Layoffs lash Colorado Public Radio, slicing into podcasts and production

The news behind the news in Colorado this week

This year has already been brutal for the local media business with layoffs lashing newsrooms coast to coast at outlets large and small.

Colorado has not been immune. This week, Colorado Public Radio laid off 15 employees, making up 8% of its staff.

The spinning blade of budget cuts sliced into the station’s standalone podcasting unit and included staff that supported production in its on-site performance studio, “as well as part-time and full-time music staff,” a spokesperson said.

“Over the past year we have had several conversations about the financial challenges facing CPR and the greater media landscape,” wrote CPR President and CEO Stewart Vanderwilt in a Wednesday note to staff. “Many of those conversations have focused on efforts to reduce expenses while seeking revenue growth in order to eliminate our ongoing deficit.”

Vanderwilt said the layoffs were “not a reflection of the quality of work of our talented colleagues.” The workforce reduction made for the “largest cut to the public broadcaster’s payroll in at least a quarter of a century,” according to a report from CPR reporter Ben Markus.

More from Markus:

The downsizing follows a period of extraordinary growth in staff, from 48 employees in the fiscal year ending 2006 to 214 in the fiscal year 2022, according to a review of public tax forms.

In recent years revenue has grown but has not kept pace with expenses. CPR lists on its website that expenses had exceeded revenue by $1.3 million in fiscal year 2022 and $2.3 million in fiscal year 2023. Member giving has remained strong, but corporate sponsorship was down. Meanwhile, programming and fundraising expenses — driven in part by employee costs — have risen by millions of dollars.

The story, which came with a disclosure reading “to avoid conflicts of interest, no senior leaders in CPR News were involved,” was remarkably transparent about the station’s financial picture.

“I hate to see talented colleagues lose their positions for financial reasons,” CPR News Executive Editor Kevin Dale said in the piece. “CPR News has been growing into a powerful news source for the past six years. Our mission has been to become an urgent newsroom that also has time to devote to enterprise reporting and accountability reporting, and we remain dedicated to that.”

Markus also put the layoff news in the context of the station’s steady growth, noting a “breathtaking expansion of a station that began in 1970 as a student operation at the University of Denver and spent most of its existence with just a handful of employees and volunteers devoted to public radio.”

Indeed, in recent years the outlet stood out as a bright spot amid a weakened local news landscape.

On social media, CPR’s southern Colorado reporter, Dan Boyce, said “all leadership” at CPR had taken pay cuts and furloughs to avoid “burdens for the rest of the Colorado Public Radio staff.”

“Our hearts are heavy at Colorado Public Radio as we learn 15 colleagues are losing their jobs,” said Colorado Matters host Ryan Warner, who added the layoff announcement “stands out in my 19 years at CPR.”

“This was a painful and difficult decision to come to, but it is necessary to reset the organization financially and position CPR for future success,” Vanderwilt said in a prepared statement Thursday following a full staff meeting. “This is a strategic reduction in workforce to clearly focus our efforts to provide free access to Colorado-focused news across the state, and to do so while being sustainable in the face of changing economic realities. And it is also never easy to say goodbye to talented, hard working colleagues.”

In its statement, Colorado Public Radio said its revenue drop last year mirrored the “experience of public and commercial media across the country as donors and corporate sponsors anticipated a potential economic downturn.”

Notably, predictions in media about an economic recession have “proved resoundingly wrong,” as the New Yorker reported this week. “By 2024, the country had gained more than three million jobs, unemployment was at historic lows, consumer confidence was steadily rising, and the United States was in stronger shape than all other advanced economies. (Germany, by contrast, declared a recession in early 2023.)” This year, the S&P 500 and Dow hit their highest levels in history.

Elsewhere in public radio, however, WBUR in Boston, the city’s NPR station, this week warned that it, too, might have to layoff employees, citing a “dramatic loss of sponsorship support.”

As news of the CPR layoffs bounced around journalism circles Wednesday, some pointed out how the cuts come just six months after the station paid $8.34 million for a new headquarters — with money given by a still-anonymous donor. Furthermore, Markus reported the building “still needs substantial interior construction for studios and offices” and could take three years to finish.

“The podcasting studio that made so many amazing shows was basically obliterated,” said former CPR staffer May Ortega. “And many others are affected too. Raises and hiring were frozen last summer, as was 401k matching. But at least the company will have a new building!”

---

🌿 This week’s newsletter is proudly supported in part by Grasslands, a journalist’s best friend for sourcing reporting on cannabis, psychedelics, and our ever-changing relationship with drug policy. Founded in 2016 by 24-year newspaper veteran Ricardo Baca — who in 2013 served as the world’s first Cannabis Editor at The Denver Post and a decade later was appointed by Colorado’s governor to the Natural Medicine Advisory Board to contribute to the state's psychedelics policy development — Grasslands brings a unique Journalism-Minded™ ethos to its suite of public relations, content marketing, and thought leadership products. Together with its partners, Grasslands is rewriting the broken narratives around cannabis, psychedelics, and global drug policy. Learn more at mygrasslands.com, and email Ricardo directly with any sourcing or interview requests for cannabis or psychedelics researchers, entrepreneurs, nonprofits and beyond: ricardo@mygrasslands.com. 🌿

---

A conservative AI news ‘experiment’ goes dark in Colorado

A Republican consultant in Colorado appears to have scrapped a local news and commentary site that relied on artificial intelligence and irked local reporters for copying their work.

The vanishing act came after inquiries about it from Erik Maulbetsch of the progressive nonprofit Colorado Times Recorder news site. From his story:

The Lobby aggregated and rewrote news stories and republished them with eye-catching AI-generated images and, for political stories, often a headline with a playful but conservative spin. The site’s copious content from the past four months is no longer available, replaced with a banner stating that it’s “Under Construction.”

Created by Roger Hudson, a former deputy chief of staff for the Colorado House Republicans, The Lobby likely generated more ire from Colorado’s press corps than actual web traffic. Hudson insisted he wasn’t copying local political reporters’ stories to compete as a news site, but rather he described it as a personal project started to “experiment with AI.”

“I just got curious about AI and had some free time and decided to play around with it,” said Hudson. “It’s probably over, frankly, now that you’re calling me about it.”  …

Hudson’s involvement with the site wasn’t difficult to find; the donation page informed contributors that their money would go to an LLC owned by Hudson.

Maulbetsch reported that multiple Colorado news outlets knew who was behind the site “as evidenced by the cease & desist letters they say they sent to him.” They included the Denver Gazette, Colorado Politics, and the Colorado Sun.

They told Maulbetsch that “they asked Hudson to stop using their reporters’ material as the basis for his site’s content, both in phone conversations and via formal legal requests.”

Read the rest of the compelling, and impactful, report here, which quotes editors from those publications.

“We’ve seen an increasing number of these sites,” said Sun Editor Larry Ryckman in the piece. “It’s a game of whack-a-mole. Any time we come across someone improperly using our content, we will always protect our reporters’ work and vigorously defend our intellectual property.”

Colorado Association of Black Journalists awards newsrooms, journalists, and more

The Colorado Association of Black Journalists on March 2 filled the ballroom at Denver’s Cableland with an inaugural gala and fundraiser. There, the revamped organization honored journalists, institutions, and news outlets with awards.

Winners were: The Urban Leadership Foundation of Colorado (DEI award), Blackpackers (Cultural Competence award), Metropolitical State University (Large Higher Education Institution of the Year), Colorado College (Small Higher Education Institution of the Year).

Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck (Champion of Justice), Rathod Mohamedbhai (Champion of Justice), Charleszine “Terry” Nelson, Jameka Lewis, and Blair Caldwell team (Community Service), Portia Prescott (Civil Rights Activism), Colorado Public Radio (Media Organization of the Year), Chandra Thomas Whitfield (Journalist of the Year), Rosalind “Bee” Harris (Legacy Award), and Sandra Dillard (Legacy Award).

Colorado Association of Black Journalists President Micah Smith, a reporter for Denver7, opened the ceremony, noting how the organization had been dormant for nearly a decade. “It has been about eight years since we’ve done anything at all like this,” she said. “I didn’t do this alone,” she added, “I did this with so many people including our board.”

National Association of Black Journalists President Ken Lemon said in a keynote address that diversity in journalism goes beyond representation.

“It is key,” he said. “It requires an active commitment to amplifying voices that have been historically marginalized or oppressed. It means actively seeking out stories that challenge the status quo.”

The CABJ is raising money for scholarships; donate here.

Colorado’s unique statewide prison radio program mysteriously goes off the air

Inside Wire, a unique-in-the-nation statewide prison radio program that gave incarcerated individuals the ability to broadcast stories for other incarcerated people across Colorado, is no more.

From a Nov. 9 story by Kyle Cooke at Rocky Mountain PBS:

Its final episodes, which aired in August, do not mention the program coming to an end. Months after Inside Wire’s final broadcast, the Colorado Department of Corrections (CDOC) and the University of Denver, which helped produce the show, are offering limited information about why the project ended. …

It’s not just Inside Wire that ceased production. The Inside Report, a newspaper published by incarcerated people that was also part of the Prison Arts Initiative, is no longer publishing now that the contract between DU and CDOC expired.

Cooke reported how research shows that prison arts programs are “undeniably beneficial for incarcerated people” and linked to a study from the University of Florida that found “expressive therapy and art education reduces violence within the prison system as well as decreases parolees’ recidivism.”

Sunshine Week event in Denver: ‘Opening Records, Meetings, Courts, Books, Minds’

Next week is Sunshine Week, dedicated to transparency and open government — and the laws that allow journalists and others to bare secrets.

In Denver, the the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition is hosting an event next Wednesday, March 13 at the Tattered Cover bookstore on Colfax along with the Sie FilmCenter.

A drink ticket comes with free registration, but you do have to register.

Titled “Opening Records, Meetings, Courts, Books, Minds,” the event is slated to feature speakers that include journalists from 9NEWS and Chalkbeat, a First Amendment lawyer, and others.

The Sie FilmCenter will screen “The ABCs of Book Banning,” an Academy Award-nominated short film. Sign up at the link above.

More Colorado media odds & ends

📺 Denver 9NEWS anchor Kyle Clark went viral on Twitter/X this week when prominent NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen highlighted what Clark said on the Get More Smarter podcast about reporting on political extremism and why his colleagues in journalism, particularly local TV news, shouldn’t ignore it. The post racked up nearly 200,000 views, 3,000 likes, and 1,200 re-posts.

➡️ Colorado Media Project, which underwrites this newsletter, has extended a deadline to 9 p.m. Sunday, March 10, “for Colorado’s local and statewide newsrooms to join forces with Rocky Mountain Public Media, Colorado State University’s Center for Public Deliberation, the Colorado Press Association, Colorado News Collaborative, and CMP in a statewide initiative to reclaim and reimagine the public square across all of Colorado’s 64 counties.” Register here.

📻 Aspen journalist Kelsey Brunner, an award-winning Aspen Times photographer, has been “named news director at Aspen Public Radio by the station’s executive director, Breeze Richardson,” the station reported. “I am a strong believer in multimedia journalism, and see a wonderful opportunity to expand the station’s storytelling practices, deepen our production of long-form investigative pieces, and listen to the coverage requests of our community to grow Aspen Public Radio’s reporting from the Roaring Fork and Colorado River valleys in an impactful way,” Brunner said.

🪣 “Besides serving the Denver area with trustworthy local news, Bucket List Community Cafe offers an apprenticeship that gives students who stay with us beyond their internship a broader experience,” wrote the outlet’s founder Vicky Collins. “This is an immersive, paid, real-world journalism gig and a ramp to other opportunities and full-time jobs.”

☀️ Enrollment is open for the Colorado Sun’s “fourth annual Rise & Shine Journalism Workshop, a free journalism bootcamp for Colorado high schoolers who want to learn how reporters chase stories and stay on top of their beats.”

🆕 Last week’s newsletter stated Thomas Mitchell is the “new editor” of Westword, but he will be the “news editor.” The new news editor of Westword.

⚙️ Another 9NEWS journalist has left the local TV news station to take a job across the street at Denver7. This time it’s weather caster Danielle Grant. “I have been a big fan of her work & work ethic for over a decade & I know she will be a great addition to our team,” said Mike Nelson.

⚖️ A judge has ordered the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing to cough up emails to Sherrie Peif, a journalist for Complete Colorado, the news and commentary arm of the libertarian-leaning Independence Institute think tank. “Now HCPF must turn over the documents they desperately tried to keep secret, as well as pay our attorney’s fees,” Peif wrote.

📰 Alex Hernandez, a special collection librarian at the Denver Public Library, has been digging through archived copies of old Colorado newspapers to illuminate stories of “dozens of cases of women who died in self-induced or unsafe abortions,” John Daley reported for CPR.

🤔 “If you are a Colorado reporter and you interview Lauren Boebert and don't challenge her on insurrection/'24 election security, Christian nationalism, blind support for Trumpist authoritarianism, replacement theory bigotry, anti-LGBTQ hate, why even bother,” asked Colorado Newsline Editor Quentin Young.

🎧 Colorado Sun journalist Jason Blevins appeared on The Friday Reporter podcast. “We get into the business of journalism, the thrill of living in the West and the health of the ski industry,” host Lisa Camooso Miller said. Blevins said he “snuck in the back door” of journalism. When talking about the outlet’s nonprofit business model, he said of the Sun, “I wouldn’t say we’re making money, sadly, but we’re close, and we really believe in our mission: local journalism and long-form narrative, and very vibrant robust journalism in a space where that is in decline.”

🏛 Colorado lawmakers are advancing a bill “to exempt themselves from parts of the Open Meetings Law despite facing strong opposition from transparency advocates who fear the measure would encourage policy to be crafted in secret at the statehouse,” Scott Franz reported for KUNC.

🎙 Emily Gutierrez wrote for Sky-Hi News about Colorado College student Henry Hodde’s podcast miniseries, “Forged by Fire,” about the East Troublesome Fire. “A wide range of topics are discussed in the podcast by Hodde and his guests including fire mitigation, community healing, climate change, forest management and more,” Gutierrez wrote.

🎯 Colorado Sun columnist Trish Zornio wrote this week about whether the children and family members of politicians are “fair game in the media.” She asks: “Are we better off in blowing up what should arguably be a local or regional news story at best into an international sensation if we haven’t learned anything new about the person holding office in doing so? I’m not so sure we are, and that’s a problem.” Writing in Complete Colorado, Cory Gaines said, “Every bit of coverage about Boebert, her husband, her child, her trip to Safeway, is one less bit about something arguably much more important: it’s one less bit about what those actually deciding policy in this state are doing.”

⚾️ Troy Renck has returned as a columnist for the Denver Post. “For 31 years, I have chronicled sports in Colorado, starting at The Colorado Daily and most recently at Denver7,” he wrote, adding, “when the opportunity arose to become a columnist at The Post, I pounced.”

⛰ Wet Mountain Tribune Publisher Jordan Hedberg has a compelling story this week about the intersection of the online creator economy, the paranoid style of politics, a troubled district attorney, rural Colorado, and an unsolved murder titled “How true crime YouTubers may cost three Colorado prosecutors their professions.”

🌞 River Grabowski, an instructor and MFA candidate in creative nonfiction writing at Colorado State University, has been “named as the 2024 SunLit Writer-in-Residence on the Eastern Plains, marking the second writer to take part in the program under the banner of The Colorado Sun.”

📡 Longtime NPR producer and Colorado College instructor Peter Breslow reflected on his 40-year career and new memoir on Colorado Matters at CPR.

🦅 The Crestone Eagle announced it will be “taking notes from the all-Indigenous-led newsroom, IndigiNews. The Crestone Eagle is grateful to be mentoring under IndigiNews Publisher, Eden Fineday, who will offer DEI council to staff, provide cultural sensitivity readings of published content and deepen our capacity for meaningful, sensitive, and accurate coverage of Indigenous topics.”

🌊 Devin Farmiloe profiled investigative journalist Ishan Thakore who is a Ted Scripps fellow at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for Environmental Journalism and is “reporting on the Army Corps of Engineers’ plan to protect New York from storm surges.”

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.