A paper boy bill in Colorado sparks talk of 'corporate power,' labor, and baseball cards

The news behind the news in Colorado

Democratic State Sens. Julie Gonzales and Marc Snyder disagree over legislation about newspaper carriers on April 28 at the State Capitol in Denver. Photo by Drew Cavin

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.

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➡️ 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. ⬅️

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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.”

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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.