💥🍦Colorado media odds & ends — holiday weekend roundup edition
The news behind the news in Colorado
🏝 This week’s newsletter was produced in out-of-the-country mode with spotty internet — and it’s a holiday, anyway — so enjoy this in a different format.
🗞 HARD PRESSED: Amid a diminished local news landscape, some Colorado newspapers are “making a comeback,” Gary Shapiro reported for a special mini-documentary for 9NEWS in Denver. The 20-minute standalone feature, titled “Hard Pressed: Keeping Community Newspapers Alive,” aired over the weekend. Spotlighted in it are the Plainsman Herald newspaper in Baca County on the Eastern Plains, the nonprofit Pikes Peak Bulletin in Manitou Springs, and the Florence Reporter. Of course the feature includes a look at what is perhaps the last Linotype-produced newspaper in the country, the Saguache Crescent, run by the inimitable Dean Coombs in the San Luis Valley. “There are newspapers in Colorado that are surviving because of the hard work, creativity, and passion of the owners and publishers,” Shapiro reported. Earlier this summer, Shapiro, who retired from 9NEWS in 2022 after 40 years on the air and still does special projects, traveled to the Colorado College Journalism Institute office in the Springs to interview me for his TV special. Toward the end, he’d asked for something to keep an eye on in the future; I mentioned a potential appetite in the United States — or perhaps Colorado? — for more public support for local news. It’s nice to see a long-form commercial TV spotlight on the inner workings of a segment of our state’s local journalism scene. Watch the whole thing here.
📢 Attention Colorado-Based Journalists: A Networking Event Just For You. Grasslands is bringing back its popular COLORADO JOURNALIST MEET-UP on July 11, creating a fun space for all active Colorado members of the media to eat, drink, learn, network, and reconnect with their media communities. This COLORADO JOURNALIST MEET-UP is free and open to all active members of the media, from 5 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., Thursday, July 11, 2024 at Grasslands, 100 Santa Fe Drive (in Denver's Baker neighborhood).
This Meet-Up will include sushi bites, beer and wine — and a high-level panel conversation titled “State of the Local Media: Colorado Journalism in an Important Election Year.” Confirmed panelists are Denver Post Editor-in-Chief Lee Ann Colacioppo, Colorado Public Radio Executive Editor Kevin Dale, Colorado Sun Senior Editor Dana Coffield, CBS Colorado-KCNC President and General Manager Tim Wieland, and Corey Hutchins from this newsletter Inside the News in Colorado, all moderated by Grasslands CEO Ricardo Baca (ex-Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News, and Daily Beast).
All full-time and freelance Colorado journalists are welcome at this Meet-Up, so please forward this to your colleagues. (Note: In keeping with the spirit of this Meet-Up, our non-media friends are not invited and will not be granted entry.) RSVP for the COLORADO JOURNALIST MEET-UP via a quick email to caseyechols@mygrasslands.com.
We look forward to the conversations, connections and community-building on July 11. The COLORADO JOURNALIST MEET-UP is proudly hosted by journalism-minded public relations and marketing agency Grasslands. More about us: mygrasslands.com and @grasslandsagency on LinkedIn and IG. 🌿
🚨 PRINTING NIGHTMARE DÉJÀ VU: Colorado newspapers are scrambling once again to find a new printer after Prairie Mountain Media, a Colorado newspaper brand financially controlled by the Alden Global Capital hedge fund, announced it will shut down its printing facility in Berthoud next month. The latest destabilizing closure is a “tragedy, a train wreck,” said independent newspaper publisher Bob Sweeney. “It’s a disaster,” he said, noting how the press prints a major chunk of newspapers in the area located near the Front Range. We’ve seen this before. Around this time last summer, when the private-equity-laden Gannett, the nation’s largest newspaper chain, mothballed the Pueblo Chieftain’s press plant, roughly 80 publications lost their printer, and at least one went out of business. It was a clusterfuck. Now the nation’s second-largest newspaper chain has sent a potentially fatal jolt through many more. The development once again diagnoses an untreated ailment of the circulatory system in Colorado’s newspaper industry.
Some thoughts and original reporting:
MISSION DELAYED: The National Trust for Local News, which bought a used mission-driven printing press from Canada and moved it to Denver this year, hoped it would be running by May to print its two-dozen Colorado Community Media papers — and many others that need it — but while the four-tower Goss Community Press is officially in the building with the requisite equipment, it is not yet up and running. “Like many projects of this magnitude, we’ve also experienced issues and delays, particularly with some essential electrical upgrades to the building and the permitting required to undertake them,” said Amalie Nash, who heads transformation for the National Trust for Local News. “That work has set us back from our original timeline. Many of our publications currently print in Berthoud. We are working hard to be operational by mid-August when that facility closes. We can’t offer a definitive opening date yet, but remain hopeful we can print our newspapers on our press in August and begin onboarding other publications shortly after that.”
Anyone interested in printing with CCM can fill out this form, and “we’ll keep them updated on the project timeline and provide quotes as soon as possible,” Nash said.
As for right now, Jim O’Rourke, CEO of O’Rourke Media Group, which runs a string of papers in Colorado’s Central Mountains Region, said he is open for requests from any newspaper that is looking for a new printer. His email is jorourke[at]orourkemediagroup[dot]com.
⚡️WE WERE WARNED: (But also maybe prepared?) Last year, a working group of Colorado journalism advocates produced a research paper about the state of Colorado’s printing industry titled “The future of printing in Colorado.” The report came with a dire caution that any further closures after the Chieftain’s Chernobyl risks a “negative domino effect in which the available supply of printing services would far outstrip the demands of publishers.” And that was only last year.
Bob Sweeney said this week he would like to see if anything might be done to save the Berthoud printing plant or bring back the one in Pueblo.
Now, onto more Colorado media odds & ends…
📡 Thomas Gounley wrote in BusinessDen about Denver7’s new building. “I really think we have built the TV station of the future, with the technology that’s in here,” said Brian Joyce, the local ABC affiliate’s vice president and general manager. Also in the story: “Denver7 has about 170 employees, with 100 or so considered part of the newsroom. Another 20 or so employees employed directly by the parent company will also work from the building.”
🏆 Denver Gazette senior investigative reporter Jenny Deam has been awarded “a prestigious National Press Club journalism award for her reporting on Colorado’s troubled oversight of the assisted living industry and other elder care issues.” In her work, “Deam revealed that the nation’s $96 billion assisted-living industry, which lacks federal oversight, has flooded Colorado with substandard care. She did an analysis of 4,500 incident reports culled over nearly a five-year period. Her reporting revealed the maximum fine allowed under state law was $2,000 per year per assisted-living facility, even as state regulators had classified as ‘unexplained or suspicious’ 110 deaths in assisted-living facilities over nearly five years.”
👮♂️❌ Nearly six months ago, the story of a West Slope mountain town man stealing copies of the Ouray County Plaindealer newspapers from racks around town went viral. Really viral. But last week, a major development happened in the story behind that story. First, the background: The reason a thief stole the papers is because he said he didn’t want people to read the graphic details that the Plaindealer had reported of an alleged teenage sexual assault at the home of a police chief and the arrest of three young men including the chief’s stepson. Stealing the papers had the opposite effect. When the story of stolen newspapers exploded it brought nearly 108,000 readers to the online version of the story, according to Plaindealer co-owner Erin McIntyre. And now, the Plaindealer reported the police chief has been fired. “I no longer trust you to comply with policy, let alone enforce it or lead by example, and I do not trust your judgment to lead the police department,” Ouray City Administrator Silas Clarke wrote in a termination letter. While other issues are at play, McIntyre said she believes the newspaper tying the chief to the sexual assault case likely had a role, calling it something of a “first domino.” “The investigations prompted by the complaints (which happened after our initial report) were significant, and I think our reporting helped those complainants and the public feel like they could come forward,” she said.
☕️ Juelz Ramirez, who is the creative director for the Southeast Colorado Springs media outlet Daily Dose 719, opened Stompin’ Groundz, a new coffee shop in that part of the city. “The wide, deep shop hosts a meeting and conference room in the rear where Ramirez aims to broadcast future Daily Dose 719 podcast episodes,” reported Matthew Schniper for his must-read Side Dish newsletter about all things food and drink in Colorado Springs. Ramirez noted to Schniper the history of coffee houses as places for the sharing of big ideas and community conversations — even the host site for the planning of revolutions. “I want to spark more civic engagement within the Southeast side,” she told him.
💨 “This will be my last week in Denver and at 9NEWS,” said sports reporter and anchor Arielle Orsuto. “While this city and this team have been my absolute dream home for the last five years, I’m following my heart and my passion to a new adventure.” She’ll be joining the Tegna-owned KING5 in Seattle as a sports reporter and anchor, she told Daniel Boniface of the Denver Gazette. He added: “Orsuto spent five years covering sports for 9NEWS and pioneered a franchise on 9NEWS called ‘Fair Game’ that she said highlights the underrepresented communities in sports, such as women, minorities, the disabled and the LGBTQ+ community.”
🥇 Denver’s 5280 magazine gave itself a “best magazine” award in its “Top of the Town” awards this year. “Don’t get me wrong; there’s a lot of admirable journalism going on in the Mile High City, despite the seemingly insurmountable challenges media outlets face today,” wrote editor Lindsey B. King. “The Colorado Sun. The Denver Post. Denverite. The Denver Business Journal. Westword. CPR. The area TV news channels, too. These outlets all deserve laurels for their commitment to the ideals of an independent, free press. But I am not inside those newsroom walls, and so I can only say, with more than a little favoritism, that our editorial staff has done praiseworthy work all year and particularly on this issue, which marks the magazine’s 31st birthday.”
🗳 “I’ve decided not to spend limited resources on it this year just to reverse one bad law,” said libertarian-leaning Independence Institute president Jon Caldara, who wanted to run a ballot measure to force “state legislators back into the open-meetings law, which they recently exempted themselves.” Instead, he said, “we’ll be spearheading a better initiative to greatly expand transparency and open meetings next year.”
📰 Sara Martin, who served the four years of her college experience as editor of the Metropolitan student newspaper at Metro State University in Denver, wrote a goodbye column as she matriculates. “This newspaper has been my entire life since I was a young adult fresh out of high school,” she wrote.
🤦♂️ More than a week after Colorado Newsline’s Chase Woodruff pointed out a false claim by the conservative Common Sense Institute organization that had published a report stating the DEA seized enough fentanyl in 2023 to kill everyone in Colorado “36 times over” — and got the group to alter some of its public statements — a Colorado Politics reporter regurgitated the false claim in the lead of a story, which made it past editors. The news outlet then changed the wording and offered this note to readers: “CSI modified its report to say that the drugs seized last year could kill every Coloradan between 16 and 26 times over. The group initially said 36 times over.” But, “this is still not even close to true,” Woodruff said on social media. “The actual range, based on the DEA’s own testing figures, is not between 16 times over and 26 times over, it’s between 0.004 times over (not a typo) and 1.1 times over.” (A Gazette editorial, however, still contains a “kill every Coloradan 36 times” line with no clarifying update.) Earlier this year, Jason Salzman of the progressive Colorado Times Recorder digital site analyzed local media coverage of the Common Sense Institute and found that “during the two months that we studied CSI coverage, conservative media outlets owned by GOP billionaire Phil Anschutz (Colorado Politics and the Denver and Colorado Springs Gazette) published the most stories mentioning CSI (16 total) — over half of the articles that mentioned CSI during the months studied.”
🍻 The Denver Press Club has ended an experiment with keeping the bar open on Saturdays. It “did not go well so we are discontinuing Saturday openings,” said the club’s executive director, Alby Segall, in a statement this week.
Now, an important message from another sponsor — and then more Colorado media odds & ends after the jump…
☁️ 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. ☁️
📺 Cara DeGette is the latest to profile 9NEWS ‘Next’ anchor Kyle Clark, this time for the Greater Park Hill News. Here’s a notable excerpt from the piece: “Under the ownership of Elon Musk, Twitter (now X) is notably more toxic. So why, exactly, is Clark still there? Hard sigh. ‘Part of it is genuinely useful to my job — staying up on things,’ he says. ‘And part of it is an addiction to the call-and-response thing … It is a shame what’s happened to Twitter, some of the hate speech.’ … Clark won’t engage with the worst of them, the ones who post seriously vile and threatening messages. He takes those threats seriously and so does his employer. But then he considers the journalists who are covering the wars in Gaza and Ukraine. And none of the hate directed his way, he says, compares to the ugly stuff that women in journalism routinely get hit with.”
📝 The Colorado Press Association has opened its registration for its annual conference, this time taking place from Aug. 22-24 in Denver-Thornton. “For 2024, we’ve even added a public event and rebranded the three days to reflect that broader scope,” the group states. “Local News Solutions 2024 brings together news leaders with community and philanthropic leaders to explore how we can continue building resilient businesses that serve our entire communities.”
🇺🇸 🏳️🌈 “Teacher and busy community volunteer Bob Bushta and High Country Shopper/Spotlight owner Tina Walker received an enthusiastic round of applause from the Council and audience for their donation of funds to the Town [of Paonia] to buy American flags for the holidays when they are displayed on Grand Avenue,” reported Thomas Wills in the North Fork Merchant Herald. “This was done after the local American Legion post declined to put out the traditional displays, using flags they own for Flag Day, due [to] their objections to Pride flags being out at private businesses and homes during June Pride Month. The Town staff will now put out the new American flags.”
🤖 The Colorado News Collaborative (COLab) says it has “negotiated a smokin’ deal for COLab partners with Nota, the company you’ve been hearing about that is making easy, dependable AI tools affordable and accessible for all newsrooms. Mark your calendar for the joint COLab and CPA monthly meeting at 11 a.m. July 11,” an announcement continued. “The former LA Times journalists who started Nota are coming to show us how it works. Imagine writing a story, then having a tool that can automatically turn it into a video – or vice versa! (To access the discount, you need to be a COLab partner. If you’re not already signed up to participate in COLab, do so here.)”
🏆 The Society for Features Journalism awards are out and Clarity Media’s Colorado outlets the Gazette and OutThere Colorado won multiple honors including first place for visual storytelling, special section (“It’s no secret our newsrooms are shrinking, however it seems that editor Nathan Van Dyne and his Gazette team haven’t received the memo,” judges said), special product, and inclusion and representation.
🆕 Kjerstin Thorson, Colorado State University’s new dean of the College of Liberal Arts, was a former assistant professor in communication and journalism at the University of Southern California, Kelly Lyell reported for the Coloradoan. Thorson also earned a master’s in journalism from the University of Missouri.
💪 Questions went “unanswered” in local Colorado coverage of hate groups, Ari Armstrong wrote for Complete Colorado, the news and commentary arm of the libertarian-leaning Independence Institute. “Local news coverage of SPLC’s report has been spotty at best, consisting mostly of warming over [the Southern Poverty Law Center’s] media release and perhaps throwing in some solicited quotes,” he wrote. “You’d think the professional news media in this state would take the matter more seriously.”
🏆 Colorado Press Women nominee Sharon Almirall was named national Communicator of Achievement runner-up, “and six other CPW members won communication awards at a stellar 2024 NFPW Conference in St. Louis, Mo., June 20-22,” the organization stated this week.
💰 “It didn’t take long for several government entities in Colorado to adopt the new, much-higher, maximum CORA fee rate that went into effect on Monday, July 1,” reported Jeff Roberts for the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition about the Colorado Open Records Act. “At least 19 cities, towns, counties, state agencies, metro districts and school districts already have indicated they will now charge $41.37/hour, rather than the previous maximum rate of $33.58/hour, to process Colorado Open Records Act requests, a Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition review of government websites and news reports shows. Another raised its rate to $40/hour.”
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.