🎓 🗞 A look into Colorado's journalism workforce pipeline

The news behind the news in Colorado this week

In Colorado, the mountain snowpack is melting, green shoots are poking through mulch, and some college journalism students might still be scrambling for summer newsroom internships.

In the spirit of the season, Colorado Media Project, which underwrites this newsletter, has just released a new research paper about workforce pathways for local journalism with a focus on higher-ed internships.

I conducted the research, analysis, and writing for the report, which comes with some recommendations for higher-ed institutions and Colorado newsrooms. The Media Project commissioned and published it to “contribute to ecosystem learning and continuous improvement of Colorado’s journalism workforce pipeline.”

From the executive summary:

Local newsrooms have long struggled to attract workers — journalists, editors, digital producers, business leaders, sales and revenue professionals, and more — who represent the diversity of their communities. In recent years, as the local journalism workforce has contracted, Colorado newsrooms also have struggled to retain workers, provide training and mentorship opportunities, and develop career paths for advancement. …

In 2023, Colorado Media Project (CMP), Colorado Press Association (CPA), and Colorado News Collaborative (COLab) formed a working group to examine these issues and identify opportunities for addressing them collaboratively with newsrooms, colleges and universities, and other partners. The working group was one of five supported by grants from CMP and the Colorado Workforce Development Council.

In addition to sharing ideas surfaced by newsroom and higher-education leaders who participated in the working group, the report captures takeaways from newsroom-hosted student internships supported by CMP through its Advancing Equity in Local News program in 2023, and from a cohort-based program that the Colorado News Collaborative, known as COLab, provided for students placed in Colorado newsrooms in the summer of 2023.

One section of the report offers a mini case study about how small local newspapers and public radio stations can act as the “farm team” in the journalism workforce pipeline and how one publisher is embracing that role. Also featured are survey results from roughly a dozen Colorado newsrooms about when they are recruiting interns and for what positions.

Before we get to some takeaways, here’s one big thing I believe could be helpful for Colorado:

💡IDEA: Creating an online hub or landing page that serves as a clearinghouse for newsrooms that offer internships, including their schedules and how to apply, would be helpful for Colorado journalism programs to match students with employers. Organizations like COLab, CPA, or Denver’s Open Media Foundation Career Engine might consider whether such an initiative fits with their mission.

Below are some other nuggets from the report:

• Colorado has a strong formal network among high schools for student journalism through the Colorado Student Media Association, but lacks one at the higher-ed level. (Some students working for campus publications said they would benefit from a digital or physical cohort space for shared learning, collaboration, and networking.)

• TREND: For journalism internships, payment is typically up to a newsroom when a student is getting credit. Some pay, others don’t.

• Multiple Colorado journalism faculty members said they’ve noticed students seeking internships in public relations, advertising, or marketing rather than in a newsroom. Such internships (including at a local real estate firm) might be easier to get, illuminating a potential barrier in Colorado’s college-to-newsroom pipeline.

• TENSION POINT: One journalism faculty member expressed frustration with a problem described as the “internship before the internship” as well as a potential newsroom bias that favors students at four-year schools. Because some newsrooms that hire interns might want to see demonstrated work, some students might not yet have it — the reason they are applying for an internship in the first place. At least one faculty member has set up a campus news organization to try and mitigate this problem so students have clips or work to show.

The report also includes some notable national models Colorado might seek to emulate, a roundup of Colorado higher-ed institutions where students are producing journalism in local newsrooms for course credit or internships, and survey results from roughly a dozen Colorado newsrooms about when they are recruiting interns — and for what positions.

The research indicates that Colorado is poised for more coordination and collaboration on the local journalism workforce development front. Colleges and universities large and small, public and private, are working hard to ensure their students are prepared for the workforce, while providing them with professional development opportunities in local newsrooms along the way.

Still, more could be done to create a stronger connective tissue among those institutions and newsrooms across Colorado. Building that network won’t be too complicated and could go a long way in helping to create a more robust pipeline for journalism in Colorado, while also helping to ensure that newsrooms of the future better reflect our state as a whole.

Find the full paper here.

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Some current open summer internships and opportunities in Colorado

Bucket List Community Cafe has created an apprenticeship program for the hyperlocal digital news site in Denver. 

• “Universities want their students to be job-ready when they graduate, with the skills required by today’s newsrooms. Some are. Many are not. They need to report, pitch, shoot, edit, know search engine optimization, analytics and social media, and be able to engage with audiences through newsletters, podcasts and events. If they want to manage these businesses, they need to raise money.”

• “Up until now this has been an opportunity for CU Boulder, MSU Denver and DU students who intern for Bucket List Community Cafe,” says founder Vicky Collins.  

• For those who choose to stay beyond their internships, Bucket List Community Cafe offers a year-long ramp after interns graduate where they get paid $200 a story or $20 per hour up to 20 hours a month if they are on the engagement and entrepreneurship team. “We have found that those who stay with us beyond the semester-long internship learn much more and do better finding job opportunities,” Collins says. 

• Visit Bucket List Community Cafe’s website and contact publisher Vicky Collins at vicky[at]teletrendstv[dot]com for more information.   

The Rural Journalism Institute of the San Luis Valley will hold two professional development workshops on June 18 in Alamosa and June 19 in Monte Vista, so keep an eye on their site for details. Both workshops will focus around “using your smartphone for content development, whether it’s for audio or photography.”

KRDO TV in Colorado Springs states that Telemundo in Southern Colorado is “looking for bi-lingual students with a strong interest in reporting, producing, web, mobile and social media platforms. Applicants should be bi-lingual, native Spanish speakers preferred.”

Boulder Reporting Lab is currently seeking a paid summer Community Reporting Fellow as part of a Colorado Media Project grant to the nonprofit digital newsroom to support equity and inclusion. The 10-week internship opportunity is for an emerging higher-ed journalist from BIPOC communities. Contact Stacy Feldman at stacy[at]boulderreportinglab[dot]org.

Colorado Community Media is currently seeking two paid internships for the summer in the Denver area.

• A digital production intern will “work alongside the digital editor and digital assistant to create a plan for social media strategies and special projects,” and more. 

• A summer reporting intern will “hit the ground running and get real-world experience in all aspects of news and features reporting, including source development, interviewing, multimedia storytelling and audience engagement,” and more. 

Colorado Public Radio has two internships open:

• A human resources data intern will “support the People and Culture team by helping to analyze and report on internal personnel and external applicant data, and work to support the team’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives and goals.”

• An events intern will “assist in organizing fundraising events, live broadcasts and community engagement initiatives, playing a pivotal role in enhancing CPR’s connection with its audience.”

KGNU public radio in Boulder is kicking off a bilingual internship with the University of Denver’s media and Spanish departments, and might have some other opportunities. Students are encouraged to check Handshake on the station’s internships page where they have openings for a radio news intern and music intern.

The Colorado Sun’s summer Rise & Shine teen workshop (deadline 6 p.m., April 21):

• “The free workshop, designed for middle and high schoolers across the state, will teach students how to find stories, interview sources, master storytelling, photograph subjects and more.”

• “Up to 15 students across Colorado can spend a week of their summer exploring their curiosity, learning how to investigate news tips and polishing their storytelling skills in The Colorado Sun’s third annual Rise and Shine Journalism Workshop.”

• “Applications for the free workshop, which will be held June 12-16 over Zoom … can be found here.” (Applicants notified May 5.)

Colorado Times Recorder, a progressive nonprofit digital newsroom offers rolling part-time paid internships “with a three-month commitment required.” Complete Colorado, the digital news and commentary arm of the libertarian-leaning Independence Institute, says it would consider an intern for its Future Leaders program.

Yellow Scene magazine sues Boulder for police camera footage

How much does the Boulder Police Department want the local Yellow Scene magazine to pay for body-worn police and dashcam footage surrounding the 2023 police killing of a 51-year-old woman? Nearly $3,000.

Yellow Scene is suing for the footage, saying the news organization wants to make sure that “just as the public could judge for itself whether George Floyd was mistreated by Minneapolis police, the people of Boulder can judge for themselves whether the Boulder Police Department is using excessive force or wrongfully killing persons on Boulder’s streets.”

From Jeff Roberts at the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition:

The lawsuit also alleges that Boulder police further failed to comply with the law by “releasing on its website highly edited and narrated excerpts of [body-worn camera] footage from high-profile critical police incidents to promote the Boulder Police Department’s self-selected narrative. In doing so, Boulder seeks to shield its police from public scrutiny by creating a curated narrative to suit the city’s interests rather than allowing unedited footage to expose the truth regarding its police officers’ actions.”

Days after the magazine’s lawsuit became public, Roberts noted two Democratic lawmakers from Denver filed legislation that, if passed, would prohibit law enforcement agencies from charging for footage released under the Law Enforcement Integrity Act.

Journalism link rot is a bummer. Long live journalism link rot

Colorado investigative journalist Chris Walker is the latest journalist to see his stories vanish from the internet because of link rot and poorly maintained digital archives at news organizations. (If you’ve been publishing stories at various news sites for 10 years or longer you know the feeling.)

For his Longform Lowdown newsletter on Substack this week, Walker wrote this:

So, the adage “things live forever on the Internet” turns out to be fickle when it comes to journalism, which as a writer can feel disheartening. All that hard work gone in a maze of 404 links. But for the human subjects of those stories? The disappearing act can bring relief. That probably seems obvious for anyone who may have come across in a negative light, or doesn’t want Internet sleuths reading about their past misdeeds and dastardly behavior. Recently, however, I was reminded that it can also be true for subjects whom readers regarded positively — even as heroic.

Walker recently left a salaried editing job at Denver’s 5280 magazine to return to what he calls the “choppy seas” of freelance writing. Part of his process involves revisiting past stories that have vanished from the Web.

Check out his piece to see what he learned when he re-interviewed the subject of a 2012 international story he wrote about a mountain rescue mission — and how his source feels about the story disappearing because of link rot.

Colorado Public Radio’s secret-donor-funded new home will mitigate ‘parking anxiety’

Westword’s Catie Cheshire caught up with Colorado Public Radio CEO Stewart Vanderwilt this week for an update following last month’s news of 15 layoffs and a discrimination complaint by fired host Vic Vela.

Some nuggets from the story:

• “The switch is to move from producing limited series, topic-focused podcasts to podcast products that are at the intersection of daily news and long-form news storytelling,” Vanderwilt said.

• “The purchase of CPR's new building, located at 777 Grant Street, was funded by an unnamed donor who specified that the donation could only be used for that purpose. The donor paid $8.34 million in cash last August to purchase the building.” (CPR has still not disclosed who the donor is.) The new building will come with “150 parking spots.” CPR is “obsessed with parking, because for our staff, our staff gets free parking,” Vanderwilt said. “When visitors come, visitors will have access to parking, and when you go to events in the central part of the city, a lot of people experience parking anxiety.”

• “The current timeline is about two years: one year while CPR works on construction permitting to ask staff and audiences what they would like to see from the space, and another year for renovation construction.”

• “The anonymous donation for the building’s purchase will not cover renovations, so Vanderwilt anticipates a need to raise additional funds to complete the project — and, as is the case with many news organizations, CPR isn’t exactly flush with cash.”

• Westword reports Vela had suggested that his recovery podcast Back From Broken “be moved from the podcast studio into the newsroom because of conflicts with podcast studio leadership. He alleges that CPR did not try to provide any changes to the workplace that would help. Vela says he told a vice president, ‘The last thing I want to do is go running to the crack house right now.’ ‘Instead of something, anything positive, anything compassionate, [the vice president] brought me in and basically accused me of using my addiction to manipulate them into getting something I want,’” he told Westword.

Read the whole thing at the link above.

More Colorado media odds & ends

📺 vs.🗞 A rare local media dispute is brewing between the news managers of the daily Gazette newspaper in Colorado Springs and the local KRDO TV station over coverage of the city’s identity as Olympic City USA. The Gazette’s editor penned a lengthy column attacking the station’s months-old investigation as “sensational,” saying its headlines were “all hat and no cattle.” In a statement, KRDO’s news director called the Gazette column “biased” and “poorly researched” — among quite a few other things. I hope to have full coverage of the matter next Friday, or earlier.

🆕 Rhea Jha has joined 9NEWS in Denver as a reporter. “Now that I’ve got my footing, I cannot wait to share my stories and more on this platform again. Beyond thrilled about this next chapter,” Jha said this week.

👎 A site called PRHive likely tried to generate some traffic and clout by creating a roundup of what it called “the biggest newspapers in Colorado,” and offered a media literacy lesson along the way. Journalists in Colorado (myself included) noted on social media how the item was full of inaccuracies and photos taken from credible news outlets and used without credit. In an age of AI-created content and online marketing web vomit, the development can serve an opportunity to explain the difference between journalism and other forms of communication — a discipline of verification being just one.

📰 “One of the things I have learned as a small-town rural journalist is that no one cares about fraud in local government, and the public hates investigative journalists who spot poorly hidden frauds,” wrote Wet Mountain Tribune Publisher Jordan Hedberg. He offered examples from the past few years in Custer County.

✅ Scripps News has announced that Ad Fontes Media, the Colorado-based company founded by Vanessa Otero that rates news for bias and reliability, “will audit its national news as part of the network’s industry-leading commitment to transparency and nonpartisan journalism. The agreement comes as advertisers struggle to filter through a deluge of low-quality journalism that can pose brand safety risks.”

🤖 Artificial intelligence is “helping decide which Americans get the job interview, the apartment, even medical care, but the first major proposals to reign in bias in AI decision making are facing headwinds from every direction,” the Associated Press reported this week, adding lawmakers working on such bills, including in Colorado, “came together Thursday to argue the case for their proposals as civil rights-oriented groups and the industry play tug-of-war with core components of the legislation.”

🚴‍♀️❌ The Ride the Rockies bike tour, an event founded by the Denver Post and sold in 2021 “to a subsidiary of Gannett USA Today, Ventures Endurance Events,” is canceled for this year, John Meyer reported for the Denver Post. “It is unknown whether there will be an attempt to bring the event back next year in some form, or to sell it to another organizer.”

🏆 This week, veteran sportswriter Woody Paige, who now works at the Denver Gazette, was inducted into the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame. “Paige has played blackjack with Michael Jordan. He drank beer with Jimmy Buffett. He had a role in the movie ‘Rocky Balboa.’ He has played a clown in a circus. He flew with the U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels and got sick in the process,” wrote Chris Tomasson about Paige’s textured life.

⚙️ Denverite, the hyperlocal site run by Colorado Public Radio, is looking for an editor it will pay $71,500 to $95,800.

😬 In a broadcast this week, Denver 9NEWS ‘Next’ anchor Kyle Clark put a spotlight on a uniquely American form of modern day clout chasing when he said, “taunting, and insulting mass shooting victims’ families and shooting survivors is now a path for fringe characters to get mainstream fame and power.”

♻️ “It’s with a sense of homecoming and forward-looking anticipation that I reintroduce myself and my pen to this community of Trail-Gazette readers,” wrote Jason Van Tatenhove last week in his hometown newspaper. (He’s the man behind a local Substack site based in Estes Park who has had some things to say about the Trail-Gazette in the past.) “Even as I ventured out to start my own gonzo-styled outlet on Substack, The Colorado Switchblade, and my … self-published and non-fiction The Perils of Extremism published by Skyhorse, the threads of community storytelling and accountability journalism remained strong and intact,” he wrote.

🔎 “The title is set for a proposed Colorado initiative to repeal newly enacted legislation that narrows the definition of ‘public business’ in the Colorado Open Meetings Law as it applies to the General Assembly and lets lawmakers communicate by email and text message without it being a ‘meeting’ under the statute,” Jeff Roberts reported for the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition.

KVNF community radio on the Western Slope in Carbondale is hiring a primary anchor for NPR’s Morning Edition it will pay $18 to $20 an hour.

🌱 John Moore of the Denver Gazette has a writeup about “a cannily timed, one-time-only 10-year retrospective screening of ‘Rolling Papers’ at 4:20 p.m. on 4/20 (aka Saturday) at the Sie Film Center. A free-form panel conversation will precede the screening.”

✉️ The United States Postal Service announced it would move mail processing from Grand Junction to Denver, meaning “it will almost certainly delay mail delivery,” including delivery of the Ouray County Plaindealer, the newspaper’s co-owner Mike Wiggins said. Wiggins accused the mail agency of a “textbook case of spin” in its announcement.

💳 Donations surged to the nonprofit Colorado Sun newsroom last week after the state GOP kicked one of its journalists, Sandra Fish, out of an event in Pueblo. (I restrained myself from using this AI-generated image to go with last week’s coverage.)

I’m Corey Hutchins, co-director of Colorado College’s Journalism Institute. For nearly 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. Colorado Media Project is underwriting this newsletter, and my “Inside the News” column appears at COLab, both of which I sometimes write about here. (If you’d like to underwrite or sponsor this newsletter hit me up.) Follow me on Threads, reply or subscribe to this weekly newsletter here, or e-mail me at CoreyHutchins [at] gmail [dot] com.