Colorado local news is at a 'crossroads,' finds new report

The news behind the news in Colorado this week

Jun 13, 2024

Funding for Colorado newsrooms isn’t secure, burnout and shortages are affecting staff, and keeping up with journalistic best practices while maintaining quality is a struggle.

That’s the assessment from a report called “State of News: Colorado” by the Colorado News Collaborative, better known as COLab, with contributions from the Colorado Press Association and Colorado Media Project, which underwrites this newsletter.

These acute challenges are roiling newsrooms even before pending moves by tech companies could drastically destabilize digital reach and advertising revenue at local news outlets that base their funding strategies on web traffic.

Meanwhile, according to their own account, a topic covered the very least at the state’s local news organizations is workers’ rights.

This first-of-its-kind 20-page report on Colorado is informed by answers to a statewide survey to media outlets across the state last fall. The Colorado News Survey was in the field in October and November.

There are some big caveats to the data. COLab sent the survey to 307 newsrooms, and 93 of them answered — so about 30%. Notably, commercial TV is completely unrepresented, which is a shame because it’s still the place where a lot of people get their local news. And because Colorado Community Media responded, that means its string of roughly two dozen suburban newspapers account for roughly a quarter of the respondent data. (The list of responding outlets appears at the bottom of the report, and my sense after looking at it is that it’s largely made of up newsrooms that are fairly active in the COLab/CMP space.)

Some shards of sunshine did pierce the doom and gloom.

Half the responding newsrooms said “they plan to grow their staff this year, while only 5% plan reductions.”

Still, the other half that shared financial information in the 2023 survey “said their revenue decreased in 2022 compared to the previous year,” the report found. (One in five newsrooms said they increased staff while one in eight stayed the same. Seventeen of them declined to answer.)

The survey came with more than 50 questions and 5,000 data points, and “asked about business structures, challenges, distribution, diversity and finances for 2022,” the report states. “Our intention is for State of News: Colorado to be a baseline for local newsrooms to compare their experiences with each other and with news outlets nationwide.”

“Of the responding outlets, 11 executives of color lead a combined 35 newsrooms,” the Colorado survey found. (One person, the publisher of Colorado Community Media, represents roughly two dozen newsrooms out of that 35 figure.)

Here are some more nuggets from the full report, which calls itself “the most comprehensive, detailed look at Colorado media yet”:

“Nearly half the journalists who once covered Colorado news are gone. And the rest are exhausted. Local news outlets are struggling.”
“Colorado is recognized as a leader in the rebirth of local news, with perhaps the most cooperative news ecosystem in the nation. For example, diverse media serving underrepresented communities here are leading the way in testing new collaborative approaches to both content and revenue, and teaching others as they go.”
“…most local news outlets in Colorado are very small. They have only a few people producing journalistic stories and they have even fewer who are responsible for raising revenue and managing operations.”
Print-first outlets were “much more likely than digital-first outlets to face budget cuts.”
“Two-thirds of staff at responding outlets are white, 14% are Latino, 8% are Black and 5% are multiracial.”
“Fifty-four responding newsrooms have a newsletter, reaching nearly 1.6 million people in total, ranging from 135 to more than 700,000, averaging just under 30,000, with a median of 3,000.”

The survey also asked frank questions about the finances of Colorado’s newsrooms. This excerpt reveals the importance of doing so, emphasis mine:

Analyzing how for-profit and nonprofit news outlets budgets compared to their previous year finds some differences. Nearly half of locally owned for-profit news outlets saw decreases in their budgets. Among these Colorado small businesses and sole proprietorships, barely one in 10 saw an increase in budgets year-over-year. But one in three held steady financially.
When it comes to nonprofits, about a quarter who shared financial information saw budget cuts. But another quarter grew their budgets year-over-year. Seven percent stayed the same.
These data will inevitably raise questions about where support organizations like COLab or journalism funders should put their resources. Does this show a need to help locally- owned small businesses and sole proprietorships or [is it] evidence that investments should go to newer, digital nonprofits?
There will be many opinions. American Journalism Project, which has raised $168 million in funding nationally, has decided to invest solely in nonprofits and has helped 48 of them since launching in 2019. Press Forward, the newly announced effort to raise half a billion dollars for local journalism, is leaving the question largely up to individual funders. Closer to home, Colorado Media Project, which became home to a Press Forward local affiliate this year, has long funded both nonprofit and for-profit media, if the for-profit entities are locally owned.

When it comes to coverage, the survey asked the 93 newsrooms to name their top five coverage topics. Here they are in order with the answers averaged and categorized:

1.) Arts & Culture 2.) K-12 Education 3.) Rural Communities 4.) Government 5.) Environment & Climate. Dead last on the full list was worker’s rights.

Here’s how that list looks when the survey asked news outlets that primarily serve communities of color: 1.) Arts & Culture 2.) Health & Medicine 3.) Government 4.) K-12 Education 5.) Economic Development

“Colorado has a rich heritage and robust future when it comes to media serving communities of color, from the 50-year-old Spanish language La Voz newspaper to the two-year-old Alamosa Citizen serving the largely Hispanic San Luis Valley,” the report states.

The report also notes how new changes from Google could tank traffic to local news sites when the tech company begins to spit out AI-generated summaries when people search instead of providing links to news sources. “The rollout threatens the survival of the millions of creators and publishers who rely on the service for traffic,” Gerrit De Vynck and Cat Zakrzewski reported for the Washington Post last month.

In Colorado, AI is a “threat and opportunity to news outlets’ connection with communities,” the “State of News: Colorado” report found, and news leaders told the researchers they are already feeling its effect.

“In this shifting landscape, engagement with local communities becomes even more critical,” the report states. Here’s more:

As direct pathways to audiences narrow due to technological changes, news outlets must build and maintain strong relationships with their communities to highlight the value of reliable local news. This involves not just being a source of news but also actively and visibly participating in and contributing to the community. Engaging the community can take many forms, such as hosting local events, forums, or town halls (virtually or in-person), providing educational resources, and collaborating with local organizations and businesses.
The focus on community engagement serves multiple purposes: it underscores the role of the news outlet as a vital part of the community fabric, encourages direct support through subscriptions or donations, and fosters a loyal audience that values the outlet’s contribution to their community’s well-being. It shifts the value proposition from mere content delivery to being an indispensable community asset.

The latest Colorado research paper concludes by saying Colorado’s local news scene is at a crossroads:

This report offers insights into the headwinds that face a free press in Colorado – and beyond – and a look at some of the collaborative actions that are addressing those headwinds. There is much still to learn and much work to be done.
In navigating the future, Colorado's newsrooms stand at a crossroads of challenge and opportunity. By embracing innovation, fostering inclusivity, and reinforcing bonds with the community, we can chart a course toward a vibrant future for journalism. As we do, news outlets will not only secure their own sustainability but also fortify the pillars of democracy they are intended to uphold.
Together, with the collective effort of the entire ecosystem, Colorado can continue to lead in the rebirth of local news, ensuring well-informed, engaged, and vibrant communities across our state.

Read the full report here.

☁️ This week’s newsletter is supported in part by the Regional Air Quality Council, the Front Range’s lead air quality planning organization. They are a great resource for reporters and others in media who cover the science, policy, and progress on local air quality issues, especially the Front Range’s biggest challenge in the summer: colorless, odorless ground-level ozone. June through August are usually the worst months each year for this invisible pollutant in Colorado, so if you’re working on any timely air quality stories, email David Sabados, Communications, Programs, and Government Affairs Director (dsabados@raqc.org) to learn more about the RAQC’s work and how they can be a reporting resource. ☁️

Colorado Media Project: Newsrooms need capacity and sustainability

For the past five years, Colorado Media Project, which underwrites this newsletter, has been a funder, catalyst, and advocate for independent local news as a public good by “investing in capacity-building for Colorado’s newsrooms at the organizational and ecosystem levels.”

This past week, as COLab’s released its “State of News: Colorado” assessment, CMP published what it called a “sobering new report” by Impact Architects that conducted an external evaluation of CMP’s grant-making over the years.

From the CMP announcement:

In the Impact Architects report, you can see an external perspective on capacity-building approaches that are working well for Colorado newsrooms and should be emulated, others that are just beginning to show promise, and even efforts we have funded that have struggled to show clear impact. (This analysis complements a 2023 external evaluation of CMP’s impact through the lens of our three priority areas: equity and inclusion, trusted local news, and sustainability and efficiency.)
As a learning organization dedicated to transparency, CMP publishes these studies to support the continued evolution of the field — both in Colorado and nationwide, through our role as the home of Press Forward Colorado. We strongly believe that Press Forward chapters and the communities they serve across the U.S. can learn from Colorado’s bright spots, as well as our common challenges.

Some key takeaways from the 20-page report:

“Almost half of the 57 newsrooms identified staffing as a major issue, with 10.5% specifically noting challenges with editorial staffing and 5.3% highlighting issues related to backend staffing. Even the largest newsrooms identified staffing as a pressing challenge.”
“Many open-ended responses that referred to staffing challenges described high levels of burnout, teams that were stretched thin, and difficulty keeping up with the news in their community given the size of their staff.”
“In interviews, newsrooms noted that member support for public radio is eroding and that it’s often hard to attract new donors for public media.”

One anecdote describes how diminished reporting capacity might distort the reality of “what life is like” in a community:

One publisher described how newsroom staff has shrunk to one third of its original size as the service area's population has grown 60%, saying that it is exhausting for one or two editors to keep up with the volume of content and it is also potentially detrimental to reporting and the community because its capacity is limited to covering crises:
“We are so short handed that we end up being caught up in this rapid of news cycles and coverage . . . So we look at the cover from week to week to week [in] print, and what's on the website. It just looks like it is constant crisis here, and that's really not representative of what life is like.”

Here’s a snapshot about newsroom economics:

On the operations side, organizations have increased payroll costs in order to maintain a high quality product and pay a living wage — which is necessary to keep talent and ensure a healthy workforce pipeline — but that puts additional pressure on leadership to increase revenue, threatening burnout among leadership and risking the existence of the operation overall.

Here’s one line of the report that jumped out at me: “Colorado appears to be ready for intervention rather than more diagnosis.”

To that end, Impact Architects offered some recommendations. One of them includes this: “Leverage CPA’s existing involvement in state lobbying to become familiar with the available state support for small businesses, make the case for its applicability to news and information providers, and give newsrooms the tools they need to access the support.”

Alongside the report, Impact Architects created a searchable newsroom resource database that includes nearly 50 Colorado-based and national organizations to help newsrooms and journalists “find services that meet a wide range of needs.”

Colorado Media Project stated that this summer it is convening a working group of “Colorado media ecosystem leaders and a diverse, cross-sector steering committee to develop scenarios and a roadmap” that leverages strategies encouraged in the report to help achieve “our shared five-year vision.”

The Northern Colorado Deliberative Journalism Project has expanded

Two years ago, this newsletter reported how a “deliberative journalism” movement was taking root in Northern Colorado.

The initiative is a collaboration between Colorado State University’s Center for Public Deliberation and the Coloradoan newspaper in Fort Collins with support from the American Press Institute.

This week, Martín Carcasson, who directs the center, published an essay for the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation with some insights about what he’s learned so far.

Here’s an excerpt:

The collaborative project now involves multiple CSU departments, local media outlets, the local public library district, and community organizations such as the League of Women Voters, all focused on reimagining local journalism by infusing it with insights from deliberative practice. The primary motivation for the DJP was the need to build capacity in communities for better conversations and collaborative problem-solving, but we also quickly recognized that we could take on the crisis in democracy while also addressing the crisis in local journalism. Our belief is as local news outlets build up their deliberative toolkits, communities will see the renewed value of local journalism and step up to support them.
For the last year and a half, we have experimented with the concept of deliberative journalism. We have hosted several online community gatherings to discuss the idea and hear what residents want from local journalism, we have held webinars on issues such as addressing misinformation, and hosted deliberative forums on topics such as “reimagining local journalism.” The CSU Journalism and Media Communication department developed a Deliberative Journalism class to specifically support the project, along with other classes that have specific assignments connected to the project.

The “most significant” development for the Northern Colorado Deliberative Journalism Project so far, Carcasson added, has been helping the Coloradoan relaunch its opinion page.

Read the full essay at the link above.

Colorado-based ‘Trusted Sources’ documentary is complete

Independent Colorado filmmaker Don Colacino has finished his documentary “Trusted Sources” that while national in scope features plenty of Colorado players.

Jenn White, host of “The 1A” show on NPR, narrates the film that addresses the “top reasons why people mistrust the news and shows how they can identify trustworthy sources,” Colacino said over email this week.

More Colorado media odds & ends

🕌 This newsletter is in out-of-the-country mode, meaning content might be lighter than usual and I might not be as quick to respond to emails, voicemails, or DMs.

📺 Tim Ryan is retiring as the executive news director at Denver’s NBC affiliate, also known as 9NEWS or KUSA. He said he will be teaching a history class at Denver’s Metropolitan State University in the fall and will explore projects. “Journalism requires a lot of sacrifice,” he said. Ryan has been the “moral compass” of 9NEWS, “our ethical guide,” one anchor said. “And when powerful people tried to influence our journalism, tried to control what you see and hear at home, it was Tim who stood tall for your right to know. What Tim Ryan did to protect accountability journalism and to preserve Coloradans right to know was not easy. If it was, every news leader in America would do it. We’re in good hands going forward, just not in Tim Ryan’s hands.”

📫 The Pueblo Chieftain, owned by the nation’s largest newspaper chain, the hedge-fundy Gannett, is “transitioning to postal delivery,” the paper’s editor announced this week. Wither the paper carrier?

🎵 Colorado Springs Indy editor Ben Trollinger said that last week’s Facebook item calling the newspaper owner’s unfinished amphitheater development project “beloved” was posted by the paper’s digital marketing manager who is not a member of the editorial department and who also added a line reading “Get ready to witness history in the making at the all-new Ford Amphitheater” to a reporter’s story about the venue. “That should have never happened,” Trollinger said, adding that it wasn’t written or approved by anyone in the newsroom and “we are taking steps to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again.” The editor said the paper’s aim was “to ensure our coverage was not preferential to one of the co-owners of Pikes Peak Media Company.”

🎙 Colorado Public Radio is “developing a new podcast with daily news that fits your schedule and won’t stress you out.” And the broadcaster is asking its audience to help develop it. Find out how here.

🪧 The National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians and Communications Workers of America labor union said it was protesting outside the KDVR and KWGN TV stations in Denver on June 7, saying, “we refuse to accept corporate indifference to our rights and fair treatment. It's time for Nexstar Corporation to acknowledge our legitimate concerns and engage in meaningful negotiations.”

📱 Eli Pariser, the co-director at New_ Public, is looking for “community stewards” who oversee online groups that share local information and is seeking to identify “who might be good partners here — either from a funding or implementation perspective” and “who else we should be talking to and what you think additional important interventions could be.”

🗣 Last week’s newsletter item about the national response to Kyle Clark’s debate moderating skills at Denver’s 9NEWS led to an Axios Denver piece by Alayna Alvarez. “I hope the attention on our 9NEWS debate encourages other journalists to lean into that kind of accountability journalism,” Clark told her. “We need a lot more of it.”

🚜 In a Complete Colorado column, Cory Gaines, a Northeastern Junior College math and physics instructor who lives in Sterling, interviewed feed lot operators to understand some perspective he felt was missing from a Colorado Sun explainer about how environmentalists are “trying to force Colorado to get tough on factory farms.”

➡️ Writing in Columbia Journalism Review, Maddy Crowell reported that The Lever, the investigative reporting site founded by Denver’s David Sirota, “stands apart” from a cluster of left-leaning media organizations she profiled because “its attention is mainly on corporations and the people who run them.”

🎬 Last week, Colorado Democratic Gov. Jared Polis signed a new law that “expands a tax incentive credit for film, TV and commercial productions that want to shoot in Colorado,” Parker Yamasaki and Tamara Chuang reported for the Colorado Sun. “The bill allocates $5 million per year over the next four years to spend on refundable tax credits for productions filming in Colorado.”

📰 Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, who is now running in a different district, and with the backing of Donald Trump very well might win, said on a local talk-radio show that she believes the “the media” does a “great job of dehumanizing me.”

📈 The maximum research-and-retrieval rate under Colorado’s Open Records Act “will jump to $41.37/hour on July 1, letting state and local government entities in Colorado charge up to 23.2 percent more to process requests for public records,” Jeff Roberts reported for the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition.

🆕 Gus Richardson, “who will be going into his senior year at Roaring Fork High School, had a grin spread from ear to ear as he explained how he became involved in journalism,” the Sopris Sun reported in a piece about the nonprofit newspaper’s Youth Journalism Program.

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.

SocraticGadfly

1. Colorado is not as American Indian-heavy as, say, New Mexico, but in the racial-ethnic breakout, is there a listing of American Indian journalists, not just a lumping under "people of color" or something? Guess even the full report doesn't tell us. Kind of a #fail on that.

2. Yes, "wither" the carrier would be exactly correct in Pueblo, Corey. (You may have meant "whither"?)

3. Eh, meh of sorts on Sirota from where I stand. He's a #BlueAnon political creature among other things, and of course, his wife is an elected Blue Anon. (On corporate hot takes, I follow Capital and Main. Or The Nation. Or Counterpunch!) That said, I did my "duopoly exit" long long ago on other domestic issues in addition to corporate malfeasance, and on foreign policy.

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Allison Gustavson

I just saw that (was in the middle when I posted that!) and came to delete my premature comment lol! But you are FAST! :) this is such great, important work. I’m not sure how I ended up on this list but read with much interest and gratitude!

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