👀 Axios ... Boulder now?
The news behind the news in Colorado
Around the same time a well-known reporter and champion for the Boulder Daily Camera announced he will leave the newspaper, the national news outlet Axios said it is hiring a reporter to cover the city.
“There were a lot of factors that went into this decision, and I will probably elaborate down the road,” Camera reporter Mitchell Byars posted Dec. 18 on multiple social media platforms. “But just know it was not an easy decision.”
As for what he’ll do now, he said he is going to “take a bit of a mental and emotional break in Hawaii before deciding what is next.”
One potential opportunity will be available should he consider it.
“We are hiring a Reporter to cover the Boulder, Colo. area as part of our growing local news initiative, which is extending our mission to America’s hometowns,” the daily newsletter company Axios announced this week in an online job posting.
“This reporter will create a meaningful local presence in their market, getting readers smarter, faster on the news that matters to them,” the job listing reads. “This reporter will connect the dots between local, national, and global developments to make readers aware of the narratives shaping their lives.”
The job pays $65,000 to $100,000 and will be the first Axios reporter position in Colorado outside Denver since the daily newsletter company known for its trademark Smart Brevity style launched Axios Denver in 2021. (Byars, who said he put in his notice in November, called the timing of the job posting coincidental, and indicated he might consider applying.)
Timing of the Axios move into the Boulder market also comes just weeks after the Boulder Daily Camera moved its staff out of its building and into a small shared workplace half an hour away in Longmont.
The Camera is owned by the Alden Global Capital hedge fund, which is known for gutting its newspapers. Earlier this year, it closed two of its papers on the rural Eastern Plains.
Like a growing number of other cities and towns with a shrinking Alden-owned newspaper, Boulder has a digital news startup serving the community. Boulder Reporting Lab has operated there since 2021.
“We launched with the word ‘reporting’ in our name because we’re addressing this news crisis in our community by adding original reporting through a nonprofit newsroom,” Boulder Reporting Lab Founder Stacy Feldman said via email.
Here’s more from Feldman:
“That’s our focus — high-quality journalism driven entirely by a public service mission. And we did this despite the rise of corporate aggregators popping up everywhere, siphoning away local ad dollars. Our team lives in Boulder, we’re embedded in this community, and we’ve spent several years earning trust through consistent, impactful reporting. That’s what I’m always rooting for: more original journalism at the hyperlocal level. I just hope any new newsroom entering this market shares that same goal.”
When Axios Denver launched, Alayna Alvarez left Colorado Politics and John Frank left the Colorado Sun to run it. They told this newsletter at the time that they felt Denver’s news scene was too fragmented and they wanted to offer a one-stop-shop that ties it all together in a way that’s respectful of a reader’s time.
“Welcome to Denver, worksheet journalism,” joked the Denver Post’s Jon Murray at the time. “I kid...sometimes it works, and they certainly deliver plenty of scoops on the national level.”
Since then, the daily newsletter has become an addiction for many — including for its local scoops — and counts more than 100,000 subscribers. The team later expanded to include reporter Esteban Hernandez who left Denverite to join.
Some journalists have grumbled about the model’s approach to aggregating content. “Axios: We pay for newspaper subscriptions so you don’t have to,” I’ve heard one Colorado editor say. The site has also nudged at least one Colorado publication to rethink what it puts behind a digital paywall so Axios Denver will cite its work more and send traffic its way. Axios Local might also benefit journalists in local newsrooms that base their pay on commensurate reporter salaries in a city.
While Denver was one of the first handful of cities for the Axios Local initiative, the company has moved into several more since then. A look at where shows they are not in news deserts where more original local reporting is needed. Rather, they pop up in cities that have plenty of local reporting to feed from and also have attractive advertising markets. (Think Boston, Seattle, Houston, the Twin Cities, and Atlanta.)
NewsBreak, another digital site that tried out local news aggregation supplemented with original local reporting, once said it would look at moving into news deserts, but they probably quickly found it wasn’t a money maker. (NewsBreak last year shut down an original local news experiment in Denver.)
Axios, the news organization named after the Greek word for “worthy,” has not been immune to disruptions upending the rest of the media business. In August, the company laid off 50 people — about 10% of its staff — citing shifts in audience attention and behavior.
At the time, CEO Jim VandeHei said audiences were “scattering across social, podcasts, individual creators and influencers, partisan websites and more,” and added that the rise of AI summaries contributed to create “the most difficult moment for media in our lifetime.”
For the past three years, the Axios Denver team has traveled to Colorado Springs to teach students in my “Inbox Journalism” newsletter-writing class about the Smart Brevity style and to let them help with the following day’s newsletter.
“The whole idea of Axios’ ‘Smart Brevity’ stood out to me in its practicality to convey important information concisely,” one student wrote after their most recent visit. “I recognized the importance of respecting readers by making each word count,” wrote another.
For my part, I’m surprised Axios chose Boulder over the Springs, which is larger and lacking on the digital news front. I wonder what the development says about the advertising market more than anything else.
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‘I still have hope,’ says reporter Charles Ashby as he retires after nearly 50 years
After 47 years in the newspaper business, many of them spent covering government in Colorado, Charles Ashby is retiring at the end of the year.
The 64-year-old reporter served stints at papers in Montrose, Boulder, Durango, and Pueblo, and spent the past 15 years at the Sentinel in Grand Junction.
When he started, the paper printed almost every day with a staff three times the size that it is now; it currently prints twice a week.
“As I write in my farewell column, the one thing at least is that I win my bet with my late father,” Ashby said over the phone this week. “He said I would never get a career out of it in newspapers, they wouldn’t exist by the time you get done.”
A hard-nosed reporter described by some as a curmudgeon — his social media handle is OldNewsMan — he is a well-known statehouse denizen and served as dean of the Capitol Press Corps.
“I got into the business because I wanted to inform people about their elected officials and the policies they approve so that they can make the proper decisions,” he said about what drew him to the profession.
As he sets to depart, I caught up with him to talk about journalism and Colorado politics. What follows are excerpts from our conversation, edited for length and clarity.
What is it about covering politics that you like? You’ve done it for so long.
I don’t.
I like covering the policy of the legislature, not the politics. The policy was always more useful to people. Politics was the same. Different faces, different names, but the same. It was not exciting. The same BS. Doesn’t matter what party it was.
There were issues they wanted to fix but they wouldn’t fix … because they wanted the voters to vote for them. The first rule of a politician is to get elected and the second rule is to get re-elected. That’s all they care about.
There are always exceptions. There are some lawmakers, Republican and Democrat, that I’ve run across over the years who actually truly cared about getting something done. A lot of them left elected office because they couldn’t stand the politics. Those are the better ones.
What I liked was … being able to figure out what the policy meant for people and how it impacted voters — and the politics be damned.
I understand why people have term limits. When you get somebody who’s in an office too long, they get lazy or they get corrupt. There’s a solution to that — which is journalism. And people voting them out of office. Sometimes it feels like I did little good, and then I look at it and say ‘You know, there were some politicians whose careers I’ve destroyed because of the things that they did.’ And I was happy about that. I considered it a public service.
Without journalism, you can’t get that done.
How have you understood the purpose of journalism throughout your career and to what extent has that changed, if ever?
I don’t think it has changed. The goals that I started with are the same goals that I have now. I still have hope that if people are properly informed then they can make proper decisions.
One thing I do bemoan is that technology has made that harder. It’s easier for people to put out falsehoods on purpose in order to fool voters, or sometimes even the media. And the media sometimes forgets its own role and needs to stick to what is factual, what is real, and not what is entertaining.
Don’t take sides. Report both sides, critically sometimes — you have to point out when something is said that’s a falsehood. Live fact-checking you have to do, and just keep at it. My only motive is to let them know what the hell’s going on.
What was the first biggest technological advancement you recall and then what was the last?
The very first was the electric typewriter, probably in the mid-’70s. The first job I ever had, I worked on a manual typewriter.
I guess the latest that I actually like is my cell phone. I can do everything on it. I can record interviews, I can take notes as I’m recording those interviews, I can type my stories. I’ve done this many times in a pinch. I can do it all on my phone and that’s the one thing I’ve been waiting for since 1977.
Social media — I wish that would go away. People can put stuff on there anonymously and they can say anything they want including falsehoods. They make up stories just for the fun of it, and they don’t realize that people believe it. That makes (my job) harder. It’s increasingly difficult.
You’re ending your career as a newspaper reporter at a newspaper. What’s your prediction for how long the paper where you are now will be around or that people will rely on newspapers the way they currently do?
I think the paper will be around a little bit longer, it just won’t be on paper. It will be a much smaller staff and will be electronic.
I hope that Neil deGrasse Tyson’s prediction is true, that when AI gets to its full capacity and people are inundated with crap on the internet and on social media, that it will collapse on itself. And that people will then turn to legitimate journalists and properly vet them and not just believe what they see without knowing who wrote it or where it came from.
What was the deal with that poker game at the Capitol? Some reporters would play with lawmakers and some wouldn’t?
Getting to know lawmakers you cover — drinks on the table — to get to know them and let them get to know you, that’s how you build trust. That’s how you build sources.
The poker game goes back long before I got there. They used to play poker everywhere, all throughout the Capitol. I don’t know if they’re still doing the Speaker’s game anymore, but that was handed down Speaker to Speaker. They did it amongst themselves to have some sort of camaraderie and to be able to relax and just be people, and I thought that was always a great thing to do for them.
Occasionally, a member of the media would be invited.
For the media, it was no different than meeting them at Prohibition or City Grill or any of those places and just having a quiet drink with them, or to go to lunch. You’re not violating any ethics by doing that.
What’s a juicy story out of the Capitol that you don’t know was ever reported?
One story that’s not really juicy or newsworthy, but is just kind of funny. Years ago, all the media were in the same press room (at the Capitol). It was located up on the third floor just above where the Senate president’s office is. It’s all been redesigned now.
This happened before my time, maybe sometime in the ‘80s, maybe early ‘90s. There was an AP reporter named Carl Hilliard who covered the Capitol for 30-something years.
One of the things they would do, the media, was collect tin cans and give it to a homeless guy so he could make some money. In those days they didn’t have any kind of air conditioning in the building. Well, Carl got lazy one time when this guy came around and he was downstairs on the south steps and Carl said “Just hang on, I’ll throw down the bag of tin cans to you” — in a plastic garbage bag.
It was summertime, everybody had their windows open. So, he threw the bag out the window from the third story, but then a wind caught up and it blew the bag into the Senate president’s office. Ted Strickland was the president at the time, and he was at his desk. And so he got hammered with all of these cans.
It was a secret for years to not tell that story and no one would tell who had done it, and so Strickland in a way of punishing the press created that buildout area in the building and put the rest of (the press) in the closet on the third floor.
Do they still make reporters wear coats and ties on the floor when covering the Capitol? How do you feel about that?
I don’t have a problem with that. You should always dress the way your sources dress. If you cover courts then you should be wearing a suit and tie, if you cover sports then you can wear shorts. That’s just respect to the people you’re dealing with.
What encourages you about the Colorado press corps?
I think by and large, everybody’s doing a much better job — and there seems to be quite a number of people who are doing it. So, it’s not diminished like it was for a short time. It kind of came back.
Two college journalists reflect on impact they had at their high school newspaper
Two journalism students at the University of Colorado in Boulder are seeing impact from their high-school reporting a year after they graduated.
This week, police arrested an 18-year-old along with two minors who they say were involved in child exploitation.
Here’s how that connects to the two CU Boulder journalism students, according to reporter Michael Abeyta at CBS Colorado:
Last year Aiyana Fragoso and Carrie Ames were seniors at Rangeview High School in Aurora when they noticed their peers seemed to be captivated by a recently created Instagram account.
“It was insane. Our entire cafeteria, our commons, everybody's phone was out. Everybody was talking about it,” said Fragoso.
They say the account was posting sexually explicit pictures of Aurora teens. Back then, Ames and Fragoso were writing for the Rangeview Raider Review, their school's newspaper.
By the time they got to that period of their school day, the page had gained so many followers they knew they had to publish a story. “We were united that this is something that, like, is affecting all of us. This needs to be talked about,” said Ames. …
As the year wore on, the story died down and they graduated and went to college, both at CU Boulder. Then, this week there was a full circle moment.
“My journalism teacher in high school, he texted me and he was like, ‘Hey this story that you covered, they finally found somebody,’” said Fragoso.
“It kind of embodied for me, like, the importance of journalism. Like, how much ... one story can make so many people feel seen or basically can feel represented,” one of them said.
Read the whole story at the link above.
📬 You’re reading “Inside the News in Colorado,” a weekly newsletter about the news behind the news in one of the most interesting and innovative states for local news in the nation. You can find the entire archive for this newsletter here — so bookmark it in case Friday’s email ever slips through your inbox.
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Colorado Community Media hires Brooke Warner to transform its business
Brooke Warner, a veteran manager of chains of commercial newspapers and TV stations, will take the helm of a string of two-dozen nonprofit newspapers in the Denver suburbs.
From the announcement:
In this role, Warner will lead CCM’s continued transformation into a sustainable community news business. She comes to CCM with extensive experience in digital media, organizational transformation, and revenue growth. …
Prior to joining CCM, Warner served as general manager at Swift Communications in Nevada, where she managed a portfolio of 25 local media brands. She also was vice president of Draper Digital Media and WBOC-TV in Maryland, where she launched its first interactive division at one of the state’s largest television stations.
Colorado Community Media was a for-profit family run chain whose owners sold it in 2021 in a unique-in-the-nation deal to keep the newspapers in local hands that included the Colorado Sun.
The National Trust for Local News now solely runs the paper and recently bought a used printing press and relocated it to Denver to print CCM’s papers and others.
Prior to the printing press coming online last week, Colorado Community Media restructured its leadership team in the fall, laying off its editor and shifting Publisher Linda Shapley into the role of director of editorial and audience engagement.
“I’m thrilled to join Colorado Community Media. It has been my mission to help local news companies grow and thrive to meet the needs of readers, advertisers, and communities,” Warner said in a statement. “With the support of the National Trust, I’m excited to lead CCM’s continued development into a sustainable community news business for Colorado.”
➡️ 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. ⬅️
More Colorado media odds & ends
💰 Colorado Media Project, which underwrites this newsletter, has funding available for $1,500 grants to help newsrooms cover costs of public events through its Above the Noise Community Events fund. Find details here. “In-person community events are a powerful tool for building trust between newsrooms and the communities they serve,” the organization says.
🐺 📧 Colorado Parks and Wildlife “did not plan on telling Coloradans it was trying to capture wolves in Grand County until after the operation finished, according to emails 9NEWS Investigates obtained from CPW Director Jeff Davis,” reported Aaron Adelson for 9NEWS. “I am really seeing that due to a leak, we had to announce this in the middle of the operation when we weren’t able to share more details,” Davis emailed at 12:53 p.m. on Aug. 30.” But 9NEWS wasn’t able to obtain all the emails its reporter sought. “How did emails from less than four months ago disappear? CPW uses the Department of Natural Resources’ email retention policy, which empowers employees to decide what to ditch,” Adelson reported, which rankled at least one open-government advocate.
🗞 Anumita Kaur of the Washington Post picked up the story about the Plainsman Herald newspaper not disappearing from Baca County.
📲 “With platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat dominating the digital world, ensuring your child’s safety online has never been more critical,” wrote Madison Voorhies for Colorado Parent.
🪦 Former Daily Camera Opinion Editor Erika Stutzman Deakin died this week at 51 “after suffering a global anoxic brain injury,” Amy Bounds reported for the Camera. “Her family said she had battled alcohol dependence for more than a decade and, in recent years, suffered from end-stage liver disease,” she added. “Erika was … such [a] fierce and committed journalist as she worked her way from the business desk at the Camera to leading the features department,” Denver Post Managing Editor Matt Sebastian, who worked with her for more than a decade, said in the story. “But I always felt it was her elevation to editorial page editor — she literally became the voice of the newspaper — that took the fullest advantage of her talents. She was able to harness her sharpest opinions, and she had many, and shape them into commanding arguments about things in the Boulder community that really mattered to her, and, just as importantly, to our readers.”
🐦 A case for staying on Twitter/X: “As of now, many … agencies seem to still post regular and breaking news updates and releases on X, so that’s my main motivator for staying as of now,” one Colorado Springs TV journalist said via email. “Some of these agencies I notice even sometimes exclusively post updates on X.”
🖨 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.
💸 The Colorado Sun reported in its subscription-based Unaffiliated newsletter that Voters First, a group working on the failed Kent Thirty-backed Prop 131 ballot measure to re-do the way Colorado does elections, “paid Democratic political consultant Jason Bane, who runs the liberal blog Colorado Pols and is cohost of the ‘Get More Smarter’ podcast.” He “was paid $36,750 between Sept. 27 and Nov. 26. The payments were described as being for ‘outreach consulting.’”
📰 In Complete Colorado, the news and commentary arm of the libertarian-leaning Independence Institute, columnist Cory Gaines wrote that Chris Sorensen, the publisher of the Kiowa County Press newspaper, said he publishes content from the nonprofit Colorado Newsline as well as “the Center Square, which he considers conservative leaning, among others, and that he seeks counterpoint for any political lean in things [he] has chosen.”
🎭 “Today, Colorado theater companies rely mostly on subscriptions, word of mouth, the unreliable noise of social media — and, like a gift out of nowhere: OnStage Colorado, which has become a robust and essential online resource for local theatermakers and theatergoers alike to engage with all things local theater,” reported John Moore for the Denver Gazette. “It’s just so refreshing to have actual coverage and reviews from a site like OnStage Colorado,” actor and playwright Josh Hartwell said in the piece.
🌪 “When I heard that Denver meteorologist Mike Nelson was packing in the weather balloons and retiring after more than four decades in the business, I remembered a picture in my elementary school yearbook of an interview he gave me twenty years ago,” Bennito L. Kelty wrote for Westword. “Nelson was the weatherman on 9News for twenty years before moving over to Denver7 in 2004. In 2006, he came by my school, Polton Elementary in Aurora, to talk about jet streams, thunderstorms and other phenomena, and he even did his imitation of how a tornado forms, which he called ‘the tornado dance.’”
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.