'That’s the problem with newsrooms out here,' rural Colorado publisher says
The news behind the news in Colorado
When Rocky Mountain PBS reporter Chase McCleary recently interviewed the publisher of the Kiowa County Independent newspaper in southeast Colorado, it wasn’t particularly easy.
The session was interrupted three times, he wrote in a recent in-depth feature for the statewide public TV broadcaster.
Members of the community kept coming in to the small Main Street newspaper office in rural Eads for various reasons — including to exchange raw milk since the newsroom serves as a pick-up-and-drop-off location. A 94-year-old “one-handed rancher from Wiley” also made an appearance.
The opening of the story sets the tone for the rest of the excellent piece headlined “Bought-out, priced out, burned out: the individuals fighting to keep local journalism alive in Colorado.” And that is, namely, that rural newspaper owners like Betsy Barnett of the Kiowa County Independent wear many hats.
“It’s me, as the publisher, and I’m also on the board of the Kiowa County Economic Development, and I help with the museum, chairman of the Crow-Luther Cultural Events Center — we’re trying to get that library in,” she told McCleary. And she just recently left another position at the local school. “I was the principal there, the high school principal.”
More like a hat rack.
Here’s a notable excerpt that details some recent developments east of I-25.
In a span of about two weeks at the end of July and in early August, five local newsrooms in Colorado [announced they would close], all of them were located in the eastern plains: the Plainsman Herald, the Burlington Record, the Lamar Ledger, the Fort Morgan Times and the Brush News-Tribune.
The Herald [is] independently owned and operated, as it [has] been since it opened in 1887, nearly 140 years ago.
Despite being based in Kiowa County, the Kiowa County Independent now reports from about five counties: “Kiowa County, Prowers County, Bent County, Cheyenne County and even Baca County now,” said Barnett, counting them out on her fingers.
Barnett is the Kiowa County Independent’s only full-time reporter (she has a part-time assistant and some freelance reporters who contribute articles), on top of being the editor, the publisher and the ad sales lead, among many other hats she wears.
“That’s the problem with newsrooms out here,” said Barnett. “There’s lots to cover, a lot is happening and just not enough people or resources to do it.”
The piece also details the efforts of the Colorado News Mapping Project, which seeks to identify where residents get their news and information in all 64 counties. The initiative is an ongoing project of the Colorado College Journalism Institute, the University of Denver, Colorado Media Project, Hearken, the Colorado News Collaborative, and others.
Here are some nuggets from the story, which comes with a well-produced video that counts me as an interview subject:
“Catherine Thurston, the editor of the Limon Leader and the Eastern Colorado Plainsman, said that after The Pueblo Chieftain’s printing press (owned by Gannett) closed in [2023], they were forced to seek printing in Hutchinson, Kansas, a seven-hour drive away. Printing for Thurston is now four times more expensive.”
“Colorado is pressed for printing presses. Only seven existed in-state after the Pueblo press closure – which impacted more than 80 publications – according to a 2023 Colorado Media Project report.”
“‘The internet isn’t as strong in many places out here,’ said Thurston … ‘if we were just digital, it wouldn’t be as accessible to everybody, especially some of our farming families.’”
Read the whole thing here and watch the nearly 5-minute video below:
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‘Remarkable’: State’s highest court to hear 2 cases from Colorado news outlets
The Colorado Supreme Court has chosen to hear two cases involving local media outlets. Both involve access to records the news organizations believe should be public.
The development is unusual given that in 2023, the state’s highest court received around 1,400 requests to hear cases and chose to brush off the vast majority of them. By its own admission, the Supreme Court “typically grants around 5 percent of the petitions filed each year.”
So, that this group of seven justices has decided to hear two transparency cases involving local news organizations “is just pretty remarkable,” says Rachael Johnson, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press’s Local Legal Initiative attorney in Colorado, who represents both outlets.
One of the cases involves the Sentinel Colorado weekly newspaper and what happened after its reporter, Max Levy, requested access to recordings and meeting notes from an executive session of the Aurora City Council. The city denied the request, the Sentinel sued, the Sentinel lost, the Sentinel appealed, and a higher court agreed with the newspaper and reversed the lower court’s decision.
But.
While the appeals court agreed with the Sentinel, it also ruled the newspaper could not collect attorney’s fees for winning its transparency case because “the Sentinel is not a ‘citizen’” under a specific state statute.
That’s the decision the Sentinel has asked the state Supreme Court to review, which it says it will do.
The case is important, Johnson says, to ensure that if agencies violate the law there will be a penalty and accountability, which is “really important to the public for greater transparency.”
The High Court will also take up another issue involved in that case that the City of Aurora asked it to hear. That is whether the court of appeals erred in finding that a general description of the discussion of an executive session in a later public city council agenda packet constituted a waiver of the entire attorney-client privilege and the executive-session privilege by the public body.
The second case involves the Gazette in Colorado Springs, which had sued the director of the Colorado Peace Officer Standards and Training Board for access to a database that contains records about certification and training of law enforcement officers.
Colorado is lucky. We’re a state with a pro-bono attorney from the national Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, through the Local Legal Initiative, who will take these cases for news outlets all the way up to the state’s highest court.
As for what the public and press should know about the initiative’s work in Colorado, Johnson says: “Government denials of access will not go unchallenged.”
Jay Rosen tells Colorado media he’s ‘never seen an opportunity like the one you have in 2024’
Last weekend, prominent NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen offered the keynote breakfast address at the annual Colorado Press Association convention outside Denver.
In it, he talked about a unique approach to covering elections and said he believed that in 32 years of advocating for a more voter-centric model of reporting, he had never seen an opportunity like the one Colorado has right now.
He agreed to let me republish his speech below:
The “citizens agenda” model for election coverage is coming to Colorado this year in a big way. I am crashing your party because 37 newsrooms in Colorado have signed up to participate in the Voter Voices project. Unprecedented, as far as I know. I want to see that project succeed.
Across the nation, election coverage has long been dominated by the “horse race” model. The question it tries to answer is: who’s gonna win? (And how are they going about it?) But since 1992 there has been a workable alternative that starts in a very different place.
It’s called the Citizens Agenda and based on a simple idea: Listen to voters. Let their agenda guide yours.
Instead of starting with the race — with the candidates and the parties — you begin by asking the voters what they want this campaign to be about. Get good, reliable answers to that question, and you can add more value.
The Citizens Agenda is what I call it. I also use the term “voters agenda.” Voter Voices works too. What matters is not what you call it, but how you do it.
Nine key steps in the Citizens Agenda model for better election coverage
Step 1.) First, identify the people you are trying to inform: your community, your public. This might include both the people you reach, and those you want to reach.
Step 2.) Ask the people you are trying to inform a simple but powerful question: What do you want the candidates to be talking about as they compete for votes?
Step 3.) is to repeat Step 2.) by asking that key question — what do you want the candidates to be talking about as they compete for votes? — in every way you can.
That includes interviews with reporters. Focus groups with researchers. Leave us a message. Email us. Tweet us. Text us. Come to our event. Comment on our Facebook page. Fill out this form, and share it with people you know.
Step 4.) When you are confident in your grasp of what you are hearing — and when the replies start to repeat themselves — synthesize the results into a list of ranked items, which you name and frame: the voters agenda.
Step 5.) Test the draft agenda with the people you drew it from and made it for. Does this sound right? Did we capture what was meant? Did we miss any nuances?
Step 6.) Publish the agenda as a “live” product at your site, and promote it to the people you are trying to inform, adding that you will continue to listen and revise the product all the way to election day.
Step 7.) Use it! Turn what you heard from voters into a blueprint for your election coverage. Dig into the problems that you know are on people’s minds — because you heard it directly from them.
Step 8.) You did the work. You have a live list of the problems that matter to the voters you serve. Now get the candidates to address them.
Step 9.) Around the citizens agenda you can build your voters guide: a page they can bring to the polls. What each candidate said about each item on the list.
And that’s how you “win” at election coverage. Listen carefully to the people you are trying to inform. Find out what they want the candidates to be talking about. Get the candidates to address those things. Tell the voters what they said. Repeat.
Here in Colorado, the Voter Voices project has set up a live experiment among newsrooms that decide to use the citizens agenda in the 2024 election.
They can share progress, share data, share what they are hearing from readers, and learn what works. The project already has responses from over 6,000 people in the state. All 37 partners have access to that data statewide.
Covering elections with a shifted model could be a breakthrough for Colorado journalism. It adds more value than the common alternatives. It is audience-centric. It is pro-democracy. It starts in a different place, and asks a different question.
And it’s not just election coverage.
A “readers agenda” product — a list of priorities that you got from regularly connecting with them — could operate year round, and change with changes in your community.
Local media has to lead the way.
Political journalism centered in Washington DC is a different animal and not a good guide for the people in this room. They have a business model: sell insiderism to the political class. It’s working fine. You have to do your own thing.For 32 years I have been writing about and advocating for a more voter-centric model in election coverage. I have never seen an opportunity like the one you have in 2024.
So. Here’s a question for any politics reporter in Colorado or anyone who runs a newsroom: Why wouldn’t you do this?
After 1,257 columns (in a row), Vail Daily’s Richard Carnes is no longer publishing
Over a career that spanned 25 years, Vail Daily columnist Richard Carnes says he published 1,257 Tuesday columns — consecutively.
But that stretch ended last month when Carnes turned in a column following news that a 20-year-old man had shot at Donald Trump during a rally in Pennsylvania and left the former GOP president with a bloody ear.
“You preach violent rhetoric on a daily basis, violence will follow you around like a lost puppy,” the column began. “You advocate the use of force whenever necessary, force becomes your mistress. You sell aggression and vengeance as a means to an end, aggressive vengeance can backfire and be the means to your very own end.”
But, for the first time in a quarter century, Carnes says he was told the Ogden-owned newspaper would not print what he sent in, arguing it was inappropriate given that the shooting had just happened barely 48 hours before. Since then, Carnes hasn’t published another column.
“Sadly, I think I’m done,” he said over email this week.
The longtime columnist mentioned that when his 95-year-old mother-in-law asked him how he felt about it, he said, “I love not having to do it … but I hate not doing it.”
Vail Daily editor Nate Peterson said he made the decision not to run the column — one he’s had to make numerous times over the years as an editor.
“Every single opinion column that comes into my inbox is judged on its own merits,” he said. “That’s what editing a community newspaper is all about.”
Denver Post sports columnist: ‘I think media are afraid’
Last week, a story in the Denver Post about University of Colorado Boulder football coach Deion Sanders refusing to take questions from one of the paper’s columnists, Sean Keeler, went viral.
Why the beef? Sanders said at a recent news conference he believes Keeler doesn’t like the team.
The Associated Press reported that one of the headlines on Keeler’s columns in recent weeks was “Deion Sanders is a false prophet. CU Buffs? College Football Playoffs? I’ll have what Coach Prime’s smoking.”
The Athletic sports outlet of the New York Times called Coach Prime’s move a “reporter ban.”
The Denver Post also reported on “specific language in his contract that requires [Sanders] to speak only with ‘mutually agreed upon media’ as part of his employment with CU.”
Since then, the Denver Post’s Keeler has been making the rounds, thus bringing more attention to the story and the football coach whose play might have backfired.
“The reaction to this nationally has been very, very different than the reaction locally, which has been fascinating, I guess, as a journalist to watch, but less fascinating when you’re the guy getting the hate mail,” Keeler said on a show called Unsportsmanlike Radio. He said there’s been a culture of “fear” around the program. “I think players are afraid,” he said, “I think coaches are afraid — because they saw what happened to the first-year staff — I think media are afraid, and I think Colorado administrators are afraid.”
On Denver’s Altitude Sports Radio, Keeler said, “I’m not a martyr, not a victim,” and that “we don’t sign up to this to be the story — sometimes we are. Fine, whatever.”
He added that the “degree of fear and cowering that runs among the people who cover the Colorado athletic department — and in some cases some people who are in the Colorado athletic department — is amazing to me. Because there is a line between respect and there is a line between just outright having some courage, and I’m stunned how many people won’t cross it.”
Rob Parker of Fox Sports Radio’s “The Odd Couple” said this week, “If you’re members of the media, not only from The Denver Post, but from all the newspapers, TV, and radio stations that cover that football team — they should refuse to cover Colorado football if they’re going to exclude a columnist from doing his job.”
Joining into the fray, Denver Post Rockies beat writer Patrick Saunders said, “There are more fanboys and butt-kissers in Colorado sports ‘journalism’ than ever before.”
➡️ As a new 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. We’re making plans for a regional conference next spring. And 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. ⬅️
More Colorado media odds & ends
🏆 Find all the winners of the 146th annual Colorado Press Association awards here, which the organization announced last weekend in Northglenn at its convention.
🖨 “70 Colorado newspapers were given 30 days’ notice to find a new printer by Alden Capital, the Denver Post hedge fund owner, announcing that they were going to list the [Berthoud printing plant] building for 7.2 million and close the printing plant almost immediately,” wrote longtime Colorado newspaper publisher Bob Sweeney in a column. “They moved their own publications to the Denver Plant in Denver leaving the rest of us gasping for air.”
💵 “Local newsrooms seeking to build connections, trust, and dialogue with residents through in-person events this fall can apply for grants of up to $1,500 from CMP's new Above the Noise Community Events Fund, to cover event organizing and hosting costs,” Colorado Media Project, which underwrites this newsletter, announced this week.
🎬 Join the Society of Professional Journalists, Colorado Pro Chapter, on Thursday, Sept. 26, for a special screening of “Trusted Sources” at the Denver Press Club. Following the screening, I’ll moderate a panel discussion with filmmaker Don Colacino and two Colorado journalists who appear in the documentary: Reporter Nina Joss of Colorado Community Media, and Thelma Grimes, who is deputy editor of Colorado Politics. Register here. (Free for SPJ Colorado Pro members via reimbursement, otherwise $10.)
🎙 Bazi Kanani has joined Colorado Public Radio where she’ll develop and co-host a new daily podcast. A veteran TV and radio host in Nevada, Michigan, Western New York, and Colorado, she also worked internationally as a reporter for ABC News based in Nairobi, Kenya, and spent a few years based in the Washington, D.C., bureau for ABC News, CPR states. “Before returning to her home state of Colorado, Bazi lived in central Mexico where she and her family studied Spanish language and Mexican culture.”
💨 Abigail Beckman has left KRCC after six years to work as a content writer for philanthropy and engagement at the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs.
🚜 “In southeastern Colorado, the loss of local newspapers is particularly concerning given the region’s rural nature. Unlike urban areas, where alternative news sources might be more readily available, rural communities often lack media outlets,” Joe Zemba wrote in a column for the La Junta Tribune-Democrat. “This means that when a newspaper closes, the void it leaves behind is not easily filled.”
⬆️ Colorado Community Media Publisher Linda Carpio Shapley has become the new president of the Colorado Press Association.
🐘 Eli Bremer, who recently became chairman of the state Republican Party, was a key figure in an unusual local news dispute this spring between the Gazette newspaper and the KRDO TV station over a narrative about Colorado Springs being “Olympic City USA.” Bremer came down on the side of KRDO in the spat, confronted the executive editor of the Colorado Springs and Denver Gazette and Colorado Politics about a personal column he wrote, and challenged him to a debate. So it should be interesting to see how the relationship plays out between this new GOP chairman and this group of publications that Republicans have historically viewed as more friendly to them than others in the state’s media landscape.
💰 “The Denver sports news site’s parent company AllCity Network launched operations in a fifth city this week, on the heels of a $12 million funding round led by broadcast company Tegna,” Thomas Gounley reported for BusinessDen. “I think we feel right now that we have more momentum than we ever had,” said AllCity CEO Brandon Spano. “But with capital comes growth expectations.”
⏳ This week marks one year since Colorado Public Radio announced it would accept at least $8.34 million from an anonymous donor that is has managed to continue keeping secret.
📚 “By default, middle school students in El Paso County’s Academy District 20 schools can no longer access school library materials until a parent or guardian signs a form granting permission to use library resources through the district’s parent portal,” Suzie Glassman reported for the nonprofit Colorado Times Recorder.
🔊 Several neighbors showed up to Colorado Springs City Council this week and raged for hours about noise from a new outdoor amphitheater that is financially benefiting the owners of the city’s two dominant print news sources, the Colorado Springs Independent bi-weekly and the daily Gazette. One neighbor brought up the media angle in her testimony and opined about “control” of the narrative.
🐺 Colorado Democratic Gov. Jared Polis’ husband, Marlon Reis, has “deactivated his ‘first gentleman’ branded social media accounts after getting into an argument about wolves on Facebook,” Aaron Adelson reported for 9NEWS. “You’ve abused the media by stoking fear of wolves,” he wrote in one comment.
🥇 Journalist Charlie Brennan won this year’s Colorado Press Association’s News Leader Award, Mountain-Ear owner Christian Vanek won the Innovation Award, journalist Sandra Fish won the First Amendment award, and Gunnison Country Times journalist Bella Biondini won the Rising Star Award.
📻 Colorado Public Radio host Nathan Heffel is teaching a radio journalism seminar at his alma mater Lawrence University Oct. 18-22. He’s offering 50% off for all registrants from today on and has two complimentary spots available, “meaning besides travel, the event is 100% free.” Register here.
🛢In our neighbor New Mexico, a network of “Chevron-owned news outlets” is “amplifying the company’s viewpoint while publishing feel-good stories about local events and people,” Felicia Alvarez reported for the Santa Fe New Mexican.
⭐️ Those inducted into the Colorado Press Association’s Hall of Fame this year at last weekend’s convention were Denver Urban Spectrum owner Rosalind J. “Bee” Harris, former Prairie Mountain Media President and CEO Albert J. Manzi, and longtime journalist Ken Amundson.
I’m Corey Hutchins, manager of Colorado College’s 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.