A 'path-breaking' new Colorado printing press rumbles to life in Denver

The news behind the news in Colorado

Those in the business of publishing Colorado newspapers might have found some relief this week as a new printing press rumbled to life in Denver.

Called the Trust Press, the commercial printing facility launched by the nonprofit National Trust for Local News “is now operational,” the organization announced on Monday.

Its goal: “to address the skyrocketing costs of producing local news in Colorado.”

From the announcement:

The new press is printing the publications of Colorado Community Media, also owned by the National Trust, and will begin printing dozens of other local and ethnic newspapers in the new year.

“We’re excited that this path-breaking idea is finally a reality in Colorado,” Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro, the CEO and co-founder of the National Trust, said in a statement.

Writing about the development for Colorado Community Media, the editorial director of the string of two-dozen Denver-area newspapers, Linda Shapley, said printing costs at CCM have risen more than 60% in the past two years.

“We have heard from so many local publishers here in Colorado who are struggling to find an affordable printing solution, and I am excited to serve them at the Trust Press,” Kevin Smalley, director of the Trust Press, said in a statement. “We have a great team and first-rate facility in place. We’re already printing 100,000 copies per week and will soon offer affordable printing services that support a wide range of publications and the communities they serve.”

In March, I wrote for Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab about the prospect of this new “mission-driven” printing press as a kind of man-bites-dog story. The plan at the time was for it to start rolling papers off in May, but construction and permitting setbacks delayed that until now.

“Print newspapers are still valued, particularly in rural and underrepresented communities,” Hansen Shapiro said in her statement. “We are proud to launch this affordable and sustainable printing solution that will strengthen local and ethnic news organizations across Colorado.”

This new printing press in Colorado comes at a critical time. A late-capitalist meteor shower has peppered these lumbering mechanical dinosaurs in recent years.

In 2021, when the Grand Junction newspaper’s Reagan-era press went extinct, the owners literally considered turning it into a museum. Last summer, Gannett abruptly mothballed its Pueblo Chieftain printing press, calling it too expensive, and sent roughly 80 newspapers into a tailspin as they scrambled to find a new facility. Then it happened again this year when the Alden Global Capital hedge fund flicked away a printing press it owned in Berthoud and left dozens of newspapers in the wind.

Against this backdrop, the Colorado Media Project, which underwrites this newsletter, declared the opening of the Trust Press “an encouraging reversal of trends in Colorado’s local print news industry.”

Read more here from the folks behind it, and here for background on the funding behind the project and how it all came together.

Expect a grand opening in late January or early February.

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‘Willing to take the risk’: The Plainsman Herald lives

In July, the Plainsman Herald announced it would close by the end of 2024, adding itself to a list of five newspapers on the Eastern Plains that were set to blink out.

One of them, the Burlington Record, came back to life when a local took it over — pirate style — and has kept it. Now, add another to the list of those sticking around.

This week, Kent Brooks, owner of the Plainsman Herald in Colorado’s most southeastern county of Baca, said after checking the pulse of his community he has been able to pull the nose up on the plane.

From Colorado Sun reporter Kevin Simpson:

After surveying readers through both social media and the Plainsman Herald itself, Brooks discovered that almost everyone who responded was willing to pay more to continue receiving the paper. He was so encouraged by the results that he recently decided to continue fighting to sustain local news.

Through a combination of a subscription price increase and finding new production efficiencies, he now says he’ll continue to publish the Plainsman Herald through at least 2025 as he gauges how well readers’ overwhelming commitment through the survey matches actual response. About 95% of respondents said they’d pay more, even double, to ensure the paper’s sustainability. …

The survey also revealed an interest by locals in sponsoring various features in the paper, helping to offset some of the advertising losses. So Brooks was more than happy to reverse course and keep the Plainsman Herald flying off the press.

“I guess that’s the luxury of private ownership,” Brooks told Simpson for the story. “I can flip-flop and do whatever I want if I’m willing to take the risk. So I guess I am.”

One of the challenges Brooks says he is still facing, according to the Sun piece, is how to provide “coverage of the nuts and bolts” of local government like town council, county commission, and school board meetings.

That’s a familiar refrain I’ve been hearing from editors in the sparsely populated rural counties on the Eastern Plains all year.

At the Colorado College Journalism Institute, we’re working on a project to learn what colleges and universities might be able to do to help — at least in Cheyenne County, which lost its local newspaper in 2022 and is now one of the growing number of 200-plus counties in the country designated as a news desert.

We hope to have more on that front in the new year.

Springs Indy tackles impact of thinly sourced ‘hoax’ story about Mayor Yemi and the FBI

An anonymously sourced story about the mayor of Colorado Springs published by a national conservative media company has riled city politics and led local media unable to match its salacious accusations from an alleged “FBI official.”

Reporter Noel Black of the Colorado Springs Independent dedicated the bi-weekly newspaper’s cover story to trying to make sense of it all.

At issue is a federal indictment of a handful of supporters of Yemi Mobolade, who the feds accuse of a staged pre-election hoax that included a burning cross next to a Mobolade sign and a racial slur. Authorities said one of the suspects messaged Mobolade before and after the incident made the news and also spoke with him on the phone for five minutes.

Here’s an excerpt from Black’s story, headlined “Mayor explicitly denies lying to the FBI: A closer look at the hate crime hoax, FBI investigation, and the conservative media blitz that have engulfed City Hall”:

On Nov. 21, The Daily Wire, an openly conservative online news source based in Washington, D.C. published an article by Luke Rosiak titled “Mayor Lied In Hate Crime Hoax Probe But DOJ Refused To Charge Him, FBI Official Says.” The article, which cites a single unnamed “FBI official,” alleges that Mayor Mobolade was aware of, and lied to the FBI about, a racially charged incident during the mayoral run-off race with Wayne Williams on April 23, 2023.

…

Before anyone can blink, the story has spread across the world. African media outlets have falsely announced on Twitter/X that the mayor is not only under indictment for lying to the FBI, but he’s in jail!

If it all sounds like the now-proverbial “fake news,” well … let’s unwind things and talk about why the reporting raises even more questions than the allegations it makes against Colorado Springs Mayor Yemi Mobolade.

“While the allegations against Mobolade, if true, would be damning, Rosiak’s article and its spinoffs are problematic,” Black wrote.

Then, he ran down a list of reasons why. Black also included questions that remain about the story. (He also quoted me in it.)

Here’s another excerpt:

None of this adds up to anything definitive one way or the other, and none of this is to say that Luke Rosiak is wrong, or that he’s lying about his source. But in the new choose-your-own-adventure online media landscape where people tend to favor news sources that confirm their biases, Rosiak’s article offers up a BINGO card of current conservative talking points without covering all the squares.

Regardless, local public officials in the Springs and outside of the city acted on the Daily Wire story, relying on it to make hay and criticize the mayor.

Local news outlets in the Springs that you’d expect have reporters who are deeply sourced couldn’t independently corroborate the Daily Wire’s allegations. Still, they took bites at the story and republished what the Wire alleged.

Reporting in the Gazette, Brennen Kauffman wrote for context, “The Daily Wire is a conservative-leaning publication that has been criticized by factcheckers for sometimes publishing unverified accounts.”

A story by Andrea Chalfin and Megan Verlee for KRCC reported, “KRCC and CPR News have been unable to independently verify or refute any of the article’s claims.”

For his part, Black says he reached out to the Daily Wire writer whom he researched and described as having “demonstrated a loose relationship with the facts in his previous reporting.” He offered to verify his source and maintain that source’s anonymity, but didn’t hear back.

Playing the role of authenticator and sense-maker will likely become increasingly necessary for local journalists. Read the whole piece for how Black sought to play that role in Colorado Springs here.

Hickenlooper’s Music Tourism Act could benefit (*checks notes*) two Colorado newspaper owners

A proposed new federal law whose sponsor says would “support and increase music tourism for both domestic and international visitors” could benefit the bottom lines of two newspaper owners in Colorado.

The bipartisan American Music Tourism Act, championed by Colorado Democratic U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper and co-sponsored by Republican U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, this week passed the U.S. Senate.

“Colorado’s vibrant music scene attracts artists and fans from around the world,” Hickenlooper said in a news release posted to his official government website. “Our bipartisan bill will help our local music venues thrive and expand.”

Two of Colorado’s wealthy newspaper owners stand to benefit. And both of them recently got involved in music venue projects that are looking to thrive and expand.

Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz, who owns the Gazette in Colorado Springs and Denver along with the Colorado Politics publication, also owns Anschutz Entertainment Group, known as AEG, the massive national live entertainment booking company.

Meanwhile, Colorado Springs businessman JW Roth, the new co-owner of the Colorado Springs Independent bi-weekly newspaper, is the founder and CEO of VENU, a new company that is building a network of outdoor amphitheaters in cities across the country.

Hickenlooper’s communications director, Anthony Rivera-Rodriguez, said via email that no one who worked on the legislation met with or heard from either Anschutz or VENU and wasn’t aware of any other outreach from them.

In November, VENU went live on the New York Stock Exchange as a publicly traded company. The company is behind the recently built Ford Amphitheater in Colorado Springs.

When it opened this summer, the Ford Amphitheater booked big-name acts and drew crowds to its picturesque location against the backdrop of Tava peak and adjacent mountains. The venue also became the source of “widespread noise complaints” by neighbors who showed up to City Hall and vented their frustration.

This summer, The Independent newspaper put the Ford Amphitheater on its cover with a story that profiled Roth’s vision for “20 more facilities planned over the next six years.” An accompanying column by Editor Ben Trollinger addressed the conflict of having an owner at the center of a major controversial local news story.

Newspaper owners Anschutz and Roth are not competing on the live-music front.

Roth’s Ford Amphitheater “struck a deal” with Anschutz’s AEG in 2023, according to reporter Pam Zubeck, who wrote that AEG would book acts and operate the day-to-day operations. “Anytime you can do business with an Anschutz company, it’s an honor,” Roth said in a news release at the time.

If Hickenlooper’s bill passes the U.S. House and Democratic President Joe Biden signs it, the law would direct the Commerce Department to implement a plan to boost music tourism nationwide. The new law would also require the department to report to Congress about its “efforts to promote travel and tourism.”

In other words, it could be a good time to be in the American live-music biz.

Roth’s VENU went public at the end of last month, less than two weeks before the American Music Tourism Act passed the U.S. Senate.

The Gazette reported at the time that the company “began offering 1.2 million shares of its common stock for an initial offering of $10 per share, for gross proceeds of about $12 million.” (The online version of the story carries this editor’s note: “This article has been updated to include a disclosure about the connection between The Gazette and AEG Presents.”)

It should go without saying that better balance sheets for companies that own news organizations could in theory mean more support and sustainability for local news.

🔎 Sponsored | Spotlight: Colorado | Colorado Media Project 🔍

Colorado Media Project believes our democracy works best when the public has transparency into powerful institutions. That’s why accountability journalism is so important to our civic infrastructure. We chose to sponsor this section of Corey’s newsletter to showcase some of the important watchdog work Colorado journalists and their news organizations have been producing recently. Corey chose which ones to spotlight.

Recent impactful local accountability coverage

• On Election Day, Colorado voters overwhelmingly cast their ballots in favor of changing the state’s constitution to create a new board that will hear ethics complaints against state judges. The vote follows five years of investigative reporting by David Migoya, beginning at the Denver Post and continuing at the Denver Gazette as recently as this week, that exposed a culture of secrecy and unaccountability in the state’s judicial disciplinary system.

• An investigative series by Colorado Public Radio reporter Ben Markus called “Cash for Caring” revealed millions of dollars have flowed to Denver organizations “that have little or no experience in mental health and drug treatment services.” Since the first installment came online on Dec. 2, policymakers have already promised changes — though Denver “needs time to assess exactly what those changes will be.” The year-long project at CPR News “found that while grants went to some of the city’s most established mental health and drug treatment providers, tax money was also given to companies with no history or license to provide behavioral healthcare, and to some companies run by individuals with lengthy criminal histories.”

• Last month, Sam Tabachnik of the Denver Post exposed how over the past year, at least seven young people who were in Colorado youth detention centers were hospitalized following overdose-related emergency calls — “including three teens who required life-saving naloxone at a Colorado Springs facility on the same day over the summer.” When the Colorado Department of Human Services relied on child privacy laws to refuse to provide the reporter with information he requested about the incidents, Tabachnik “surveyed fire departments in cities with youth services centers” to compile the figures.

To submit a local accountability story for consideration in the future, send me an email. If you or your organization would like to sponsor a recurring newsletter section like this, hit me up.

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➡️ As a new 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. We’re making plans for a regional conference next spring. And 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. ⬅️

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More Colorado media odds & ends

📉 Results from a poll in last week’s newsletter (if the 60 people who responded were indeed all Colorado journalists) show 36% said they were “reading but not posting” on Twitter/X, while 31% said they were “long gone.” Another way to read this, noted Eric Anderson of the SE2 agency in Denver, is that “Half have left X” and roughly “86% are gone or passively monitoring.”

⚖️ “People who sue state and local government entities are still entitled to get public records from those entities by using the Colorado Open Records Act, a majority of the Colorado Supreme Court ruled Monday,” Jeff Roberts reported at the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition. “In an amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court last January, the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado and the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition supported a litigant’s right to use CORA.”

☀️ Each year, Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab asks what it calls “some of the smartest people in journalism and media what they think is coming in the next 12 months” and publishes their predictions. One of them this year is Larry Ryckman, publisher of the nonprofit Colorado Sun. “News organizations that emphasize quality over quantity will stand apart from the aggregators and wire-heavy sites that lack a connection and relevancy in people’s lives,” he predicted for 2025. He added: “Contraction will be accompanied by more collaboration across platforms.”

📱 Local Colorado news organizations seeking new revenue streams could follow outlets like the New York Times by providing games to their audiences. The Colorado News Collaborative, or COLab, is working with a company called News Games to bring newsrooms their own Wordle-like game based on their own content. An artificial intelligence tool can read the site’s articles and automatically generate word games based on them. “We want to figure out ways to create revenue around it,” COLab executive director Laura Frank said on a Zoom call with newsrooms.

💡 Free idea: If your local news organization is running a local police blotter, how about a public defender blotter? Ask the local public defender’s office for a roundup and narratives of recent arrests and accusations that turned out incorrect or fell apart under scrutiny. If you’re consistently running versions of events only from police officers, why not from officers of the court who are tasked with challenging the actions of police?

⛅️ Colorado Democratic Congresswoman Yadira Caraveo took to the floor of the U.S. House this week to honor Mike Nelson, who is retiring from Denver7 as the station’s chief meteorologist. “From his early days at WeatherCentral to pioneering the use of computer-weather graphics, Mike has been a trailblazer in his field,” she said in part. One particularly notable thing she didn’t mention is how Nelson used his long career to “take on climate change.”

❌ Last week’s item about Boulder Weekly incorrectly reported the paper prints 110,000 copies per week. (That would be a big deal.) The paper’s editor says the 110,000 figure is its monthly audience reach, per an audit.

💨 Chris Leppek has retired after 47 years at the Intermountain Jewish News. For the past 34 years, he served as assistant editor of the Denver-based publication. “What truly stands out in Leppek’s journalistic career is his uncanny ability to interview, investigate, verify and deftly write news and feature stories on the widest range of subjects and developments in the Jewish world,” read a send-up and Q-and-A with him earlier this month. “And, on top of that, Leppek is not Jewish.”

🙏 Thanks to the Climate Democracy Initiative for an engaging dinner in Denver this week that brought local journalists together with those working on issues involving misinformation, disinformation, climate, and democracy.

🆕 “A new publisher takes over at the Denver publication as its founder finds he can step away after three decades,” Greg Avery reported for the Denver Business Journal about Charity Huff taking over 5280 magazine from Daniel Brogan.

🤝 Staff at the Boulder Weekly alternative weekly newspaper are looking to convert the publication to an employee-owned newsroom.

I’m Corey Hutchins, manager of the Colorado College Journalism Institute and a board member of the state Society of Professional Journalists chapter. 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, where I’m an advisor, 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.