Colorado Springs Indy lays off staff and transfers ownership amid shock statement

The news behind the news in Colorado

For staff at the Independent bi-weekly newspaper in Colorado Springs, Easter Monday was decidedly not a day for contemplating any kind of resurrection.

“The entire staff was laid off today, including me,” publisher Fran Zankowski said over the phone around noon on April 21.

That marked the third time in about two years that staff had been laid off at the once-venerable alternative weekly newspaper known affectionately by supporters as the Indy.

John Weiss had founded the paper in 1993 to oppose an anti-gay ballot measure and offer an alternative to a conservative daily newspaper that he felt ignored underrepresented voices in the Springs. “We were a progressive voice in a town that had never had it,” he has said.

Weiss left the paper in 2022 and it converted to a nonprofit model. Shortly after that transition, the paper wiped out half of its staff after discovering an unexpected $300,000 budget shortfall. The nonprofit paper had also experimented with an unsuccessful brand makeover and it ultimately imploded. Staffers who remained scattered to the wind.

But last February, some were encouraged when a pair of wealthy local developers and businessmen, Kevin O’Neil and J.W. Roth, swooped in and resurrected the Indy and its counterpart the Colorado Springs Business Journal.

They changed the papers back to a for-profit enterprise. They said they wanted a voice in the community. They hired Zankowski away from Boulder Weekly and he assembled a small but strong staff led by Editor Ben Trollinger who they brought in from Summit County.

Along the way, the paper’s decades of digital archives vanished, creating a sinkhole in the civic memory.

The resurrection wound up lasting a total of 14 months.

On Easter Monday, during a regular in-person morning meeting, an HR representative stunned the staff by saying, albeit graciously, that they’d all be getting the big vamoose. Zankowski announced the company would transfer the paper to another local publisher, Dirk R. Hobbs, who runs business publications in the Springs.

“They just turned out the lights,” one laid-off staffer who was still reeling said.

An April 21 press release from Pikes Peak Media, the company O’Neil and Roth had created to run the paper, explained why — and did so in unusually candid terms.

“While it was a difficult choice, the former owners acknowledge that it became increasingly challenging to communicate their vision and values through the platforms as they had intended,” the statement read in part. “Ultimately, the alignment between the leadership and the editorial direction of the papers no longer reflected the voices they sought to represent.”

Here’s more:

“We believe that media should be a true reflection of the people behind it,” said a representative of the outgoing ownership group. “When that connection is lost, it’s time to step aside and let new leadership take the reins. We are confident that Dirk R. Hobbs and the Colorado Media Group will bring fresh perspective and energy to both publications.”

No need to read between the lines on that one: The owners seemed to find they couldn’t effectively communicate their message through the newspaper.

‘It won’t look like the Indy of old’

When they bought the paper, the new owners said they were interested in stabilizing it and using it to help build community.

“As a 5th Generation Coloradan, I take great pride in providing my hometown with another trusted, civic driven, and relevant publication,” Roth said in a statement at the time. “This opportunity offers the Independent and the Business Journal a chance to thrive under unprecedented stability.”

O’Neil said the opportunity fit his focus on “building a stronger community where a diverse range of voices are heard.”

In recent weeks, the owners had been publishing their own columns in the paper.

O’Neil, whose company is behind major real estate development projects, authored a column urging the city to embrace growth and business.

In the lead-up to the recent April 1 City Council election, Roth penned a personal column that ripped into an incumbent candidate named Dave Donelson for what Roth called a “dysfunctional legacy.” Donelson went on to win his election by 16 percentage points — the highest margin of anyone else on the ballot.

O’Neil did not respond to emails and a voice message Monday or Tuesday; a reply stated he was traveling. I didn’t hear back from an email I sent Roth early Wednesday morning.

In a phone interview on Wednesday, Hobbs said the owners approached him in March and things moved quickly. He added that he was still in the process of finalizing an agreement, but offered his hopes for the publications. He said he is speaking to the laid-off staff and seeing if he can find a home for them.

Hobbs, a publisher who also has a background in marketing and lobbying, said he hopes to fold the Business Journal into his Southern Colorado Business Forum & Digest. He said he envisions the Indy as a standalone publication.

“It won’t look like the Indy of old from when John Weiss owned it and it will probably pivot a little bit from where it’s been lately,” he said. He added that he doesn’t believe the region has done a great job marketing itself to the rest of the country and he wants to position the Springs as a “destination to do business.”

The new owner acknowledged that there are some “different philosophies between the Indy and of course what we’re doing,” and added that “we’ll put our fingerprints on it.” He said he plans to run some focus groups to see what the community wants out of the publication.

As for its valuable digital and print archive that goes back to the early 1990s, Hobbs said he plans to “make every attempt to transfer everything that they’ve done” while trying to access “any backlog of historical information.”

Last summer, the Gazette reported on how Hobbs had found a niche in his suite of local and regional publications including NORTH magazine and his business paper.

Before getting into the local publishing scene, Hobbs “spent 30 years working as a marketing executive for a national biotech and medical research organization, as well as one National Hot Rod Association and two NASCAR programs and other national and regional brands,” the Gazette reported.

He published clinical medical journals in the early 2000s and “also became a lobbyist for physicians and from 2016 to 2019 served on the Colorado Governor’s Council on Health and Wellness.”

Asked what the Indy’s owners told him about why they were offloading the papers, Hobbs said they have a lot of business projects going on.

“They wanted to put it into the hands of a steward that would [have] their full attention on it, that’s my perception,” he said, adding that they’d approached him from the beginning about becoming an operator.

“Yes, there was some frustration, I’m sure, between their editorial staff and the owners and their philosophies,” he said. “But, what I got from them is we need this to be in the hands of somebody who’s going to take it and run with it.”

Some context and backstory to what just went down

The move by these wealthy onetime local newspaper owners in Colorado Springs comes amid highly visible and unsettling developments involving moneybags newspaper owners across the country.

One needn’t look further than the Washington Post under billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. It is not a stretch to wonder if he eventually realized the headache he’d made for his personal business interests by trying to operate an independent news organization during the second presidential administration of Donald Trump. (Swarms of readers canceled their subscriptions after Bezos killed an endorsement of Kamala Harris and tried to steer the paper in a direction that might run less afoul of a score-settling president.)

On the opposite coast, the billionaire owner of the L.A. Times drew headlines for meddling in coverage of a dog-bite story involving his rich friend. That owner, too, is under fire for trying to reimagine the paper as more friendly to the new presidential administration. The wealthy local owner of the Baltimore Sun clashed with employees over “editorial influence.”

In their brief tenure in the media business, O’Neil and Roth might have learned that owning a newspaper is not the same as owning a defense contracting company or a restaurant.

Readers and others responded to actions the owners took in their personal lives — hosting a fundraiser for a Republican candidate for Congress, allowing Steve Bannon to speak at one of their hospitality venues — and linked those actions to the newspaper.

The print issue of the Independent that’s on the street right now carries an entire half page of letters to the editor lambasting Roth over the Bannon incident and for one of his music businesses. (The co-owner had previously defended himself in an un-bylined staff report in his paper; “I will not participate in cancel culture,” he said about calls for him to nix the Bannon event.)

The Bannon dustup also created a rift between the Indy and the Pikes Peak Bulletin, a weekly nonprofit newspaper that serves the city’s west side. The two papers used to share about 20 newspaper racks. But after the Bulletin ran a story linking Bannon’s speaking gig to the Indy’s ownership, it reported someone from the Indy called the paper and “cited the article as a reason” for ending the rack-sharing agreement.

The “rack wars” is how one Bulletin leader was describing the developments in recent weeks. (Zankowski said it was overblown.)

At the time, it was almost comically reassuring that the Springs could foster a media environment robust enough for a mini newspaper war, as ridiculous as it might have been. (Under an older incarnation of the Indy, that war had been between the progressive counterculture alt-weekly and the buttoned-down daily Gazette with its conservative Trump 1.0-endorsing editorial pages.)

Throughout the past year of the Indy’s coverage, it had become plainly obvious just how many local business interests the new owners had that were conflicting with their newspaper’s coverage about a rapidly growing city. Numerous news reports came with disclosures, whether it was about a controversial proposed skyscraper, a controversial outdoor amphitheater, a controversial annexation development, campaign contributions, or even a licensing deal to provide prepared foods.

“The owners of this company are involved in a host of major projects, from music venues to high rises. News coverage in the Independent is inevitable,” Trollinger, the Indy’s editor wrote in a column last summer addressing the myriad conflicts. He added also at the time that the owners had been “assiduously hands off” and were not telling the journalists what or what not to cover.

Just this week, a sharply critical freelance story for the Indy by the local investigative reporter Pam Zubeck exposed a local nonprofit that according to the headline “shorted” vendors and a landlord.

The deeply reported article about a nonprofit that shut down amid the course of the reporter’s months-long investigation came with this disclosure: “Among the donors are JW Roth, who gave $70,000 via his business, VENU, and businessman Kevin O’Neil, who gave $50,000. Both own a stake in the Independent.”

Ironically, as print editions fill newspaper racks around town with the story on its cover this week, the online version vanished from the Indy’s website on the day of the layoffs and sale after being online for weeks.

Zankowski said one of the owners asked for its removal.

Journalism best practices are to at least explain to readers why a news outlet has removed a story in the rare instances when it does.

A ‘dedicated little pirate ship of a newspaper’

With Trollinger at the editorial helm under Pikes Peak Media Company, the Indy published long-form in-depth reporting and bi-weekly news coverage.

Noel Black, who has written for the New York Times and NPR and once ran the Bush-era thumb-in-the-eye Toilet Paper in the Springs, came on board as a senior reporter and penned stories that likely would not have been covered if not for him.

Cannon Taylor, a young and emerging journalistic talent in the city, provided prolific and zesty coverage of the Springs arts-and-culture scene. Andrew Rogers moved from local broadcast journalism to print to cover local business. Freelancers like Kathryn Eastburn reported important under-the-radar feature stories. Trollinger offered insightful bi-weekly from-the-editor columns about the Springs, journalism, and life in general.

“We probably started before we were ready,” Trollinger said in an email Wednesday about the Indy. “We made mistakes along the way. And I wish we had more resources to give Colorado Springs the journalism it needs and deserves.”

He said he is proud of the work the paper’s “dedicated little pirate ship of a newspaper” was able to produce in just a year’s time.

“But on the morning of April 21, all of that came to a whimpering and unceremonious end when the entire staff of Pikes Peak Media Company received the news we were all getting pink slips,” he said. “We received no severance and no pat on the back for our work from co-owners J.W. Roth and Kevin O’Neil, who were not present to watch us pack up our belongings, hug each other and commiserate as we waited for our last paychecks.”

In the end, he said, “it wasn’t our company” and opined that the owners “had grown tired of bankrolling a company they couldn’t dominate or immediately profit from.” He added: “Regardless, the staffers of the Independent and the Business Journal were deeply invested in the mission — to serve the needs of a unique and vibrant community through storytelling and fearless reporting.”

“Once again,” he said, “the Indy is dead. Long live the Indy.”

My own view (and some personal history) about all this

I can’t say I’m utterly surprised that it ended this way, but I am surprised it happened so quickly.

Last January, one of the owners had approached me out of the blue about potentially running the new Indy if they bought it. I balked but said I’d help if they needed advice.

Following a meeting I attended with both owners that included some of their employees and Zankowski, the team invited me to offer a proposal for a potential advisory role; I sent along a memo about the pitfalls of local media ownership and about how local news is a public good.

Here were some parts of it:

Regardless of any altruistic motives for re-launching The Indy, the backgrounds of those doing it will become a matter of public concern. They should be. Everyone should care about who owns their local news organizations and why. …

Media ownership is a tricky business and might be compared to owning a rare and valuable pet snake. You could earn money and attention by showing it off and selling its eggs, but occasionally it might bite you — and it can hurt. Local news, however, should not really be compared to a reptile.

Local news is a public good. Local media ownership matters because people want to know who is funding what they read, see, and hear, and what agendas might be behind it.

Because local news is a public good, local media owners get in trouble when their own financial or personal interests intersect with news and editorial coverage. …

There should be a firewall between the business side and editorial side to prevent conflicts. That is an industry best practice. It also protects owners if friends receive what they perceive as unfavorable coverage. (The snake can bite!)

The public should expect that a news organization should not be a vehicle for its owners to advance their financial interests, bolster their reputations, reward friends, punish enemies, or otherwise advance a personal, professional, or political agenda. The news side of a media company should be an independent vehicle to provide more reliable news and information in a community to make sure people have access to the information they need to make decisions in their lives.

While I’d emailed both new owners a copy, I can’t be certain they ever read the document.

But after sending it, and following my reporting on the purchase of the Indy, which included some skepticism, I pretty much got ghosted. Perhaps a consulting fee I’d proposed was too high, who knows. When the team announced their purchase of the Indy I was out of the loop.

It’s obviously unfortunate that more journalists lost their jobs this week and the circumstances surrounding it are troubling. Local news is a public good — and local ownership obviously matters. The nation’s 40th largest city deserves a robust media scene.

The Indy’s retrenchment leaves the Gazette, four TV stations, KRCC, Springs magazine, and some scattered smaller publications.

One news outlet that might stand to benefit from a diminished Indy could be the Manitou Springs-based Pikes Peak Bulletin, which has recently been expanding its coverage into downtown and has been publishing work by some of the Indy’s longtime former writers.

“There is a clear need for independent journalism in the Pikes Peak region and the Bulletin is currently poised to take on this role,” said its managing editor, Heila Ershadi.

She added that the paper has “top talent in our pool of freelance reporters” and said what it needed to do now is build capacity, to bring writers on full time, and increase circulation.

“The only missing ingredient at this moment is financial support,” she said. “We’re currently writing a strategic plan to show potential funders, advertisers and readers our vision for sustainably serving the community.”

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More Colorado media odds & ends

💨 This is an early edition of the newsletter because it’s in travel mode, which means content might be lighter than usual and I might not be as quick to respond to emails, voicemails or DMs.

✋ “When — and how — to say no:” Last week, a handful of Colorado journalists gathered for a virtual discussion about ways to avoid conflicts of interest with sources, advertisers, and others. The state chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists organized the panel as part of the SPJ’s #EthicsWeek programming. Michael de Yoanna, managing editor, Mountain West News Bureau, moderated the conversation. Journalists included former Denver TV journalist Tamara Banks, Ouray County Plaindealer Publisher Erin McIntyre, Denver Post City Hall reporter Elliott Wenzler, and KUNC government reporter Lucas Brady Woods. Watch it here.

📼 “I was wrong when I reported on CFOIC’s blog that Colorado is one of only two states that do not provide at least some video coverage of legislative committee meetings,” wrote Jeff Roberts, head of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition on Facebook. “It’s the only state.”

🤺 Colorado Democratic State Sen. Cathy Kipp of Fort Collins, who sponsored a bill to extend open-record request processing time, except for journalists, “said Friday morning she intends to pursue an override vote of the governor’s veto,” Scott Franz reported. “The looming debate between lawmakers and Gov. Polis over the open record rules also comes as leading transparency advocates say the state is experiencing a ‘backsliding’ of the public's ability to access public information.”

🎥 The Front Page, Front Range Community College’s student-run publication, is “hosting a watch party at the school’s Larimer Campus to showcase its three-part YouTube documentary on the proposed Front Range Passenger Rail (FRPR) project. The event will be the exclusive premiere of a never-before-seen third episode in this series.” April 28 at 5 p.m. at the Long Peak’s Student Center, Room 110 Front Range Community College’s Larimer Campus. (Watch Part I and Part II on YouTube.)

👊 “Good for the Colorado Times Recorder for standing up to a former city council member who tried to pressure it into removing an accurate story about her past arrest,” wrote the Freedom of the Press Foundation this week about the progressive digital news and commentary site.

⚽️ Field of Schemes, which casts “a critical eye on the roughly $2 billion a year in public subsidies that go toward building new pro sports facilities” examined a recent Colorado Sun story about how Denver National Women Soccer League “plans to spend more than $100 million to build a stadium and training center of their own near the South Platte River.”

☀️ Sun Fest tickets are out.

🆕 The National Trust for Local News, a nonprofit that owns Colorado Community Media, this week named Tom Wiley, who is currently president and publisher of the Buffalo News, as its new CEO. Recall: “What is the future of CCM and the National Trust for Local News?”

🎙 “Help us produce the second season (and hopefully beyond) of Colorado Springs’ most-needed podcast,” says Nick Raven.

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 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, where I’m an advisor, 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.