An Arizona-based digital outlet billed as “the only nonprofit newsroom in the Southwest dedicated to LGBTQ+ communities” is expanding to Colorado.
LOOKOUT began as a monthly protest newsletter by an Arizona reporter frustrated with his newspaper’s coverage of LGBTQ+ issues. But now it’s a four-person news source based in Phoenix that has grown to become a full-time statewide publication.
This Monday, I wrote for Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab about LOOKOUT’s expansion into the Southwest — and potentially beyond.
Here’s an excerpt from the piece:
Last month, LOOKOUT’s founders hosted an invite-only event at a Denver bar for partners, funders, and local publishers. The gathering received support from the Knight Foundation and the digital marketing firm BlueLena.
Danika Worthington attended the party. As the membership manager for the nonprofit statewide Colorado Sun digital outlet, she has had an inside look at the state’s media scene while helping grow a startup through most of its eight years in business.
There is plenty to cover in Colorado’s queer space, both good and bad, she said, but she often feels that queer news is relegated to arts and culture. The Denver journalist, who has donated to LOOKOUT, said she’s excited for an outlet to take a serious approach to hard news in her state.
“I think it might even lead other publications to kind of step up their game,” she said, “or at least to partner with them.”
The founders of the publication were in Colorado looking to get to know those in the Mile High City who care about LGBTQ+ communities and their intersection with local news.
Jake Hylton, LOOKOUT’s executive director, described the reception as profound. “It felt like there was hope around it,” he said over the phone recently. “We walked away with a community.”
The event was the first physical foray into expanding their publication into Colorado after research and listening sessions here and in four other states.
“Colorado is the first step as we regionalize to the rest of the Southwest,” Hylton said about Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and Nevada. He added: “There are queer people everywhere, and the type of work we do doesn’t really exist this side of Ohio.”
The idea for LOOKOUT, whose tagline is “Fierce. Independent. Queer.,” began about three and a half years ago.
“There are publications for the Latino community, there are publications for AANHPI communities, there are publications for Black communities,” Hylton said. “But this type of hard-hitting local and hyper-local news never really existed, especially in the form of accountability news.”
Here’s another excerpt from the story:
A grant from the American Journalism Project seeded the publication and the MacArthur Foundation supported its recent feasibility studies. But the founders worry that anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric from the White House has made it difficult to attract future or sustained funding.
“I do believe this is a pivotal moment, and philanthropy has the ability to step up and support organizations serving communities that are being targeted,” said Jake Hylton, LOOKOUT’s executive director.
The success and ambition of the local news operation is an example of a small, bootstrapped nonprofit newsroom building a community and relying on that community to help fuel its sustainability and reach new places.
“We cannot wait for philanthropy to fund us to do this,” [founding editor Joseph Darius Jaafari] said about the site’s move into Colorado. “We’re going in there bare fucking bones.”
Below are some nuggets from the Nieman Lab story:
“I’ve always been a bit of a rabble-rouser,” said LOOKOUT’s founding editor, Joseph Darius Jaafari, a tattooed 38-year-old Iranian journalist who has written for Rolling Stone, The Marshall Project, and others. “I like to poke, I like to prod, I like to be a bit of a jackass to The Man. That’s kind of, I think, why I went into this career in the first place.”
“Currently based in Phoenix, the newsroom prints a quarterly magazine, produces about three separate newsletters each week to more than 14,000 subscribers, and publishes news, investigations, and accountability journalism on its website each week. The style marries the voice of an alt-weekly — “Join Our Drunken Live Blog of the Republican Governor’s Primary Debate” — with sharp and rigorous reporting.”
Colorado is the first step as they seek to expand throughout the Southwest to include Utah, New Mexico, and Nevada. It’s also part of their own survival strategy as a news organization. Colorado has a robust nonprofit news scene and a strong philanthropic journalism support network. The extent to which a new statewide outlet can break through and compete for funding will be a test for future growth elsewhere.
“Next month, LOOKOUT plans to travel to a pride event in Pueblo, Colorado, a former major steel hub in the West about two hours south of Denver. Some who have been involved in local media there have complained about feeling neglected by the state’s broader local media support networks. Hylton said LOOKOUT is already in talks with the 5-year-old nonprofit Pueblo Star Journal about potential partnerships.”
Find the whole piece here, and keep an eye on the publication as it starts growing some roots in our state’s media scene.
➡️ This newsletter is proudly sponsored by The Colorado Health Foundation. As a proud funder of Colorado Media Project, the home of Press Forward Colorado, the CHF understands that healthy communities need a healthy news ecosystem.
This year, The Colorado Health Foundation is working to combat disinformation and misinformation, and helping nonprofits build media literacy.
🗣 Explore the latest findings from our 2026 Pulse Poll, which surveyed 2,240 Coloradans, for potential story ideas. (See how the Colorado Sun recently did so here.)
The Colorado News Collaborative called our annual Pulse Poll a “trove of information useful to reporters.” Get in touch to see how the data might be useful for any stories you are pursuing — or to learn about potential story ideas. ⬅️
Denver Post’s list of 150 ‘most notable’ (and almost notable) Coloradans counts plenty of media stars
As part of the state’s 150th anniversary, the Denver Post has published a list of 150 of the most notable people in Colorado history.
Elsewhere, the paper has called the list a compendium of the state’s most “influential.”
The process took weeks in which Posties, by their own admission, “discussed, disagreed, argued, justified, cajoled, begged and whined (a lot)” when deciding who would make the final cut.
In the end, nearly 10% — 14 out of 150 — had strong ties to the journalism business.
These media luminaries include:
Philip Anschutz: “An entrepreneur and one of the wealthiest individuals in the world, he has given more than $100 million to the University of Colorado School of Medicine. He is the founder of AEG and owns sports teams and sports venues.” (Editor’s note: Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Post did not mention that he also owns the Colorado Springs Gazette, Colorado Politics, and the Denver Gazette, which erected billboards around the city reading “Better. Balanced. Denver.,” and created digital ads that urged readers to “Leave the Post in the past.”)
Alan Berg: “Member of the ‘shock jock’ revolution that took over broadcast media in the 1980s, the outspoken liberal, a Jew, was murdered by the white supremacist group The Order outside his Denver home in 1984 at age 50.”
Frederick Bonfils and Harry Tammen: “The two purchased a failing newspaper in 1895 and renamed it the Denver Evening Post, predecessor of The Denver Post.”
Helen Bonfils: “Bonfils became president of The Denver Post when her father, founder Frederick G. Bonfils, died. Her legacy includes the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, the Bonfils Memorial Theater (now Lowenstein Theater) and the Bonfils Blood Center.”
Stan Brakhage: “Experimental filmmaker whose 300-plus works helped define the ‘language of American avant-garde cinema,’ according to the Whitney Museum of American Art. Taught Cinema Studies & Moving Image Arts at the University of Colorado for more than 20 years.”
William Byers: “Byers founded the Rocky Mountain News, Denver’s first newspaper. He helped create the city’s first Chamber of Commerce and joined John Evans and Henry Brown in starting the Denver Tramway Company.”
Patty Calhoun: “Calhoun co-founded Westword magazine in 1977 (from which she is stepping down as editor this summer), a frequent panelist on ‘Colorado Inside Out,’ and past president of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies.”
John Malone: “The New York Times described Malone as the ‘most influential’ of those who have transformed the modern media industry. The chairman emeritus of Liberty Media is also the second-largest private landowner in the United States.”
Larry Mizel: “Founded M.D.C. Holdings, parent company of Richmond American Homes. His philanthropy is far-reaching. He founded the Mizel Institute, which includes the Mizel Museum and the Counterterrorism Education Learning Lab).” (Editor’s note: He also previously owned the Colorado Statesman newspaper, which has now become Colorado Politics.)
Sue O’Brien: “O’Brien was the editorial page editor at The Denver Post for eight years until her death in 2003. Dean Singleton called her the ‘conscience of Colorado.’ She was a press secretary for Gov. Dick Lamm and ran Gov. Roy Romer’s first campaign for governor.”
Don Seawell: “The former publisher of The Denver Post left his greatest legacy as the visionary behind the Denver Performing Arts Complex.”
Dean Singleton: “Denver Post readers can thank Dean Singleton for The Post existing today. The founder of Media News Group is credited with winning the newspaper war with The Rocky Mountain News and securing The Post’s future.”
Hunter S. Thompson: “The creator of Gonzo journalism, where the journalist becomes central to the story, spent decades living in Woody Creek. He wrote ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.’”
Dalton Trumbo: “This once cub reporter for The Daily Sentinel in Grand Junction published his first book, ‘Eclipse,’ in 1935, which was a thinly veiled critique of his hometown’s socialites. Trumbo was forced to testify before Congress during the Red Scare. He became a fierce defender of the First Amendment.”
Find the whole list here, and a list of those who almost made it here.
The catalogue of also-rans includes Richard Ballantine, owner of the Durango Herald, Charlie Ergen who founded DISH Network, the radio commentator Ross Ford, newspaper owner Horace Greeley, cable news pioneer Glenn Jones, author Jon Krakauer, sports radio personality Dave Logan, cable and telecommunications giant Bob Magness, and former Denver Post editor Greg Moore.
For what it’s worth, Blinky the Clown almost made the list, as did another character — quoting directly from the Post: “Alfred Packer (cannibal).”
This week’s newsletter is supported in part by the Regional Air Quality Council, the Front Range’s lead air quality planning organization. The RAQC is a great reporting resource for stories about ground-level ozone, the Front Range’s most pressing air quality issue each summer. Visit RAQC.org to learn more and sign up for our newsletter. To learn more about ground-level ozone and the simple steps your audience can take to protect their health and reduce their emissions, visit the RAQC’s SimpleStepsBetterAir.org.
More Colorado media odds & ends
💰 Colorado Media Project, which underwrites this newsletter, has announced a new grant opportunity for local Colorado newsrooms. “The 2026 Closing Colorado Coverage Gaps Grant provides flexible support to newsrooms serving Colorado’s BIPOC, linguistically diverse, and rural communities,” the organization states. “These grants provide general operating support to newsrooms with strong, existing relationships in these communities, helping them build on those relationships with their audiences and strengthen their editorial coverage of issues vital to the communities they serve.”
📂 A reader told me they keep a separate email folder to archive this newsletter so they can go back and read older editions and search them. No need! Every edition of “Inside the News in Colorado” is archived here online.
👀 “A St. Louis PBS station says its 70-year archive of programming is stuck in a Denver data center after a cloud storage company cut off the TV station’s access to the 50 terabytes of data this spring,” Shelly Bradbury reported for the Denver Post. “Nine PBS filed a lawsuit Tuesday in Denver District Court seeking the safe return of the data, which the station’s attorneys believe is being stored within Iron Mountain Data Centers DEN-1, a data center at 4300 Brighton Road in north Denver.”
🗞 Niki Turner, editor and publisher of the Rio Blanco Herald Times in northwest Colorado, is turning over the editorial reins to Caitlin Walker.
📺 Readers have asked me about this disclosure at the bottom of some E.W. Scripps-owned Denver7 online stories: “This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.” (This newsletter reported last summer how KOAA NEWS5 in the Springs, also owned by Scripps, was using the same disclosure language and also detailed the process for how it works.)
🖨 “We are keenly aware of the woeful quality of the printed newspaper we have produced in recent weeks,” wrote Grand Junction Daily Sentinel publisher Jay Seaton to readers this week. He listed the problems and called it “unacceptable,” adding that his team is “marshaling all the resources available to us to get it fixed.” The news came with a “stinging irony,” he said, because he recently bought the Delta and Montrose newspapers “in part to get control of the printing press so that we could enhance the quality of the product. I am wiping that egg off my face as I type this. But we will get it fixed.” The development underscores some of the unique problems in the print newspaper industry.
🆕 The Denver Press Club is considering this new mission statement: “The Denver Press Club — the oldest press club in the nation — strengthens journalism and the First Amendment by empowering an ethical Fourth Estate and encouraging the free exchange of ideas. We foster open, respectful dialogue on the issues of the day, and nurture the next generation of journalists through scholarships and professional development. Through the stewardship of our historic clubhouse, we serve as a third place for friends of journalism and a home for where conversations begin.”
🍦 Journalist Spencer Soicher lifted some spirits in the 9NEWS newsroom this summer when he bought a Costco soft-serve ice cream maker and hauled it into the office where he set it up at his desk. He filmed the positive reactions from colleagues and posted them on social media. “The boss let us keep it,” he wrote. “For now.”
🚨 Alden Global Capital, the hedge fund that gutted the Denver Post and other newsrooms “is poised to hold a major voting stake in reorganized Cumulus Media,” Mike Blinder wrote in Editor & Publisher. “To many broadcasters, that may sound like another post-bankruptcy ownership story. To those of us in the newspaper business, it sounds like an alarm.”
🆕 Josh Pike joined the Gunnison Country Times. He previously reported for the Pagosa Springs Sun. “I’m looking forward to the perspective and energy Josh brings to our coverage of the people and science that shape policy on water, wildlife, forests, public lands and the environment,” said Times editor John Waters. The paper is also seeking a “full-time reporter/digital journalist.” Email the editor at jwaters[at]orourkemediagroup[dot]com.
🎧 I’ve been listening to an excellent podcast about the news business from Scene on Radio. Episode four features Colorado’s Vanessa Otero and examines and critiques the Media Bias Chart from her company Ad Fontes Media.
📡 Former Colorado Public Radio host Vic Vela has started hosting Morning Edition at Aspen Public Radio.
🌭 Axios Colorado Springs is still without a local reporter since Glenn Wallace started it this spring and left shortly after. Axios Denver’s John Frank has been filling in. Now, as he takes time off, Axios Chicago reporter Carrie Shepherd will be writing the daily newsletter. “What does some Chicagoan know about Colorado? I’ll be honest. Not a ton,” she acknowledged in this Friday’s edition. But she said the team in Colorado will make sure she doesn’t sound “completely out of place.”
🆕 Aspen Daily News has a new downtown office — and a new website. This week, the paper told its readers about it, among other things going on at the ADN including a new reporter, Drew Shaw, supported by Report for America.
💨 After nearly four decades in broadcast journalism, Alan Gionet of CBS Colorado is retiring, the station reported. He “was the first television reporter to cover the dispute over the keeping of bodies in a shed in Nederland. Ultimately, the story went worldwide. Later, the community would use that publicity to create Frozen Dead Guy Days.”
💵 A Colorado newspaper publisher used a personal column to gently ask subscribers to pay their past-due bills by saying it’s “time to feed the horses.”
🆕 Sky-Hi News in Grand County has a new full-time editor, Tim Rasmussen. “From taking photos as a small-town photojournalist in Utah to managing an award-winning photography staff at the Denver Post, Rasmussen is an industry veteran whose career spans more than four decades,” Isabel Del Mastro reported for the paper. (Del Mastro is also new and is working remotely before moving to the area Aug. 10. “Current editor Sean McAlindin’s last day will be July 31,” the paper reported.)
✈️ Writing in Columbia Journalism Review, Susie Banikarim gave props to “an impressive and ambitious new documentary about ICE Air, the sprawling aviation network that ICE uses to move thousands of detainees around the country, from investigative journalists Chris Vanderveen and Chris Hansen of 9News/KUSA-TV in Denver.”
I’m Corey Hutchins, manager of the Colorado College Journalism Institute, advisor to Colorado Media Project, and a board member of the state Society of Professional Journalists chapter. For more than 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. Most recently, I’ve been contributing to Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab and The Conversation. I also write the twice-monthly Community Newswire newsletter for the Center for Community News at the University of Vermont. The nonprofit Colorado Media Project 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.