring New Mexico passed the Local Journalist Employment Tax Credit, which provides a refundable tax credit to cover 30% of a journalist’s wages, capped at $15,000 per reporter each year. (Could Colorado be next?)

📰 Behold the writing style of this column in the DU student newspaper after a student discovered the work of Hunter S. Thompson.

📡 Colorado Public Radio is hiring a public affairs supervising editor and a digital supervising editor, and will pay up to $101,641 for each role.

I’m Corey Hutchins, manager of the Colorado College Journalism Institute, advisor to Colorado Media Project, and a board member of the state Society of Professional Journalists chapter. For nearly a decade, I reported on the U.S. local media scene for Columbia Journalism Review, and I’ve been a journalist for longer at multiple news organizations. Most recently, I’ve been contributing to Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab and The Conversation. I also write the twice-monthly Community Newswire newsletter for the Center for Community News at the University of Vermont. The nonprofit Colorado Media Project is underwriting this newsletter, and my “Inside the News” column appears at COLab. (If you’d like to underwrite or sponsor this newsletter, hit me up.) Follow me on Bluesky, reply or subscribe to this weekly newsletter here, or e-mail me at CoreyHutchins [at] gmail [dot] com.

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As Republican President Donald Trump and his administration attempt to roll back diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, one Colorado news outlet has “leaned in.”

That’s according to a handful of journalists working for Colorado Public Radio who appeared for a panel discussion at the Denver Press Club on Wednesday.

Moderator Esteban Hernandez of Axios Denver had asked the journalists how Trump 2.0, and a crackdown on DEI specifically, might have changed the way they go about their work.

“I have changed nothing in what I personally do,” said Chandra Thomas Whitfield, a host and producer for the statewide show Colorado Matters. “In fact, I’ve probably leaned in a little bit.”

Asked for examples, Whitfield said she has recently started inviting members of the Colorado Ethnic Media Exchange onto the show to highlight what they’re doing.

“I would say at CPR, we have pushed back on this idea that we cannot acknowledge differences and uplift and educate people about other communities,” she said. “I think we all have to make that decision, and we’ve decided to lean into it, specifically on Colorado Matters.”

Paolo Zialcita, a neighborhood reporter for Denverite, which is owned by CPR, said he agreed that the work of the organization’s journalists hasn’t changed.

Newsrooms, he said, “need to take stock of who they employ.” He said they also should understand that having people on staff who can speak multiple languages and gain the trust of some communities faster than someone who might not is important.

Nathan Fernando-Frescas, senior host of All Things Considered at CPR, said he agreed with a lot of what his colleagues said. He added that he makes an effort to let community members know he lives here — and isn’t flying in from above to report on them.

Marco Cummings of the Denver Post organized the event, titled “DEI on Deadline,” on behalf of the state chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, of which we are both board members.

The comments from the journalists offered a counter to a national trend as DEI efforts at news organizations across the country have seen some decline. In September, Hanaa’ Tameez reported in Nieman Lab that “race, diversity, and identity products” were “being shut down” at publications including Politico, Bloomberg, and the Washington Post.

In November, Riddhi Setty asked in a headline for Columbia Journalism Review, “Has the Media Reached the End of Its DEI Era?”

Last year, Gannett, the nation’s largest newspaper chain, which owns the newspapers in Fort Collins and Pueblo that bookend Colorado’s Front Range, announced it would stop publishing demographic and diversity data about those in its company as it adapts to the “evolving regulatory environment.” (The company also “revamped its corporate site to remove mentions of diversity,” Nieman Lab reported.)

In a report last month, the media reform group Free Press published what it called an “authoritative report analyzing the retreat in 2025 of the nation’s largest media companies from prior commitments to promote diversity, equity and inclusion principles in their workplaces and policies.”

Five months ago, Colorado Public Radio ended its years-long partnership with Denver7 on its Real Talk program, saying, “in today’s current fiscal climate, we have to focus on our core platforms of radio and digital.” The show had launched in 2023, promising to focus on “stories and experiences of underserved communities.”

Six years ago, alongside the Black Lives Matter movement and protests over the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, news outlets across the country, including CPR, were reckoning with the experiences of journalists of color as outlets grappled with the makeup of their newsrooms and their approaches to coverage.

In June of that year, at least five newsrooms in Colorado made public pledges about how they were approaching their work — from hiring practices and denouncing racism to their plans for future coverage. Two separate outlets used the same phrase: “Silence is not an option.”

On Wednesday’s panel, Hernandez mentioned that he currently works for a news organization that “initially allowed reporters to participate in the George Floyd protests in 2020,” but has “since reversed that policy.”

Here were some more nuggets from the conversation:

• Asked about the Trump administration cutting public funding for NPR and what impacts it has had on CPR, Zialcita said he has never seen the station’s audience more united and supportive. “It’s not only showing financially … it’s also showing on the streets.” Whitfield said CPR has benefited from “a lot of rage giving,” but the problem is “will that be sustainable?” (Colorado Public Radio has joined a lawsuit with NPR in suing the Trump administration over the funding cuts.)

• “There are audiences that have never held our trust,” Zialcita said at one point. He referenced some recent difficulty doing a story in Denver’s Little Saigon District. “People there, they were inherently distrustful even though I looked just like them,” he said. “They would tell me they don’t talk to press. They would tell me some TV station barged in the other day and tried to talk to them and they just didn’t want to get involved.” He said he was able to win some sources over by explaining his goals, but some needed more time.

• Yolánda L. Chase, the founder and CEO of Diversity Way-Maker and Intersect Global Leadership Institute, was also on the panel and added her perspective from a non-journalist point of view.

• When artificial intelligence came up, some on the panel talked about the limitations of software CPR uses to track what sources its journalists are quoting in stories, and also some issues with transcription services for non-English-speaking sources. Fernando-Frescas described the intent of the software as a good thing.

There was plenty more, so watch a video of the discussion here.

➡️ This newsletter is proudly sponsored by The Colorado Health Foundation. As a proud funder of Colorado Media Project, the home of Press Forward Colorado, the CHF understands that healthy communities need a healthy news ecosystem.

This year, The Colorado Health Foundation will be working to combat disinformation and misinformation, and helping nonprofits build media literacy.

• As diversity, equity, and inclusion rollbacks and funding gaps put pressure on media outlets serving Coloradans of color, the Colorado Ethnic Media Exchange is building collective power for trusted, community‑rooted outlets to thrive. Read how this coalition is strengthening local journalism and why it matters for equity, democracy, and health across Colorado.

Recently, the Colorado News Collaborative called our annual Pulse Poll a “trove of information useful to reporters.” The Colorado Health Foundation’s Katie Peshek talked to journalists across the state about the poll results, which you can watch here. We also have Pulse Poll slides here, showing how you can use what we found to guide your reporting on topics and bring facts and data to your stories. ⬅️

‘Complete mess’ involving Indy alt-weekly archives should serve as a warning

Publishers and writers might learn from an attempt by a local news organization in Colorado Springs to bring back the digital archives of a 30-year-old newspaper after acquiring its assets.

A story this week by Heila Ershadi in the nonprofit Pikes Peak Bulletin newspaper details what a headache it has been for publisher Dirk Hobbs to revive the online archives of the former Indy alternative weekly in a meaningful way.

“Hobbs told the Bulletin in December he’d make the Indy archives available in January of this year – but those plans have collided with a harsh technical reality,” Ershadi wrote.

More from the story:

Currently, digital issues from 2023 are accessible with no paywall via socoinsider.com and housed on the reader platform Issuu. Individual issues may be searched, but there is no way to search the collection as a whole. And, of course, it’s only one year’s worth of material.

“The older Indy files from previous ownership teams and archivist that were given to us are a complete mess,” Hobbs told the Bulletin. “[It is] not necessarily anyone’s fault – since different and less capable technology was used during the former years and ownership periods.”

Hobbs said the “severely scattered files” spanned “nearly 7 [terabytes] of data in a file system that is not easily managed.” For reference, today’s desktop computers typically come with 1-2 terabytes of data storage.

“As a result, we’re now spending an inordinate amount of time piecing them together,” he said. “This is proving to be a massive undertaking since the files were not done in a consistent manner through the years and as technology evolved. There are numerous corrupt files as well.”

As more and more local newspapers change hands, maintaining proper digital archives will become increasingly important.

Now would be a ripe opportunity for any local news organization in Colorado to take a look at how it is currently storing its archives, assess what might happen to them if the paper went under or was sold, and make appropriate safeguards.

It’s also a good time for writers to consider making PDF files of all of their published work in the event that an outlet they published it in succumbs to link rot or loses their archives in a digital sinkhole.

For her story, Ershadi reached out to get my take on how this particular archival mess has played out in Colorado’s second largest city.

“We often hear about newspapers disappearing from communities and what that means for the future, but we should also be as concerned with what it can mean for the past when digital archives vanish,” I told her. “We’re talking about decades of civic memory that is very important for this city. I’m sure there are plenty of fat cats and power brokers in Colorado Springs who would be pretty pleased to know that certain things the Indy reported about them are no longer readily available. Ask yourself who that serves.”

Coloradans could vote on a ‘Right to Know’ ballot measure for more transparency

“It is declared to be the public policy of this state that all public records shall be open for inspection by any person at reasonable times,” reads Colorado’s state law.

But a coalition has organized to put a question to voters on the upcoming November ballot that would enshrine a “Right to Know” in the state’s Constitution.

From Sara Wilson at Colorado Newsline:

A ballot initiative filed Friday by the Independence Institute and the League of Women Voters of Colorado would codify that value in Article II of the constitution by establishing the “fundamental constitutional right of all persons to know the affairs of all levels of state and local government that guarantees access to public proceedings and public records.”

The Colorado Open Meetings Law, first passed in 1972, requires that most meetings of state and local governmental bodies are properly noticed and open to the public. That means everyone can attend a city council meeting, for example, or request correspondence between state lawmakers, with some exceptions.

But the initiative mentions recent restrictions on that law. In 2024, the Legislature narrowed the definition of “public business” within the state’s open meeting law as it applies to the General Assembly. Last year, the Legislature passed a bill that would have extended the response timeline for records requests, but Gov. Jared Polis vetoed it. Both bills have drawn [criticism] from the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition and other groups.

“A healthy democracy requires informed understanding and public participation in government decision-making. The League of Women Voters of Colorado believes that the people’s right to know is fundamental in a government of, by and for the people,” Beth Hendrix, the executive director of the LWV of Colorado, said in a statement.

Here’s more on the background for how this came together, from Jeff Roberts of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition:

The transparency proposal is the product of several months’ work by a diverse alliance of groups that also includes the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition, Colorado Common Cause, the Colorado Broadcasters Association, the Colorado Press Association and the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado.

“The most amazing part of this process has been the incredibly diverse group of organizations and activists who are demanding the right to know what goes on in government,” co-proponent Jon Caldara, president of the libertarian Independence Institute, told CFOIC. “Groups that have been pitted against each other on every conceivable political issue agree on one thing — government in Colorado is becoming dramatically more opaque, and democracy cannot last when those in power work in the dark.”

Violators of the new measure could have to pay a minimum of $1,000 per violation. At least 55% of voters would have to approve the question for it to pass if it gets on the ballot.

Meanwhile, a judge awards nearly $150K in suit over a ‘vague’ public meeting notice

As advocates push for more transparency from public officials in Colorado, one judge has put governments across the state on notice.

From the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition:

A judge ordered the payment of $148,822 in attorney fees and court costs to a parent who won an open meetings case against the Woodland Park school board for its discussion of a charter school MOU under a vague “BOARD HOUSEKEEPING” agenda item.

Erin O’Connell’s lawsuit “sent a message to public bodies across Colorado,” wrote Teller County District Court Judge William Moller in a decision issued Friday. “Based on the ruling of the Colorado Supreme Court, government entities can be held accountable for their actions by being forced to pay an opposing party’s fees and costs. Consequently, I find the results of the litigation far exceeded what defendants’ counsel argues because the litigation results have state-wide implications.”

It took four years of legal wrangling for this to play out.

Colorado’s Sunshine Laws require governments to post notice of meetings at least 24 hours in advance with “specific agenda information where possible.”

Basically, the judge found that a citizen had called out a local school board for violating that law. One judge said the school board had made “a conscious decision to hide a controversial issue.”

The school board cleaned up its act after getting sued and then tried to argue it shouldn’t have to pay attorney’s fees and court costs to the citizen who filed the suit because it had pulled itself together in a subsequent meeting.

The judge said the school board should pay.

“The position argued by the School Board would, had the Colorado Supreme Court adopted it, have allowed the School Board to escape repercussions for its actions,” the judge wrote. “Similarly, it would have allowed this school board, and other public bodies, to violate the COML with relative impunity because any violation could be remedied by a remedial cure.”

No doubt, headlines like these are likely to bolster any campaign seeking to persuade voters that Colorado has a transparency problem that a certain ballot measure might help mitigate.

He’s baaaack. West Slope man ‘competent’ to stand trial for accused strangling of TV reporter

A 40-year-old Grand Junction Marine who is accused of following a young, nonwhite local TV reporter for miles in a taxi while questioning his citizenship in “Trump’s America” before tackling and choking him outside of a news station has been cleared to stand trial.

A month ago, a Grand Junction judge had declared a mistrial because she thought the defendant, Patrick Egan, might be off his rocker.

But the same judge has now given him the A-OK to get back in the dock.

From Amanda Pampuro of Courthouse News:

“I will make the finding that based on the evaluation presented, Mr. Egan is competent to proceed with the matters,” said 21st Judicial District Judge Jennilynn Lawrence. … Lawrence will release Egan on a $20,000 cash bond with requirements to undergo mental health treatment, continue taking prescribed medications, and remain 100 yards away from the victim and his former employer.

Victoria Fazzino, deputy attorney for Colorado’s 21st Judicial District, reiterated her concerns about Egan taking his prescribed medications.

“The report shows there are still concerns with staying on meds, even in the jail,” Fazzino told the court.

Following the mistrial, Egan requested a hearing before a new judge to appoint a new public defender, a matter Lawrence is seeking to address this week so that trial dates may be scheduled.

The weeklong trial last month was a bit of a clown show and ended up completely off the rails on its final day.

Some testimony from the trial centered around the extent to which Egan tried to allegedly strangle reporter Ja’Ronn Alex, who was working for KKCO/KJCT in Grand Junction, at the time before Alex’s co-workers and another witness pulled him off. Part of the incident, including audio of Egan yelling at Alex from his taxi until he rushed the reporter at the station, was caught on Egan’s taxi dashcam. The news station’s security camera also recorded part of the incident but testimony indicated some of it was obscured by a Christmas tree.

Some of Egan’s friends testified that they didn’t think he was some big Trumper. And his attorney said there was a reason for why Egan did what he did. The attack, his lawyer said at the trial, was “because of a medical reaction to Benadryl, not a political bias,” according to the Sentinel newspaper in Grand Junction.

But the jury never got to decide because the judge took issue with Egan’s bizarre behavior in court, including comments he made about the clocks in the courthouse.

“I dream of a day when the mental health services in this state are such that I can recess this trial, get Mr. Egan the help he needs, and pick this up next week,” the Polis-appointed judge said when declaring the mistrial. “Unfortunately, we are not in this place in this state or this country. It’s going to take months to get Mr. Egan the help he needs to stand trial before this court.”

We’ll see if the next trial, should it happen, goes any more smoothly.

Industry site wonders if 9NEWS suitor Nexstar will ‘allow’ more ‘solid’ journalism

Denver’s 9NEWS anchor Kyle Clark is once again ruminating about his role as a man on an island among his colleagues in the MSM in the way he chooses to cover state politicians.

“Should journalists cover extremism or ignore it and deny it oxygen?” he asked on social media.

His question came as he made waves this week by confronting a Republican lawmaker who is running for governor about some serious allegations the candidate has made on the stump. That lawmaker, Scott Bottoms, told a crowd recently that when he becomes governor he will shut down what he called “pedophile rings” in state government.

In a broadcast about it, Clark’s co-anchor said the candidate’s comments, made without providing evidence, have “a lot of state leaders worried about political violence and what this will lead to.”

In Clark’s “unscheduled interview” with Bottoms at the Capitol, the candidate denied saying some things. Clark brought the receipts and rolled some tape of Bottoms making claims at campaign events and on talk radio.

In our polarized political moment, it’s not a stretch to imagine people who like Bottoms or have sympathies to his tribe simply won’t appreciate a journalist asking him to back up things he’s said during his campaign or to provide clarifications about conflicting statements he has made.

On air, Clark and his co-anchors talked about why they believe it’s important to do so.

“If he’s telling the truth, this is a horrific scandal that’s been victimizing children and should be dealt with right away,” Clark said from the anchor desk. “And if he’s not telling the truth about something this important, and something that could potentially put his colleagues’ lives in danger, that’s really important, too.”

Because of the way Colorado’s Republican Party has shifted in the past decade or so, the largely ceremonial gubernatorial primary this year is likely to feature some off-the-wall characters, bonkers antics, and wild allegations in service of a kind of audience that might incentivize it.

At the end of his broadcast, Clark said whether it’s unsubstantiated claims about pedo rings at the Capitol or calls by another candidate for hanging Democratic politicians he’s called “Satan Jews,” the broader electorate should know about them.

That’s particularly the case, Clark said, because “When they appear before other media outlets, they might just get asked about how to pave the roads and how to fund the schools.”

Following Clark’s reporting on Bottoms this week, Scott Jones, who runs a widely-read TV industry site, wondered how this kind of approach might play with Nexstar, the station’s potential new owner.

From FTVLive:

While the journalism appears solid and the questions needed to be asked, will Nexstar allow this to take place once they take over Tegna? You see, right now KUSA is owned by Tegna, but will soon be under Nexstar.

I get the feeling that Clark’s days under Nexstar will not be long if he keeps this up.

But if he does keep it up, I think he will find a place that still wants to employ journalists. I’m just not sure that Nexstar will be that place.

Nexstar needs a green light from the Department of Justice and Federal Communications Commission, whose leadership Trump has appointed.

Trump last week said he supports the deal for Nexstar to takeover Tegna.

More Colorado media odds & ends

👏 The University of Colorado Boulder “has found student journalist Ašiihkionkonci Parker not guilty of any student code of conduct charges after it banned Parker from campus in October after covering a pro-Palestine protest, records show,” Olivia Doak reported for the Boulder Daily Camera.

🗣 “The Pikes Peak Bulletin is not partisan, but that does not mean it is neutral – no newsroom has ever been completely neutral,” wrote Managing Editor Heila Ershadi in a column about why she deleted political memes she had posted on social media. “I’m not a formally trained journalist but started freelancing during my council term, and got more into it once I was out of office. One of the reasons I love journalism is I don’t have fiery opinions on many things (the more I look into the nuances of issues, the truer this becomes) but I do have endless curiosity and a general interest in people. I believe in democracy and that journalism is key to its success.”

🏛 “As part of our work with the Local News Policy Coalition, supported by the Colorado Media Project, we’ll also host our first Local News Day at the Capitol next month, where the Senate will introduce a formal resolution recognizing the importance of local journalism in Colorado,” wrote Colorado Press Association CEO Tim Regan-Porter in an email blast this week.

💰 Colorado Media Project, which underwrites this newsletter, is offering Microgrants for Newsroom Safety and Resilience of up to $5,000 to “help small newsrooms invest in urgent safety and resilience needs, and can support liability insurance, digital security tools, encrypted communications, or physical safety upgrades.” Learn more here.

🌵 “And as parts of Colorado and the American West start to look more like deserts, they’re becoming news deserts, as well,” wrote Joe Arney for CU Boulder. “Cuts, closures and consolidations are shuttering newsrooms and robbing reporters of resources, making it harder to ensure the public is getting trustworthy, verified information about the scope of this crisis.”

🎥 Watch the latest monthly meeting hosted by the Colorado News Collaborative.

⚖️ “It’s a bit of a random fluke that Colorado’s second-largest newspaper has a full-time reporter covering the state’s federal court,” wrote Michael Karlik of Colorado Politics and the Gazettes. “Beyond informing the public about cases, or trends in cases, dedicated courts reporters can nudge the institutions they cover.”

➡️ Colorado journalist Chris Walker, who is serving as a fellow at the Center for Environmental Journalism CU Boulder, answered five questions about his work on the fellowship so far.

📡 As KUNC is shaking up its programming, the station stated that the changes come as it “continues to navigate financial pressure tied to last summer’s annual CPB funding loss and reflect research around news-burnout. Audiences value and rely on trusted, independent journalism, but also want more variety — and, at times, a break from the intensity of nonstop news. Research has shown rising news avoidance and feelings of overload among audiences.”

🆕 I launched a new newsletter project, “Community Newswire,” for the Center for Community News at the University of Vermont that seeks to create more connective tissue among the higher-ed journalism community, students, and local news. Find the first edition here.

I’m Corey Hutchins, manager of the Colorado College Journalism Institute, advisor to Colorado Media Project, and a board member of the state Society of Professional Journalists chapter. For nearly a decade, I reported on the U.S. local media scene for Columbia Journalism Review, and I’ve been a journalist for longer at multiple news organizations. Most recently, I’ve been contributing to Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab and The Conversation. I also write the twice-monthly Community Newswire newsletter for the Center for Community News at the University of Vermont. The nonprofit Colorado Media Project is underwriting this newsletter, and my “Inside the News” column appears at COLab. (If you’d like to underwrite or sponsor this newsletter, hit me up.) Follow me on Bluesky, reply or subscribe to this weekly newsletter here, or e-mail me at CoreyHutchins [at] gmail [dot] com.

If you thought the only drama in Denver’s local TV news scene was a looming takeover of 9NEWS by FOX31, think again.

This week, three top people in the newsroom at Denver7, which also goes by the names KMGH and the Denver Channel, suddenly hit the bricks.

News Director Megan McRae, Assistant News Director Olivia Dickinson, and Digital Director Landon Haaf are all gone.

Poof, just like that.

No public announcement, no teary on-air goodbyes. And it sure sounds like there wasn’t any cake in the break room at the E.W. Scripps-owned building on Delgany Street in Five Points.

Denver7 General Manager Brian Joyce confirmed the abrupt hat-trick vanishing act in an email. He declined to offer any details about the circumstances of what he called a personnel matter.

So, what exactly happened to these three remains an open question at this point.

But the news appeared unexpected for Denver7 staff who apparently learned about it in a meeting this week and in a subsequent email from Joyce. That staff-wide note hinted at some precipitance.

“The search to fill these positions begins right away,” Joyce told staff, according to Scott Jones at the broadcast insider’s site FTVLive. (Jones wrote that the Denver7 triumvirate had been “shown the door.” I sent Denver7’s GM Joyce a link to the item as I sought more information and he said he had nothing else to provide. Notably, he did not warn against linking to it when given the chance.)

More from the Joyce memo published at FTVLive:

“Meanwhile, you will be supported with an interim leadership plan which includes our corporate news team and some experienced managers already in the newsroom, who will be working under my direction. In the interim, I have asked for a few leaders in our newsroom to step up and help with our transition. Russell Haythorn will serve as acting news director and will report directly to me. … Jeff Anastasio has agreed to help and be our interim digital director.

A job listing posted on Tuesday for a senior news director at Denver7 puts the salary range between $220,000 and $245,000. Part of the job duties include monitoring “all on-air and online product for compliance to Federal, State and local laws as well as First & Fourteenth Amendments.”

Last year, E.W. Scripps, which owns Denver7, laid off some people at its Colorado Springs station, but the budget cuts spared the Denver outlet.

This week, Matthew Keys at The Desk, which covers the broadcast and streaming industries, reported that Scripps sold its legal brand Court TV where mass layoffs are taking place. Variety also reported this week that layoffs “loom” throughout Scripps as the company sets a “cost-cutting” and “revenue growth” plan that includes AI and automation.

“We don’t have any further comment at this time on specifics,” Joyce said in an email about the latest shakeup in Denver. But, remember, he did say it was not part of a restructure, and the station is re-hiring for the three roles.

As for the abruptly departed themselves, so far, silence.

A cell phone number I’ve used in the past for McRae has gone straight to voicemail since last weekend; I’ve heard it might not be operative anymore. Emails sent to potential Gmail addresses for Haaf and McRae found through a subscription people-search service went unanswered, as did requests to connect with all three on LinkedIn. I can’t be sure they saw my outreach.

In the absence of any official announcement or public statements, Denver journalists were pinging each other throughout the week with the kinds of DMs, texts, and emails that start with “word is,” “I hear,” and “Omg.”

For a local TV news station that could position itself as, well, something in the event of a destabilizing consolidation of FOX31 and 9NEWS, the unceremonious Denver7 news-side decapitation is a cringe-face emoji when it comes to timing.

Meanwhile, the station’s corporate parent, E.W. Scripps, is currently fighting off a hostile takeover bid of its own in the form of the conservative local broadcast giant Sinclair.

Sinclair’s attempt to gobble up Scripps would give the conservative broadcaster its first foothold in Colorado and drastically reshape the Denver TV landscape. If successful, it would also turn Sinclair into a local broadcasting behemoth with some 240 stations nationwide.

It was 2023 when Denver7 hired away McRae, who then went by the last name Jurgemeyer, from 9NEWS where she was a news director. She became the rival station’s senior news director overseeing the newsroom.

She told this newsletter at the time that she chose to cross the street because she was excited about Denver7’s vision and the company’s “desire to find ways to stay relevant against the challenges of a shrinking audience for traditional broadcast news.” She described the job change as a “messy and difficult process,” but said she wanted to join a team that was “unafraid to try new things to keep local journalism alive.”

That didn’t last long.

In the meantime, though, she was able to bring two more journalists, weathercaster Danielle Grant and reporter Anusha Roy, from 9NEWS to her new home.

Whatever happened this week at Denver7, KMGH, the Denver Channel, or however you describe it, the station’s GM Joyce promised in an email that it “remains committed to serving Denver with the quality, local journalism and information people need to feel connected to this community.”

Whether it remains as committed to letting Denver know what’s going on under the hood — and the extent to which that might even matter to its audience — well, you be the judge.

➡️ This newsletter is proudly sponsored by The Colorado Health Foundation. As a proud funder of Colorado Media Project, the home of Press Forward Colorado, the CHF understands that healthy communities need a healthy news ecosystem.

This year, The Colorado Health Foundation will be working to combat disinformation and misinformation, and helping nonprofits build media literacy.

• Our grant funding deadline is Feb. 16. Learn more about our current funding opportunities and identify your interests.

Recently, the Colorado News Collaborative called our annual Pulse Poll a “trove of information useful to reporters.” The Colorado Health Foundation’s Katie Peshek talked to journalists across the state about the poll results, which you can watch here. We also have Pulse Poll slides here, showing how you can use what we found to guide your reporting on topics and bring facts and data to your stories. ⬅️

Longmont’s newspaper goes deep on a local AI ‘news site’ or ‘news-shaped object’

Local news and information likely created with help from artificial intelligence tools is coming to your state and town whether you like it or not.

Some of it will be produced by outsiders, like ones in several Colorado towns run by someone in New York City.

Others will be from local media vets like Scott Converse in Longmont who has set up something called Longmont News Network.

If you’re lucky, a journalistic outlet that adheres to a discipline of verification where you live will do the kind of deep dive into whatever emerges that London Lyle produced for the Longmont Times-Call newspaper this week.

“Longmont media veteran launches AI news site, but is it just ‘a news-shaped object’?” was the headline of an in-depth Feb. 8 story.

From the piece:

Scott Converse has spent years launching and experimenting with local news projects, driven in part by his dissatisfaction with the state of local journalism. The longtime local media and technology figure’s latest project, Longmont News Network, uses artificial intelligence to generate stories about civic affairs in Longmont.

Since increasing its publishing frequency earlier this year, the platform has drawn attention for both its ambitions and its mistakes, including articles containing fabricated information, misspelled names, and AI-generated images that some residents mistook for real photographs.

Robin Burke, a professor of information technology at the University of Colorado Boulder, draws a distinction between news and what he calls “news-shaped objects.” AI-generated articles, he says, fall squarely in the latter category.

But Converse sees AI as the future of journalism.

The story goes on to explain Converse’s history and role in the local media scene and what he’s doing now. Here are some nuggets from the story:

• “When first contacted by the Times-Call for an interview, Converse requested an agenda for the call, writing in a Facebook message that ‘you are, technically, the competition.’”

• “During the interview, Converse said the Times-Call played a role in his decision to launch LNN. He said he started the Longmont Observer because he was dissatisfied with the Times-Call’s local coverage and unhappy that the newspaper’s office had moved out of Longmont.”

• “Converse said LNN is an experiment built around what he describes as AI ‘agents’ that act as reporters, scanning public documents, meeting transcripts, budgets and records to generate stories.”

• “Converse has also circulated a 13-page business plan for a broader venture called SmartNewsNetwork, which frames LNN as a pilot project, with Longmont being the first city in what he hopes will be a nationwide phenomenon.”

• “LNN has drawn attention not just for its business model but for errors that appear to stem from AI hallucinations.”

• “In a Jan. 20 article titled “A winter without snow: How Longmont is feeling the weight of Colorado’s 2026 snow drought,” an entire section referenced drought concerns that were not raised during the City Council open forum it purported to summarize. A Reddit user who said they listened to the full meeting wrote, “There was not a single mention of water. How much of this is hallucination?” Converse replied in the thread, apologizing for the error and acknowledging it was an AI hallucination.”

• “Less than 30 minutes after the interview ended, Converse emailed the Times-Call an AI-generated article summarizing the conversation, along with an AI-generated mock newspaper front page. The article stated, ‘The interview reveals a fundamental tension between the technological optimism of an engineer and the ethical skepticism of a traditional reporter.’”

There’s a whole lot more, so read the entire compelling story at the link above.

Pioneering Colorado radio legend James ‘Dr. Daddio’ Walker has died

“Colorado is mourning the loss of a radio legend,” said Chandra Thomas Whitfield of Colorado Public Radio this week.

James “Dr. Daddio” Walker, “whose radio station KDKO was long known as ‘The Soul of the Rockies,’” has died.

“Dr. Daddio opened doors for countless Black radio professionals and provided a platform for leaders and citizens to be heard, standing proudly for ‘Unity in the Community’ while amplifying the fight for civil rights across Colorado and beyond,” said Omar Montgomery, the president of the NAACP of Colorado, Montana, and Wyoming, according to CBS Colorado.

Whitfield offered an illuminating segment about Walker’s life on Colorado Matters this week that is worth a listen.

“I want to become a role model to our young Black adults on the basis that if there is something you want to do in life, you can do it,” Walker had told the Rocky Mountain News in the 1980s. “For me to own this station was not an easy task. But I knew it could be done. I knew that some way and somehow, I would get a chance to get this station.”

From a remembrance by Kyle Harris at Denverite:

Walker started his career as a social worker in St. Louis, received a degree in education, worked as an insurance salesman and got his start as a radio announcer at KOKA in Shreveport, La., followed by stints in Atlanta, Jackson and Houston.

In 1967, he moved to Denver and started visiting radio stations, looking for work.

“I went to every radio station in the town,” he told The Rocky Mountain News in 1989. “They just wouldn’t hire Blacks.”

After about 20 years, though, he purchased the station with help from the mayor’s office and several investors.

“Dr. Daddy-O is to me, a community warrior,” Terri Gentry, a historian at History Colorado and family friend, told Byron Reed of 9NEWS. “He came into Colorado, and he started KDKO radio, and on KDKO radio, he opened up opportunities for all of our community members to have access to resources.”

Caribou Current arts & culture mag launches in Boulder County

A new monthly arts-and-culture print publication has officially launched in Boulder County, Golden, and the Peak-to-Peak region.

Caribou Current hit the streets last week.

From a welcome item by Managing Editor Jezy J. Gray:

Taking our name from the storied Caribou Ranch recording studio in Nederland, where giants like Steely Dan and Stevie Nicks laid down some of their most legendary cuts before its fiery demise in 1985, our goal is simple: to bring you the very best arts reporting this side of the Continental Divide.

It took some doing to get here. Our small but mighty team of local journalists was assembled from the wreckage of Boulder Weekly, the leader in regional arts coverage for more than three decades. We were devastated when the paper went down in flames last summer, thinking our journey with you was done. Now, with the help of our time-tested sister publication The Mountain-Ear in Nederland, we’re back and better than ever.

In a Q-and-A for the piece, Gray promised readers “feature stories, profiles, interviews, previews, art news, curated calendar listings and pretty much whatever else tickles our fancy,” and said, “you can expect everything from short and sweet event round-ups to longform culture journalism and points in between.”

Find the inaugural edition at the link above.

Bennet, Neguse blast Trump’s support for TV deal to allow Denver’s FOX31 to eat 9NEWS

The fickle whims of Donald Trump this week saw the 79-year-old Republican president lurching from a previous position to a new one on a deal that could have major impacts for Denver’s TV news scene.

On Feb. 7, he indicated that he now supports Nexstar Media Group’s takeover of its broadcast rival Tegna, though he had earlier indicated he opposed it.

“GET THAT DEAL DONE,” the president said, along with some other things that I don’t care to repeat because they frankly aren’t worth dignifying.

From the Associated Press:

The acquisition, which Nexstar announced in August and requires regulatory approval, would bring together two companies with significant holdings in local broadcast media. Nexstar oversees more than 200 owned and partner stations in 116 markets nationwide and also runs networks like The CW and NewsNation. Meanwhile, Tegna owns 64 news stations across 51 markets.

In November, Trump had criticized the purchase. “If this would also allow the Radical Left Networks to ‘enlarge,’ I would not be happy,” he wrote then.

The Department of Justice and Federal Communications Commission, whose leadership Trump appointed, will have to green-light the deal.

Almost immediately, Colorado Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and Democratic Congressman Joe Neguse put out a statement blasting Trump’s announcement.

“Today, Donald Trump backed a media merger that will have devastating consequences for local news in Colorado and for American journalism writ large,” they wrote. “By designating news outlets he dislikes as ‘the enemy,’ Trump has continued his baseless attack on reporters who devote their careers to investigating those in power and holding them to account.”

The joint statement went on to call the administration’s effort an “attempt to obscure the clear abuses being perpetrated by the president and his allies, while depriving communities across the country of reliable, accessible local news.”

The two Democrats said that is why they have “fought against this reckless and illegal merger last year,” adding that they “will continue doing everything we can to oppose this dangerous erosion of one of the most essential pillars of our democracy.”

🌿 This week’s newsletter is proudly supported by PR firm Grasslands: A Journalism-Minded Agency™, founded by Ricardo Baca (ex-Denver Post, ex-Rocky Mountain News, and current Colorado Public Radio board of directors). We understand journalists because we were journalists — and we’re here to help. Need expert sources or compelling stories? Our diverse client roster includes beloved Colorado institutions (Naropa University and Illegal Pete’s), innovative wellness brands (Boulder County Farmers Markets, Naturally Colorado, Eden Health Club), bold natural products businesses (Wild Zora, Flatiron Food Factory, Flower Union Brands), and other purpose-driven organizations. As creators of the Colorado Journalist Meet-Up and longtime champions of quality journalism, Grasslands recognizes the essential role reporters play in our communities. Our team is ready to connect you with sources, data, and unique perspectives that elevate your reporting.

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More Colorado media odds & ends

👀 Courier, “a local and national news group with a progressive perspective, is expanding to nine additional states this year,” including Colorado, its publisher, Tara McGowan, told Axios.

⏸ A House committee shelved a half-baked bill dealing with county newspaper public notices and their ability to exist online following testimony from Colorado Press Association CEO Tim Regan-Porter. “I think we can come up with something that meets his goals and makes sense from a policy perspective without negatively impacting any legal newspapers,” he said in an email.

🗣 The Society of Professional Journalists Colorado Professional Chapter, of which I’m a board member, is hosting a Feb. 18 in-person conversation about DEI in the media industry at the Denver Press Club. Panelists will include Colorado Public Radio’s Nathan Fernando-Frescas and Chandra Thomas Whitfield, Denverite’s Paolo Zialcita, and Yolánda L. Chase, the founder of Diversity Way-Maker and Intersect Global Leadership Institute.

⏳ State lawmakers are “trying for the third straight year to give state and local government entities up to three calendar weeks to fulfill many Colorado Open Records Act requests,” Jeff Roberts wrote for the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition.

🏛 LaVozColorado Publisher Pauline Rivera joined the Hispanic Tech and Telecommunications Partnerships, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, Telecom and Internet Council, LGTBT Tech, Asian Pacific American Advocates, Asian American Journalists Association, Hispanic Federation, and others in Washington, D.C. “in an effort to relay the value of community/local journalism.”

😬 The University of Colorado Boulder appears in a new report titled “The secret war against student journalists,” by Marie McMullan of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, known as FIRE.

📲 Lawmakers and Evergreen community members “stood near Evergreen High School on Monday to unveil legislation to prevent acts of violent extremism by tightening the time social media companies are allowed to respond to warrants from law enforcement,” Ava Kian reported for Colorado Public Radio.

🕹 John Weiss, the former owner of the Colorado Springs Independent alt-weekly, is introducing The Catalyst Fund of Manitou on Feb. 13 at 110 Pawnee Ave. in Manitou Springs. Part of the fund will support “creating locally controlled, independent news and cultural reporting for the region, building on the strengths of existing local media,” according to an announcement.

🆕 Rocky Mountain Public Media has hired Amber Payne as chief experience officer. “As part of her role, a new addition to the organization, Payne will lead content strategy for journalism, civic engagement, radio and programming teams,” Julian Wyllie reported for Current. “Payne most recently worked as publisher and GM for The Emancipator, a multimedia digital magazine now operating under Howard University in Washington, D.C. She was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 2021 and has also been managing editor of BET.com, EP of Teen Vogue and founder and managing editor of NBCBLK, an NBC News digital initiative.”

🎙 Coloradan Vanessa Otero, the founder of Ad Fontes Media, the company behind the Media Bias Chart, wrote that she’s starting a series called “Navigating the News with Vanessa” where she and paid members who sign up can “talk about the biggest current news stories together.”

🏆 Denver’s 9NEWS anchor Kyle Clark said on social media he was “honored to be recognized at this year’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian Awards.”

I’m Corey Hutchins, manager of the Colorado College Journalism Institute, advisor to Colorado Media Project, and a board member of the state Society of Professional Journalists chapter. For nearly a decade, I reported on the U.S. local media scene for Columbia Journalism Review, and I’ve been a journalist for longer at multiple news organizations. Most recently, I’ve been contributing to Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab and The Conversation. The nonprofit Colorado Media Project is underwriting this newsletter, and my “Inside the News” column appears at COLab. (If you’d like to underwrite or sponsor this newsletter, hit me up.) Follow me on Bluesky, reply or subscribe to this weekly newsletter here, or e-mail me at CoreyHutchins [at] gmail [dot] com.

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Colorado lawmakers are proposing to update the state’s laws around newspapers and legal notices to reflect the changing media landscape.

According to the president of the Colorado Press Association, a recently introduced bipartisan bill with four bicameral sponsors counts support from both the press advocacy group and Colorado Counties, Inc.

That unlikely pairing might be newsworthy on its own, given the two organizations typically might find themselves crosswise on such a topic.

Meanwhile, a lone lawmaker has introduced a separate bill in the House that would allow counties to publish legal notices online on a legal newspaper’s website. (That bill is likely to lead to more discussion and could foretell an uncomfortable situation down the road among some of Colorado’s print newspaper publishers and those who run digital-only local news outlets.)

Tim Regan-Porter, the president and CEO of the Colorado Press Association, says his group is seeking more information about the online-notices bill, but the CPA is currently backing the one titled, “Publication Counties Without Legal Newspapers,” albeit with the hope for some minor tweaks.

Sponsors of the bill are Western Slope Republican Sen. Janice Rich, ski-mountain-area Democratic Sen. Dylan Roberts, Democratic Rep. Meghan Lukens of Northwest Colorado, and Eastern Plains Republican Rep. Chris Richardson, who represents two news-desert counties.

Rich indicated in an email that stakeholders are still hashing out parts of the legislation.

If passed, the new law aims to strip out language that currently bars free newspapers from being a county or other entity’s “legal newspaper.” Some free papers in Colorado aren’t paid subscription newspapers, and so they could now become beneficiaries of county money through notice placement sales. It would also scrap language about how many consecutive weeks a newspaper must have published in order to become an entity’s “legal newspaper.”

A designation as a legal newspaper means a county, special district, or other entity including a private business pays to place certain notices that are required by state law to appear in a local printed newspaper in order to make the public aware of certain information. A storage unit company, for instance, might place a legal notice if it seeks to foreclose on someone’s property. A special district might place one to announce an upcoming board meeting, and a county might publish a notice to alert the community about a new ordinance.

“This has been a problem really for a while, but it’s come to the fore as print costs have gone up,” said Regan-Porter of the Press Association.

He added that in 2010, lawmakers updated the language similarly for cities, “so we’ve been wanting to address that for a while” for counties.

Other proposed updates to this legal county newspaper law are a nod to the realities of Colorado’s growing news deserts, meaning counties that no longer have a dedicated print newspaper serving them.

This is from the bill summary:

Current law requires a county to publish a legal notice or advertisement (notice) in a legal newspaper that satisfies certain requirements, including a publication period requirement (legal newspaper). If a legal newspaper does not exist in a county, the county is permitted to use certain alternatives. The bill removes the publication period requirement for a newspaper to be considered a legal newspaper. The bill also expands and clarifies the alternatives for a county to publish a notice when the county does not have a legal newspaper.

The proposed new law would allow counties in news deserts to publish legal notices in papers that serve counties adjacent to them, or in the bleak case that they don’t exist either, any nearby newspaper based on “geographic proximity.”

It’s a shame that such a proposal in Colorado is necessary.

But there is indeed a growing number of counties that do not have a newspaper serving them anymore. In 2022, Cheyenne County on the Eastern Plains became a news desert when the Range Ledger closed. Last summer, the San Luis Valley counties of Conejos and Mineral lost their dedicated weekly newspaper when they rolled up into the SLV Journal. (While one newspaper has listed Dolores as a news desert, the Four Corners county with a population of around 2,400 has a monthly print newspaper called the Pinto Bean out of Dove Creek and a digital-only community news site called Rico Ore Cart.)

In November, when the Limon Leader shut down, it created “another ‘news desert’ on Colorado’s Eastern Plains,” the Colorado Sun reported.

What, then, should a government do in a county without a newspaper when state law requires it to publish a legal notice?

That’s in part what the proposed new law would also help mitigate.

Some counties might consider printing legal notices a hassle. Others, which are run by elected officials, also might not have the best relationship with a pesky local paper.

In recent years, controversy has swirled in some counties where such public officials sought to punish a newspaper by taking away its coveted status and depriving it revenue generated by public tax dollars. (See: Wet Mountain Tribune and Aspen Times, 2022.)

Last year, when the county government in Gilpin cut the Weekly Register-Call off of its gravy train as the paper of record, the newspaper sued the Mountain-Ear, the paper the county chose instead.

The lawsuit, still ongoing, asks a judge to determine what exactly the requirements are under state law to serve as a county’s newspaper of record. Whether a ruling in the case might clarify or complicate any potential legislation remains to be seen.

“Across the country, modernizing legal notices to the reality of digital news and news deserts will be an ongoing discussion. This is a good step,” Regan-Porter said. “We have to do this carefully. We need to preserve those news outlets, which are also the only news outlet in their community … We don’t want to drive anybody out of business by updating this law.”

The Colorado Press Association, which has advertised in this newsletter, runs a free service called Public Notice Colorado that makes notices searchable online for people “who want to know more about the actions of local, county and state government.”

As the Press Association and Colorado Counties, Inc. work on their bill, another one has also dropped in the House.

That separate bill, which Four Corners-area Republican Rep. Larry Don Suckla has introduced and the CPA says it is seeking to learn more about, would give a county, municipality, or entity “discretion” to publish legal notices online on a newspaper’s website instead of in print.

“Legal notices published online must be free to access and cannot be kept behind a paywall or subscription,” it reads.

As I understand it, the bill does not suggest that digital-only news outlets that do not have print editions would qualify as legal newspapers to run such notices, something some local online news organizations might be interested to know.

Watch this space for how these dueling measures fare throughout the session.

➡️ This newsletter is proudly sponsored by The Colorado Health Foundation. As a proud funder of Colorado Media Project, the home of Press Forward Colorado, the CHF understands that healthy communities need a healthy news ecosystem.

This year, The Colorado Health Foundation will be working to combat disinformation and misinformation, and helping nonprofits build media literacy.

• Our grant funding deadline is Feb. 16. Learn more about our current funding opportunities and identify your interests.

Recently, the Colorado News Collaborative called our annual Pulse Poll a “trove of information useful to reporters.” The Colorado Health Foundation’s Katie Peshek talked to journalists across the state about the poll results, which you can watch here. We also have Pulse Poll slides here, showing how you can use what we found to guide your reporting on topics and bring facts and data to your stories. ⬅️

An example of how a 9NEWS takeover by FOX31 could change Colorado journalism

Those wondering what could change in practice for Colorado journalism if the owner of FOX31 in Denver takes over 9NEWS might consider a recent example.

Compare and contrast how the two Denver TV news stations covered an announcement this week from one high-profile government official.

Here’s how 9NEWS anchor Kyle Clark reported on it in a Feb. 4 broadcast:

“Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert is back on her business of taking credit for funding projects in Colorado even when she votes against them. Boebert’s team sent out a statement today touting nearly $15 million worth of infrastructure projects. Ten of those projects were earmarked in a funding bill passed last month that she voted yes on. Three million dollars were in a funding project signed by President Trump yesterday. Boebert was the only Colorado Republican to vote against that funding package. She said it didn’t include enough funding for ICE.”

Clark went on to say that he has previously asked Boebert about taking credit for projects she voted against and how she explained that she sometimes prefers packaged bills broken up into individual measures.

So, that’s one way to do journalism. Reporting critically on a public official’s announcement and providing context for the viewer.

Here’s another way: this was from FOX31 in a (since removed) story headlined “Boebert secures nearly $15 million for rural clean water projects”:

Rep. Lauren Boebert secured nearly $15 million for clean water projects in rural areas of Colorado, only about a month after President Donald Trump issued the first-ever veto to a unanimously-approved, bipartisan bill, the “Finish the Arkansas Valley Conduit Act,” on Dec. 30, which would have funded the completion of a 130-mile pipeline that would have delivered clean water to over 50,000 residents in southeastern Colorado.

Now, 13 communities in Boebert’s district, the 4th Congressional District, have secured $14.75 million in funding for water and infrastructure projects, after requests were signed into law.

The (now disappeared) story went on to quote at length the announcement from Boebert’s office without any of the kind of context offered in the 9NEWS coverage.

“Much of this article is essentially cut-and-paste from GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert’s press release,” Clark himself posted on social media, linking to the FOX31 story. “What Boebert's press release (and therefore this article) doesn’t mention is that she voted against three of the projects she’s now claiming credit for.”

The FOX31 story vanished from the outlet’s website after Clark’s comment about it generated tens of thousands of views and plenty of comments on social media. (I haven’t seen an editor’s note, explanation, or disclosure about why. The link to it I shared above goes to a still-available MSN version that had re-published it.)

Fans of Boebert’s might get their hackles up over this, feeling perhaps that 9NEWS is “partisan” for reporting that context, that “commie Clark” is simply carrying water for the libs with such coverage — and they might cheer KDVR for its “unbiased” journalism when it simply regurgitates a press release from a politician they agree with.

Such people likely forget all the times 9NEWS has reported just as critically on Democrats who just so happen to control all of state government and Colorado’s largest municipality. And if they actually do want less critical coverage of Colorado’s politicians in general, which could happen if the Nexstar/Tegna deal goes through, I really don’t know what to say.

Upcoming public discussion: ‘DEI on Deadline’

The Society of Professional Journalists Colorado Professional Chapter, of which I’m a board member, is hosting an upcoming in-person conversation about DEI in the media industry.

On tap will be a conversation about how journalists are “navigating diversity, equity and inclusion at a moment when the terms themselves have become politically charged, legally contested and frequently misunderstood.”

From the announcement:

Rather than debating DEI as an abstract concept, this panel will focus on how reporters and editors actually encounter these issues in their work: sourcing, framing, newsroom decision-making, audience trust and internal culture.

Panelists will discuss what has changed in recent years, where tensions are showing up in coverage, and how journalists can approach these questions with clarity, fairness and ethical rigor.

Panelists will include Colorado Public Radio’s Nathan Fernando-Frescas and Chandra Thomas Whitfield, Denverite’s Paolo Zialcita, and Yolánda L. Chase, the founder of Diversity Way-Maker and Intersect Global Leadership Institute.

Esteban L. Hernandez of Axios Denver will moderate the discussion, which will take place Feb. 18 at 7 p.m. at the Denver Press Club.

“RSVP via email to spjcolorado@gmail.com with ‘DEI on Deadline’ in the subject space,” reads the SPJ announcement. “Also email us with any questions.”

Denver’s ’Stripped for Parts’ screening discussion focused on broadcast consolidation

A recent discussion following a public screening of the film “Stripped for Parts: American Journalism on the Brink” put a spotlight on how negative impacts of ownership issues are not just relegated to local newspapers.

The panel discussion, in which I took part, focused on a pending takeover attempt by Nexstar Media Group of Tegna, which could see FOX31 subsume 9NEWS. (I misspoke at one point in the conversation and called KDVR “FOX21.” That’s actually the station in the Springs.)

From the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition, which had a write-up about the event:

Kimberly Spencer, director of the Colorado Media Project, moderated the conversation with Colorado College journalism professor Corey Hutchins, University of Colorado media studies professor Nathan Schneider and Colorado News Collaborative executive director Laura Frank. …

The $6.2 billion deal, if approved by the Federal Communications Commission, would likely lead to major changes in the way Coloradans get news from local TV stations.

During the hourlong discussion, Schneider warned attendees to watch out for something called “innovation amnesia,” which he described as when a new technology “becomes the excuse for doing away with rules that are good.” An example, he said, might be when Uber came along and people paid less attention to taxi regulation or labor law.

“Similarly, when someone says ‘Well, there’s the internet, so now we can’t care about laws designed to maintain competition and diversity in local news ecosystems,’” he said, “that’s something to be worried about.”

Frank, at one point, quantified the size of Colorado local newsrooms based on a recent COLab survey of around 150 of them.

I offered some tips on how to tell if something is journalism or something else. Watch the full discussion here.

‘Truth Be Told’ screening and discussion TONIGHT with local journos in the Springs

Journalists, educators, and community members will assemble on the Colorado College campus tonight for a screening of the documentary Truth Be Told.

Following the film, a community conversation will ensue that offers an inside look at how facts are verified, choices are weighed, and stories are told.

From the announcement:

This event is more than a film screening. It’s a celebration of the people and principles that keep Colorado communities informed. The documentary “Truth Be Told” offers an inside look at how journalists from different mediums across Colorado verify what they report, make choices about what they cover, and how they tell stories with care.

It reminds audiences that trustworthy local information isn’t a luxury — it’s a public good.

Journalists from local news organizations plan to attend the event for an informal community discussion with attendees after the screening. The filmmaker, Brian Malone, will also be there.

The free event with light refreshments, which my program is hosting, is from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Cornerstone Screening Room on the Colorado College campus at 825 N. Cascade Ave.

This event is part of the statewide Free Press, Free Country initiative coordinated by the Colorado News Collaborative, known as COLab, in partnership with local hosts and newsrooms across Colorado.

If you’ll be in the Springs tonight, register here for the event.

🌿 This week’s newsletter is proudly supported by PR firm Grasslands: A Journalism-Minded Agency™, founded by Ricardo Baca (ex-Denver Post, ex-Rocky Mountain News, and current Colorado Public Radio board of directors). We understand journalists because we were journalists — and we’re here to help. Need expert sources or compelling stories? Our diverse client roster includes beloved Colorado institutions (Naropa University and Illegal Pete’s), innovative wellness brands (Boulder County Farmers Markets, Naturally Colorado, Eden Health Club), bold natural products businesses (Wild Zora, Flatiron Food Factory, Flower Union Brands), and other purpose-driven organizations. As creators of the Colorado Journalist Meet-Up and longtime champions of quality journalism, Grasslands recognizes the essential role reporters play in our communities. Our team is ready to connect you with sources, data, and unique perspectives that elevate your reporting.

Have a story you’re working on? Email Ricardo directly: ricardo@mygrasslands.com. Together, we’re crafting better narratives — one story at a time. 🌿

More Colorado media odds & ends

🪧 Scott Tobias and Chelsey Dequaine-Jerabek, who are the CEO and editorial director of Voice Media Group, which owns the Denver alt-weekly newspaper Westword, published a Jan. 30 column in the paper. “Yesterday, businesses across the country went on strike against ICE,” they wrote. “Our offices remained open to continue reporting, but we want to make it clear where Voice Media Group and our publications stand. Immigrants are a vital part of our community. Our employees. Our readers. Our members. And our advertisers. We support them today in the strike against ICE and the current administration’s surge in funding of this program, sending thousands of agents into U.S. communities. Our company and publications were built on uplifting the voices of our communities – voices from all backgrounds of life – and holding our government leaders, both locally and nationally, to account. We are standing in solidarity with today’s national protest.”

🎙 City Cast Denver is seeking a contributor/correspondent for Denver, which it will pay $100 per podcast episode and a negotiable rate for projects.

🤦‍♂️ In a letter to a lawyer for 9NEWS and Colorado Public Radio, Weld County “defended a sheriff’s office requirement that records request forms be notarized,” Jeff Roberts reported for the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition. “The unfortunate reality, as we have explained to your clients before, is that the WCSO needs to make policy that prevents bad actors from misusing our criminal justice records,” wrote Matthew Conroy, assistant Weld County attorney. “This will inevitably cause some inconvenience to good actors, but the law requires no less from us.” Other than the Weld County and Eagle County sheriff’s offices, CFOIC “has heard of no other law enforcement agencies in Colorado that require notarization of records request forms,” Roberts wrote.

🆕 Jennifer Coombes has joined Colorado Public Radio as Morning Editor. “I’m thrilled to join such a vibrant and energetic team where I can explore even more avenues in public media and jump in and help out wherever I am needed,” Coombes said on LinkedIn.

👀 “After a year marked by scrutiny, restructuring, and difficult lessons, the National Trust for Local News is signaling a shift in how it approaches innovation and newsroom empowerment,” reads an item from Editor & Publisher. “Under new leadership, the organization is narrowing its focus and experimenting with a different kind of growth—one that places journalists, not executives, at the center of change.”

📈 Writing for the Status newsletter, Natalie Korach wrote that this week, Axios was “set to announce an additional investment from OpenAI, underwriting a local expansion to nine new communities, building on its existing three-year partnership. Axios Local will be launching in Colorado Springs, Douglas County and Arapahoe County, Colorado; Scottsdale, and Mesa, Arizona; Hollywood and Fort Lauderdale, Florida; and Cincinnati, Ohio, and its northern suburbs.”

📰 Behold this news headline in 2026: “After public questioning, Colorado Springs City Council may recognize Black History Month.”

🎓 Linda Carpio Shapley, the new interim president and CEO of Rocky Mountain Student Media, was quoted in a recent Editor & Publisher story headlined “Student journalists push back as censorship tightens on campus.” The story didn’t indicate there was anything awry at CSU Fort Collins where Shapley works, but noted that “she was preparing for a meeting with school administrators.” Author Gretchen A. Peck quoted Shapley saying, “We recognize that they have a job to do, and we hope they’ll recognize that we have a job to do — and ultimately, we all want what’s best for our students. That’s our mission.”

I’m Corey Hutchins, manager of the Colorado College Journalism Institute, advisor to Colorado Media Project, and a board member of the state Society of Professional Journalists chapter. For nearly a decade, I reported on the U.S. local media scene for Columbia Journalism Review, and I’ve been a journalist for longer at multiple news organizations. Most recently, I’ve been contributing to Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab and The Conversation. The nonprofit Colorado Media Project is underwriting this newsletter, and my “Inside the News” column appears at COLab. (If you’d like to underwrite or sponsor this newsletter, hit me up.) Follow me on Bluesky, reply or subscribe to this weekly newsletter here, or e-mail me at CoreyHutchins [at] gmail [dot] com.

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Colorado’s version of the FBI has determined that the famed journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson took his own life in his Aspen-area home more than 20 years ago.

The Colorado Bureau of Investigation’s months-long review “did not uncover any new physical evidence, facts, or circumstances to support a conclusion different from the 2005 investigation,” the agency stated in a Jan. 23 announcement.

In October, the agency had set off a cannon-shot of headlines when it said it would review what authorities had originally determined was a gun-death suicide.

After Colorado Sun reporter Olivia Prentzel broke the story, CBI put out a news release shortly after. The blockbuster announcement led to international headlines and reporters heading to Aspen and hitting the phone lines to talk to locals once again about the godfather of Gonzo journalism.

“While we have always believed the original investigation was conducted properly, we recognized the importance of an independent review for the Thompson family,” Pitkin County Sheriff Michael Buglione said in a statement to media. “CBI’s conclusions reaffirm the original findings and, we hope, provide reassurance and clarity.”

• 📞 HELP: If you or someone you know are considering suicide, call or text 988 for free, 24/7 support from the Colorado Mental Health Line.

Here’s the background from Tim Arango at the New York Times, who had done in-depth reporting on the investigation:

In September the sheriff of Pitkin County in Colorado, Michael Buglione, asked the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to re-examine the death of Hunter, who was found dead in the kitchen at his compound in Woody Creek, Colo., near Aspen, on a snowy Sunday in February 2005. At the time, investigators with the sheriff’s department determined that Hunter, who was in failing health, had taken his own life with a single gunshot to his head.

And that’s where matters stood for two decades, until last year, when Hunter’s widow, Anita Thompson, approached Mr. Buglione with her suspicions about the official story of her husband’s death. Anita had speculated that her late husband’s son, Juan, and Juan’s then-wife, Jennifer Winkel, might have had something to do with his death, either by murdering him or assisting him in taking his own life.

Last summer Anita told law enforcement officials that her doubts about her husband’s death had grown after reading the original police report. She said she had also heard from the former wife of Juan and Jennifer’s son, who claimed that she had heard Jennifer suggest a cover-up by saying they had had to make Hunter’s death “look like a suicide.”

“The modern trajectory analysis and scene reconstruction conducted in 2025—which was based on the intact bullet defect—was consistent with the original PCSO investigation, the autopsy report, and the observations of original investigators,” the CBI stated.

“I’m thankful for the kind and thorough work done by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation in their review of this case and not a single attempt to overstep the ethical boundaries of a technical review, especially under such difficult circumstances,” Anita said in the press release. “This allows all of us who loved Hunter to move forward with a clean conscience.”

➡️ This newsletter is proudly sponsored by The Colorado Health Foundation. As a proud funder of Colorado Media Project, the home of Press Forward Colorado, the CHF understands that healthy communities need a healthy news ecosystem.

This year, The Colorado Health Foundation will be working to combat disinformation and misinformation, and helping nonprofits build media literacy.

• Our grant funding deadline is Feb. 16. Learn more about our current funding opportunities and identify your interests.

Recently, the Colorado News Collaborative called our annual Pulse Poll a “trove of information useful to reporters.” The Colorado Health Foundation’s Katie Peshek talked to journalists across the state about the poll results, which you can watch here. We also have Pulse Poll slides here, showing how you can use what we found to guide your reporting on topics and bring facts and data to your stories. ⬅️

‘People see themselves in the publications’: Brittany Winkfield on the Colorado Ethnic Media Exchange

“Colorado’s population continues to grow more diverse, yet many residents of color say they often feel underserved by mainstream media and overlooked by advertisers.”

That’s how Chandra Thomas Whitfield of Colorado Public Radio opened a recent conversation she had with Brittany Winkfield, who runs the Colorado Ethnic Media Exchange.

The 2-year-old organization, with its acronym pronounced “see me,” is dedicated to “bringing ethnic media outlets together to increase visibility, sustainability and economic opportunity in hopes of attracting the advertisement dollars they need for long-term sustainability.”

From the interview:

Winkfield, an executive board member for the Colorado Association of Black Journalists who also previously held a leadership role with the Denver Urban Spectrum newspaper, a Denver-based Black publication, said the coalition grew from conversations among publishers who were searching for new ways to survive in a changing media economy.

“It was birthed from a dream of seeing what we can do together,” she said. “If we present ourselves as a network and all of the audience that we have who have been really following the news, they are what I consider the most engaged citizens.”

Member outlets include Afrik Digest, Asian Avenue, El Comercio de Colorado and the Aurora Sentinel, among others. Many of the publications and broadcast outlets have served their communities for decades and, in some cases, more than a century.

“To know that they have built this audience,” Winkfield, who also worked for the Sentinel in Aurora, said, adding, “they are not just popping something up overnight, but have been doing this quality work for years and years and years, really serving, I think it is the most critical part of our democracy.”

Some more nuggets from the Q-and-A:

• “Winkfield said ethnic media connects with audiences in ways that mainstream outlets often cannot. ‘They are speaking their language. They are calling them by name,’ she said. ‘People see themselves in the publications.’”

• Asked how ethnic media outlets are faring at a time when DEI is “practically a dirty word” under Trump, Winkfield said people are not feeling good. “It’s not a pretty picture right now,” she said. The economics are tough, she explained, adding that some publishers go unpaid.

• “The exchange also works across platforms, including print, digital, radio and podcasts, to reach audiences where they are. ‘Maybe not everybody is reading a newspaper or magazine, but they will turn on the radio. They will listen to a podcast,’ Winkfield said.”

• “Local media matters,” Winkfield said. “As we live and work and play in this state of Colorado, there are diversities, multi-ethnic, multi-generational … all of these factors bring us together.”

Listen to the interview at CPR at the link above.

Gazette journalists talk about their work on new ‘Colorado 1st’ podcast

The Gazette newspapers in Colorado Springs and Denver have joined others across the country in getting into the podcast game.

In recent weeks, the paper has released 20-minute podcast interviews with its journalists about their stories.

The development is a reflection of what The Daily has pioneered at the New York Times to broaden its audience and draw more engagement with its work.

Hosted by my colleague Steve Hayward at the Colorado College Journalism Institute and produced by recent CC grad Seth Jahraus, the podcast is called Colorado 1st.

Recent episodes include interviews with Colorado Politics Deputy Editor Thelma Grimes about her recent stories on Lauren Boebert and the state’s “economic crossroads.”

The most recent episode goes deep into an investigation that Gazette reporter David Migoya did into Colorado’s “broken bingo industry.”

The hosts say they have more in the can. Follow along here.

With ‘no end in sight’ for rising print costs, Mountain Mail mothballs its press in Salida

Colorado is losing another newspaper printing plant.

This time it’s in Salida, where the Arizona-based O’Rourke Media Group is making some changes to the Mountain Mail, which it bought in 2023. The changes also include the newspaper printing less frequently.

A statement from the paper called the move part of “strategic operational enhancements designed to strengthen the newspaper’s long-term sustainability and ensure continued delivery of trusted local journalism to the Salida community.”

The paper will now print at the Santa Fe New Mexican.

From the announcement:

Expenses to produce a newspaper have significantly increased over the past several years with no end in sight. This change allows us to produce our print publications more efficiently while also achieving product improvements such as full-color capabilities on each page. The final print run at The Mountain Mail’s Salida facility will take place the week of Feb. 23, with printing officially transitioning to Santa Fe beginning the week of March 2.

In conjunction with this change, The Mountain Mail will move to a once-weekly print schedule, publishing each Thursday. This will also start the week of March 2. This shift allows the organization to focus resources on local reporting, audience growth and community engagement in print, online, newsletters and on social media platforms. Readers can expect the same level of local news and information, or more, in the print Thursday Mountain Mail each week.

The newspaper is also looking to sell its building.

“These decisions are about protecting the future of local journalism and keeping our business in Salida financially sustainable for many years to come,” Jim O’Rourke, OMG’s CEO, said in the piece. “By modernizing our operations and partnering with an outstanding regional printing organization, we can operate more efficiently while continuing to invest in strong local reporting and community coverage.”

The development means that other newspapers not owned by OMG that use its press, including the Wet Mountain Tribune in Westcliffe and the Crestone Eagle, will also have to print elsewhere.

In 2023, Mountain Mail Editor Cailey McDermott wrote about the luxury of having a printing press and how Gannett’s shutdown of its press in Pueblo was a factor in why she sold her Colorado Central magazine.

That same year, a report from a cluster of journalism advocacy groups painted a dire picture for the future of Colorado’s news printing industry.

Ex-Boulder Weekly editor posts recording of her firing

Following news last week that a trio of Colorado media vets are seeking to bring back Boulder Weekly as a nonprofit, the paper’s former editor, Shay Castle, wanted to tackle the topic on her new podcast Boulder Frequency.

She recorded an hourlong interview with some of her former colleagues but lost the audio to the tech gremlins. (If that’s ever happened to you, you know the feeling.)

“It turned out to be an apt metaphor for our experience losing our jobs,” Castle says in a podcast segment this week about the latest news involving her former paper.

That segment, remarkably, also includes an audio recording from last July of Boulder Weekly’s owner, Stewart Sallo, firing Castle.

“I’m paying you right now, so please sit down,” he says in the recording when Castle decides to leave before he has finished reciting a statement. “I’ve just been fired, so I’m going to leave,” she replies. “But you can email it to me, thank you.”

The rest of the segment includes clips from another podcast that included former BW staffers talking about their former paper and what they’re doing now with the launch of a new magazine, Caribou Current, which comes out next week.

‘Truth Be Told’ screening and discussion with local journos in the Springs next Friday

Journalists, educators, and community members will assemble on the Colorado College campus next week for a screening of the documentary Truth Be Told.

Following the film, a community conversation will ensue that offers an inside look at how facts are verified, choices are weighed, and stories are told.

From the announcement:

This event is more than a film screening. It’s a celebration of the people and principles that keep Colorado communities informed. The documentary “Truth Be Told” offers an inside look at how journalists from different mediums across Colorado verify what they report, make choices about what they cover, and how they tell stories with care.

It reminds audiences that trustworthy local information isn’t a luxury — it’s a public good.

Journalists from local news organizations plan to attend the event for an informal community discussion with attendees after the screening. The filmmaker, Brian Malone, will also be there.

The free event with light refreshments, which my program is hosting, is from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Cornerstone Screening Room on the Colorado College campus at 825 N. Cascade Ave.

This event is part of the statewide Free Press, Free Country initiative coordinated by the Colorado News Collaborative, known as COLab, in partnership with local hosts and newsrooms across Colorado.

If you’ll be in the Springs next Friday, register here for the event.

🌿 This week’s newsletter is proudly supported by PR firm Grasslands: A Journalism-Minded Agency™, founded by Ricardo Baca (ex-Denver Post, ex-Rocky Mountain News, and current Colorado Public Radio board of directors). We understand journalists because we were journalists — and we’re here to help. Need expert sources or compelling stories? Our diverse client roster includes beloved Colorado institutions (Naropa University and Illegal Pete’s), innovative wellness brands (Boulder County Farmers Markets, Naturally Colorado, Eden Health Club), bold natural products businesses (Wild Zora, Flatiron Food Factory, Flower Union Brands), and other purpose-driven organizations. As creators of the Colorado Journalist Meet-Up and longtime champions of quality journalism, Grasslands recognizes the essential role reporters play in our communities. Our team is ready to connect you with sources, data, and unique perspectives that elevate your reporting.

Have a story you’re working on? Email Ricardo directly: ricardo@mygrasslands.com. Together, we’re crafting better narratives — one story at a time. 🌿

More Colorado media odds & ends

👀 After “being called out by journalists for failing to disclose ties between Phil Anschutz’s family and a key player in a story,” the Denver Gazette, which Anschutz owns, has started including disclosures in its coverage, Jason Salzman wrote for the progressive Colorado Times Recorder digital news site. Salzman gave props to Spencer Soicher of 9NEWS for leading the charge and argued that other journalists writing about an Alameda traffic plan should have joined Soicher in “asking questions publicly about the Gazette’s coverage.” The Denver Gazette had erected billboards that promised “better” and “balanced” coverage than its rivals, so the questions are fair. Some journalists have been shaking their heads at another self-own in this regard from an organization that should have figured out by now that early transparency would have been better, particularly given the great work it does in other areas.

🔥 Rocky Mountain PBS and Xcel Energy “are partnering on an initiative to educate Colorado communities on wildfire mitigation and preparedness,” Dave Kovaleski wrote for DailyEnergyInsider.

🤖 Artificial intelligence is “reshaping how news and media are produced, and students at the University of Northern Colorado (UNC) are learning to navigate that shift in real time,” Austin Watts wrote for the school. “Shawn Montano, assistant professor of Journalism and Media Studies, has introduced a new project-based course that adapts as quickly as the technology itself.”

❌. Last week’s newsletter misspelled the last name of the owner of Boulder Weekly. It is Stewart Sallo.

📺 Josh Barlow has left as news director of the Gray-owned KKTV in the Springs to become the news director of rival Nexstar-owned FOX21 in the same city.

🏆 Shannon Lukens of Steamboat Radio received the Shining Star Award from the Western Resilience Center for “unwavering dedication to community building through accurate, timely and impactful local news coverage.”

😬 “You know I can’t answer that. And I’m off the record,” a politician told a TV reporter as cameras rolled. “9NEWS informed the interview was on the record at that moment and in a public building,” the reporter wrote.

🆕 Monique Brooks Roberts is the newest Colorado Public Radio Classical Host. “Monique is a violinist, composer, producer and arts storyteller with a career spanning classical, contemporary and popular music,” the station stated.

📲 “If passed by state legislators, House Bill 26-1058 would require certain parents and guardians who feature minors in monetized online content to set aside a portion of their earnings into trust funds for the minors,” Hannah Metzger reported for Westword.

👊 CU Boulder’s chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists “officially kicked off the semester on January 26 with an alumni panel,” Ainsley Coogan wrote on LinkedIn.

 💨 Raleigh Burleigh, the editor of the nonprofit Sopris Sun newspaper in Carbondale, is leaving after five years for New Mexico. “My decision to leave the Sopris Sun has nothing to do with the organization being anything less than incredible,” he told Marilyn Gleason of KDNK. “I so appreciate all of my coworkers there. All of the freelance contributors, all of the supporters, our board of directors. And my decision comes more from a personal desire to challenge myself in a new context.”

🏅 Watch COLab’s executive director Laura Frank’s acceptance speech when awarded the Governor’s Citizenship Medal for Public Service.

🗣 “The Chaffee County Patriots hosted Buena Vista Police Chief Dean Morgan Jan. 14 to talk about the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and practical issues and gray areas that come with protecting that right,” Max R. Smith reported for a story published in the Mountain Mail.

🤖 The conservative Rocky Mountain Voice digital outlet founded by former Republican gubernatorial candidate Heidi Ganahl, perhaps emulating the Trump administration’s embracing artificially created or altered photos of real people, used AI to generate a bizarre image to go with a story about Denver Mayor Mike Johnston.

📻 After founding Fraser Valley Community Media in 2007 and serving as a board member for nearly a decade, Denis Moynihan “is stepping down from his role at Grand County’s community radio stations, KFFR 88.3 FM and KWTR 89.1 FM,” Izzy Wagner reported for Sky-Hi News.

⚙️ Rachel Estabrook, who left Colorado Public Radio, has taken a position at the Maine Trust for Local News.

🏳️‍🌈 John Moore of the Denver Gazette reported that the cultural director of the city-run Parker Arts in Parker, Colorado, asked the director of the Shrek musical that is playing there to perhaps not display rainbow-colored pride flags because people were complaining. The cast rejected the request during a recent show. “The actors then performed the song, complete with the Pride flags,” Moore wrote. “The crowd can be seen in posted videos largely cheering in support. But there were immediate consequences.”

💨 “After nearly two years at a local television station, anchor Alex Aley has concluded her time in Grand Junction and is moving on to pursue other opportunities in broadcast journalism,” Wylee Mitchell reported for KKTV in Colorado Springs.

⚙️ Colorado Public Radio is hiring a senior host for Morning Edition and will pay between $71,900 and $95,800 for the position.

💨 “This is my last newsletter to you from House of Pod,” wrote Cat Jaffee of the Denver-based podcasting company. “I’m moving my writings and adventures to a brand new Substack channel that I’m still configuring, and you can subscribe right now to be part of whatever happens next.”

🪦 Editor David Hall, “the feisty force-of-nature who led the Denver Post to a Pulitzer Prize in Public Service for a series debunking the belief that thousands of children went missing in the United States every year, has died at the age of 82,” Vince Bzdek reported for the Gazette.

I’m Corey Hutchins, manager of the Colorado College Journalism Institute, advisor to Colorado Media Project, and a board member of the state Society of Professional Journalists chapter. For nearly a decade, I reported on the U.S. local media scene for Columbia Journalism Review, and I’ve been a journalist for longer at multiple news organizations. Most recently, I’ve been contributing to Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab and The Conversation. The nonprofit Colorado Media Project is underwriting this newsletter, and my “Inside the News” column appears at COLab. (If you’d like to underwrite or sponsor this newsletter, hit me up.) Follow me on Bluesky, reply or subscribe to this weekly newsletter here, or e-mail me at CoreyHutchins [at] gmail [dot] com.

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Six months after the messy collapse of Boulder Weekly, a triumvirate of Colorado media professionals are in the process of reviving the three-decade-old alternative print publication.

The group is running a fundraising campaign to bring Boulder Weekly back in a different form — as a nonprofit.

“We need to raise probably about a half a million dollars to restart,” Todd Chamberlin, one of those involved who is also the executive director of the nonprofit Sopris Sun newspaper in Carbondale, said over a recent Zoom call.

That’s a big figure, but Chamberlin says it’s not impossible. His nonprofit paper in Carbondale, a municipality with a population of around 7,000, raised $150,000 over the last two months of the year, he said.

Boulder County has a population of more than 300,000, and there’s plenty of money in the highly educated, tech-forward college town and surrounding areas.

The county is not a news desert.

The area’s media scene includes the nonprofit Boulder Reporting Lab, the Boulder Daily Camera newspaper, KGNU, the Left Hand Valley Courier, Redstone Review, Yellow Scene magazine, CU’s campus publications, Boulder Jewish News, the Mountain Ear, and more. Axios Boulder recently set up shop, likely with ad-dollar signs in its eyes.

Rachel Pickarski, the partnerships manager of the Colorado Press Association, and Brooke Warner, a veteran local media executive and the former, if short-lived, head of Colorado Community Media, are also involved in the Boulder Weekly comeback crew.

The three initially came to the project separately. Following its meltdown in July, Boulder Weekly’s owner, Stewart Sallo, had been seeking to sell the paper he founded more than 30 years ago. (Chamberlin was a senior at the University of Colorado Boulder when BW launched.)

The troika gelled as a team during a meeting with Sallo in the fall and decided to join forces and pursue a nonprofit route together.

While Boulder Weekly racks have been empty around town for six months, the outlet has been publishing digital newsletters and produced an online voter guide that carried Pickarski’s byline in the lead-up to November’s local elections.

Pickarski, who has been a Boulder County resident for six years, said a revived nonprofit Boulder Weekly would not just be for the city of Boulder but for all the surrounding towns as well.

“We want to do something different,” she added, “with a vision of making this a community hub, partnering with CU, talking to business leaders.” They’re planning a listening tour.

In recent weeks, when readers visited the Boulder Weekly website, they were greeted with a splash page about the paper’s next chapter that noted a “small group of community members and journalism leaders” were working on transitioning it into a nonprofit.

This week, the three are putting their names publicly on the effort as the people behind it.

On the Zoom call, Pickarski and Chamberlin said the future of the paper will be up to the community. Sallo, who is past retirement age, still owns the paper. A hand-off to the group that is creating the nonprofit will happen once the new team raises enough money, they said.

In the meantime, Pickarski described the current moment as a transition phase.

The three are running a pledge campaign, stabilizing operations, building the nonprofit structure, and being intentional so they can “rebuild with purpose,” she said.

After Boulder Weekly imploded last summer, its staff scattered to other Colorado local news outlets and projects. The paper’s former editor, Shay Castle, has started a local podcast called Boulder Frequency.

Meanwhile, three out of four members of the former newsroom, including Castle, are currently involved in launching an arts-and-culture-focused magazine called Caribou Current under the auspices of the Mountain Ear in Nederland. That new magazine, which one of those behind it described as “in the mold” of Boulder Weekly, also plans to cover the city of Boulder and the entire county.

The first issue of Caribou Current is set to come out Feb. 5.

Castle said she plans to tackle the reinvention of her former paper on her podcast next week.

She told me she wishes the new owners success and hopes the community gets their paper back. But she said it likely won’t get its newsroom back “and the magic we had there.” She said she was still mourning the paper’s loss in the community and called it a painful topic. (For a rundown of why the paper folded, which isn’t easy to briefly explain, click here.)

The people working to revive Boulder Weekly know they will have to earn back some trust as they try to reinvent a 30-something-year-old brand.

“Boulder is a great market with a strong love for this paper (even if trust has been bruised), which we believe will translate into the support we need to get — and keep — rolling,” Warner said in an email. “Boulder and Boulder Weekly are a great match, and with hard work and a vision of service, we believe we can not only earn it back but prove that the healthiest future is interdependent. We plan to be active and embedded on the ground (and institution level), as well as spreading service to the wider community. With that mission in mind, we will also plan to be bilingual. Community means everyone.”

As for Pickarski, she said it’s an opportunity for the team to do things they had never been able to do before in newsrooms that were already established.

“We kind of get to start something from the ground up,” she said, “and try a bunch of cool shit and see what works.”

➡️ This newsletter is proudly sponsored by The Colorado Health Foundation. As a proud funder of Colorado Media Project, the home of Press Forward Colorado, the CHF understands that healthy communities need a healthy news ecosystem.

This year, The Colorado Health Foundation will be working to combat disinformation and misinformation, and helping nonprofits build media literacy.

• Our grant funding deadline is Feb. 16. Learn more about our current funding opportunities and identify your interests.

Recently, the Colorado News Collaborative called our annual Pulse Poll a “trove of information useful to reporters.” The Colorado Health Foundation’s Katie Peshek talked to journalists across the state about the poll results, which you can watch here. We also have Pulse Poll slides here, showing how you can use what we found to guide your reporting on topics and bring facts and data to your stories. ⬅️

When 9NEWS ‘steps in’ to town

News coverage from one Denver TV station has upended the town of Kersey, population around 1,500, in northern Weld County.

For at least two months, 9NEWS in Denver has been reporting about how the town was charging $340 for speed-camera tickets despite a rule capping them at $40.

One motorist said she had received six such tickets.

That reporting led to more reporting — about other things, like a transparency fiasco when the Kersey town board of trustees “amended the town’s ordinance regulating the use of speed cameras during a special meeting” after conferring “behind closed doors for about an hour.”

The Town of Kersey also changed the wording of its social media policy after 9NEWS reporter Steve Staeger raised First Amendment questions about it. His questions were about the town government saying it would delete Facebook comments it found “misleading” or “inappropriate.”

After 9NEWS began airing broadcasts about Kersey, a local part-time private investigator said the coverage led him to start sniffing around the town. His nose led him to the police chief who had been defending the town’s use of photo-radar cameras.

“There’s got to be something going on with this guy,” the private dick told 9NEWS for a story by Steve Staeger and Anna Hewson.

That private eye said he filed a federal First Amendment lawsuit, arguing the town blocked him on Facebook and deleted a comment.

Now, just last week, the Town of Kersey’s leaders voted to refund all of the $340 speeding tickets and to not reinstate such hefty fines for motorists caught by photo-radar cameras.

During the town meeting, one citizen spoke up.

“It is sad Kersey is just making rules up as it goes along, not doing their job until 9NEWS actually steps in,” he said from the podium.

Nexstar, the owner of Denver station FOX31, is currently in the process of trying to take over TEGNA, which owns 9NEWS. If that happens, media watchers worry about what will happen to this station.

They might also worry about what will happen in other towns in Colorado like Kersey if there’s no 9NEWS anymore to step in.

Colorado newspaper wins ‘media and democracy hero’ award

The Media and Democracy Project has awarded the Sentinel newspaper in Aurora its national award as a “Media and Democracy Hero.”

From the announcement:

The Sentinel is among a select group of journalists and news organizations recognized by the nonprofit for “outstanding journalism and advocacy for press freedom and democracy,” according to the Media and Democracy Project announcement.

In naming the Sentinel its December honoree, the organization praised the 118-year-old newspaper as “an outstanding local news outlet serving Aurora, Colorado,” citing its role in providing accessible, independent, fact-driven reporting and opinions for the community.

The Sentinel was lauded in December for its wide range of coverage, recently examining claims by local police and elected officials about the impact of “get tough” shoplifting laws on crime rates, and especially a Nov. 21 Sentinel Editorial outlining unconstitutional acts by President Donald Trump and calling for his impeachment.

“The groundbreaking piece by their Editorial Board is exemplary, and a perfect reminder of the vital role that independent journalists play in defending our democracy and the public’s right to know,” the organization said in its citation.

The Media and Democracy Project described the Sentinel’s editorial calling on Trump’s impeachment “as a rare stance among independent outlets nationwide,” the paper reported. “The group also highlighted the non-profit paper’s decision to keep its reporting free of paywalls so readers can access coverage online and in print.”

Read more about it here.

On Colorado radio stations suing Trump, ‘clownfish,’ and Colorado broadcast history

Colorado Public Radio, KSUT, and Aspen Public Radio got some national attention this week about their lawsuit against the White House.

“Colorado is a notable battleground,” Lucy Schiller wrote for Columbia Journalism Review.

This newsletter reported on the oral arguments in the case in December.

Schiller spoke with some of the principals and also with a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder about the historic context.

From the CJR piece:

Josh Shepperd, a media historian and associate professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, told me that “public media,” as a term, began in this state. “Colorado needed something like public media more than even some of the plains states, because it needed to figure out how to surmount the mountains,” he said. “They had to come up with logistics for building up infrastructure for equal access to public education”—reaching every child, under state and regional mandates. “And that was technology. Technology connected the mining towns.”

Here’s another excerpt:

Steve Zansberg, the lawyer for the three Colorado stations, recalled that the government’s justification for taking down public media included, among other things, a piece that NPR had run on “queer animals,” which “suggested the make-believe clownfish in Finding Nemo would’ve been better off as a female, that ‘banana slugs are hermaphrodites,’ and that ‘some deer are nonbinary.’” The story, delivered on an episode of NPR’s Short Wave (“science for everyone”), had noted that Finding Nemo would have been more accurate had it portrayed Nemo’s father transforming into a female, since clownfish often change sex. “I don’t know what it must have been like to be a fly on the wall in the room of DOJ lawyers and White House lawyers to pick these,” he told me. “Joni Mitchell famously said laughing and crying are the same release. You know, I choose to laugh at all of this because it is so farcical.”

Read the whole story at the link above.

AI-driven mis-and-disinformation inaccurately claims the life of another Colorado reporter

In 2023, Trevor Hughes, a senior national correspondent for USA Today based out of Denver, kept seeing his obituary pop up on creepy websites even though he was very much alive.

“Many of these were the kinds of pages that explode with pop-up ad vomit and chumbox sponsored content and seem designed to splatter data-tracking cookies all over your web browser,” I wrote at the time. “Amid all that, they displayed multiple (maybe copyrighted) photos of the Hughes I knew.”

Now, an “apparent AI-generated Facebook post” has claimed the life of another Colorado reporter. This time, it’s Cody Roark, who reports on the Broncos for Mile High Sports.

From Luca Evans at the Denver Post:

On the morning of Dec. 28, 31-year-old Cody Roark poured himself an espresso, sat on the couch with his phone, and learned that he was dead.

Some two hours away in Hugo, Roark’s coworker Doug Ottewill was helping his 79-year-old mother Helen set up a new iPad he’d bought her for Christmas. Ottewill showed her how to log into Facebook. Helen scrolled. And then came across a graphic of a young man overlayed with a large R.I.P. insignia.

“Oh, this is sad,” Helen told her son. “Do you know this guy?”

The post, from an account labeled “Wild Horse Warriors” with over 6,200 followers and no profile picture, reported the death of a “Denver Broncos analyst” who’d “dedicated over a decade to protecting the team” and had left behind a 5-year-old child, following a heartbreaking domestic violence incident.” It did not mention a name. But it had a picture.

Oddly, the picture included him holding a child. Roark does not have children.

“It was just one of those things you hate seeing,” Roark told Evans about a week later for the story. “Just doesn’t make sense. I always thought, like — usually you see that happen to, like, high-profile celebrities … For that to happen to me was just really weird … Very, very weird.”

Some more nuggets from the piece:

• “In the moments and days to come, Roark concluded that this was an AI-generated post because no such image exists of him smiling while holding a child. He’s still befuddled. He is a well-known figure in the Broncos’ fanbase, a former football coach and PE teacher who’s made a career in the Denver media market and has over 21,000 followers on X. But he would never view himself as an “important enough figure” for such a creation, as Roark put it.”

• “‘Wild Horse Warriors’ is now dead. After The Denver Post reached out to Meta for comment, it removed the Facebook page and ‘other connected pages,’ the company said, for violating policies around inauthentic behavior.”

• “Several experts in the field of AI and social-media disinformation noted to The Post that artificial intelligence, in a vacuum, is not the problem. The problem, they said, is how easy AI can be utilized to set up widespread networks of misinformation — trickling all the way down to a Broncos reporter who is decidedly not dead.”

• “The actual person or people behind such accounts: unknown. Many have linked phone numbers that, when rang, automatically play a message that the call can’t be completed. According to Facebook’s page transparency settings, the manager of the ‘Wild Horse Warriors’ account that posted Roark’s supposed death was located in Vietnam. Several other similar accounts also have managers located in Vietnam.”

The Denver Post story goes into detail about plenty of other ways that this kind of phony slop is being directed online at the Broncos and other Denver sports teams.

Read the entire excellent piece at the link above.

🌿 This week’s newsletter is proudly supported by PR firm Grasslands: A Journalism-Minded Agency™, founded by Ricardo Baca (ex-Denver Post, ex-Rocky Mountain News, and current Colorado Public Radio board of directors). We understand journalists because we were journalists — and we’re here to help. Need expert sources or compelling stories? Our diverse client roster includes beloved Colorado institutions (Naropa University and Illegal Pete’s), innovative wellness brands (Boulder County Farmers Markets, Naturally Colorado, Eden Health Club), bold natural products businesses (Wild Zora, Flatiron Food Factory, Flower Union Brands), and other purpose-driven organizations. As creators of the Colorado Journalist Meet-Up and longtime champions of quality journalism, Grasslands recognizes the essential role reporters play in our communities. Our team is ready to connect you with sources, data, and unique perspectives that elevate your reporting.

Have a story you’re working on? Email Ricardo directly: ricardo@mygrasslands.com. Together, we’re crafting better narratives — one story at a time. 🌿

More Colorado media odds & ends

🤮 Check out the allegations in this federal indictment that has Colorado connections, including: “When financial reporters raised questions about Zynex’s business practices, including shipping unnecessary electrodes, among other things, Sandgaard hired an individual to attempt to disrupt the reporters’ personal lives. These efforts included signing reporters up for therapy sessions and listing conditions such as erectile disfunction. They also sent used female underwear to a reporter’s spouse at the reporter’s home with a thank you card addressed to the spouse, detailing the reporter’s alleged ‘illicit behavior’ – all apparently with the intent to convince the spouse that her husband was being unfaithful.”

🏆 The Society of Professional Journalists Top of the Rockies contest deadline is Jan. 26. Learn more here.

👀 “The question of whether there was assisted suicide is a legitimate question,” Mick Ireland, a lawyer, journalist, and former mayor of Aspen who has advised Hunter S. Thompson’s late wife, Anita, told Tim Arango of the New York Times about her husband’s death. “I don’t have an opinion on it.” Arango wrote a detailed update on the investigation into the late author and Gonzo journalist’s 2005 death.

❌ The emailed newsletter version of this newsletter misspelled Stewart Sallo’s last name.

📲 Clay Calvert, a nonresident senior fellow in technology policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, used Colorado’s recent loss in a case involving social media companies and speech to offer “at least three lessons for lawmakers regarding forcing platforms to warn minors about alleged dangers of their services.”

🎬 Durango residents gathered for a screening of the documentary “Truth Be Told” about Colorado journalism. “Local officials and representatives in local journalism – including student journalists with the FLC Independent — gathered to view the film Jan. 14, which provided an intimate look into the life of a journalist and explored the vital role of local news in a healthy democracy,” Elizabeth Pond wrote for the Durango Herald.

⚖️ The public hospital district in Estes Park “is not required to redact privileged information from attorney billing invoices and release non-confidential portions to the Estes Valley Voice news site, a judge ruled Wednesday,” Jeff Roberts reported for the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition. The Estes Valley Voice will appeal the ruling, the news organization’s attorneys, Michael Beylkin and Steve Zansberg, said.

💸 “For at least the fourth year in a row, Colorado lawmakers have introduced a bill to provide financial incentives for data centers to set up shop in the state,” Hannah Metzger reported for Westword. “The latest effort, House Bill 26-1030, seeks to exempt certified data center developers from paying state sales and use taxes for twenty years.”

🆕 Lauren Grimshaw Sloan “will take the reins as Colorado’s newest film commissioner on Thursday, following a monthslong search that began when the former commissioner was fired without explanation in September,” John Wenzel reported for the Denver Post.

⚙️ KVNF is seeking a regional news host, producer, and reporter to join its news team and “help shape daily news for rural Western Colorado.” ($38,000 to $47,000.)

I’m Corey Hutchins, manager of the Colorado College Journalism Institute, advisor to Colorado Media Project, and a board member of the state Society of Professional Journalists chapter. For nearly a decade, I reported on the U.S. local media scene for Columbia Journalism Review, and I’ve been a journalist for longer at multiple news organizations. Most recently, I’ve been contributing to Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab and The Conversation. The nonprofit Colorado Media Project is underwriting this newsletter, and my “Inside the News” column appears at COLab. (If you’d like to underwrite or sponsor this newsletter, hit me up.) Follow me on Bluesky, reply or subscribe to this weekly newsletter here, or e-mail me at CoreyHutchins [at] gmail [dot] com.

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As lawmakers this week begin their latest legislative session under the gold dome of the Capitol in Denver, interested observers will have an easier way to follow along in real time.

That’s because an open-government group, journalists, and their advocates put pressure on the legislature to finally drag Colorado into the civic digital age. And they succeeded.

Earlier this month, a group of policymakers voted to take Colorado out of the doghouse column among the states when it comes to legislative transparency.

This is from a Jan. 3 story by reporter Marianne Goodland of Colorado Politics:

The executive committee of the legislative council — the six top leaders of the House and Senate — voted 5-1 … to make permanent the video livestreaming of committee hearings, starting in the 2026 legislative session, which begins Jan. 14. …

Colorado was the only state in the nation that didn’t livestream its state legislative committee hearings, according to the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition, which has advocated for the change for the past 18 months.

Since then, journalists, news organizations, and others from across the political spectrum have cheered the move.

“The decision means people cannot only listen to the proceedings at the Capitol, as they’ve been able to do, but also watch them and see slide presentations at hearings — as well as human interactions,” wrote Jason Salzman of the nonprofit progressive Colorado Times Recorder digital news site.

The conservative editorial page of the Gazette newspaper in Colorado Springs and Denver urged “Colorado’s taxpaying citizenry” to “utilize this long-overdue tool,” saying, “Not only will it shed light on government’s inner workings, it also will remind elected officials just whom they are accountable to.”

If you would like to do that, bookmark this page.

Coloradans have the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition to thank for this new update. The state’s preeminent open-government and transparency nonprofit organization had sent a letter last fall to the Legislative Council urging lawmakers to enable permanent live-streaming.

“Enabling video on the system that provides committee-meeting audio is a cost-efficient way to make the legislature more accessible and more accountable to Coloradans,” the letter read in part. More than two dozen groups, journalists, journalism advocates, and others had signed it.

Reporting about this new development, the CFOIC’s Jeff Roberts wrote that the new system will come with some limitations.

“Viewers should not expect a high-resolution experience with multiple camera angles,” he reported. “Those tuning in online during the pilot could see a wide shot of the committee as well as any slides referenced by speakers. But previously, you would see nothing but an illustration of the state Capitol building under the words ‘Audio Only.’”

Over the phone this week, Roberts said he, too, hopes the new development will get more people engaged in the legislative process.

“It was pretty obvious that the legislature wasn’t going to spend a lot of money on this because they don’t have a lot of money to spend right now, but turning on the cameras in the committee rooms, we think, is a low-cost way to provide the public with more transparency,” he said. “We’re just happy that they decided to do this, and my hope is that one day it could be better quality — more like what the coverage of the floor proceedings is like.”

Last year, as lawmakers considered the change, reporter Chase Woodruff of the nonprofit Colorado Newsline threw some shade at concerns that a video component might add storage costs.

“I don’t even see how that’s true,” he wrote, “since one of my favorite stupid only-in-government things is that the ‘audio-only’ recordings are already stored as enormous mp4 files (because the webcasting platform they use is designed for video).”

➡️ This newsletter is proudly sponsored by The Colorado Health Foundation. As a proud funder of Colorado Media Project, the home of Press Forward Colorado, the CHF understands that healthy communities need a healthy news ecosystem.

This year, The Colorado Health Foundation will be working to combat disinformation and misinformation, and helping nonprofits build media literacy.

• Our grant funding deadline is Feb. 16. Learn more about our current funding opportunities and identify your interests.

Recently, the Colorado News Collaborative called our annual Pulse Poll a “trove of information useful to reporters.” The Colorado Health Foundation’s Katie Peshek talked to journalists across the state about the poll results, which you can watch here. We also have Pulse Poll slides here, showing how you can use what we found to guide your reporting on topics and bring facts and data to your stories. ⬅️

‘I’m not going to give up on this newspaper,’ says Saguache Crescent owner

This week, a reporter from Germany was traveling across Colorado from the Eastern Plains to Lake City as he worked on a story about U.S. newspapers disappearing from small rural communities.

If he had taken a minor detour, he might have checked in on the Saguache Crescent, which is either the last or among the last in the world of newspapers produced on a Linotype machine.

A few weeks ago, reporter Bruce Finley profiled the Crescent’s 73-year-old owner, Dean Coombs, for the Denver Post.

Saguache residents say they “couldn’t live without” the newspaper, Finley wrote, adding that Coombs, “who periodically doubles as a plumber for the people he serves, sees no reason to switch to modern digital production and electronic delivery to smartphones.”

More from the piece:

“It’s harder to change than to keep doing the work,” he said. His phone is a landline, upgraded a few years ago from rotary dial, and an old TV plays vintage game shows as he works, often until 9 p.m.

The Crescent remains the paper of record in 3,168-square-mile Saguache County, located in south-central Colorado at the northern end of the San Luis Valley.

It is enduring at a time when other news companies in the valley, and around the nation, are collapsing. Five weekly newspapers here that relied on more modern methods merged last summer into one, the San Luis Valley Journal.

Nationwide, the number of newspapers has decreased by 3,500 since 2005, leaving 5,419, according to the latest State of Local News survey conducted at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

Many of the newspapers dying, at the rate of about two per week, are weeklies like the Crescent. The decline leaves one in seven Americans in “news deserts” with limited or no access to local news, typically in low-income rural areas like this. And in 212 U.S. counties, including five in Colorado (Cheyenne, Conejos, Dolores, Lincoln, and Mineral), there’s no local newspaper, the survey found.

• 📝A note on that last part: The Conejos County Citizen still has a website, but the print paper has been rolled up along with several other nearby papers into the Valley Journal. Same with the Mineral County Miner. The Dolores Gazette operates a Facebook page.

Some other nuggets from the Denver Post story:

• “The Crescent’s annual revenues, around $60,000, cannot sustain reporters to investigate murky matters or keep residents up on international news. Instead, Coombs publishes news written by unpaid contributors, along with government notices…”

• “Crescent contributors submit their news stories, sometimes handwritten, through a slot in the front of the building.”

• “Early typesetters worked letter-by-letter, using 15th-century Gutenberg technology. Coombs’ grandparents, Charles and Mary, bought the newspaper in 1917 and relied initially on her hand-setting skills. They bought one of German American inventor Ottmar Mergenthaler’s revolutionary linotype machines in 1920 to speed production. When Coombs was an infant, they tethered his cradle to an arm of the press, letting it rock him as they worked.”

• “Coombs says he’s no journalist. But he recognizes the role of a free press in democracy. ‘I got into this because my father died, not because I was sitting in my dorm room dreaming about Pulitzers,’ he said.”

• “The main costs include newsprint — $6,000 for 120,000 sheets every four years — and mail delivery to 340 subscribers. When the U.S. Postal Service ended its two-century practice of reducing rates for news publications, that weekly bill shot up from $8 to $188, he said. Revenues come from ads, $ 20-a-year subscriptions, single-copy sales (35 cents), and mostly the fees the government pays to publish required legal notices.”

• “I’m not going to give up on this newspaper. I don’t know why. I’m not a person of change.”

There’s so much more in the excellent story, which you can read at the link above.

SPJ Colorado’s 'Top of the Rockies’ award deadline is approaching

Newsrooms in Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Wyoming should finish preparing applications for the annual Top of the Rockies awards. The contest recognizes some of the best journalism in the region across myriad categories.

Sponsored and managed by the Colorado chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, of which I’m a board member, the contest closes Jan. 26.

• 🏆 Click here for contest rules, categories, and information.

SPJ Colorado will announce the awards in April during the spring reception.

“Entries will be accepted from journalism organizations whose mission is independent coverage of news striving to be fair and balanced without a public relations or activist agenda,” SPJ Colorado Co-President Deborah Brobst said in an announcement. “Disputes about the nature of the organization that enters the contest will be decided by the Contest Committee.”

Colorado’s SPJ chapter is also seeking nominations for individual awards, like Journalist of the Year, Keeper of the Flame, and more.

West Slope district attorney weighs in on reporter attack mistrial clown show

The district attorney in the Grand Junction area offered some public comments after a judge declared a mistrial in the case of a man accused of following a nonwhite local TV reporter for miles in a taxi before tackling and choking him outside of a news station.

The weeklong aborted trial, described as “chaotic” by some local outlets, went entirely off the rails last Friday morning. The judge basically threw up her hands and put the kibosh on the whole thing after she noticed the 40-year-old defendant, Patrick Egan, began acting off in the courtroom. She said she didn’t think he was competent to proceed.

District Attorney Dan Rubinstein told local media he does not recall seeing a similar situation before in Mesa County.

“It is not uncommon for us to have situations where the competency of a defendant is challenged, which is essentially a question about whether or not they understand the nature of the proceedings against them and can assist in their own defense,” Rubinstein said. “I’m just not aware of a time previously where that wasn’t figured out before starting the trial.”

No kidding.

“The doctors are going to determine whether or not the defendant is competent to proceed. If he’s not, they will determine what level of restoration services to restore him to competency that need to be ordered,” KJCT News in Grand Junction reported Rubinstein saying. “If he is competent, they will advise the court that he is competent and able to understand what’s going on in his defense, at which point we will gather together to get the case back on track.”

The victim, a young reporter named Ja’Ronn Alex, whom his news station has referred to as its “former reporter,” said he does not plan to comment until this thing eventually comes to some sort of conclusion.

Upcoming panel discussion: ‘What happens when local news disappears?’

As Rick Goldsmith’s documentary “Stripped for Parts: American Journalism on the Brink” airs on PBS, organizations in Colorado are hosting screenings and discussion panels. The film focuses a lot on Colorado.

Next week, the League of Women Voters of Colorado is doing one in Denver, in which I plan to participate. From the announcement:

The League of Women Voters of Colorado will host a virtual panel discussion, “Democracy on the Precipice: What Happens When Local News Disappears,” on Tuesday, Jan. 20 from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. MT. The event will examine the future of local journalism and its essential role in a healthy democracy and follows the acclaimed documentary Stripped for Parts: American Journalism on the Brink.

Presented by the League’s News Access & Literacy Task Force, the panel discussion will serve as a follow-up to the film, which “explores the collapse of local newsrooms across the country and the consequences for civic life when journalism is treated as a financial asset rather than a public good,” the League stated in a news release.

Here’s more:

The panel will feature Colorado journalism leaders, including Corey Hutchins … of the Journalism Institute at Colorado College and author of the newsletter Inside the News in Colorado; Larry Ryckman, co-founder and editor of The Colorado Sun; and Jay Seaton, publisher of The Daily Sentinel in Grand Junction and manager of a group of radio stations serving the Grand Valley. The discussion will be moderated by Kay Shaw of the League of Women Voters of Colorado.

The panel discussion is set to explore why local journalism matters to democracy, the risks facing undercovered communities in Colorado, how nonprofit and independent newsrooms are responding, how individuals can find credible, nonpartisan information, and what communities can do to support local news.

Register for it here.

Rural Western Slope town meetings reporter on covering three local governments

Since 2023, Marty Durlin has been covering the municipal governments in three towns on the Western Slope.

“Delta is the largest, at just under 10,000 people,” she wrote in a recent syndicated column for Writers on the Range. “Paonia has a population of 1,500 and Crawford only 400. For all three, the closest big city is Grand Junction, from 40 to 70 miles away.”

Here’s more from her column, which is headlined “What reporting on three city councils teaches me”:

When I first covered local government decades ago, I saw town councils as an opportunity for grandstanding but little else. The position of mayor didn’t seem to matter one way or the other.

But I’ve come to understand that the job of a council member is challenging and important. You don’t just waltz in to say yea or nay. The task demands attention to detail and a grasp of everything from high finance and road repair to solutions for the unhoused. It’s also time-consuming and basically unpaid.

In the column, Durlin reflected on the sometimes tedious nature of the job.

“I may grow impatient in the third hour of a tedious meeting—will it never end?—but the mayors, be it Christian mental health counselor Chris Johnson from Crawford or former environmental regulator Smith from Paonia, remain energized and determined,” she wrote.

Read the column for one reporter’s view on the importance of covering local government, no matter how small the community.

“The least I can do is cover it,” Durlin wrote.

🌿 This week’s newsletter is proudly supported by PR firm Grasslands: A Journalism-Minded Agency™, founded by Ricardo Baca (ex-Denver Post, ex-Rocky Mountain News, and current Colorado Public Radio board of directors). We understand journalists because we were journalists — and we’re here to help. Need expert sources or compelling stories? Our diverse client roster includes beloved Colorado institutions (Naropa University and Illegal Pete’s), innovative wellness brands (Boulder County Farmers Markets, Naturally Colorado, Eden Health Club), bold natural products businesses (Wild Zora, Flatiron Food Factory, Flower Union Brands), and other purpose-driven organizations. As creators of the Colorado Journalist Meet-Up and longtime champions of quality journalism, Grasslands recognizes the essential role reporters play in our communities. Our team is ready to connect you with sources, data, and unique perspectives that elevate your reporting.

Have a story you’re working on? Email Ricardo directly: ricardo@mygrasslands.com. Together, we’re crafting better narratives — one story at a time. 🌿

More Colorado media odds & ends

🆕 Colorado Media Project, which underwrites this newsletter, got a brand refresh that director Kimberly Spencer hopes will better distinguish its role in the state’s media ecosystem. “The new site serves the distinct needs of both our local ecosystem partners and our funding partners,” she wrote on LinkedIn.

🎊 Colorado Democratic Gov. Jared Polis “and the other living Colorado governors have selected Laura Frank, COLab’s founding executive director, to receive the Governor’s Citizenship Medal for Public Service — the state’s highest honor for civic leadership and service,” the Colorado News Collaborative announced this week. “The most exciting thing is they recognize journalism as a public service,” Frank said about the honor.

🤔 A Jan. 1 FCC filing appears to show KSUN community radio in Parachute applying for a cancellation with the federal broadcast regulator’s Licensing and Management System. (I reached out to the station last week, but haven’t heard back. I also haven’t seen any local coverage about it in case someone wants to follow up.)

🎙️ Tonight (Friday, Jan. 16) at 6:30 p.m. at the Denver Press Club, Colorado Public Radio’s Ryan Warner will be doing a live interview of Colorado journalist and author Josiah Hesse about his new book “On Fire For God: Fear, Shame and Poverty In The Christian Right — A Personal History.” The interview will later air on Colorado Matters.

🆕 The Denver VOICE announced it has appointed David Giles Clasen as the organization’s new executive director. Founded in 1996, Denver VOICE is a nonprofit news source that serves “individuals experiencing housing or financial instability by providing low-barrier income opportunities. Since its inception, Denver VOICE has put more than 4,600 vendors to work selling the paper throughout the Denver metro area.”

🪴 This week, 9NEWS anchor Kyle Clark responded to one viewer’s feedback that his station “work on replacing commie Kyle Clark with a plastic ficus tree” by showing what that would look like if it actually happened.

👎 The Washington Post followed up this week on the excellent reporting by Elizabeth Hernandez for the Denver Post about the CU student newspaper getting taken over by “AI slop,” but sadly didn’t credit her or the Post. (The story also made NewsNation, which did credit the Post. NewsGuard’s Reality Check also flagged the Post story this week.)

🌈 The Holyoke Enterprise newspaper is now printing in full color for the first time. “This has been a long-time goal, and we’re proud to bring you brighter photos, more vibrant pages, and an even better way to tell the stories of our community,” the paper stated. “Thank you to our readers, advertisers, and supporters who make progress like this possible.”

📸 Gov. Jared Polis declared Jan. 7, 2025 “Tony Kovaleski Day” in honor of a retiring investigative journalist in Colorado. Polis ambushed the reporter on film and did a little skit as if he were a journalist seeking comment from an unwilling source.

🎙️ Andrea Chalfin of KRCC interviewed Matthew Schniper, the founder of the successful Substack newsletter “Side Dish With Schniper,” in what the station called an “introductory conversation” for what it pegged as a monthly installment. The development is an example of local legacy media partnering with a local independent journalist as some MSM outlets begin to understand the traction that entrepreneurial content creators are gaining with audiences in their communities.

📺 Drew Carney is the new anchor for 9NEWS Mornings in Denver. “Before moving to Colorado, Drew anchored the morning news for our sister station in Portland, Oregon,” the station stated. “Drew also earned a reputation as the area’s go-to event emcee, helping raise millions of dollars for local non-profits and Children’s Hospitals.” As an Eagles fan, he said on air that it might get weird for him if they wind up in the Super Bowl against the Broncos, but he’s “totally on board with this Broncos Crush.”

🔎 Pueblo Star Journal reporter Molly Cotner is one of two recipients of the 2025 Investigative and Reporters Freelance Fellowship. “Her current work includes an in-depth examination of the childcare crisis in the region, exploring how public policy decisions, labor conditions, and barriers to access intersect with Pueblo’s cultural attributes and ways of life.”

🎥 Tami Graham of KSUT spoke with Colorado-based filmmaker Brian Malone about his recent film, Truth Be Told, “a documentary that explores the vital role of local journalism in sustaining informed communities and a healthy democracy.”

🔓 SoCo Insider in Colorado Springs stated on social media that it has “begun the process of downloading and extracting ALL the digital archives” for the former Colorado Springs Indy alt-weekly and Colorado Springs Business Journal.

⚙️JOBS: The nonprofit Colorado Sun statewide digital newsroom is looking for a public policy editor and will pay $90,000 to $105,000 for the position. Aspen Public Radio wants a Women’s Desk Reporter and will pay $65,000.

I’m Corey Hutchins, manager of the Colorado College Journalism Institute, advisor to Colorado Media Project, and a board member of the state Society of Professional Journalists chapter. For nearly a decade, I reported on the U.S. local media scene for Columbia Journalism Review, and I’ve been a journalist for longer at multiple news organizations. Most recently, I’ve been contributing to Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab and The Conversation. The nonprofit Colorado Media Project is underwriting this newsletter, and my “Inside the News” column appears at COLab. (If you’d like to underwrite or sponsor this newsletter, hit me up.) Follow me on Bluesky, reply or subscribe to this weekly newsletter here, or e-mail me at CoreyHutchins [at] gmail [dot] com.

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A judge in Grand Junction on Friday declared a mistrial in the case of a man accused of following a nonwhite local TV reporter for miles in a taxi before tackling and choking him outside of a news station.

From Amanda Pampuro of Courthouse News, who provided comprehensive coverage of the weeklong trial:

“I dream of a day when the mental health services in this state are such that I can recess this trial, get Mr. Egan the help he needs, and pick this up next week,” said 21st Judicial District Judge JenniLynn Lawrence.

“Unfortunately, we are not in this place in this state or this country. It’s going to take months to get Mr. Egan the help he needs to stand trial before this court,” concluded Lawrence, who was appointed by Democratic governor Jared Polis.

The now-scuttled trial stemmed from an alarming incident around the holidays about a year ago that upended the life of a 22-year-old journalist working his first job out of college.

During the trial, which began in earnest on Tuesday, the journalist, Ja’Ronn Alex, who was working for KKCO/KJCT in Grand Junction at the time, testified that a 39-year-old taxi driver named Patrick Egan accosted him out of the blue while Alex was on assignment in his work vehicle and demanded he prove he was a U.S. citizen.

“He was being an asshole,” Alex told jurors, according to Courthouse News. “He was being racist to me. He doesn’t know who I am, but he thinks he has the right to my time. He was asking me if I’m an American citizen,” Courthouse News reported Alex testifying. “He was telling me he was a Marine and that ‘this was Donald Trump’s America,’ and I was supposed to show him if I’m an American citizen.”

Alex testified that his father is Black and his mother is Pacific Islander.

After following the reporter for roughly 40 minutes to the station, Alex said Egan charged him, tackled him, put him in a chokehold, and tried to suffocate him.

Some testimony from the trial centered around the extent to which Egan tried to allegedly strangle the reporter before Alex’s co-workers and another witness pulled him off. Part of the incident, including audio of Egan yelling at Alex from his taxi until he rushes the reporter at the station, was caught on Egan’s taxi dashcam. The news station’s security camera also recorded part of the incident but testimony indicated some of it was obscured by a Christmas tree.

Egan’s attorney said there was a reason for why Egan did what he did. The attack, his lawyer said, was “because of a medical reaction to Benadryl, not a political bias,” according to the Sentinel newspaper in Grand Junction.

“Colorado’s involuntary intoxication defense states that a person can’t be held responsible for committing a crime if they are not to blame for taking the substance that made them intoxicated,” the newspaper reported.

During an initial hearing back when the incident first happened, media reported Egan’s lawyer said her client had a history of mental health issues.

Police had charged Egan with second-degree assault, a bias-motivated crime, and harassment. (Alex told this newsletter last year that he had tried to get attempted murder added to the charges.) In August, Egan pleaded not guilty. Just a few weeks ago, police arrested Egan again for violating a protection order “involving two former co-workers who could be potential witnesses,” according to KKCO11 News.

The station reported Egan had sent a message to one of his former co-workers that read, “I guess your oath to your job is more important than the oath you took to the US Constitution, but you’re perfectly capable to drive around in your Tesla with that plate. P***Y!!! you couldn’t even buy my jockstrap cause you make no support Semper Fi.”

Throughout the now abandoned trial, witnesses, including other KKCO/KJCT news staff, testified about what they heard and saw.

Beyond that, a medical doctor described the effects of strangulation. A responding officer testified about what Alex said directly after the incident. The defense put forward some friends of Egan’s who, according to reports, testified that they believed he was a Democrat, not a supporter of President Donald Trump, and that they never heard him make racist remarks or talk about immigration. According to trial reporting, police bodycam footage of Egan’s arrest showed him asking officers if they liked the band No Doubt and asking if they could stop and say the Pledge of Allegiance outside of the detention center. “A diagnosis of bipolar disorder in Egan’s medical records was withheld from the jury,” the Sentinel reported.

On Thursday, the defense called for a mistrial after one of their witnesses, the last passenger Egan allegedly drove before the incident, didn’t show up to court. Media reported that the witness was arrested and booked into the county jail for skipping out on the trial. Media also reported that Egan’s attorney raised concerns about her client’s competency.

From Courthouse News:

[Judge] Lawrence agreed, adding that her own observations supported the need to order further evaluation, including comments Egan made while leaving court on Thursday about the make of the clocks in the courthouse.

When videos of the attack were played for the jury, Lawrence found it unusual that Egan appeared amused.

“He was exercising great restraint to not show amusement, and I think that directs toward his competency to proceed at this time,” Lawrence said.

During jury selection on Monday, Egan’s defense attorney “asked potential jurors if they thought it was possible the media could get things wrong sometimes,” KKCO reported.

Local reporting about the proceedings from news outlets throughout the week did not indicate that such questions played a role in the trial.

“After considering Egan’s criminal history and the strength of the evidence presented to date,” Courthouse News reported, Judge Lawrence ordered Egan “detained until his competency evaluation.”

Alex declined to comment for this story.

➡️ This newsletter is proudly sponsored by The Colorado Health Foundation. As a proud funder of Colorado Media Project, the home of Press Forward Colorado, the CHF understands that healthy communities need a healthy news ecosystem.

This year, The Colorado Health Foundation will be working to combat disinformation and misinformation, and helping nonprofits build media literacy.

• Read our post titled “Getting in the News in a Changing Media Landscape” that includes five concrete steps that changemakers can take to build influence through local media.

Recently, the Colorado News Collaborative called our annual Pulse Poll a “trove of information useful to reporters.” The Colorado Health Foundation’s Katie Peshek talked to journalists across the state about the poll results, which you can watch here. We also have Pulse Poll slides here, showing how you can use what we found to guide your reporting on topics and bring facts and data to your stories. ⬅️

Springs TV meteorologist bolts FOX21 to start his own ‘digital weather company’

After years doing the local weather for FOX21 in Colorado, Matt Meister has left to start his own outlet called Peaks2Plains Weather.

On a recent edition of the “Outdoors with Hiking Bob” podcast by Bob Falcone in the Springs, Meister said viewership is down for local TV news and the broadcast industry is contracting in Colorado’s second largest city.

“That’s not a comment about any of the local Colorado Springs stations, it’s a market economy thing,” he said.

At the end of a five-year contract with FOX21 and children leaving the house, Meister, known as the Weather Meister, considered doing something different.

He described his move as a response to the changing ways in which people consume information — on demand whenever they want it, not live when an outlet wants to provide it — and the timing is right.

“It’s a digital weather company,” he said of his recently launched Peaks2Plains Weather. “It will be a combination of a weather app, a website, a 24-hour weather channel that will be available on Roku, Apple TV, and Fire TV.”

A stream of that channel will also live on his website. Each weekday morning, he plans a 30-minute live weather broadcast. The idea is that wherever Coloradans are and whatever device they are using, they’ll be able to see Meister’s coverage.

“My concept is when the weather is active I am going to be there covering it,” he said, adding that he won’t be boxed in by the time constraints of a traditional TV newscast.

To augment the limitations of a one-person operation, Meister said he plans to enlist crowdsourced content from people across the state as weather events occur.

On that front, the weatherman said there had been many times in his career when he had more information to provide but wasn’t able to because of the format of a TV newscast.

“That’s a frustrating thing,” he said.

What will make his weather modeling and forecasts different from what people can get from other apps and services will be his expertise from 25 years in the local market, he said, and his understanding of the idiosyncrasies in our “crazy Colorado weather.”

As for the business model, there won’t be a subscription fee, and Peaks2Plains will rely on advertising. “There are partnerships that I’m developing with businesses who believe in new media,” he said.

Last year, local TV meteorologists feared they could lose their jobs when a large broadcaster indicated it might outsource its local weather forecasting to a “hub” based in Atlanta.

This newsletter used the opportunity to check in with local meteorologists to explain the importance of reporting from where they live.

But as TV news markets like the Springs continue to contract — two of the four stations are already set to merge — Falcone, the podcast host, asked if the kind of independent model Meister is building might one day become what legacy outlets rely on instead of doing the weather in-house.

“I think so, very much,” Meister said. “The broadcasting industry on a local level over the next decade is going to look a lot different — it just is.”

He said he could see a day when a station might approach him with the idea of contracting him to do the weather.

“That is something I’ve thought of,” he said. “I’ve actually had conversations about [it] already, and I think it is something that is very, very likely.”

Report: Colorado University’s student newspaper got ‘taken over by AI slop’

Journalists at Colorado’s largest university are getting an education in the negative impacts of cheap and easy artificial intelligence tools.

Reporter Elizabeth Hernandez at the Denver Post published a story this week about how. In it, she explains the ways an unidentified imposter was able to take over her former campus newspaper’s website and turn it into a digital barf bag of “AI slop.”

What happened at the state’s flagship university offers a case study for the importance of good cyber hygiene and digital management at campus publications.

From the story:

Google the CU Independent, the student news outlet that covers the University of Colorado Boulder, and the first result — cuindependent.com — is a copycat website churning out what appears to be AI slop with headlines like “Why does my itchy scalp itch a day after washing?”

The second result — cuindependent.org — is the legitimate news site run by dozens of CU Boulder student journalists who take photographs and write articles about local sports, student government, arts and culture, and campus goings-on.

Their website warns that the news organization is “not affiliated with cuindependent.com,” the web address the CU Independent had used since 2009.

The imposter site is confusing readers with articles that appear to be generated by artificial intelligence and is siphoning pageviews from real student reporting, the CUI’s journalists say. They’ve spent hundreds of dollars of their own money to try to fix the problem, enlisted lawyers and even tried to get the Colorado Bureau of Investigation involved.

Students built an entirely new website — the version now found at cuindependent.org — over the summer in hopes of disentangling themselves from the old one.

By their nature, campus publications are staffed by a transient community. They cycle through editors, managers, writers, and digital folks each time graduation rolls around. Continuity can be a consistent foe.

At the University of Colorado, the paper’s editors didn’t have access to their web domain and a bad actor appears to have gotten hold of it.

Here’s another excerpt from the story:

When a reporter from The Denver Post messaged the imposter site asking who was behind it, the emailed response ignored the question entirely, instead offering prices from $149 to $299 that could be paid for articles with “quick link integration into content that’s already resonating with our audience.”

Some more nuggets from the piece:

• “The website lists seemingly fictitious writers and advisers alongside what appear to be AI-generated photos and author biographies. Some of those bios claim the site’s journalists — who are supposed to be college students gaining experience — are “seasoned reporters” with more than a dozen years of experience in the journalism industry. A Google search of those reporters’ names did not turn up results elsewhere.”

• “Students built an entirely new website — the version now found at cuindependent.org — over the summer in hopes of disentangling themselves from the old one.”

• “It is clearly being done by someone who knows every legal loophole,” said Jessica Sachs, the CUI’s editor-in-chief during the 2024-2025 academic year and a current CU Boulder journalism student. “It feels incredibly malicious.”

• “Jonathan Gaston-Falk, an attorney with the Student Press Law Center, said the CU Boulder students’ case and others involving AI are difficult to pursue because it’s hard to find an actual human or legal entity against whom to lodge grievances like copyright infringement.”

Read the whole Denver Post story at the link above.

At Denver7, Jennifer Kovaleski will replace her dad, Tony Kovaleski, who just retired

Among the changes Denver will experience in the new year is one less pesky journalist sniffing out wrongdoing and bad behavior. But, his daughter will take his place at KMGH Denver7.

From Denver7:

After more than 40 years in journalism, holding the powerful accountable, asking tough questions and getting answers, Denver7 Chief Investigative Reporter Tony Kovaleski will retire at the start of 2026.

His last day was Dec. 31. To commemorate its veteran watchdog heading off to pasture, Denver7 produced a 30-minute special called “40 Years of Accountability” about Kovaleski’s career.

In the broadcast, the suspender-wearing reporter, who according to the Denver Post has won “50 local Emmys and other awards over his 42 years on camera,” talked about his transition from general assignments to accountability reporting.

Kovaleski, 66, described “the intellectual challenge” in going deep on a story “where people say ‘You’re wrong, you don’t know the right story,’ but you have the information and you know you’re right.”

Hosted by Denver7 investigative reporter Natalie Chuck, the special begins with a montage of Kovaleski asking uncomfortable questions of story subjects who don’t appear pleased at being asked. Example: “Do you want to explain why you chopped up bodies?”

His accountability reporting “spurred key reforms,” Chuck said, helping “change laws and policies that reshaped Colorado.”

At least three high-impact stories of his involved hospitals or treatment centers. One scene shows a news-gathering tactic: He left business cards on cars in a behavioral health center’s parking lot with a note reading “Anything I need to know?” Sources reached out.

Viewers are treated to a healthy dose of what Kovaleski calls “unscheduled interviews,” which others might call an ambush. They typically happen when a story subject refuses to sit for a proper chinwag or an on-camera Q-and-A. Next thing they know, they’re walking to their car (or their golf cart on the course) and there’s Kovaleski with a microphone in their face.

The Denver Post’s John Wenzel spoke with Kovaleski for a story about his retirement.

“There’s a whole handful of people who are not happy with me or my reporting, and many of those people, including executives, have lost their jobs. Some ended up in jail, laws were changed, and accountability happened,” Kovaleski told him. “I’m not an advocate, I’m a journalist asking questions.”

Here’s another nugget from Wenzel: “His daughter Jennifer Kovaleski, another celebrated investigative journalist who has worked with her father in more than one market, will take over for him at KMGH.”

David O. Williams closes Real Vail site to join Vail Daily as its business editor

A longtime independent journalist who has styled himself as an outsider in Colorado’s mountain town media scene is folding back into legacy media with a new job.

David O. Williams is returning to Vail Daily as its business editor.

From the announcement in the paper:

Williams first moved to Vail in 1991 to serve as sports editor of the Vail Daily, then ski editor (an actual title back then), Eagle County reporter and city editor before moving out of town to work at publications on both coasts. He returned to the Vail Daily in 1997 before moving to the competing Vail Trail and Daily Trail newspapers from 1998 to 2003.

Since then, Williams has been an independent freelance journalist, producing articles for more than 75 publications ranging from The New York Times to People Magazine. Since 2007, Williams has been the publisher and managing editor of RealVail.com, which he will now put on the backburner indefinitely.

Williams was one of the Colorado journalists I profiled in this newsletter in 2023. The story was about local media entrepreneurs who left legacy publications to do their own thing, but still kept local MSM news organizations in the mix as they developed portfolio careers.

This week, Williams wrote a swan song of sorts for Real Vail and explained some of the reasons behind his move.

Here’s an excerpt from the post:

I started RealVail.com in part as my own personal archive and a repository for some of my freelance work, and then over the years it became an actual alternative news site in its own right. I’m a big believer in the alternative press, but after a quarter of the 21^st century has flown by, it’s clear that the alternative press in many places has just become the press.

It’s hard to draw a mainstream media distinction when newspapers in so many Colorado communities are just shutting down and leaving vast information deserts that are being filled by Big Tech with unvetted, inaccurate, divisive and disruptive social media platforms. First they soaked up all the ad revenue, and now they’re soaking up all of our brain cells.

So community journalism means a lot to me, and I’m glad we still have a vibrant and influential local newspaper focused on making the lives of the people who live in the Eagle River Valley and beyond better. People on the outside think we all must have trust funds to live here, but so many of us just came here to work and ski and contribute positively to a place we are privileged to call home. In other words, there are a lot of “real” people here struggling with their “real” lives.

“Real” Vail has been great, but the Vail Daily offers a wider audience, a much bigger platform, and an amazing opportunity for me to work with the small businesses that make this place great, to tell the individual stories of people who believe passionately in outdoor recreation, tourism, conservation of our public lands and preserving our mountain lifestyle for future generations. That, and I needed health insurance.

Williams’ going back to Vail Daily is a notable contrast to Matt Meister, formerly of the legacy news outlet FOX21, striking out on his own. And both in the same week, to boot.

🌿 This week’s newsletter is proudly supported by PR firm Grasslands: A Journalism-Minded Agency™, founded by Ricardo Baca (ex-Denver Post, ex-Rocky Mountain News, and current Colorado Public Radio board of directors). We understand journalists because we were journalists — and we’re here to help. Need expert sources or compelling stories? Our diverse client roster includes beloved Colorado institutions (Naropa University and Illegal Pete’s), innovative wellness brands (Boulder County Farmers Markets, Naturally Colorado, Eden Health Club), bold natural products businesses (Wild Zora, Flatiron Food Factory, Flower Union Brands), and other purpose-driven organizations. As creators of the Colorado Journalist Meet-Up and longtime champions of quality journalism, Grasslands recognizes the essential role reporters play in our communities. Our team is ready to connect you with sources, data, and unique perspectives that elevate your reporting.

Have a story you’re working on? Email Ricardo directly: ricardo@mygrasslands.com. Together, we’re crafting better narratives — one story at a time. 🌿

More Colorado media odds & ends

📺 Telemundo Colorado, also known as KDEN, which is part of NBCUniversal Local’s Telemundo Station Group, has named Johan Castellanos anchor of Noticiero Telemundo Colorado. “He made his anchoring debut on Monday, Dec. 29, alongside Kehiry Castillo. He will continue to serve as a multimedia journalist for KDEN, his role since 2020,” TV Newscheck reported.

🤦‍♂️ Some local news outlets still can’t seem to help themselves from publishing stories based on click-baity unscientific promo material that companies churn out to try and get their brand’s name in the media. (My all-time favorite was from an online condom retailer that earned local press by telling journalists where their state stacked up “based on the sizes of condoms most commonly sold in all 50 states.”) Less conscientious news outlets will dash off a quick writeup to “feed the beast” and generate clicks, not because the content offers any real news value. Now, Kyle Clark of 9NEWS reports that the sitting president of the United States “may have just relied on one to cut off a clean drinking water project in Colorado.”

🎙 Studio 809 Podcasts is “launching a new course, offering six 1-hour classes, practical experience working on existing podcasts, and a chance to earn money continuing that work,” says Dave Gardner in Colorado Springs. “The course is free to students completing all aspects of the curriculum. We’re offering these classes because we want to develop more local recording and producing talent. The course begins January 13, 2026.” Interested students can register here.

⚙️ COMINGS & GOINGS: Sage Smiley has joined Aspen Public Radio as the host of All Things Considered. Stephanie Rivera has left Colorado Public Radio to become director of audience engagement at the Colorado Sun. Longtime journalist Rick Carroll has left the Aspen Daily News and will be a communications specialist for the Town of Snowmass Village. The TV station KRDO13 in the Springs announced it has named Paige Reynolds as the evening co-anchor joining Heather Skold; Reynolds will also lead the station’s investigative unit.

👀 This comment came from a Denver TV news anchor on-air this week: “Can a journalist tell the truth about January 6 without consequences? Increasingly, it depends on which media company the journalist works for.”

❌ Last week’s newsletter misspelled in some instances the last name of the person behind the group that bought the Aspen Daily News. It’s David Hoffmann.

💰 Colorado is one of seven states where the national Press Forward local news fundraising campaign is sending money. The group recently awarded $2.7 million to support public media. “The grants will help coalitions of local stations build long-term sustainability by making operational changes that reduce costs, generate new revenue, strengthen coordination and partnerships, and leverage economies of scale among public-service broadcast, digital and print platforms.”

I’m Corey Hutchins, manager of the Colorado College Journalism Institute, advisor to Colorado Media Project, and a board member of the state Society of Professional Journalists chapter. For nearly a decade, I reported on the U.S. local media scene for Columbia Journalism Review, and I’ve been a journalist for longer at multiple news organizations. Most recently, I’ve been contributing to Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab and The Conversation. The nonprofit Colorado Media Project is underwriting this newsletter, and my “Inside the News” column appears at COLab. (If you’d like to underwrite or sponsor this newsletter, hit me up.) Follow me on Bluesky, reply or subscribe to this weekly newsletter here, or e-mail me at CoreyHutchins [at] gmail [dot] com.