Colorado joins national Press Forward local news campaign

The news behind the news this week

Feb 23, 2024

This week, a cluster of Colorado foundations announced they have joined a national fundraising campaign to galvanize support for local news.

The nationwide movement is called Press Forward, which already had chapters in six states. The effort launched last fall, led by the MacArthur Foundation and a network of roughly two dozen big-money organizations. Together they want to raise $1 billion over the next three years to “catalyze a local news renaissance.”

Colorado Media Project, which underwrites this newsletter, is taking a lead on the local initiative here. From the announcement:

The Colorado Health Foundation, The Colorado Trust, Gates Family Foundation, The Gill Foundation, and Rose Community Foundation have stepped forward to lead Press Forward Colorado as a local affiliate of the nationwide Press Forward initiative. Most of these foundations have been pooling funds since 2020 through the Colorado Media Project, a community-informed philanthropic initiative launched in 2018 and housed at Rose. As the “home” of Press Forward Colorado, CMP will expand its efforts to introduce more place-based funders to the value of investing in local journalism.

Colorado this week joined several other states in a cohort linking with the national campaign.

Colorado Media Project said three organizations have made or plan to make financial commitments to help fuel CMP’s next phase. They are: Colorado Health Foundation, to the tune of $900,000, Gates Family Foundation for $900,000, and Democracy Fund for $800,000.

Here are some more nuggets from the announcement, which came during an annual gathering in Miami called the Knight Media Forum:

“Press Forward Colorado leaders aim to build on this momentum throughout 2024 and beyond, seeking new commitments from peers across the state — either by contributing to CMP’s pooled funds, making grants directly to vital statewide and community-based newsrooms across Colorado, or via aligned funding to support ‘big bet’ initiatives and transformational change.”
“Press Forward offers Locals a suite of support to help them succeed. For example, the initiative also announced Wednesday that Press Forward Locals can now apply up to $250,000 in Catalyst Funds to accelerate local work. In addition, the national Press Forward Pooled Fund will have multiple open calls through 2024, with the first opening in April, in one or more Press Forward priority areas.”

Co-chairing the effort in Colorado are Taryn Fort, senior director of communications for the Colorado Health Foundation, and Melissa Davis, CMP director and vice president for informed communities at the Denver-based Gates Family Foundation.

“In Colorado and beyond, more funders and policymakers are recognizing that for community members to be engaged in solving the most important challenges facing our communities — from public education to healthcare, from affordable housing to wealth building, from water sustainability to climate resiliency — they need reliable access to verifiable, trustworthy, independent sources of credible information,” Fort said in a statement. “Through Press Forward Colorado, we aim to expand the tent for community-based and statewide funders to make a positive impact in our communities, by joining forces to support a healthier and more inclusive ecosystem of trusted local news and civic information providers.”

Read the full announcement here.

As the advertising model for local news has collapsed, siphoned off by large tech companies, philanthropic funding has moved in to fill gaps and support sustainability. Some might be skeptical about it.

Colorado journalist Kevin J. Jones, who has served as a senior staff writer for Catholic News Agency, called this new local fundraising development “important news for local news.” But, he added, “as someone who has dived into some of these grantmakers’ priorities, I’ll have questions about how they influence coverage in the media ecosystem.”

It’s always prudent for people to take into consideration who is funding news and information they consume, including what you read here.

In 2022, when Corona Insights surveyed Coloradans about how they wanted to see state and local news funded, 18% said “funded through philanthropic and community organizations” while 36% said “funded through advertising.” Moreover, 16% said news “should be free to access and funded by the government.”

Notably, researchers also found Coloradans of color, Spanish speakers, and younger residents “were all less likely than others to rank the advertising model first” and were “all more likely to rank the government funded model first.”

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Colorado journalists ding lawmaker bills about already 'shitty' public records laws

Some Colorado journalists and editorial boards this week criticized legislation lawmakers introduced that would put up more barriers between government and public access to information.

One bill, according to Ben Markus of Colorado Public Radio, would “add substantial new restrictions to who can access public records.” The proposed new bipartisan law would “create a new category to delay the release of records to Coloradans deemed too nosy about how government works.”

From CPR News:

[Democratic] State Rep. Cathy Kipp’s bill, HB24-1296, would, among other things, allow state and local governments to label someone a “vexatious requester” and deny them access to public records for 30 days. Republican Rep. Matt Soper of Delta and State Senator Janice Marchman, a Loveland Democrat, signed on as co-sponsors.
A vexatious requester would be defined as someone who “demonstrates an intent to annoy or harass.” There are several factors records custodians can consider in determining whether someone is vexatious, like the “subject matter of requests” or “unreasonable burden.” …
First Amendment attorney Steve Zansberg, who represents news media organizations including CPR News, said the bill does nothing to advance transparency.
“This is a bill that is moving backwards, and putting up hurdles for ordinary citizens, and to some extent members of the press, in obtaining access to government-held but public records,” said Zansberg. “And our view is anyone who seeks to move backwards and to make matters worse as this bill does there's the burden of coming forward with documented proof of the need to do so, and I haven’t heard or seen any such documented proof here.”

On TV, 9NEWS journalists Kyle Clark and Marshall Zelinger seized on the word “vexatious” — and also noted that journalists would be exempt.

“This is tricky business,” Clark said in a broadcast this week. “If they’re going to say, well, journalists, you can be as persistent and annoying as you want because we know your job has societal value, but just because somebody else is a citizen journalist or isn’t getting paid for it, somehow they’re vexatious? That’s tricky.”

According to the story in CPR News, Kipp, the bill’s sponsor, “met with businesses and news media organizations, including representatives of Colorado Public Radio, as she prepared the bill.” She told CPR that “news organizations objected to these new CORA restrictions, so she created carveouts for news media from the provisions restricting vexatious requesters.”

“I’m not at all trying to put barriers in front of news media,” the lawmaker said in the story. “We're just trying to make it easier for people, for agencies to comply with the law.”

On social media, CPR’s Markus said he personally uses public records frequently as a reporter, “and Colorado is the toughest state I’ve ever worked in to obtain documents and data.” He complained of “massive fees,” “recalcitrant” local governments, and records-holders weaseling out of transparency by claiming “privilege.”

Already, “public record laws in Colorado are so shitty,” said Denver Post reporter Elise Schmelzer, that just this week she received documents from the Aurora police that she had requested in June of last year. (In the meantime, her beat at the paper had already changed from covering law enforcement to climate and the environment.) “Shame on anyone who tries to make it harder for the public to access the records that belong to us,” Schmelzer said on social media.

The Sentinel Colorado editorial board ripped the bill in an editorial. “Enacting these measures would enable government fraud and deceit to withdraw into the shadows and thrive,” it read in part.

But if that new CORA bill wasn’t enough, a separate proposed new law from Democratic leaders would keep even more of what lawmakers do secret. The law would exempt members of the General Assembly from our transparency Sunshine Law.

From Luige Del Puerto in Colorado Politics:

The proposal introduced by House Speaker Julie McCluskie and Senate President Steve Fenberg would change the laws so that written communication, “electronic or otherwise,” that is exchanged between members of the General Assembly is not subject to open meetings laws.
In addition, the bill would redefine “public business” to not apply to matters that are “by nature interpersonal, administrative, or logistical or that concern personnel, planning, process, training, or operations, as long as the merits or substance of matters that are expressly defined as being public business are not discussed.”
First Amendment attorney Steve Zansberg, president of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition, said the proposal, in essence, “completely exempts the General Assembly, and all its constituent committees, from the open meetings law.”

The “sweeping exemptions” only apply to members of the state legislature, Del Puerto reported, “not to other policymaking bodies such as a city council or county commission.”

The proposal led to “stout opposition” in a committee hearing this Wednesday, according to the Denver Post editorial board, and even included “a little name-calling.”

As written, the bill “would exempt too much of lawmakers’ work from public scrutiny,” the editorial opined.

Students revived the print edition of the Clarion at the University of Denver

Following four years running their campus newspaper as a digital-only product, students at the University of Denver are once again printing physical copies.

“It was a disappointing fact to not have a student newspaper in print. That was something that we had had in high school,” Editor Aubrey Cox told Kyle Cooke of Rocky Mountain PBS. “And it's kind of a historic tradition that we wanted to reignite.”

Recent Colorado accountability coverage

Julia Cardi and Chris Osher this week won a prestigious George Polk state reporting award for journalism they produced at the Gazette that exposed “the heartbreaking consequences of a family court system that relied on the advice of unqualified and incompetent parental evaluators to return young children to abusive fathers, leading to four deaths in a two-month period. Their reporting has led to changes in state law curbing the use of such discredited theories as ‘parental alienation’ in determining custody and has prompted an ongoing criminal investigation by the Colorado Attorney General’s Office.” (Cardi is now a reporter for Detroit News.)
Relying on documents obtained via the Colorado Open Records Act, reporter Jennifer Brown of the Colorado Sun revealed the state is currently “under a corrective action plan with the federal government” because of how slow it has been in processing applications for food assistance.
9NEWS consumer investigator Steve Staeger reported that many survivors of the 2021 Marshall Fire in Boulder were having trouble getting what they are owed from mortgage companies. “In one week, Steve On Your Side was able to help two Marshall Fire survivors get a total of more than half a million dollars being held by their mortgage companies,” he reported. In one of the cases, all it took was “one call from #SteveOnYourSide and a check for $465,000 is headed his way.”
Rachel Gabel, an assistant editor at the Fence Post agricultural news outlet, has been scrutinizing the rollout of the state government’s reintroduction of wolves to Colorado. She reported that two of them “come from depredating packs in Oregon,” and more.
While Colorado had enough money to stop landlords from evicting 1,500 renters last year, Colorado Sun reporter Brian Eason revealed the administration of Democratic Gov. Jared Polis told renters not to apply.

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.

Colorado lawmakers take on social media companies with proposed new laws

At the Capitol in Denver, members of the General Assembly have Big Tech in their sights. Lawmakers are “taking the most significant steps ever to rein in social media,” reported Shaun Boyd for CBS Colorado.

Here’s how, according to Denver7 reporters Deb Stanley, Adria Iraheta, and Katie Parkins:

One of the bills is called “Healthier Social Media Use by Youth.” HB24-1136 would require the Colorado Department of Education to “create and maintain a resource bank of evidence-based, research-based, and promising program materials and curricula pertaining to the mental health impacts of social media use by children and teens,” the bill description said. It would also require pop-up warnings urging children and teenagers who’ve been on an app for more than an hour to close it after 10 p.m. …
The second bill - introduced last week — would require a company to post published policies for each of its social media platforms and submit reports to the state attorney’s general office.

A list of exactly what the companies would have to provide is long, and you can find it at the link above.

Two lawmakers behind the proposed new laws co-wrote an opinion column in the Denver Post this week headlined “If Congress won’t act, Colorado can regulate harmful social media.”

If you or someone you know might have a problem with social media, University of Colorado professors Annie Margaret and Nicholas Hunkins wrote this week in The Conversation about how a four-week intervention can significantly reduce “social media addiction for those who started with problematic or clinical levels of social media addiction.”

More Colorado media odds and ends

➡️ On April 13, the Colorado Association of Black Journalists will host its regional conference in Denver for the National Association of Black Journalists at Auraria Higher Education Center. “NABJ family from Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming will gather to uplift one another as we unite to advance diversity in journalism and communications through innovative programming and networking activities,” the organization said. Get involved here.

🏔 Ouray County Plaindealer co-owner Erin McIntyre wrote a personal column this week about grudges, small-town “close to the bone journalism,” and “being human.” The column includes a dishy conversation at the Denver Press Club. (Is one of the unnamed “veteran newspapermen” involved an ethical editor or a boozy brontosaurus?)

📰 Kyle Cooke of Rocky Mountain PBS wrote about an Epoch Times billboard in Denver: “Despite its claims, the Epoch Times is not the most-trusted news outlet by any official measure. The outlet has a mysterious ownership structure, has elevated conspiracy theories and employed suspicious marketing strategies that saw them banned from advertising on Facebook.”

⚙️ Former Pueblo PULP founder John Rodriguez said on social media at the end of the month he’ll be starting a job as community relations director for the Town of Taos, New Mexico. “Ever since the pandemic I wanted to do impactful work [but] also live in an art community and this opportunity presented itself,” he said. “So starting soon, I’ll be doing communications, community relations and tourism for the historic town.”

🙏 Thanks to Sarah Stonbely at the State of Local News Project for linking this newsletter in this week’s article “Wealthier, urban Americans have access to more local news – while roughly half of US counties have only one outlet or less.”

📊 Ad Fontes Media, founded by Colorado-based Vanessa Otero, “is launching a new platform with a mission of persuading advertisers to return to news,” Semafor’s Max Tani reported this week.

🆕 ICYMI: Two local developers bought the Indy alternative weekly and the Colorado Springs Business Journal. (In headlines, news outlets described two locals behind the purchase as “businessmen,” “investors,” and “developers.” Who do you think wore it better?)

📡 Kyle Fredrickson reported in the Denver Gazette this week that players for major Denver sports teams are “paying attention” to a longstanding TV blackout caused by a dispute between Comcast and Altitude TV. “The sports media distribution landscape is rapidly evolving with a universal decline of the regional sports network (RSN) model,” he wrote.

🗣 “Antisemitic trolls test the limits of free speech at city council meetings — with Lakewood the latest target,” John Aguilar reported in the Denver Post this week. “Lakewood became the latest municipality in Colorado to be barraged by a group that coordinates call-ins to city council meetings across the country. Its members use the anonymity of remote participation and the protection of the First Amendment to unleash hateful words on an unsuspecting audience.”

👀 “I hope that we do not have to witness the Millionaires vs. the Billionaires influence in our local media ecosystem,” wrote Lyn Ettinger-Harwell in the Pikes Peak Bulletin this week about the purchase of the Springs Indy alt-weekly and Business Journal.

⚙️ The nonprofit digital newsroom Boulder Reporting Lab is hiring a full-time reporter and newsletter writer to “ramp up” its “daily news coverage in the City of Boulder and surrounding communities” and help write its flagship newsletter BRL Today. Pay is $50,000.

⚖️ A Ridgway business owner “who stole nearly 200 copies of the Ouray County Plaindealer from racks in Ridgway and Ouray last month pleaded guilty to a civil infraction last week and was fined $150,” the newspaper reported. The Plaindealer is also hiring an assistant editor/reporter.

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.

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