A Colorado newspaper published an ad that 'disturbed' its own staff
How Denver Latinas are ‘helping change the journalism industry,’ an opinion page free-for-all followup, and more
‘I’d love to know how other papers feel’
On page 19 of this week’s edition of the Colorado Springs Indy appears a print advertisement by an anti-abortion group. The ad features a photo of puppies with the caption: “If Planned Parenthood killed puppies THEN WOULD YOU CARE?”
In a note to readers in the same paper, publisher Amy Gillentine wrote that some members of her staff were “disturbed” about the ad and had asked about it. The alternative weekly’s decision to publish it comes with a twist: As long as the ad runs, Gillentine told readers, the paper will be donating money from it to Planned Parenthood.
That’s some interesting jujitsu. Will Pikes Peak Citizens for Life keep paying to place this ad knowing they’re in turn providing revenue to an organization that performs abortions? We’ll find out next week, I suppose.
A different question is one the publisher raised while explaining the paper’s reasoning behind its decision to publish the anti-Planned Parenthood ad. From the publisher:
We believe the First Amendment gives people the right to say what they want; we believe the ethics of journalism means that we can’t silence voices we disagree with. It’s why we let people comment on social media about our stories and our opinions — even when we find those comments to be contrary to the paper’s founding principles.
Something tells me that statement might not withstand a test beyond what the local anti-abortion group offered this week. Would the newspaper publish any advertisement?
“The answer is probably not,” Gillentine said when I asked. “We [reserve] the right to deny ads if the person is abusive or rude to our staff; if the products advertised are illegal; if the stance taken in the ad is against common decency. In this case, the ad didn’t reach those standards, although it did spark some debate among the staff.”
Enough of a debate, apparently, to warrant a publisher’s note. And to kick off the opportunity in this newsletter to see whether this is something with which other outlets are grappling. “I’d love to know how other papers feel about denying ads, especially since margins are so tight for us all,” Gillentine said in an email. “I hope to hear from other publishers.”
So let’s hear it: What kind of advertising, if any, is your news organization denying and why? Are any staffers or readers rankled about ads an outlet is running?
Last year, one tipster raised an eyebrow when passing along a photo of a full-page ad in The Denver Post for AshleyMadison dot com, a dating site that encourages extramarital affairs. When it comes to rejecting ads, The Gazette in Colorado Springs and its family of publications doesn’t accept cannabis advertising “of any kind,” an ad exec there told me.
This isn’t a new debate. In the early 1990s, an alternative weekly newspaper in Rochester, New York, defended on free speech grounds its decision to run a recruitment ad by the Ku Klux Klan while also running an apology note to those offended.
On a separate note, the First Amendment is what allows a news organization like the Indy the right to refuse an ad or, say, a letter to the editor. In a 1974 case, the U.S. Supreme Court wrote:
“A newspaper is more than a passive receptacle or conduit for news, comment, and advertising. The choice of material to go into a newspaper, and the decisions made as to limitations on the size and content of the paper, and treatment of public issues and public officials - whether fair or unfair - constitute the exercise of editorial control and judgment. It has yet to be demonstrated how governmental regulation of this crucial process can be exercised consistent with First Amendment guarantees of a free press as they have evolved to this time.”
That legal authority is, of course, different from a publication’s own values and ideas about freedom of speech and expression.
Speaking of ads, Denver TV broadcasts a cannabis ad for the first time
You might have heard how Denver city leaders this week decided to change city rules to allow cannabis delivery and cannabis lounges.
But there was also a pioneering development in the media space when it comes to cannabis, which is legal to sell and consume in Colorado, but still illegal at the federal level. For the first time, a TV station will broadcast a pot ad.
The Denver Business Journal had the scoop:
In a first for Colorado — and quite possibly the nation — Livwell Enlightened Health will be advertising its brand on Denver NBC affiliate KUSA, and the company says it's a big step forward for normalizing the multibillion-dollar Colorado industry. … Finding a partner TV station to make that big move to traditional media was difficult … A combination of conservatism within broadcast TV and fear of isolating existing advertisers and audience was likely a big factor.
… The spots feature paid spokespeople praising their retail experience and Livwell's customer service. The words “cannabis” and “marijuana” are never mentioned. And in keeping with a TV-commercial tradition, low prices are proudly touted. … DBJ research shows that advocacy ads for cannabis legalization have run on TV, but couldn't find any instances of a retail outlet advertising its services or products.
The ads will appear on KUSA 9News, DBJ reported, though a station representative didn’t “immediately respond” for the story. Marijuana Business Daily reported “a 2015 attempt to air marijuana advertisements on a Colorado ABC affiliate failed after the TV station decided not to broadcast the commercials because of legal concerns.”
The move comes as Democratic President Joe Biden “won’t commit to signing a marijuana legalization bill if passed by Congress, saying his position ‘isn’t the same as what the House and Senate have proposed,’” according to Marijuana Moment.
Prepare to be asked about your identity
On March 31, Denver Post journalists published an open letter through their newsroom labor union about how they’re aiming to do better in diversifying coverage. That means speaking with a broader diversity of sources for their reporting.
This week, one of the paper’s journalists explained what it might mean in practice:
“This information is to help us understand what we are missing by failing to include diverse voices in our news stories,” Phillips went on. “We aren't sharing it outside the newsroom but will use it internally to figure out where we need to go to be more inclusive.”
Denver Latina journalists are ‘helping change the journalism industry’
The Denver Post’s Elizabeth Hernandez has advanced a local story sparked by former 9News reporter Lori Lizarraga’s March 28 column in Westword about troubling interactions with management at Denver’s KUSA 9News and the departure of three Latinas at the station owned by TEGNA.
The headline: “How three Latina women let go from 9NEWS are helping change the journalism industry.” From the piece:
One issue TEGNA addressed after meetings with the National Association of Hispanic Journalists: language used in immigration reporting. “Using the word ‘illegal’ can be inaccurate and harmful,” TEGNA said in an email, obtained by The Post, sent to news directors around the country this week. “Humans are not illegal. TEGNA journalists should avoid using ‘illegal immigrants’ in both broadcast and digital content.”
The language change encourages reporters to only report what they know, which may mean referring to people as immigrants, migrants or unaccompanied minors. The email noted “asylum seeker” also would be appropriate if accurate and that seeking asylum is legal under U.S. and international law. For Lizarraga, the change was a stepping stone to future victories.
The Denver Post story also includes an important anecdote about the station’s coverage of air pollution involving the Denver-area Suncor Energy oil refinery and its impact on the Latino community, and more.
“News about Latinas written by a Latina? We love to see it,” Hernandez wrote when pointing readers to her piece.
Denver Post examines the Sangre de Cristo Sentinel
The Denver Post was the latest outlet to introduce its audience to the Tenacious Unicorn Ranch in Custer County and profile what the paper described as a “leftist, anarchist alpaca ranch commune for queer people” — who are armed to the teeth.
The update follows coverage from Rocky Mountain PBS, High Country News, and others. The latest development at the ranch is how those who operate it have been on guard against some locals following more media publicity to a typically quiet and politically conservative part of rural southern Colorado.
Like, HCN, the magazine that featured the Tenacious Unicorns in an in-depth January feature story, the Post’s Elise Schmelzer folded in how a local print publication based in Westcliffe has engaged with those who live and stay at the ranch.
The Sangre De Cristo Sentinel — a weekly conservative publication in Westcliffe — republished the magazine story but included lengthy editor’s notes at the beginning and end. The notes, written by publisher George Gramlich, called the ranchers a “hypocritical bunch of hate-filled xenophobes” and said the article was “very, very disturbing.”
In an interview Wednesday, Gramlich walked back some of the language in the note and said the article was generally well done and that the Tenacious Unicorn ranchers are good people. When asked which part of the story he found disturbing, Gramlich pointed to [a] quote calling [a] Fourth of July parade fascist. That sentence felt like an attack on the community as a whole, he said. “There could have been a Three Percenter flag there, but basically people can bring their own flags,” Gramlich said. “We’re not excluding anybody.”
Some in the community agreed with Gramlich’s rebuke of the comment, letters to the editor and social media comments show. Others disagreed. “The article does not imply that the community as a whole is not good,” one Westcliffe resident commented on Facebook.
The Sentinel has also re-printed several transphobic cartoons and commentary pieces from websites like The Daily Signal and The Federalist. “This is an old-school conservative Christian county. Folks here have never seen any folks like them before they moved in,” said Gramlich, who has lived in the valley for nine years.
Custer County, as small as it is, has an interesting media ecosystem, and the Sentinel’s role adds to it. One resident told me the paper closely covers the local high school, which likely boosts readership. Its commentary can be silly. In 2018, for instance, the paper referred to the Colorado Press Association as “obviously part of the left wing, corrupt, deep state press” after the CPA’s then-director indicated support for the group’s members to publish editorials “against anti-press ‘enemy of the people’ rhetoric.”
Keep an eye on the news ecosystem in Custer County, by the way. There might be something interesting popping out of there soon.
An Asian-American woman leads 5280’s food coverage for first time
Patricia Kaowthumrong almost didn’t write a first-person essay introducing herself and her new role at the lauded Denver magazine.
“I preferred to get to work with the least fanfare possible after I received news of my promotion earlier this month,” she wrote. “That is, until a fellow local journalist of Asian descent reached out to me via Instagram after I announced my new role on April 10. She told me that the thrill of seeing an Asian-American woman become a prominent face in Colorado’s food writing scene made her cry.”
So Kaowthumrong did introduce herself to readers. And more. From 5280:
So although I’m ecstatic about overseeing all of 5280’s dining coverage, a beat I have adored since joining the staff as assistant food editor in 2019, my excitement is laced with the fear of failing to represent my ethnicity in such an influential role when anti-Asian violence is on the rise across the country. When I admitted to my mother that I didn’t know how to put my thoughts into words for this essay, she offered some advice: “Tell them you will do the best job,” she said. “Not because you are Asian, but because you are an Asian who loves food.”
“Now I will lead 5280’s dining coverage as an Asian-American woman, a fact that I hope will help shape what we publish to be more inclusive,” she wrote later in the piece. Read the whole thing at the link above.
Opinion page free-for-all followup
Should content in the opinion pages of local newspapers be a fact-free free-for-all or subject to the same verification standards of the news side? That’s not a new question, but one that’s getting renewed scrutiny in Colorado.
Remember, it was Ben Franklin in the 1730s who said “Printers are educated in the Belief, that when Men differ in Opinion, both Sides ought equally to have the Advantage of being heard by the Publick; and that when Truth and Error have fair Play, the former is always an overmatch for the latter.”
Last week, Colorado Newsline columnist Trish Zornio pointed to what she described as content she didn’t think deserved to be found in a newspaper, even in the opinion pages. She found a new one this week in The Boulder Daily Camera.
At issue is a pair of guest columns the paper published about a proposed state law aimed at reducing jail populations. A Boulder city councilman, Bob Yates, wrote a column opposing it. Rebecca Wallace, an attorney for the ACLU, penned a rebuttal. Wallace’s column begins:
Boulder Councilperson Bob Yates’ opinion piece about Senate Bill 21-62 is replete with demonstrably false statements that would have been disproven with even the most minimal fact checking (e.g., reading the bill) by the Boulder Camera editorial board.
A reader might wonder a couple things. Is Wallace correct? Or is Yates? Did the op-ed page editor try to find out? Does the op-ed page editor think it matters if the newspaper published a guest column that might contain incorrect information? Is it merely up to the reader to figure out for themselves, or does a newspaper play a role beyond offering a forum for some-say-this-some-say-that? At least one reader has publicly called for the Camera to retract the Yates column.
I asked those questions to the Camera’s new opinion page editor, Julie Marshall. Here’s what she said:
This is a very important bill that has a lot of people in our Boulder County community very interested in its outcome. I can tell you that the authors are both lawyers, and they are both very adamant that their pieces are 100 percent accurate. So where does this leave me, the Opinion Editor, who is not a lawyer?
I can tell you that I have consulted three top neutral attorneys, going over the bill line by line. And I have spoken to both authors. And I have consulted top law enforcement. And the answer is that this is a very confusing, poorly written bill that already has the most seasoned prosecutors unsure of how to read it properly.
I am disappointed that some people in our community are so quick to criticize our newspaper, but it’s OK, I understand people are feeling raw and they care deeply. We will be continuing to present more viewpoints on this important bill, as it is fluid and will be amended to the point when anyone can understand it clearly, we hope. At that point, maybe we can all be a little more understanding and kinder to one another as we address the important issue of racial inequalities in part, with a solid bill in the end.
How do you feel about it?
Journalists testified against a proposed new law in Colorado
Journalists this week showed up to a committee hearing at the state Capitol and spoke out about a bill, something they’ve been comfortable doing in Colorado for the past several years.
From the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition:
State legislation designed to reduce collateral consequences for people with criminal records would hinder the ability of news organizations to identify systemic problems in the criminal justice system and hold public officials accountable, journalists told Colorado lawmakers this week. House Bill 21-1214, which passed the House Judiciary Committee on a 7-4 vote Tuesday, creates additional opportunities for the sealing of lower-level criminal records, including an automatic process for closing public access to many arrest records when no criminal charges have been filed. It also lets some former offenders with multiple convictions — and those who have received full pardons — petition to have their records sealed.
Seven Democrats approved the bill over the objections of four Republicans.
The journalists who testified “said they are sympathetic to the bill’s intent, but they asked legislators to also consider the effect of criminal-record sealing on public-service news reporting,” the CFOIC’s Jeff Roberts reported.
One of those journalists was my former boss Susan Greene, who has spent her career as an investigative reporter scrutinizing law enforcement, and who now works as an editor for COLab. She is also a member of the Colorado Press Association’s board of directors and chair of its advocacy committee.
“Just because charges were dropped, someone was acquitted, or a conviction is old doesn’t mean there is no public interest in a case,” Greene told lawmakers. She added:
“Take, for example, a story I’m reporting this week about a sheriff’s deputy in Kiowa County who took part in fatally shooting an unarmed man, Zach Gifford, last spring. I got a tip that the deputy had inappropriately used deadly force during two separate car chases in the months leading up to Zach’s killing. Charges in those cases had to be dropped because of his misconduct. Sealing those arrest and court records would have prevented the public from 1. Knowing about the deputy’s pattern of excessive force, and 2. Understanding that history enough to ask his boss, the elected sheriff, why he hadn’t disciplined or fired the deputy before Zach was killed.”
Read what other journalists said during the committee meeting here.
More Colorado local media odds & ends
🎉 Annie Guo VanDan, president of Asian Avenue Magazine, “the only English-printed publication in Colorado focused on the APA community and culture,” will be a 2021 Maynard 200 Fellow on the media entrepreneurship track.
🎦 “By July 1, 2023, police officers across Colorado must be outfitted with body-worn cameras to capture their interactions,” The Denver Post reports.
💉 What happened on the day the Indy says paramedics injected a 26-year-old Colorado Springs man twice with ketamine “is depicted in CSPD’s case report and body camera videos obtained by the Indy through an open records request.”
❓Denver TV journalist Britt Moreno says: “Could it possibly really be my last few mornings getting ready at 2:30am for the morning newscast at CBS4?”
🏫 COLab director Laura Frank is one of the instructors for this On Poynt session at the Poynter Institute where “you will learn about creative business models that could change the future of journalism, from co-ops to coalitions.”
🎙️ Ari Armstrong spoke with University of Colorado philosopher Michael Huemer about objectivity. (At about 31:30 they talk about journalistic objectivity.)
🎊 Denver KUSA 9News reporter Jeremy Jojola was elected to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press steering committee. “I’m excited to be part of this great organization that fights for our First Amendment rights,” he said. “I hope to be a voice for local broadcasters.”
🔓 The Colorado Department of Labor and Employment “portrayed cunning and sophisticated scam rings that are trying to manipulate Facebook groups, state lawmakers and media organizations in an effort to pressure the unemployment department to loosen fraud controls, thus allowing scammers to steal more money from the state,” Denver’s CBS4 reported. (Emphasis mine.)
📺 Longtime Denver broadcast journalist Natalie Tysdal has “left the traditional news business to launch her own network of news starting with a podcast that will focus on a positive approach to telling stories while also asking hard questions.”
📢 “Apple’s decision to reinstate Parler on the App Store is a huge win for free speech,” said Colorado Republican Congressman Ken Buck. “It’s time for Amazon and Google to follow Apple’s lead and stop the censorship of Parler,” he added.
💸 In neighboring New Mexico, Albuquerque Public Schools has “been ordered to pay more than $400,000 to two news organizations for failing to turn over public records in a timely manner and not adhering to deadlines in responding to requests for documents.”
⚖️ No Colorado newspapers are involved in this big lawsuit against Google and Facebook that claims the Big Tech giants “unlawfully monopolized” the digital ad market. (Some Colorado news outlets got money from Facebook last year.) “We welcome any interest there may be for those that would like to join our cause,” said a paralegal at the law firm representing the papers when I asked about potential involvement of our state’s press.
I’m Corey Hutchins, instructor at Colorado College’s Journalism Institute, the Colorado-based contributor for Columbia Journalism Review’s United States Project, and a journalist for multiple news outlets. The Colorado Media Project, where I write case studies, is underwriting this newsletter, and my “Inside the News” column appears at COLab, both of which I sometimes write about here. (If you, too, would like to underwrite this newsletter, hit me up.) Follow me on Twitter, reply or subscribe to this weekly newsletter here, or e-mail me at CoreyHutchins [at] gmail [dot] com.
Just a quick note to say how much I missed you weekly around the state news update in The Independent and especially appreciate "More Colorado local news odds & ends" at the end of issues