Local man saves a Colorado newspaper on the Eastern Plains. What about the rest?

The news behind the news in Colorado

One of five newspapers on Colorado’s rural Eastern Plains that recently announced it will close has come back to life.

An unlikely revival of the hedge-fund-owned-and-shuttered Burlington Record in Kit Carson County was the subject of an excellent in-depth story this week by veteran journalist Kevin Simpson in the Colorado Sun.

At the center is Tom Bredehoft, a 62-year-old businessman and J-school grad who lives about 45 minutes away in Flagler. The former mayor who has run the Flagler News since the early 1990s along with a print advertising publication known as a “shopper,” knows the rural local news business well.

So he “seized an opportunity he viewed as good both for business and the community and legally claimed the publication’s name,” Simpson wrote. “Despite some production and delivery hiccups, the Record played on without missing a beat.”

The development offers an example of one of the ways community members can rally to the rescue of a local newspaper that disappears from a community. And it also underscores the limitations.

Bredehoft is a well-positioned area local with the background and capacity to swoop in. He was also willing to take some risks with his pirate-like approach to taking over the abandoned ship; he hoped the absentee owners wouldn’t put up much of a fight when he captured its flag.

But what’s happening in Burlington so far does not appear to be happening in nearby Morgan County and Prowers County where two other newspapers have recently blinked out. And the folks who run the Plainsman Herald newspaper in Baca County in the state’s southeast corner do not yet appear to have a successor for when they plan to shut down in December.

Worse, for the past two years, Cheyenne County, about two hours east of Colorado Springs, has been without a newspaper since the Range Ledger closed, potentially making it Colorado’s first news desert.

Simpson contrasts all that in his detailed Sept. 22 story in the Sun. You should read the whole thing, but here are some excerpts:

• “The hasty transition hit some snags — most notably, Bredehoft said, the post office’s refusal to grant him the usual discounted postage rate for the Record because the permit was still in the previous owner’s name. While ironing out that wrinkle, he created a workaround: He printed about 900 extra copies of his Flagler News, inserted The Burlington Record into those copies and mailed them out to the Record’s subscribers, who scored a temporary two-fer.”

• “Additionally, the Record’s website remained up, populated with Denver Post and wire stories. But Bredehoft said he’s negotiating to assume control of the site as well as a dedicated Facebook page.”

• “At 62, he’s also cognizant of the long-term outlook. Across the country, small rural papers have confronted confounding economics that intersect with a generation of independent owners reaching an age when they want to cash out of the industry — but find few interested buyers. Part of Bredehoft’s strategy appears to center on creating a portfolio of local publications that might attract interest once he’s ready to retire.” “I mean, nobody’s going to want the Flagler News, because you wouldn’t make a living,” he said. “But with The Burlington Record, Flagler News and the Mile Saver Shopper, you can make a halfway decent living. So I’m hoping that that’s the ticket to keep Flagler having a local paper and Burlington having a local paper.”

• “We have had a couple inquiries, but I’ve watched these rural weeklies be for sale for like five years, and nobody ends up buying them,” said Plainsman Herald owner Kent Brooks of the Baca County paper. “So I don’t know. The path is a little bit unclear. The print doesn’t make any more sense financially, though.”

• “Although current plans call for the final issue to be printed the last week of December, much about the Plainsman Herald’s future, including its online presence, remains in flux. “There is probably no way to end gracefully,” Brooks wrote in his letter to readers, “but we’ll try.” (Editor’s note: Might someone in the area consider acquiring it and having a go at a digital product? If so, consider connecting with Andrea Faye Hart of Tiny News Collective and tell her I sent you.)

Finally, the big question in the Sun piece: “Can he make the Record a sustainable business when corporate ownership could not? Bredehoft thinks so. But the daunting numbers initially gave him pause.”

Set some time aside to read the whole story here.

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‘Can’t always trust the media,’ say Denver youth activists behind Dystopian Times magazine

Aiming to uplift marginalized voices in the Denver area, the crew behind Dystopian Magazine this week held a launch event for their publication’s second volume.

Rossana Longo Better, who runs the La Ciudad newsletter for Colorado Community Media, reported a dispatch from the launch.

“The event, held at Green Spaces, showcased the work of community writers and artists addressing issues such as gentrification, displacement and media narratives,” she wrote.

More from Longo Better:

Contributors Mario Reyes and Honey Buendía shared their insights on the publication’s mission to take control of the narrative and uplift marginalized voices, particularly from neighborhoods such as Globeville and Elyria/Swansea, where gentrification has dramatically affected Latino families.

Reyes and Buendía talked about the invisibility that many marginalized groups face, particularly when only being valued or recognized during election seasons. The conversation dives into the need for self-organization within the Latinx community, the importance of cross-racial solidarity, and how collective efforts in areas such as food sustainability, education and housing can counter gentrification and empower the community to shape its own narrative.

La Ciudad interviewed the pair about the magazine. Here’s an excerpt:

🎙️La Ciudad: Why is it important to take control of the narrative? 

Reyes: One, I think as we’ve seen recently, we can’t always trust the media, and that’s on both sides. From a Democratic perspective and a Republican perspective, it’s very clear that when people are broadcasting news, there are agendas, and those agendas are not of the people and for the people.

So we wanted to create a space where the people could come and share their own agendas, share their own stories, share their own plans and dreams and visions, because without a space that we’ve created, we will not always get that voice in other mediums and in other broadcasted news. 

Find the entire interview here.

Meanwhile … Denver’s ‘homeless-focused’ Voice newspaper to close

The Denver Voice, a newspaper founded in 1996 that prints about 3,500 copies a month and promises “news you won’t read anywhere else” with a “direct and personal impact to address the roots of homelessness” said on Facebook it is shuttering because of financial woes.

“The pandemic was really rough, and there was some poor leadership decisions, and we lost some funders — and we really have not been able to recover from that,” current board president and former contributor Robert Davis told Denverite. “Our bank account is at zero, and we are in between grant cycles and haven’t been able to land one yet.”

More from Deverite’s Kevin Beaty:

The Denver Voice is a “street newspaper.” It’s sold on city streets by people experiencing poverty and homelessness — an accessible way to make money and build relationships. It has provided community and income for hundreds of people, and its vendors are a familiar sight around the Denver metro — but all that is under threat as the nonprofit faces a major financial crisis. …

The Voice has been in financial trouble for years, but its future was thrown up in the air last week, when its fifth executive director in three years quit,” Beaty reported. The organization’s bank account hit zero and paychecks stopped coming. On Friday, the paper posted on Facebook that it would be suspending operations for at least a month. ..

[In 2022], a beloved contributor died after he lost housing. Then, a trusted executive director left for another job. They went months without anyone at the helm, and the paper has dealt with several more leadership changes since.

The paper hasn’t recovered since the pandemic, those close to it said.

“The story of the Denver Voice isn't that we ran out of money. The story of the Denver Voice is that, for 27 years, we were a place where people experiencing homelessness could come and find an environment that was welcoming and excited to have them,” Giles Clasen, a former Denver Voice board president and longtime contributor, said in the piece.

Read Beaty’s in-depth story here.

Should lawmakers help keep secret the names of ranchers who report problematic wolves?

A Democratic lawmaker is floating the idea of a new law that would keep the press and public from knowing the names of Coloradans who say they believe their livestock was killed by a wolf.

“Many ranchers and livestock owners are hesitant to fill out depredation claims because they fear their personal information may be revealed to the public,” Democratic Sen. Dylan Roberts of Frisco told reporter Elliott Wenzler.

More from her story:

Under Proposition 114, the ballot measure that voters narrowly approved in 2020 to reintroduce gray wolves on the Western Slope, the state is required to compensate ranchers for any losses or injuries due to wolf attacks, also known as depredations. 

The compensation, which allows up to $15,000 per head of cattle or working dog, is only granted when a depredation is proven as wolf-caused. 

There have been 16 confirmed wolf attacks so far, but only three cases have resulted in payouts under the state’s compensation fund, according to Colorado Parks and Wildlife. Claims haven’t been filed in most of the confirmed cases. 

Jeff Roberts, executive director of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition, told Wenzler the open-government organization’s board had not yet taken a position on the bill.

“It’s important that journalists and the public be able to scrutinize government programs that involve the disbursement of public dollars,” he said. “If a lot of the data is off limits to the public, it’s much harder to do that.”

Wenzler reported that the public agency has already been redacting personal information when fulfilling open-records requests under the Colorado Freedom of Information Act.

The new law, if passed, would put the practice into statute, she reported, adding, “The bill would also apply to compensation claims from other animals, such as bears and mountain lions.”

‘Harsh financial reality’ pushes Grand Junction Sentinel to cut print days — again

The owner of a regional newspaper on Colorado’s Western Slope made a rare acknowledgement this week in announcing the paper would once again cut the days it prints a physical copy.

The Grand Junction Sentinel, which once printed every day, will now only print twice a week, its publisher Jay Seaton told readers. Those editions will be “beefier,” he added, and more like a magazine.

“This is the next logical step in the Sentinel’s future,” he said. “At a time when it has become rare to find a paper menu or airline ticket, the era of producing, printing and hand-delivering thousands of printed newspapers each day will ultimately come to a close.”

Here’s more from the Sept. 22 note to readers:

This change will allow the Sentinel to invest in its newsroom — the beating heart of any newspaper — while shoring up its financial future. Increasing production costs compounded by the difficulty of finding and retaining reliable carriers also drove this change.

Seaton pitched the move as a way for the paper to save money it could invest in more reporting capacity, and he blamed a “harsh financial reality” for having to do it. Specifically, he noted that tech companies like Google and Facebook are “soaking up” advertising.

To maintain its market share, Grand Junction Media, which runs the Sentinel, has “added four unique radio stations and a robust suite of digital advertising options. We are also convening annual events such as the High School Sports Awards and Best of the West contest,” Seaton said.

And he sought to position the paper as a valuable public service at a time of rapid digital disruption.

“At a time when artificial intelligence, misinformation, disinformation and straight untruths become more prevalent,” he said, “we want to be one of your touchstones of truth — regardless of medium.”

The move to printing twice a week is the latest disruption for this newspaper serving the largest city between Denver and Salt Lake City, with major impacts hitting the publication every three years.

In 2018, the Sentinel, which still goes by the full name the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, cut its print run to five days a week, citing newsprint costs.

Three years later, in 2021, the newspaper decommissioned its Reagan-era printing press, with Seaton saying at the time that he had no plans to reduce print days.

What could happen in 2026 remains to be seen.

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More Colorado media odds & ends

🏛💰Public funding for local news: Following a City of Boulder voter initiative that provides an initial match “toward purchase and renovation of the downtown office building to amplify news, music, education, culture, and community voices,” KGNU community radio has begun renovation of a downtown building for its headquarters and a cultural space. “The Amplifying Community campaign introduces an approximate $7.5 million project buoyed by a $1.25 million City of Boulder match from the Community, Culture, Safety voter ballot initiative passed by 83% of the Boulder voters,” according to a news release this week.

🛑 “Two days after the Colorado Times Recorder revealed that the Anschutz-owned Denver Gazette was paying for Facebook advertisements spreading falsehoods about Venezuelan gangs in Aurora, the online newspaper stopped running most of those ads,” Jason Salzman reported for his progressive nonprofit site. (An update notes some ads are back.)

👀 “I used to think Lauren Boebert refused to do interviews with local reporters because she thought the journalists would be unfair,” wrote Denver Post opinion page editor Megan Schrader. “Now I realize that her fear of the media is because she comes across as an insufferable jerk — the kind of person who is out of step with the values of most of Coloradans.” Schrader’s column was headlined “Why was Lauren Boebert such a jerk to CPR’s Ryan Warner?”

🎙 Here’s an excerpt from that CPR interview: Boebert: “Are we having a debate or an interview? I’m just checking.” Host Ryan Warner: “Well, first of all, I get to say things as a journalist to set the record straight. So, inflation is easing.” Boebert: “Oh, you're going to fact-check me during the interview.” Warner: “That’s exactly right. And inflation is easing.” Boebert: “OK. This is adorable.”

🍽 Matthew Schniper, the independent Colorado Springs food and culinary journalist who launched his own Substack newsletter Side Dish a year ago, spoke candidly and at length on the COS Business Podcast about the home economics and business side of entrepreneurial journalism. “I am paying myself now better than I ever was paid working for a [news] organization,” he said.

🆕 Cassandra Ballard, an award-winning Colorado journalist, this week joined the news staff of the Sentinel newspaper in Aurora. “Ballard, who grew up in the metro area, comes to the Sentinel from the Glenwood Springs Post Independent, where she covered a variety of beats and issues,” the paper reported.

🐘 The two wealthy businessmen and developers who bought the alternative weekly Independent newspaper in Colorado Springs were “among the hosts of a fundraiser” this week for Republican congressional candidate Jeff Crank who is running against Democrat River Gassen in the 5th District race to replace outgoing U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn, reported Jason Salzman in the Colorado Times Recorder. (In an alternate universe, the alt-weekly cover story headline would be “Cranky Owners.”)

😵‍💫 Journalist Susan Greene reported an in-depth story for the Sentinel in Aurora about the roots of the viral “Venezuelan gang hysterics.”

🍾 The Southern Colorado Business Forum & Digest is celebrating its first anniversary this month. Next month, the publication will move to a subscription model, publisher Dirk R. Hobbs wrote to readers in the latest print edition. “To deliver the most reliable, timely, relevant, and accurately reported news you can use — no regurgitated press releases or AI stories here — we need to pay great writers and editors to get it done.”

🎙 Brendan Joel Kelley of Westword profiled the important podcast Master Plan by Denver journalist David Sirota and a team including Jared Jacang Maher, editor Ron Doyle, producer Laura Krantz and Ula Kulpa that traces the roots (including in Colorado) of a multi-decade effort to legalize corruption in the United States. “Now halfway through its first season, Master Plan hit the podcast charts in its first week, charting second for politics and fourth for news; it’s been ranked in the top 20 of all podcasts worldwide,” Kelley reported. “I'm thrilled that our chart-topping audio series was built by journalists mostly from Colorado, rather than only from the Brooklyn/DC media bubble,” Sirota said on social media. “It’s bad that so much of (what remains of) media is so concentrated in NY/DC. I’m psyched we’re showing theres another way.”

✋ Dave Perry, the longtime editor of the Sentinel community weekly newspaper in Aurora, wrote an open letter to Donald Trump, urging him to stay away from the city the former Republican president speculated is being overrun by Venezuelan gang members. “Aurora embraces diversity,” Perry wrote, “so there’s nothing here for you.”

💨 Phil Castle, who has spent the past 25 years as editor of the Grand Valley Business Times in Colorado’s Mesa County, said in a column this week that he is retiring. “I’m eager to devote more of my efforts to becoming what I always wanted to be when I grew up — a novelist,” he wrote. “I’m looking for a literary agent and publisher who share my passion for two particular mysteries set in western Colorado featuring a newspaper journalist as sleuth. I expect a more concerted search to yield results.”

💨 “This is my last month editing the Denver North Star,” Kathryn White told readers of the Colorado Community Media-run newspaper.

💸 Big Green, a Broomfield nonprofit founded by Elon Musk’s brother Kimbal Musk, has agreed to pay $449,999 in back pay to “ten workers who lost their jobs three years ago after forming a union,” Tamara Chuang reported for the Colorado Sun. The Denver Newspaper Guild-Communications Workers of America, Local 37074, AFL-CIO represented the workers. (With his brother in the news so much, one reader of this newsletter said he is surprised “Kimbal doesn’t get more sustained attention from Colorado media.”)

⚖️ Denver Gazette reporter Nicole C. Brambila said the paper obtained communications between the City of Aurora and attorneys for a local apartment complex currently at the center of news coverage only after “the threat of a lawsuit from the Denver Gazette.”

🚔 Julianna O’Clair has joined the Glenwood Springs Post Independent as a reporter who will focus on Garfield County and arts and entertainment. “I believe the biggest issues Colorado faces right now are the high cost of living and rising violent crime,” she told the paper’s Peter Baumann in a Q-and-A. (While crime is higher than it was in, say, the 2010s, recent state data show it’s trending downward in Colorado. Asked about it, O’Clair said the 2024 data isn’t complete, so we’ll see if it continues, and she pointed to data showing trends from 2008 to 2024. “I think it’s fair to say that overall, violent crime is rising in Colorado,” she said, and while there are dips, she is concerned about an “overall upward trend.”) This week, new data showed violent crime “dropping sharply” in major U.S. cities. Citing state data, Democratic Gov. Jared Polis and the Colorado Department of Public Safety on Sept. 26 stated in a news release that “violent crimes in Colorado have decreased by 15% overall in the past year (2023 Q2 to 2024 Q2), including a 27% decrease in murder, a 15% decrease in non-consensual sexual offense, a 16% decrease in robbery, and a 15% decrease in aggravated assault.”

⛰ “On an early morning in Aspen, Colorado, Maria Hinojosa met up with three super-star Latino journalists at Aspen Public Radio; John Quiñones, Maria Elena Salinas, and Paola Ramos,” wrote Monica Morales-Garcia and Maria Hinojosa for Latino USA. “They all gathered in Aspen for the 4th Annual Raizado Festival —celebrating Latine excellence and representation.”

📚 Boulder’s Brian Buckley, founder of the since-closed Innisfree Poetry Bookstore, is “bringing his passion for the written word to Trident Booksellers & Cafe with the launch of a new Author Series,” reporter Ella Cobb wrote for the Daily Camera and its sister newspapers. “From local writers to nationally bestselling novelists, audiences can look forward to live readings, discussions and book signings from different authors each week.”

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’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.) Reply or subscribe to this weekly newsletter here, or e-mail me at CoreyHutchins [at] gmail [dot] com.