Denver Post & Gazette's front-page Trump shooting headlines differed starkly

The news behind the news in Colorado

This is a special early edition of Inside the News in Colorado in light of recent events…

This Sunday’s front pages of the Denver Post and the Colorado Springs Gazette could hardly have been more different.

For its A1 treatment, “Gunman dies in attack,” the Denver Post chose to center the news around the alleged shooter and the extent to which he still had a pulse. Conversely, the Gazette went with “Trump ‘fine’ after shooting,” choosing to focus on the positive health status of the former U.S. president whose ear appeared to have been clipped by a bullet.

Both newspapers carried now-iconic photos of a defiant Donald Trump posturing to the crowd through a scrum of Secret Service agents with blood smeared on his face.

That these newspapers were even able to carry the news on their front pages wasn’t a given. With printing deadlines so out of whack because of press consolidation, some papers couldn’t get the information about the nation’s most important weekend event onto their Sunday covers, including at least one in Colorado.

As a practical matter, you might really have to be living under a rock if your Sunday morning print newspaper is where you first learned Trump had survived a Saturday evening assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania rally.

In that sense, these days print newspaper front pages serve something of a dual purpose — some news delivery, yes, but also as a static historical record, something perhaps worthy of framing and hanging on a wall, or as a statement by a news organization about how it views the world. Some newspapers sell reprints on their websites for this reason.

But the ways in which a highly polarized electorate perceives decisions by legacy media, coupled with a pitiless social media environment, make crafting a print newspaper headline for a major news event no small thing — and it is especially difficult under a tight high-pressure deadline.

The Denver Post is learning that as political figures and others hammer the paper for its choice to go with “Gunman dies” over “Trump ‘fine’” — even if that was the most recent incremental turn of the news screw before the edition’s evening deadline.

On social media, MAGA youth leader Charlie Kirk posted to his three million followers a screenshot of the Denver Post headline along with a critical comment about what he called the “leftwing” media. The account End Wokeness posted to its 2.7 million followers: “Today’s front page of the Denver Post. Yes, this is real. No, this is not satire.” Others called it “tone deaf” — and worse.

Closer to home, Denver’s 9NEWS investigative reporter Chris Vanderveen said he believed the newspaper’s headline was a “mistake.” Former Republican U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, whom the Post once endorsed and later unendorsed, also side-eyed the word choice.

That might have something to do with why the Denver Post’s editor said over email Monday that the newsroom’s internal decision-making process was not a subject the paper would be discussing with this newsletter. (For what it’s worth, the editor of the Gazette also declined an invitation to offer a play-by-play of how it put together its final front-page product.)

For his part, John Moore of the Denver Gazette, a digital newspaper owned by the same company as its print sibling in the Springs, seemed to appreciate the brevity and clarity — “Trump shot at rally” — of that outlet’s choice of a homepage on Sunday.

“Journalism 101,” he said. “Keep it simple.”

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A ‘truce’ in Westcliffe’s newspaper war? (This newsletter will believe it when we see it)

Longtime readers of this newsletter are no strangers to the local media drama in Custer County, where two weekly newspapers have been warring on the streets of Westcliffe for years.

This week, Denver Post reporter Bruce Finley, who is intimately familiar with the area, has new details about the battle between the right-wing upstart Sangre de Cristo Sentinel and its more established rival, the Wet Mountain Tribune.

Mudslinging, threats, lawsuits, guns on hips, and pistols in newspaper office drawers — it’s all there in the piece.

Here’s an excerpt that shows the stakes:

It got to the point that attorneys last week coaxed editors of the Wet Mountain Tribune and the Sangre de Cristo Sentinel to sit for a 21st-century solution — mediation via Zoom — and defuse tensions reminiscent of the 19th-century wild west.

“We have a diversity of thought here. That’s good,” Westcliffe Mayor Paul Wenke said. “I sure hope it doesn’t lead to violence. But it could.”

Whether or not a truce holds, staffers at the competing weekly publications plan to provide robust election-year coverage and commentary for residents of Westcliffe (population 477) and adjacent Silver Cliff (population 688) in rural Custer County.

The rivalry stands out because thousands of towns in the United States lack even one local newspaper, surveys show. The Sentinel and the Tribune have survived on revenues from business ads, paid legal notices, and subscriptions by readers here and in more than a dozen other states.

Some more nuggets:

• “The Sentinel’s volunteer staff of seven delights in tweaking their paid competitors at the Tribune, which claims on its masthead to have been operating since 1883. Longtime Tribune reporter  W.A. Ewing calls the Sentinel ‘the neo-fascist agitprop pamphlet up the street’ and said it is creating confusion and doubt about government — ‘softening up the citizenry for authoritarian rule’ — and raising risks of violence.”

• “During the COVID-19 pandemic, a man stood outside the Tribune’s red door shouting: ‘Hey you communists get out of town’, ” Ewing said. Others have entered the office hurling insults. In October, [publisher Jordan] Hedberg shut down the office — ‘too much glass,’ he said — and staffers for seven months worked remotely.”

Tribune publisher Hedberg has also filed a defamation suit against Sentinel publisher George Gramlich and his paper. About that, Finley reports: “A tentative settlement reached Wednesday includes an agreement for Gramlich to publish apologies. Other elements were kept confidential.”

Colorado’s ham radio operators get a moment in the Sun

If you’ve ever met someone who knows their way around a ham radio — sometimes called amateur radio — you know of their passion.

That was on full display this week from Jason Blevins of the Colorado Sun who attended a recent local meetup during a national American Radio Relay League annual Field Day.

The story details the public-service nature of this network of radioheads and how some of them stand ready to fill in should typical lines of communications fail during disruptive Colorado events.

From the piece:

It could be a tornado, flood, hailstorm or wildfire. Maybe an earthquake or solar storm has knocked out satellite communication. Maybe rural emergency service folks need help with a big event, like a mountain bike or running race. Whatever the reason, there are 19,629 licensed amateur radio operators in Colorado — almost 750,000 in the U.S. — who are trained and ready to keep critical communications flowing.

“For most amateur radio groups, it’s about serving our communities,” said Desiree Baccus — call sign N3DEZ — with the Rocky Mountain HAM Radio club, a nonprofit that maintains a network of radio-transmitting equipment across Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming. “There is only so much local sheriffs can do in small towns and you will see amateur radio operators stepping in to fill the gaps as volunteers to help as a second service to our emergency management professionals.”

Some other notable nuggets from the story:

• “About 100 licensed amateur radio operators in Colorado are part of Colorado Auxiliary Communications, a disaster response public safety communications network of volunteers trained to support the state’s Office of Emergency Management.”

• “The radio operators have helped set up communications to assist with state response to floods in Hinsdale County and wildfires across the state. Most recently the AUXCOMM team helped establish remote monitoring systems so state regulators could better track and mitigate the spread of avian influenza in rural parts of the state.”

Read the whole thing at the link above.

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More responses from Colorado journalists and newsrooms about being ‘pro-democracy’

In last week’s newsletter, I asked what others thought about some major Colorado media outlets openly saying they run pro-democracy newsrooms. Some responses came in; here are a few:

“This is starting to remind me of when every Dem presidential candidate in 2020 realized they had to say ‘health care is a human right’ even though most of them had no policies that would come remotely close to effectuating that,” said Colorado Newsline reporter Chase Woodruff. “It’s a bingo free space.”

Jan Wondra, who runs the small digital nonprofit Ark Valley Voice based in Salida, noted that her speech last year at the Colorado Press Association convention where she accepted a First Amendment Award was these words: “Democracy is worth defending.” Her outlet does that, she said this week. “And we pointed out that what we are witnessing from the Trump folks is nothing less than fascism.”

“As the head of a small newsroom at City Cast Denver, I was very surprised to hear the panel unanimous on the democracy question,” said Paul Karolyi, the executive producer of the local podcast outlet. “Just like the Washington Post’s slogan has always rubbed me wrong. The Post unveiled it just as I was starting to think of myself as a journalist. I had been living in Jordan and Nazareth after college, working with Palestinian youth groups, then in DC working with a Palestinian academic institution. So I saw democracy from the outside and witnessed a very broken democracy in the occupied territories.”

More from Karolyi:

In both of those places, the need for good journalists was just as great, and speaking truth to power required even more courage. So my question has always been: What does democracy have to do with truth? And why would you tell everyone who doesn’t live in a democracy that the Washington Post is not for them? The slogan struck me as bad business then and totally irrelevant now. 

Feel free to keep pinging me with insights and different points of view on this subject.

Cancer scare puts dean of Colorado Capitol Press Corps, Denver Press Club prez on hiatus

Readers who follow Colorado public affairs will notice the disappearance of a prolific byline until late August.

Marianne Goodland, a reporter for Colorado Politics who is the dean of the Capitol Press Corps and serves as the president of the Denver Press Club, is recovering after a successful June 25 hysterectomy following a cancer diagnosis that she says was caught “incredibly” early.

Beyond the obvious, one has to imagine having surgery scheduled for primary day was a double whammy for such a dedicated and compulsive journalist.

Thankfully, “the cancer is now over and I can focus on healing and recovery,” Goodland said in a recent text message, adding that “everything went great.”

She said she will be off for two months from the surgery — and that her doctor is “pretty firm” on that timeline.

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📢 Amplify your message: When you reach journalists, you reach their audiences

Each Friday, this “Inside the News in Colorado” newsletter reaches perhaps more influential Colorado journalists and media-adjacent readers in one place than any publication and has a record of raising awareness among the state’s press corps and newsmakers. Get in touch about a sponsorship box in this newsletter. Email me at coreyhutchins[at]gmail[dot]com.

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More Colorado media odds & ends

📸 Ross Taylor, an assistant professor of journalism at the College of Media, Communication and Information at the University of Colorado Boulder and an award-winning photojournalist, weighed in about the iconic photos taken during the Trump assassination attempt, especially the one taken by Evan Vucci, a longtime photographer with the Associated Press.

🥸 Does KKTV sports director Parker Way have “the best mustache in Colorado journalism,” as determined by Jesse Paul of the Colorado Sun? Send in your photos if you have a worthy contender.

🆕 Josie Taris began filing stories for Aspen Public Radio this week “as part of a 2024 collaboration the station launched with the Aspen Daily News to bring more local government coverage to the Aspen Public Radio listening audience,” the station said in a statement.

⏮ “Some folks just don’t know how to retire,” said Warren Epstein, who has returned to the Gazette in Colorado Springs in the capacity of a columnist who will publish one column a month about the arts. “My life since the Gazette, working on the other side of the curtains, watching and participating in how the arts sausages are made, has given me a broader perspective,” he wrote in a column about his return.

✂️ “Yes, Project 2025 does call for defunding NPR and PBS,” reported Emery Winter, a digital journalist for Tegna, which owns 9NEWS in Denver. Project 2025 is a plan for the conservative movement that offers a blueprint for what a potential Republican president should do with their power should they win.

🎧 Jon Mitchell, an editor, content manager, and page designer of the Gazette in Colorado Springs, has launched a Sunday podcast called “Weekend Roundup.” For it, he plans to “do interviews with staffers, editors and other influential people” and to “give a sneak peek” about some of the stories the paper is working on. “I think this will be a great resource for busy people who don’t have time to look through a newspaper every day,” he said. “And I promise it will have a little more bite to it than a typical NPR newscast!”

📺 “Gotcha journalism is not the same as accountability,” opined lawyer Mario Nicolais in a column for the Colorado Sun.

⚙️ Rhonda Van Pelt has left the Pikes Peak Bulletin. “After nine years as editor of the Pikes Peak Bulletin, I was told that Heila Ershadi would be the publisher/editor, but I could stay on as a part-time staff reporter,” she said. “I declined to do that.” With nine years at the Bulletin, nearly 11 years of copy editing at the Colorado Springs Gazette, and years of freelance writing for the Indy and Business Journal, Colorado College, and other entities, “I have shown my dedication to effective communication, community service and hard work,” she added. “I look forward to continuing the work I love as a freelance writer, editor, and marketing consultant.”

💨 Pueblo Chieftain reporter Anna Lynn Winfrey said she has left the paper and has moved to Ohio to join the Columbus Dispatch.

I’m Corey Hutchins, co-director of Colorado College’s Journalism Institute and a board member of Colorado’s Society of Professional Journalists chapter. 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.