๐ Beat shuffle at The Denver Post: Several reporters to switch coverage areas
Your week in the news behind the news in Colorado
โFresh eyesโ
Several Denver Post reporters who have developed expertise and sources in their respective coverage areas will be switching to new beats soon, the paperโs top editor told staff this week.
One of the changes includes Bruce Finley, the Postโs longtime environmental reporter, who would be moved to cover education. (I didnโt hear back from him via email about it.) Elsewhere, Iโm told this disorienting beat scramble, which includes around eight reporters and shuffles coverage areas from higher education to health, politics, and more, caught journalists off guard and theyโre still processing it.
By early Friday morning as this newsletter was going out I hadnโt yet seen anything public on social media from those affected. Perhaps weโll hear something from the department of Some Personal News in the future as things level out.
One of the affected reporters, Justin Wingerter, who moved to Colorado from Oklahoma in 2019 to cover Coloradoโs congressional delegation and other federal topics, will now move to a business beat. After writing about the federal government for the past seven years at three different newspapers, โitโs the only full-time beat Iโve ever had,โ he said when asked if he wanted to weigh in on the change. โItโs strange and hard to imagine writing about anything else.โ
The reporter said heโs โhopeful and confidentโ that his colleagues on the Postโs politics team โwill continue to report on federal issues, at least on a part-time basis.โ The move comes as the nation experiences the greatest expansion of government and spending since LBJ, a fall redistricting effort that will determine political geographic lines in Colorado for a decade, and next yearโs midterm elections that could help determine who controls Congress.
Denver Post Editor Lee Ann Colacioppo, who said she was heading on vacation Thursday and didnโt respond to a followup, told me in a brief email the timing of these musical chairs is to make sure the paper has a K-12 reporter in place as school starts.
โThe best switches allow reporters to tackle new challenges, bring fresh eyes to coverage and fill needed holes,โ she said. โEvery person involved in these changes is an excellent reporter and will bring their years of experience to these beats. If they need help or support along the way, happily their predecessor is a phone call away.โ
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Newspepper: Pueblo Chieftain sorry for โharmโ in its outsourced chile coverage
The Gannett-owned Pueblo Chieftain newspaper unwittingly antagonized its local readership earlier this month when when it highlighted New Mexico-based Hatch chile peppers instead of Colorado-based Pueblo chile peppers in a prominent spread.
The out-of-touch, tone-deaf move that seemed to have slipped past a critical eye on the local editorial desk sparked immediate scorn.
Coloradoโs House majority leader, Daneya Esgar of Pueblo, said in a social media statement that the Hatch chile howler was an indication for โHow you know your local paper is no longer locally owned.โ She tweeted at the Chieftain to โdo betterโ and to โknow your audience.โ Others weighed in, too.
The paper responded to local criticism with an apology and put the mea culpa outside of its paywall. โThe article was notย chosen by The Pueblo Chieftain editorial staff,โ Chieftain news director Luke Lyons wrote. โWhile the staff here dictates local coverage, it does not always dictate much of the wire and nationally syndicated content that goes into the paper.โ
More from the Aug. 12 apology:
The article that ran in Wednesday's paper was not meant to cause harm or to infer that the Hatch chile was superior.ย The Pueblo Chieftain has long reported on the Pueblo chile, and will soon cover the Chile and Frijoles Festival that will celebrate Pueblo's beloved pepperย โฆ A story in Friday's paper about Blazin' Bagels talks about a Pueblo chile cream cheese bagel sandwich.
The piece went on to explain how the paper understands the importance of the Pueblo chile, and promised that its journalists would continue to report on that importance. โWe apologize for the harm and offense the story has caused,โ Lyons concluded.
One Denver Post editor framed the apology as: โSorry, our newspaperโs corporate overlords made us publish a story about our cityโs rival chile.โ
As local newspaper companies consolidate and out-of-state ownership increases across the country, readers will no doubt see more face-palming incidents like this from outsourced content produced from faraway hubs. After local ownership for a century and a half, the Chieftain sold to the hedge-fundy GateHouse in 2018, which then merged with the Virginia-based Gannett chain a year later under a deal backed by private equity. Buyouts soon hit the newspaper, sapping institutional knowledge.
Itโs easy for those at local papers to get defensive about these big blunders when they happen โ on Facebook, followers werenโt happy with the Chieftainโs apology โ and some journalists donโt like to see other journalists elevating these SNAFUs. But a journalist wouldnโt say that about a local police department or hospital that made egregious mistakes because it wasnโt adequately funded or was being improperly managed by an absentee chief or CEO regardless of how hard the rank-and-file might be working under less-than-ideal circumstances.
These instances do underscore systemic problems of consolidation and the pernicious nature of private equity involved in American local newspapering. They highlight the plight of local newspapers writ large and the exacerbating inability to find universal solutions to the local news business model in our current economic system.
A Denver PR pro asks: Who had the worst week?
Jeremy Story, a Colorado communications professional, has a rolling feature on his Denver Public Relations Blog: โWho Had the Worst Week?โ
The roundup includes a mix of national and Colorado-related people and organizations.
His Aug. 13 edition counted The Pueblo Chieftain as a contender, but also this:
Theย Colorado Rockiesย learned the hard way about the importance of guardrails when commenting during a crisis. In a game earlier this week, broadcasters for the Miami Marlins claimed a Coors Field fan screamed a racial slur that was caught by its microphones, and the Rockies validated that before looking into it by posting to social media that it was โdisgusted at the racial slur by a fan โฆ .โ The next morning, it became clear the fan had actually yelled โDinger,โ the name of the Rockiesโ mascot, in an attempt to get a photo. Media quickly backtracked and blamed the Rockies for legitimizing the story with its social media post (as evidenced byย this post from 9Newsโ Nicole Vap).
Over at The Gazette in Colorado Springs, sports columnist Paul Klee published a column taking certain media to task for their coverage of that incident and scant coverage of a local killing. โGosh,โ he wrote, โI canโt imagine why media credibility is below the Mendoza line.โ
Coloradoโs first anti-SLAPP ruling for media is a weird one
Ever since Coloradoโs Democratic governor, Jared Polis, signed a law in 2019 that could protect journalists from retaliatory lawsuits, close media watchers wondered what the first legal test might be.
The legislation in question is something typically called an anti-SLAPP law.
The acronym stands for Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press calls SLAPP suits anย all-too-common toolย โfor intimidating and silencing critics from exercising their First Amendment rights.โ
In a SLAPP suit, the subject of a news story who has enough money to sustain an expensive court battle could sue a news organization in hopes of forcing it to incur defense costs and scare it โ and others โ from continued reporting on the subject. To combat that, anti-SLAPP laws set up a preliminary hurdle a plaintiff must clear before those legal costs start to pile up.
Now, Colorado First Amendment attorney Steve Zansberg says we have what he believes is our first ruling from a judge in a media case that relied on the 2-year-old law. It came with an unusual set of circumstances involving a newspaper in Black Hawk, and it probably isnโt what many in the media business were thinking about when it comes to an inaugural SLAPP suit decision.
From the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition:
Patricia and Robert Unruhโs libel claim against Weekly Register-Call editor Aaron Storms, newspaper owner Storm Media, LLC, a local church and several other individuals arose from Patricia Unruhโs decisionย notย to review the annual Gilpin County School play for the newspaper. In April 2019, as a freelancer for the Weekly Register-Call, Unruh wrote aย storyย about an excerpt from the play โShe Kills Monstersโ presented to the local Rotary Club as a sneak preview. But she decided not to write about the full performance, according to the Unruhsโ May 2020ย civil complaint, because she found the play to be โlewd and profane โฆ distressing in the extreme and inappropriate for the stage of a K-12 school.โ Writing about it, the complaint adds, โwould both draw attention to the content inappropriate for students and also might stir up conflict that would be unkind to the student performers and participants.โ
Unruhโs decision, she and her husband claimed, led to an โobviously organized and coordinated series of verbal attacks upon herโ and โa barrage of letters to the editor submitted to the newspaper and on social media.โ Their complaint, which asked for damages exceeding $1 million, accused the Weekly Register-Call of publishing โfalse statements with reckless disregard and indifference to their falsity including by not inquiring as to the truth.โ
Gilpin County District Court Judge Todd L. Vriesman tossed the suit and applied the anti-SLAPP law in doing so.
โPeople may behave badly in a personโs view, but not all bad behavior has a legal remedy,โ Vriesman wrote in the decision. He added that his ruling โdoes not vindicate any behavior by any party against another โฆ And, with no legal authority whatsoever, the Court further orders the Plaintiffs and Defendants to โbe kind.โโ
Read the whole story here at the CFOIC site.
Follow-up file: #BillionaireNewsOwnerWatch
Last month this newsletter reported how a newcomer reporter for The Colorado Sun scooped the stateโs legal and political press with an intriguing story that the stateโs legacy print outlets chose to ignore.
At issue was a tax dispute lawsuit against the state by one of Coloradoโs wealthiest and most powerful people, the conservative billionaire Phil Anschutz whose Clarity Media happens to own The Gazette newspaper in Colorado Springs, The Denver Gazette, and Colorado Politics. (None of those publications reported on the lawsuit. At least two outlets, the Colorado Springs alt-weekly Indy and BizWest, published items citing The Sun.)
A judge in the lawsuit also put some of the details under wraps, The Sunโs Daniel Ducassi reported in his initial coverage. Three weeks later, The Colorado Sun had an update on the case. Ducassi reported Denver District Court Judge J. Eric Elliff dismissed the lawsuit. From The Sun:
Part of what influenced his thinking, Eliff wrote, were the implications of the state having to cut numerous refund checks for prior tax years if he were to agree with the Anschutzesโ argument. He noted โthe unavoidable reality of plaintiffsโ interpretation is that the refund associated with the prior tax year would have to be borne by the one in which it was claimed. Plaintiffs are asking for a check, and that money has to come from somewhere.โ
Also included in the story was this:
The judge also disclosed just how much money the Anschutzes were seeking: nearly $8 million โ a fact that the Anschutzes had tried to keep secret. In a footnote, Elliff explained that the Anschutzes โhave availed themselves of a public forum, and given the issues raised in the briefs, the court concludes that whatever privacy interest (the Anschutzes) may have in protecting the amount of the refund request is outweighed by the publicโs right to know.โ
Read the full update here.
More Colorado media odds & ends
๐บ๏ธ Programming note: This newsletter is on vacation mode, meaning it might hit your inbox with less frequency or with lighter reporting and content.
๐ฐ The Denver Business Journal has namedย Alicia Cohnย as its managing editor. She was a senior editor at The Hill in D.C. and โpreviously worked with the communications teams at Denver-based lobbying and law firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck as well as Colorado Parks and Wildlife,โ the DBJ reports.
๐บ Tori Mason joins CBS4 News at 10 p.m., and Michelle Griego is โback home and โฆ anchoring CBS4 This Morning.โ
๐ฏ๐ต The Springs Indy alt-weeklyโs executive editor emeritus calls it โunforgivable thatย The Gazetteย abdicated its responsibilityโ in not sending someone to Tokyo to cover the Olympics โfor the first time in a generation.โ (The columnist doesnโt attempt to answer the logical question any reader would have โ why? โ or indicate he even asked.)
๐ค KVNFโs Gavin Dahl spoke with two journalists, one from The Guardian and one from High Country News, about climate issues facing Colorado.
๐ Welcome Rob Tann to Colorado Community Media where he looks forward to โhearing and telling the stories of these communities, and doing so alongside some stellar journalists.โ
โฐ๏ธ Longtime Denver-area newspaper man Dick Hilker died. He was remembered as someone โfiercely passionate about his role as a journalist and responsibility to mentor those getting started in his newsroom.โ
๐ A vaccinated Colorado journalist with a symptomatic case of COVID-19 says: โIโm one in a million.โ
๐๏ธ The Los Angeles Times reported whatโs going on with Colorado billionaire newspaper owner Phil Anschutzโs proposal โto build the countryโs largest wind farm.โ
๐๐ผ A Denver Post reporter showed how to offer a mea culpa on a story via social media.
๐ก๏ธ โScientifically accurate coverage of man-made climate change is becoming less biasedโheadlining the idea that print media are no longer presenting climate change as controversy,โ according to the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. โBut thereโs one place where the team did find biased coverage: conservative media.โ
โ Readers still want answers about what it means to have a Denver Post sport column โpresented byโ a local sports bar.
๐ Rocky Mountain PBS investigative producer Brittany Freeman was one of six reporters chosen to participate in ProPublicaโs latest round of its Local Reporting Network.
๐ป Alison Borden is the newest team editor at Colorado Public Radio where sheโll help โtell stories about the health, education and justice systems and how they intersect.โ
๐ฆ Applications are open for the Local Independent Online News (LION) awards. (The Colorado Independent won one last year.)
๐ซ A Denver Post reporter admonished Denverโs CBS4, saying, โBan the single-source story quoting someone powerful and/or fortunate dumping on the destitute. Way too common in homelessness coverage and itโs got to go. No nuance there, no attempt to understand or humanize the story subjects. A waste of finite reporting resources.โ
โ๏ธ Watch an attorney for the mayor of Loveland have a city council member served with a defamation and slander lawsuit โฆ during a council meeting.
๐ Check out the many Colorado winners in this yearโs Edward R. Murrow awards for TV news in the region that includes Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, and Wyoming.
๐จ Jacqueline Quynh is โgoing to missโ Colorado as she departs CBS4 in Denver.
๐ท๏ธ A Colorado Sun reporter noted a potential gubernatorial candidateโs guest column in The Gazette โlacks an opinion tag.โ The paperโs opinion page editor once said, โIโve even at some points in the past put notes with editorials explaining this is opinion content. Weโve done that, weโve tried everything.โ
๐ป Current published โ5 takeaways from the expansion of public radioโs climate change coverageโ that includes Colorado Public Radio.
๐ Ike Fredregill is a new reporter for The Glenwood Springs Post-Independent. โAs a veteran, much of my community involvement revolves around getting to know the local military service organizations and finding out where I can be of the most help to my fellow veterans,โ he says.
โ๏ธ A professional photographer โnearly lost his finger when police officers shot him with a less-lethal projectile while he documented 2020 racial justice protests in downtown Denver, according to a lawsuit,โ reports The Denver Post.
๐๏ธ Colorado Newsline reporter Chase Woodruffโs important tweet thread about climate policy landed him an interview about it on City Cast Denver. (If youโre not sure what City Cast Denver is or why you should care, read this.)
Iโm Corey Hutchins, interim directorย of Colorado Collegeโsย Journalism Institute,ย the Colorado-based contributor for Columbia Journalism Reviewโsย United States Project, andย a journalist for multiple news outlets. Theย Colorado Media Project, where I write case studies,ย is underwriting this newsletter, and my โInside the Newsโ column appears at COLab, both of which I sometimes write about here. (If you would like to join CMP and Grasslands in underwriting this newsletter, hit me up.) Follow meย onย Twitter, reply or subscribe to this weekly newsletterย here,ย or e-mail me at CoreyHutchinsย [at] gmail [dot] com.