Colorado journalism demystified in new documentary 'Truth Be Told'

The news behind the news in Colorado

A new documentary aired this week that follows multiple Colorado journalists as they produce their work for a newspaper, a digital site, on the radio, and on local TV.

The film is part of a project called “Free Press, Free Country” that’s been rolling out across the state. The goal is to help educate people about the importance of the First Amendment and a free and independent press.

The 49-minute documentary aired on Denver’s 9NEWS this Sunday.

Filmmaker Brian Malone of Malone Media Group and Fast Forward Films traveled the state to spend time in local print, digital, radio, and TV newsrooms.

The film takes a fly-on-the-wall approach as it follows 9NEWS reporter Marshall Zelinger, Tami Graham of KSUT Tribal Radio, Bazi Kanani of Colorado Public Radio, 9NEWS visual storyteller Byron Reed, Jason Blevins of the Colorado Sun, and husband-and-wife team Mike Wiggins and Erin McIntyre who own and run the Ouray County Plaindealer newspaper.

Here are some moments that stuck out to me:

• In one part, Zelinger interviews a Douglas County commissioner and then explains why he couldn’t use much of the footage. It’s not that the camera wasn’t working or the microphone zonked out. It’s because the reporter didn’t believe what the elected official said was factually accurate and he made a decision not to put it on air.

• “I didn’t get into this business to be the guy covering the topics that might put me at risk, I got into the business to cover sports,” Zelinger said at another point. “And then it converted into I’m in this business because I’m really good at simplifying really hard-to-understand topics in a fun, visually compelling way, and I enjoy what I do every day. But sometimes when I’m asking a tough question to somebody, I have to tell them ‘You’re wrong.’ Journalists can say ‘You’re wrong. That’s a lie. That’s not true.’”

• “We’re out here fighting every day, competing against the bloggers, the TikTok people, the Instagram,” Reed said at one point. “And I just want people to know that we will continue to do that.”

• “The Plaindealer prides itself on not being a tourism newspaper,” Wiggins said about the small Western Slope broadsheet. “We are not a Chamber of Commerce newspaper, we are not a public relations newspaper. We are serious about covering the people and events and news happening here in Ouray County. And there’s a lot.” (This was the paper that made international news when someone stole copies from around town after it reported on sexual assault allegations that allegedly took place at a police chief’s home while he slept.)

• McIntyre quoted a friend calling what she and her husband do “close-to-the-bone” journalism. “Because there’s really no wiggle room, right?” McIntyre said. “You might hang out with someone socially at a public event or something but if they get arrested for murder next week, you are writing about them. That’s it. And there’s really no one else to pass it off to. Is it hard to make friends when you are the co-publisher, co-owner, co-editor, co-janitor of a newspaper in a small community? Yes.” (She said people who have been welcoming and understand the newspaper owners are doing their job outweigh the haters each week.)

Now that the documentary is out, Malone is partnering with the Colorado News Collaborative on a screening tour in communities across the state. Q-and-As featuring local journalists will follow the showings.

Following the Sunday documentary airing, 9NEWS anchor Kyle Clark led a 30-minute panel discussion of journalists and their advocates.

During one part of the discussion about media fluency, Clark posed this notable question: “Are journalists the right people to be leading the charge on news literacy, or has the opinion of our work and our profession so eroded that somebody else should do it?”

One panelist, Judy Muller, said educators, particularly at the early level, are in a good position to teach it in the classroom.

“It can be so easy to get caught up in the challenges to journalism or the impediments to journalism,” Clark said toward the end of the discussion. “And we forget sometimes to talk about not just how essential it is, but how it’s righteous good fun.”

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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 will be working to combat disinformation and misinformation, and helping nonprofits build media literacy.

• Read our post titled “Getting in the News in a Changing Media Landscape” that includes five concrete steps that changemakers can take to build influence through local media.

Recently, 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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After ‘considerable deliberation,’ CBS Colorado protects identity of DoBetterDNVR creator

CBS Colorado political reporter Shaun Boyd might know who is behind the anonymous and controversial social media account DoBetterDNVR that’s run by a self-described citizen journalist.

But Boyd and the station decided to keep hidden the account manager’s identity after “considerable deliberation,” she said on the air this week.

“Her critics say she hides her identity to avoid accountability for what she posts online,” Boyd said in a Nov. 11 segment that lasted more than seven minutes. “She told me she’s concerned for her safety, especially with the recent rise in political violence.”

In the segment, a woman whose voice appears distorted in the audio talks to the reporter during an outdoor interview while the camera shows only her shadow on the grass.

DoBetterDNVR is an anonymously run social media account that has gained popularity in recent years by posting photos and videos of people who were experiencing homelessness in Denver and allegedly doing drugs in public, among other things.

“The posts are often inflammatory, and the information presented is sometimes false, with tidbits of fact mixed with rumor, speculation and misinformation,” the Denver Post found in an extensive review of the account’s postings this summer. The Denver Post’s top editor has said the account pushes misinformation, including about the paper’s reporting.

In August, Denver Post reporter Shelly Bradbury unmasked three women who had contributed content to DoBetterDNVR. The paper declined an interview with someone who said she ran the account who had wanted to remain anonymous for the story. One of the account’s contributors who was identified in the story later said she felt the paper “doxxed” her.

Last February, the alternative weekly Westword also granted anonymity to someone who said in phone calls and emails with reporter Chris Perez that she was the founder of DoBetterDNVR. This summer, the Denver Gazette similarly made the decision to allow columnist Jimmy Sengenberger to protect the purported account creator’s anonymity.

The Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics states journalists should consider a source’s motives before promising anonymity and reserve it “for sources who may face danger, retribution or other harm, and have information that cannot be obtained elsewhere.” The code urges journalists to “explain why anonymity was granted” and to “balance the public’s need for information against potential harm or discomfort.”

It will be interesting to see if another news organization in Denver makes a different decision than Westword, the Gazette, or CBS Colorado if a reporter learns the identity of the alleged creator. (There’s a running bet in the Inside the News in Colorado office about whether that might happen before or after someone unmasks the anonymous donor to Colorado Public Radio who paid at least $8.3 million for its new building more than two years ago.)

If an outlet does decide to handle a DoBetterDNVR disclosure differently, it should be transparent about why and thoughtfully explain the decision-making process to its audience.

On CBS Colorado this week, Boyd said the alleged creator told her she had considered running for public office but feels she can have more impact running DoBetterDNVR. She said she has seen her posts have impact on city government. She also said she has modified her behavior after criticism and regrets some posts she has made.

Here’s more of how Boyd described the alleged creator:

She will tell you she’s not your typical dissident. She’s unaffiliated, she says, has never been politically active, and didn’t set out to be an activist. “Do Better Denver,” she says, was born out of frustration with a city that she felt had become numb to human suffering. … She says she’s lived in Denver for more than 20 years and doesn’t recognize the city anymore. The videos -- submitted by her followers -- show people lying on sidewalks, openly using drugs, and experiencing mental breakdowns in public.

Her critics accuse her of exploiting people at the lowest point in their lives. “I don’t think that documenting reality is exploiting people. My videos are meant as a call to action out of complacency,” she said.

She says she manages the account while working a full-time job and spends at least 20 hours a week posting videos and hundreds of dollars on criminal records. … She admits she is considering moving out of the city even though she says she has always loved it. She says Denver is so dominated by progressive voices and policies that there’s little room left for other perspectives.

That DoBetterDNVR might have chosen Boyd at CBS Colorado for the scoop might not surprise some close Denver TV watchers.

In 2021, former Republican Congressman Mike Coffman, who became the mayor of Aurora, invited Boyd to exclusively report on him going “undercover” as a homeless person for a week.

The station’s decision to play along and its subsequent coverage caused some controversy at the time, as this latest exclusive might as well.

‘Colorado Matters’ goes to J-school(s)

Twice this month, Colorado Public Radio host Ryan Warner took his statewide Colorado Matters interview show on the road to journalism schools.

The first was at Colorado State University in Fort Collins for a Nov. 3 episode he taped from a class called Media Writing 210.

There, Warner interviewed students about why they wanted to get into public service and where they get their news.

“Students entering the classroom for Master Instructor Steve Weiss’s 9 a.m. newswriting lecture were greeted by cords, microphones and the sound of troubleshooting communication,” Maiya Kreamer reported for the campus newspaper the Rocky Mountain Collegian.

Then, this week, Warner aired a show he taped at Front Range Community College in Westminster where students in a “Writing the News” class of mine at Colorado College met with students in professor Aaron Leff’s media classes at Front Range.

For that episode, I appeared on a panel along with former Denver Post Editor Greg Moore and Jeff Roberts, who runs the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition.

Warner asked us what we lose as a state and nation if we lose faith in the press, why we believe trust in news media is so low, and more.

At one point, all three of us said we are open to or support the idea of more public-sector support to financially bolster local journalism.

“After being trained to think differently my entire career, I believe in taxpayer-supported journalism,” Moore said at one point. “I really do. And I don’t think that the worries that have been expressed about public support for journalism are really valid.”

He added that it would be foolish to think that when corporations were supporting journalism they weren’t also trying to influence it. “They were trying to do it all the time,” he said. “They were always twisting doorknobs.”

“I think that we will figure out ways that there are guardrails so that there’s not undue influence from elected officials, from people who hold taxpayer purses, to influence journalism, but just like taxpayers support public campaigns for elected officials, we should be able to have a checkoff on our tax returns to support, you know, journalism that’s in the public interest.”

Listen here to the 50-minute episode titled “Trust Matters: A community conversation about record-low levels of trust in the press.”

Limon Leader newspaper turns out the lights

Rocky Mountain PBS reporter Cormac McCrimmon was in Limon, Colorado not long ago to cover the final day of the Limon Leader local newspaper.

Unlike other newspapers on the Eastern Plains that are closing because of financial problems, Publisher Catherine Thurston, who wants to retire, has a different problem.

“We’re making money, but I can’t find anybody to do the reporting,” she said in the story. “I can’t find anyone to replace me.”

Here’s more from RMPBS:

“The Leader” is one of six newspapers in Colorado’s Eastern Plains that have closed since July. The closure leaves Lincoln County, population 5,600, without a designated news source, according to the Colorado News Mapping Project.

Indeed, the Leader’s disappearance creates yet another “news desert” in Colorado where a county does not have a newspaper or other source of consistent reliable news and information.

Lincoln County follows Cheyenne County, which became a news desert after the Range Ledger closed in 2022.

The Leader’s closing exacerbates a troubling trend of newspaper closures this year on our state’s rural Eastern Plains.

Here’s another excerpt from RMPBS about what it means for Lincoln County:

Alison Arnold, who runs Veterans for A Better Community, a nonprofit based in Limon, worries that without a newspaper, community members will have a harder time separating fact from fiction.

“The rumor mill be milling,” said Arnold.

Right now, “there’s a rumor about another foodbank here in town that may or may not have lost their funding. Who knows what the truth is. It’s like a telephone game,” said Arnold. “At least if it was from the newspaper, we know Cat’s done her homework.”

Local Facebook groups, like Lincoln County Swap Shop, have begun to replace the newspaper as a source for sharing neighborhood information, like upcoming yard sales and announcements, said Limon library director Katie Zipperer. But she said it’s much less common to find updates from town meetings on social media.

“We have a lot of people that like to complain because things change, and they don’t know about it. Now, there’s going to be even less information,” said Zipperer.

Limon resident Michael Kopp, 80, thinks the closure will have the largest effect on seniors, many of whom he said are not on social media.

Read the whole story at the link above.

Kyle Clark and his ‘Next’ team pitched to lead CBS News

As we get closer to an unfortunate media consolidation deal that would see FOX31 taking over 9NEWS in Denver, some are wondering what might happen to the latter’s most visible news anchor.

Stacey Woelfel, a veteran TV news hand who spent 35 years on the faculty the Missouri School of Journalism, has an idea.

CBS Evening News should hire Kyle Clark to remake the program, he said.

Here’s what Woelfel wrote in a Substack post about what he’d do if he were the boss at CBS:

I’ve left the flagship news broadcast for nearly last, though that doesn’t mean I don’t have big changes in mind there, too. The network evening news—on all the networks—has devolved to a point that it serves no purpose, as far as I can tell, other than as a carrier for pharmaceutical advertising. Why not remake the program into something that will once again be important for informed people to see? I’d have CBS reach outside the company for this one, offering Kyle Clark and his team at Denver’s KUSA-TV (a TEGNA powerhouse) whatever it takes to get them to jump ship and bring their innovative newscast to the network. If you’re unfamiliar with Mr. Clark’s work, I urge you to take a look at his daily 6 pm newscast, entitled Next with Kyle Clark. Clark and his team are reinventing local TV news, actually making it valuable to viewers. Clark tells it like it is, which means no both sides-isms; instead, he calls out those who deserved to be called out no matter where they are on the political spectrum. Getting Clark on the network (or someone else able to do something similar) would breathe new life into a tired, yet still important news daypart.

Selfishly, I hope the team can stay in Colorado, but I recognize the national vision here.

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More Colorado media odds & ends

⚖️ A federal court has paused a Colorado law that requires social media companies to “warn young users about the potential harms of being on their sites,” Bente Birkeland reported for Colorado Capitol News Alliance. “The court said the law likely violates the First Amendment.”

💰 Suzie Glassman, an education reporter for the Colorado Trust for Local News, recently won a $10,000 grant from the National Trust for Local News for its Innovation Sprint project “to develop interactive journalism tools for decision-based stories,” she said. “The project creates templates that let readers step into decision-makers’ shoes by experiencing budget tradeoffs, zoning decisions, or policy choices firsthand rather than just reading about them. Think of it as choose-your-own-adventure meets civic journalism.”

📂 Colorado Newsline reporter Chase Woodruff pointed out on BlueSky how Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein might have been in Aspen together in the early 1990s.

🎒 Colorado Mesa University’s annual Media Innovation Day “brought nearly 200 high school and college students together to explore multimedia storytelling through hands-on workshops and professional insights,” the school wrote this week.

🎙 A recent Colorado College graduate, Evelyn Baher-Murphy, “has put their degree to use by producing a six-part podcast, Lifeblood: Glen Canyon, Lake Powell, and the Future of the Colorado River,” Julia Fennell wrote for the college. “Using the skills I learned in Radio Journalism to research an important environmental issue in the Southwest was truly a dream combination of some of my favorite coursework at Colorado College,” Evelyn Baher-Murphy said.

💨 “As I reflect on my career, I realize working for the Chieftain is something I have done longer than being a mother, a wife, or a student,” wrote Tracy Harmon in a goodbye retirement column for the Pueblo newspaper earlier this fall. “It is such a big part of who I am, I don’t even know how I will function outside of the daily news grind.”

📲 9NEWS reporter Jeremy Jojola posts some compelling news content on his Instagram page. This week, he reported in vertical-video style about “why Adams County is paying a man $80,000 after a bad arrest.”

💪 Ari Armstrong wrote for Complete Colorado that he believes a censorship claim against History Colorado fails the “smell test.” The digital site is the news and commentary arm of the libertarian-leaning Independence Institute think tank.

🏈 The Denver Post is hiring a sports editor who it will pay $80,000 to $85,000. The person will “oversee a staff and sports section that have repeatedly earned national recognition for excellence” and the “ideal candidate knows how to set a strategy that works for both our digital and print readers.”

👊 The county involved in the 2023 raid of the small Marion County Record newspaper in neighboring Kansas “will pay a cumulative $3 million to three journalists and a city councilor,” Anna Kaminski reported for the Kansas Reflector. “In two of the four agreements, the Marion County Sheriff’s Office also crafted a statement admitting regret.”

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 nearly a decade, I 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. 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.