Boulder Weekly journalists want to buy their paper and make it employee-owned

The news behind the news in Colorado

Dec 06, 2024

Staff at the alternative weekly newspaper in Boulder are looking to buy the publication and convert it to an employee-owned newsroom.

Boulder Weekly is currently running a fundraising campaign to explore its options as its founder and owner, Stewart Sallo, seeks to retire.

The free independent paper that has served the entire county for 30 years isn’t at risk of folding if employee ownership doesn’t pan out, says Editor Shay Castle, but those who work there are looking at a co-op model as an initial option. The paper isn’t even technically listed for sale, she said.

The paper has always been profitable, according to its former publisher, Fran Zankowski. He said this week that he had considered buying the weekly himself, but recently took a job as publisher of the Colorado Springs Independent.

Now, Castle and staff are working with the Denver-based nonprofit Rocky Mountain Employee Ownership Center on a feasibility analysis and valuation of the company to see what might be possible. To pay for that analysis, the staff launched its fundraising drive.

“It’s just the first step,” Castle said over the phone Wednesday. “It’s not guaranteed.”

From Boulder Weekly’s fundraising pitch:

By contributing to this fundraiser, you'll help us explore the financial and organizational requirements for transitioning from private ownership to employee and community ownership.
What does this mean for you? That’s to be determined, but ultimately, we’d like community members to have a seat at the table for business decisions: Share in our profits and decide where to reinvest any dividends, alongside Boulder Weekly staff.

In recent years, Colorado has seen a trend in news organizations converting to different business models. In many cases, that has meant a shift to nonprofit newspaper ownership.

The most recent convert, the Colorado Sun, also worked with the RMEOC on its transition. The Sun now operates as a “self-directed nonprofit,” meaning its workers vote to elect a board on which its employees can also serve along with community members.

Last year, when the Aurora Sentinel converted to a community ownership model, the weekly newspaper took inspiration from the Green Bay Packers where fans can own shares in the football team.

Boulder Weekly’s employee-owned model, if it comes to fruition, might look different as it would likely still be a for-profit company, but they’re looking at various potential structures. About a dozen people work for the paper.

Nathan Schneider, a media studies professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder who studies democratic ownership and governance for online platforms and media organizations, has written about the history of cooperative ownership. In one 2020 article, he noted how “journalism was among the formative industries for the practice of employee ownership in the United States.”

The upsides for a news outlet being owned by its workers, he said, are that it can offer protection from a hostile takeover and also enable the outlet to center its professional values around journalism. A downside might be that it could limit a news organization’s ability to raise cash infusions from outside investors.

Regardless, Boulder Weekly is in a good location to try and make it happen.

“Colorado has the best co-op laws in the country and the best co-op lawyers in the country,” Schneider said over the phone Thursday while attending a conference in New York City about employee ownership where he said Colorado was well-represented.

“There’s really no better place to do it, and do it flexibly,” he said, adding that he donated to the Boulder Weekly campaign and has been assisting in the effort.

In 2018, when Democratic Gov. Jared Polis first launched a campaign with what he called a “bold, progressive” platform, he said he wanted the state to become “first in the nation” for companies that share their profits with employees. His second campaign stop as a candidate for governor was at the employee-owned Save-A-Lot grocery store in Colorado Springs.

Since he has been governor, Polis created the Colorado Employee Ownership Commission and the Colorado Employee Ownership Office. The state provides programs, funding, and incentives for business owners to “understand, explore, and pursue” employee-owned business structures, according to his office.

Programs include scholarships, free courses, loan support, networking groups, and more, including a “first-in-the-nation” refundable income tax credit that can cover up to half of conversion costs. Lawmakers have also expanded the list of employee ownership models that can apply for tax credits.

“Since 2021, 69 Colorado companies have converted to Employee Ownership models,” Polis spokesperson Shelby Wieman said in an email. She called that a “significant increase” since the state launched its initiatives.

Ashley Ortiz, the technical assistance director of the Rocky Mountain Employee Ownership Center, has met with Boulder Weekly about its plans. She said there are essentially four well-defined pathways to employee ownership in Colorado and each company might choose a different route when it comes to structures.

“Depending on a company’s size and scale, that question will be answered differently,” she said in an interview this week. “When we talk about employee ownership at our level and the state level, we are talking about broad-based employee ownership.”

What that means is that a good number of the workers in a company will have ownership or an ownership opportunity. In the news business world, that’s what distinguishes “employee-owned” from a situation in which one person might buy and own a news organization, or, say, a couple who own a rural newspaper and also work for it.

That Boulder Weekly is still around and looking for a new ownership structure is impressive enough.

The past 10 years have essentially been the hospice-care decade for alternative free weeklies that served as punky counter-culture organs of the American underground in cities of a certain size since the 1960s.

“Alt-weeklies are obviously not doing well across the country,” Castle, the Boulder Weekly editor, said. “When you have owners retiring, who is going to take over is still kind of an unanswered question.”

Whether Boulder Weekly’s staff will be able to answer that for themselves remains to be seen. If you want to help, learn more here.

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A Denver entrepreneur just bought 5280 magazine. She ‘made a great pitch’

Charity Huff this week took over Denver’s award-winning 5280 magazine that Daniel Brogan founded 33 years ago and prints 55,000 issues each month.

“I’m excited to be a part of the transformation of 5280 into a multimedia brand that continues to build upon a passion for the city of Denver and communities throughout Colorado,” Huff said in a post on LinkedIn.

“Charity, an ad tech and niche media industry leader, will guide the magazine as publisher alongside Jessica LaRusso, who has been named editor-in-chief,” read a news release sent to media this week.

Museum exhibition highlights cruel local press coverage of Denver’s Chinatown

Those who visit History Colorado’s current exhibition about Denver’s onetime sizable Chinatown likely won’t miss how local media negatively portrayed the area.

“Recurring news stories used derogatory nicknames and other racist language to depict Chinatown as a dark and dangerous maze of alleyways teeming with opium (or hop) dens, gambling establishments, and brothels,” reads one narrative accompanying a photograph. “Prejudiced journalists writing about Chinatown contributed to the idea that only Chinese people created these problems.”

Moreover, in late October of 1880, when a mob nearly destroyed Denver’s Chinatown, it was “inflammatory newspaper articles” claiming that Chinese immigrants were taking American jobs that “fanned the flames of racism, and helped lead to an anti-Chinese riot.”

One exhibit, by K! Collective, is an artist’s rendering of “historic anti-Chinese articles from Rocky Mountain News Daily.”

Another, titled “Why don’t we know more about Denver’s Chinatown?,” has this to say (emphasis mine):

No Chinese newspapers were published in Denver, and the city’s mainstream newspapers often reported on Chinatown in ignorant and prejudiced ways. Inconsistent transliteration of names in official records made it harder to trace individual people and families over a hundred years ago. Even now, it is rare to find existing diaries or journals from Chinese people in Denver.
Academic researchers rarely focused on the history of Chinese people in the region until the 1960s. But members of Denver’s Chinese community have worked tirelessly for decades to maintain and pass down the memories of this once vibrant neighborhood.

The exhibit is called “Where is Denver’s Chinatown? Stories Remembered, Reclaimed, Reimagined,” and runs through Aug. 9, 2025.

Last year, members of Colorado’s Asian, South Asian, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander community told the Colorado News Collaborative they were “fighting to be seen” and had some recommendations for our contemporary local media.

Hello, Bluesky as Colorado journalists leave Twitter/X

Last summer, Elon Musk’s social media platform Twitter, a.k.a. X, was sputtering on fumes.

TweetDeck, a tool journalists use for newsgathering and reporting, as well as categorizing, searching, and identifying information, all but broke down. Elsewhere, users were complaining about seeing fewer tweets. Musk said he had implemented rate limits, which pushed people away from the platform.

And worse.

“Due to issues with Twitter rate limits, we are unable to access most tweets at this time,” the Twitter account for the National Weather Service’s Boulder and Denver office posted during one extreme weather situation. “Send reports to our other social media accounts or direct through our email/phone lines.”

Twitter/X’s troubles sent Colorado journalists (myself included) looking elsewhere, and many found Threads, which is owned by Meta, née Facebook.

Now, with Musk attached at the hip to Republican President-elect Donald Trump and the platform becoming a “MAGA megaphone,” as some have called it, scores of users, including journalists, are again jumping ship. (This time it’s for the rival Bluesky.)

The Guardian left Twitter/X, saying “the site’s coverage of the US presidential election had crystallised its decision.” The media reform organization Free Press bounced, saying the site “is now the premier platform for white supremacists and conspiracy theorists.” Europe’s largest journalism organization plans to quit publishing content as soon Trump assumes office, saying it can “no longer ethically participate in a social network that its owner has transformed into a machine of disinformation and propaganda.”

Closer to home, prominent Colorado Public Radio host Ryan Warner said last month he was “pausing” his presence on Twitter/X, as the site is now owned by someone he called a government official. “Ethical discussions underway with news leadership,” he added.

By contrast, Kyle Clark, the prominent Denver 9NEWS anchor, has continued to stay and post — even if it means publicly reacting to ghoulish remarks about his young daughter. This week, much of Clark’s X feed included posts of him politely responding to people asking why he hasn’t been fired, accusing him of being a CIA plant, suggesting someone “outlaw” him, and worse.

But even he is questioning that decision.

“X once was a useful tool for newsgathering and thoughtful conversations, but sadly that’s evaporated,” he said over email this week. “For now, I still use it to distribute our reporting. I wrestle with whether posting on X contributes financially to purveyors of hate and misinformation.”

The news anchor likened the platform to a bar that might fill up with “angry people wearing masks to hide their identities” as they shout “slurs and insults,” and he posited that at some point everyone else would leave.

“I imagine that’ll happen fairly soon with X if nothing changes,” added Clark, who is also active on Threads and Bluesky. “It’s just not an interesting or productive place to be anymore.”

For my part, I lost more than 500 followers since the election amid the mass X-odus, and engagement on my posts there have pretty much flatlined. I still pay $8 a month to use its TweetDeck service to find content for this newsletter and as someone who regularly invests in the S&P 500 I understand I’m already fairly compromised on the where-my-money-goes front.

I still keep TweetDeck open as a browser tab, and while I frequently scroll the app on my phone, I haven’t posted on the platform since Nov. 30. I can’t say if, when, or why I might start again. Like other Colorado journalists, I recently found Bluesky an encouraging alternative where I quickly gained followers, and I appreciate the user experience and category tabs.

So I’m curious…

Feel free to send an email about why you’re still there (or not) if you think it might interest other readers of this newsletter beyond what those have said above.

➡️ 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

🌺 The Steamboat Pilot is looking for a new editor since its owner, Ogden Newspapers, recruited Editor Eli Pace to run its Maui News sister paper in Hawaii. “It can be hard to make ends meet and I’ve certainly felt the squeeze on housing like so many others, but it’s also a magical place with its tight-knit bonds between its people and the environment,” he said of being a Colorado mountain town newspaper editor.

🌵 “Even with newsroom closures and consolidations nationwide, Colorado is largely without ‘news deserts’ as of now,” Alayna Alvarez wrote for Axios Denver. (Find a map that identifies where Colorado residents say they are getting their local news and information in each Colorado county here.)

⚖️ United States Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, who is from Colorado, has recused himself from a court case that could benefit the billionaire Colorado newspaper owner Philip Anschutz. Besides owning the Gazette in Colorado Springs and Denver and Colorado Politics, Anschutz also owns an oil and gas exploration company that filed a friend-of-the-court brief urging the justices to curtail an environmental regulation that his company must also “obey when developing wells on leased public land,” Charlie Savage reported in the New York Times. In 2017, the Times reported on Gorsuch’s “web of ties” to the “secretive” wealthy newspaper owner.

🪦 Dick Kreck, who Westword once named Denver’s “Best Gossip Columnist,” died this week at 83. That title came in response to Kreck, who who wrote for the Denver Post, telling “his entire readership that he thought Westword’s Best of Denver was getting a little, well, tired,” Westword Editor Patty Calhoun wrote in a remembrance. Her obit includes a “scene that would not be possible today” because of how much the newspaper business has changed. His death follows that of self-described Denver gossip columnist Bill Husted just a few weeks ago. The two once had a “very enthusiastic discussion” over who was the “biggest ‘hack’.”

🗞 The Denver Post is looking for a “well-rounded reporter to cover Denver city hall on its politics and public affairs team” and will pay $23.82 to $35.30 per hour. “This is a tight-knit, hardworking newsroom that values diversity and still packs a punch when it comes to Colorado journalism,” the paper’s Noelle Phillips said on social media.

📻 Jeff Bieri is retiring as the station manager of KRCC after 35 years at the local NPR station in Colorado Springs. “I couldn’t have wished for a better career,” he told a room full of friends and colleagues at the Southern Colorado Public Media Center on Tuesday.

🆕 Spencer Soicher is back in Colorado, having joined 9NEWS in Denver. The TV reporter previously worked at KRDO in Colorado Springs and for about a year at ABC 10News in San Diego.

❌ An item in last week’s newsletter incorrectly reported that four new journalists had been inducted into the Denver Press Club’s Hall of Fame. The caricature wall is not the same as the Hall of Fame, club president Marianne Goodland said. “The caricature wall salutes people who have made significant contributions to the Press Club through volunteer service. The Hall of Fame recognizes lifetime accomplishments in journalism and public relations.”

📰 The Left Hand Valley Courier newspaper in Niwot spotlighted two of the young people who make up its newsroom, Camryn Bell and Ryan Sullivan. “We are a diverse group of devoted journalists who feel strongly about keeping small town newspapers alive,” the paper wrote.

💲 “As we are independent from the university, raising money can often be a major challenge for our publication,” reads a plea from the CU Independent campus publication which is trying to send someone to cover the CU Buffs bowl game or playoff. (The state SPJ chapter gave to the campaign after voting on whether to do so.)

📺 Well-wishers were stopping by Denver7’s new building this week to see off Mike Nelson, the veteran weather caster who is hanging it up. “Although I retire in a week, I will always be a ‘weather-nut’!” he said on social media. “To my viewers, thank you for inviting me into your homes for all these years!”

🏈 University of Colorado football coach Deion Sanders offered “banned” Denver Post sportswriter Sean Keeler to shoot his shot at a recent press conference. “Give him the mic,” Sanders said, gesturing to Keeler as he took a final question. “Let’s go.” Keeler declined to say anything and Sanders looked incredulous. “God bless you,” he told the columnist, shaking his head and standing up to leave. “I was just trying to — it’s Thanksgiving, man. Going into the new year. Let’s start something new. You had your shot, now. Right? I did it. God bless you.” The development maintained “the tension that has simmered between the two,” Jason Jones wrote for Sports Illustrated.

🦃 🥃 ICYMI: Colorado media odds & ends — Holiday hangover edition.

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 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.

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