Current and former students at the school newspaper serving Grand Junction High are concerned about the sidelining of a media advisor and are worried about censorship and threats to press freedom.
About three weeks ago, the Orange & Black Newspaper reported that its advisor, Steve Fox, was “facing reassignment by administration.”
The move, wrote student reporter Mason Strippel, raised questions about “adviser independence, student press freedom, and the balance between administration and student media at Grand Junction High School.”
Here’s more from the May 26 piece in the O&B:
This transition, which moves Fox into an English and yearbook role, is more than a routine staffing decision. It comes after a period where O&B has published content that challenged expectations and addressed issues that were not always comfortable for the school. Fox has been the adviser of the O&B for 5 years which started in the beginning of 2021-2026. Fox also has a past of working as a news reporter for 15 years. He is also the current advisor of Colorado Mesa University (CMU) newspaper named The Criterion.
Under Fox’s leadership, the O&B “expanded beyond typical school coverage and took on more serious topics,” the paper reported. One example included an opinion piece about Gaza and Palestine that led to backlash.
Other content had also created tension, the school newspaper reported.
A front-page cover story that featured a large group of students apparently rankled the administration and “a visible detail in the image led to increased expectations for oversight.”
In another case, coverage of a lawsuit “brought attention to legal issues that are not typically covered in school media,” the paper reported. “These examples reflect a pattern of O&B publishing content that goes beyond surface-level reporting.”
This week, tensions escalated.
The Orange & Black’s former editor, Marie Calkins, who is now at Colorado Mesa University, published a column in the much larger Sentinel newspaper that serves Grand Junction, the largest municipality between Denver and Salt Lake City.
“Student press freedom under threat at GJHS,” read the headline.
The column echoed what the student paper had previously reported about the reassignment of its media advisor following uncomfortable reporting and offered more details.
Here’s an excerpt:
In the past two years, GJHS administration has attempted to censor, review, and repress several articles and elements within the publication. Their first attempt, in fall of 2024, was quickly shut down by the staff when administration was upset about a cover photo because it contained a photo of a student wearing a shirt that said “I Hate Milfs,” at a football game.
The piece reads that the administration “found fault in it due to their opinion that it didn’t promote the school appropriately.”
School administration, Calkins wrote, “asked to engage in prior review and restraint, which is when a school official tells a publication not to publish something and takes action against them doing so.”
The journalist alleged that such a thing would be in violation of the First Amendment “and when the legal language was presented to administration, they decided against it.”
Calkins also reported that school officials took issue with a pending story about a discrimination lawsuit involving the termination of a teacher and had “attempted to persuade Fox and Eli Schultz, the editor in chief at the time, not to publish the article.”
“This violates D51 school board policy, Colorado’s state law protecting student journalism and the First Amendment,” Calkins wrote. “Administration attempted prior restraint, again, creating a ‘chilling effect,’ likely leading to a decrease in free expression.”
A note at the bottom of the column reads: “This opinion piece also represents the viewpoints of other past members of the Orange and Black who read it prior to publication: Miah Hines and Lila Mottram.”
Earlier this month, Megan Fromm and Mark Newton, former editors and advisors to the Orange and Black, said they wrote a letter to the school board, superintendent, and principal expressing concern about the issue. They urged the administration to reconsider Fox’s reassignment and reaffirm its commitment to the free, robust, and uncensored voice of its student journalists.
“We live in a world where educators and leaders openly struggle to convince young people to think critically, verify sources, and care about civic engagement,” they wrote. “Fighting this fight means allowing our young people the freedom to think and express in real-time, with relevant and authentic tools that speak to their lived experiences.”
Here’s more from the letter:
Scholastic journalism makes this learning process fully public, and the discomfort this can create for adults is not the students’ burden to bear. The community at large will never see the mistakes a student makes on a science test or their growth on an English essay, nor will they be able to pass judgment on how a teenager constructed their history project. We would encourage the district to remember the value of learning experiences like scholastic journalism that have real-world implications and not to try to sanitize those experiences; rather, students who choose to engage in scholastic journalism should be respected and supported for their willingness to grow and learn in very public ways. This support requires recognizing that the role of scholastic journalism advisers is not to ensure a perfect publication.
For his part, Fox, the former media advisor at Grand Junction High School, told me he is “100 percent convinced” his reassignment is retaliation for student content.
“I was informed I would continue in my role shortly before the reassignment was announced,” he said. “When I informed students, they were all surprised.”
He added that students had immediately shared their concerns about the future of the school paper, a lack of qualified advising they might receive in the future, and how the decision might lead to erosion of student journalism at Grand Junction High as it has elsewhere.
Callie Berkson, a spokesperson for Mesa County Valley School District 51, said in a statement that while the school cannot comment on a personnel matter, the district is committed to student voices and student journalism.
“Personnel decisions are not made to limit or censor student expression,” she said. “The Orange & Black has a long and valued history at Grand Junction High School, and we remain committed to ensuring students continue to have opportunities to report, write, and share stories that are important to their school community.”
Since 1990, Colorado has had a state law that clarifies the rights of student journalists in public schools. The state was one of the first to enact such laws, known as New Voices laws. In 2020, lawmakers amended it — specifically to protect student media advisers.
Lawmakers did so in large part because of testimony from multiple Colorado journalism teachers who described being punished for supporting the press rights of their students, said Mike Hiestand, senior legal counsel at the Student Press Law Center.
“The legislature heard those stories and responded by adding the explicit anti-retaliation protections for school employees,” he said in an email this week.
Schools, he added, routinely tell students that they should be engaged citizens, ask hard questions and participate in democracy and student journalism is one of the few places where students actually get to practice those skills.
“If students conclude that vigorous reporting leads to pressure on their publication or its adviser, the lesson they’re learning is the opposite of what public education should be teaching,” Hiestand said.
The national student press attorney said what seems to be happening at Grand Junction High School — “an experienced journalism adviser being reassigned after the paper pushed back against prior review and restraint” — is a “textbook example” of what Colorado's student free expression law was specifically designed to prevent.
New Voices Laws have been spreading across the country.
The legislation seeks to strengthen protections for student journalists in the wake of a 1988 U.S. Supreme Court decision known as Hazelwood, which established that schools can suppress student journalism if they have “legitimate pedagogical concerns.”
Earlier this year, a court ordered San Francisco’s Lowell High School to reinstate a media advisor to his former role after finding the school had violated California’s New Voices law.
Steve Zansberg, a prominent First Amendment attorney who represents the state’s news organizations, said in an email that he is not aware of any tests of Colorado’s law since lawmakers updated it six years ago.
Asked if he is considering a lawsuit at Grand Junction High, Fox told me it would likely be determined by students at this point.
The Orange & Black newspaper first started publishing in the Grand Junction school system in 1918, according to its website. (Hollywood legend Dalton Trumbo was an early staff member.) Last year, the paper won 19 awards from the Colorado Student Media Association.
Recent stories and columns explored the impacts of a new school cell phone policy, a mobile school meal program, a new AP class, and new air monitors at the school.
In recent weeks, Fox has been posting links to student journalism in the Orange and Black on his public Facebook page along with his own praise for it.
“No matter what they write about, no matter if there are spelling or grammar mistakes, no matter if the journalism could be stronger, I am always proud of students for being willing to take the risk to share their writing publicly,” he wrote in one post. “For being accountable for what they publish. For being thoughtful and responsible. For being willing to engage in their community. It would be easier - safer - to go to class and keep out of the spotlight. These students are not taking the easy path. I am … immensely proud of them for that.”
He also seems pretty up to speed on the work of the Student Press Law Center.
Fox posted a link to the national advocacy group’s publicity of the court win in San Francisco. In another post, he linked to an item from the Society of Professional Journalists that called on Indiana University to protect student media independence after a major SNAFU and lawsuit there that involved the firing of a student media advisor.
In a personal note above the SPJ post, he added: “Watch for it all over.”
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🛣 This newsletter is in travel mode, meaning content might be lighter than usual, and I might not be as quick to respond to emails, messages, or DMs.
📺 Last week’s newsletter focused on an interview Kyle Clark of 9NEWS conducted with a gubernatorial candidate and a recent debate he moderated. National media have also taken note. This week, HBO satirist John Oliver dedicated a segment of his “Last Week Tonight” show to the same topic. “Perhaps the craziest race this year is for governor of Colorado,” he told his audience. The national shine is once again earning Clark accolades from viewers across the country while at home in Denver his job hangs in the balance as litigation surrounds the recent purchase of 9NEWS by Nexstar, which owns Denver’s FOX31. Watch the clip below:
💸 A new policy paper by Matthew Baker and Dermot Murphy for the national group Rebuild Local News has found a diminishing local news environment has led to $1.1 billion in extra borrowing costs for local government and taxpayers. “As an illustrative example, Colorado has a population of 6.01 million people, and approximately 31.5% of the population lives in a news desert,” the authors wrote. “Colorado issued $13.89 billion of municipal bonds in 2025, and thus we estimate that $13.89 billion x 31.5% = $4.4 billion was issued in a news desert in 2025.” (For what it’s worth, I told one of the authors that I’m skeptical that nearly a third of Coloradans live in a news desert, which the report describes as a place that has “zero newspaper outlets.” He said they had consulted 2015 Editor and Publisher data for the info.)
🔗 “Public media’s next chapter may be consolidation,” wrote Alex Curley in a story this week for Editor & Publisher magazine. In it, he argues “three possible mergers” have made consolidation “the new dominant conversation among public media workers.” One of them is between KUNC and Rocky Mountain Public Media in Colorado. “So, based on these three mergers, what does the future of consolidation in public media look like? It’s clear that there’s vulnerability in being a small, independent public media broadcaster, financial or otherwise, which makes merging with a larger organization appealing.”
👏 “We love it when good journalism and a healthy primary goad an incumbent politician into doing the right thing,” the Denver Post editorial board wrote this week when assessing the U.S. Senate Democratic primary race between Julia Gonzales and John Hickenlooper. The “good journalism” was a reference to a March story by Laura Toomer for the nonprofit Colorado Newsline site that reported how Hickenlooper’s investments raised questions amid a push to ban congressional stock trading. “Hickenlooper, who has been in the Senate for six years now,” the Post editorial read, “told us that he and his wife have decided to move their money into a qualified blind trust.”
🍺 The conservative former Gazette editorial page editor Wayne Laugesen emerged in national media this week as a source in a tsunami of bad press for Graham Platner, the embattled Democratic U.S. Senate candidate in Maine. Laugesen, who is described in a story in the New York Post as an “independent journalist and strategic communications and policy consultant,” told the paper that he had a negative experience as an ex-patron of a Washington, D.C. establishment where Platner was the bartender several years ago. “Laugesen, who at the time lived three blocks from the Tune Inn, said Platner was so disagreeable that he and his wife eventually took their business to the Hawk N Dove next door whenever they saw Platner behind the bar,” according to the story.
🗣 A man cited for projecting “stop ICE murders” on the Colorado Supreme Court “is suing members of the city police department and Colorado State Patrol claiming violations of his right to free speech and petition,” Amanda Pampuro reported for Courthouse News. “On Jan. 31, officers seized Trevor Ycas’ projector and cited him for violating a city advertising ordinance after he flashed political slogans on the Ralph L. Carr Colorado Judicial Center in Denver during a demonstration. The messages included ‘stop ICE murders,’ ‘de-ICE Colorado,’ and ‘abolish ICE.’”
🚫 The Florence Reporter community newspaper in southern Colorado had this announcement to readers this week: “To maintain the highest standards of journalistic integrity and the trust of our readers, The Florence Reporter does not accept payment for ‘sponsored content,’ or any articles written on behalf of an advertiser. We believe in a clear line between news coverage and commercial interests. While we offer various traditional advertising opportunities to help businesses reach our community, our editorial content remains independent, unbiased, and unpurchasable.” (Some other small Colorado newspapers have made sponsored content part of their business model.)
🎯 Want to sponsor this newsletter? | Here’s Denver agency SE2 founder Eric Anderson about why he did it
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🍻 Patty Calhoun, the outgoing founder and editor of Denver’s alternative weekly newspaper Westword, took two conservative talk-radio hosts on a tour of downtown Denver last Friday night. Jeff Hunt and Bill Thorpe said it was a night they’ll never forget. Downtown is just “not what it used to be,” Hunt said on the show, echoing an apparently common lament of his audience of “conservative folks.” They cited the visibility of people experiencing homelessness, and drugs. So, he wanted a downtown defender to show him around. “It was a pleasant experience,” Hunt said, sounding like an American backpacker recounting a foray into the Exarcheia area of Athens in the 2010s. “We were never accosted. We were never threatened. Nobody even asked us for money while we were down there. I felt pretty safe.”
📺 9NEWS broadcast a short clip that showed viewers how a day in the life of a reporter on assignment in Estes Park looks.
☀️ The Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition has updated its “free online guide to Colorado's sunshine laws to reflect 2026 legislative changes, including adjustments to the statute governing the release of police bodycam and dashcam footage.”
🆕 Colorado Media Project, which underwrites this newsletter, is “thrilled to welcome two new team members” with the addition of Charlene Emory-Proctor as associate director of operations and Libbie Randolph as grantee relations manager.
🇺🇸 The Rocky Mountain Voice, a conservative media outlet in Colorado founded by former Colorado Republican candidate for governor Heidi Ganahl, is hosting a “Freedom Festival” at the Douglas County Fairgrounds later this month. The event includes a roster of conservative speakers like Greg Gutfeld of the Fox cable TV channel and Nick Shirley who is described as an “investigative journalist & fraud whistleblower,” as well as a rodeo, rally, and drone show. When introducing the outlet in 2024, Ganahl described the Rocky Mountain Voice as part of a “Road to Red” project to help Republicans win elections in Colorado.
📚 “Officials within Colorado’s Elizabeth School District removed eighteen books from school library shelves and marked another as ‘temporarily suspended,’ claiming to protect children from inappropriate content and to guard parental authority,” wrote Ari Armstrong for the progressive Colorado Times Recorder site. “But if you look at the facts surrounding the case and at the books themselves, it becomes obvious that the district targeted these particular books at the behest of ideologues largely to ‘protect’ children from content ideologically at odds with the views of those making the complaints.”
➡️ As a board member of the Society of Professional Journalists Colorado Pro chapter, I’d like to invite you to join the nation’s foremost organization for journalists. SPJ is a fierce national advocate for First Amendment rights, journalistic ethics, and other values important to a free and vital press. The Colorado Pro chapter offers professional training programs and events, including the four-state Top of the Rockies competition, the region’s broadest platform for honoring journalism excellence. Each year, the chapter provides thousands of dollars in scholarships to the young journalists of tomorrow. At a time when journalists are under fire from all sides, joining SPJ is your chance to make a stand for journalism. Learn more about the chapter here, and find out how to join here. ⬅️
🖕 Colorado’s controversial congresswoman, Lauren Boebert, got into it this week with a Fox reporter who seemed to want to prod her about an aspect of her private life. “Fuck you, first of all,” she said after the reporter began to ask about one of the exes of another member of Congress who had suggested that Boebert and Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie might have had a liaison. “If you’re going to bring me into this, like, this sexist stuff is like out of control,” Boebert said. “So, there’s your clickbait that you were looking for.”
🎙 From her “experiences as an investigative reporter to political pundit on the set of PBS 12’s ‘Colorado Inside Out,’” Chris Rourke shared “details of her storied career in journalism and commentary” on the Humanity Against Tyranny podcast. On the show, the former Colorado journalist said she believes being a former journalist is “permanent now.”
⚙️ Nicole Fierro, who worked as a journalist for KDVR FOX31 in Denver, is now “serving the community in a new way,” she said on social media. “I am beyond honored to share that I am now the senior communications manager for Douglas County Sheriff's Office,” she said.
🆕 Julia Wildman, a senior at Colorado Mesa University, has joined Grand Junction Daily Sentinel “as a summertime intern for the newsroom.” The paper did a Q-and-A with her.
📺 Colorado communications consultant Rachel Mains teased an upcoming video for her Pinpoint Colorado series in which she interviews Greg Nieto for a “fascinating conversation about Channel 2, Colorado’s first television station.” She says the discussion will explore how the channel “helped shape the local news” and will offer a look into Colorado broadcasting history, among other things.
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.
Here we go again concerning the legacy media reporting on Platner. The alleged specific issues are reprehensable all agree. The issue is fitness to serve, fair question. Legacy continues the double standard of reporting depending upon party. Here's a mirror image; Platner and Pete Hegseth. Both have a history of substance abuse. Platner admits his, Hegseth apparently an untreated alcoholic, both credibly accused of domestic abuse. Both with the damning tats. Platner's nazis, Hegseth's Christofascist. Both have made disaparraging statements about minorities. Hegseth seems to fire only women and/or black generals and admirals. Why isn't legacy media openly and consistently questioning Hegseth's fitness to serve? What would be the reporting if Ken Paxton was a Dem? How would the Post, Fox31, the Denver Channel or the GJ Sentinel report about statements made by Victor Marx if he were running as a Dem?