‘Very unfortunate news’: Colorado Community Media closes 2 papers

What is the future of CCM and the National Trust for Local News?

A nonprofit news organization that runs a fleet of two dozen newspapers in the Denver suburbs is planning to shut down two of them.

“Because of market challenges and changes in readership, the March editions of Life on Capitol Hill and the Washington Park Profile will be the last,” wrote Eric Heinz, an editor for Colorado Community Media, in a Feb. 12 email to writers.

“This is very unfortunate news to share,” he added, “but it was a decision the company had to make.”

Last year, CCM laid off its editor and business manager as part of what the organization called a leadership reorganization.

Now, the looming closure of these two monthly papers in Colorado comes amid a time of uncertainty and questions swirling around the National Trust for Local News. That’s the nonprofit that oversees CCM along with a string of newspapers in Maine and Georgia.

In recent weeks, the National Trust has come under scrutiny as reporting indicates a structure that appears strained at the bottom and wobbly at the top.

A pair of troubling headlines have focused on the National Trust’s newspapers in Maine. Two thousand miles west, concern has been palpable among several people in the journalism community who are close to Colorado Community Media.

Absent a major turnaround, some worry about the future of what was once seen as a hopeful success story amid the destabilizing times of a retrenching commercial local newspaper industry.

Throughout a series of conversations with roughly a dozen people who have direct knowledge of CCM’s operations, some worried about what potential problems at the National Trust might portend for Colorado. Most of them asked not to be named so they could speak candidly.

Questions they had included whether CCM might close more of its papers, what it would take to pay its journalists better, how the National Trust is supporting CCM, and what the right strategy might be to keep the operation sustainable.

Speaking for the Trust in an interview, Amalie Nash, who is based in Colorado and serves as the nonprofit’s head of transformation, acknowledged the issues and said such questions are fair.

At this point, without support from the National Trust, Colorado Community Media is “not profitable,” she said.

Nash said it “remains to be seen” whether CCM would cut more print newspapers.

“If there’s a strong case to be made for a digital future and not having a print product that’s losing money, if that’s the case then I think we need to look at those avenues,” she said about some of the properties.

Many who spoke about CCM stressed that the papers are important to each community they serve and that those who work there are tirelessly dedicated. And they offered genuine hope that the organization can find not only a sustainable path forward, but one that sees the outlets thrive.

Almost everyone, however, expressed varying degrees of outrage about the high salaries that National Trust executives have earned while CCM’s journalists are paid less than they could make by working fast-food jobs in Denver.

‘What went wrong’?

Last month, the National Trust’s CEO and co-founder, Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro, who was making $370,540, according to the organization’s 2023 tax filings, abruptly stepped down.

News stories critical of the organization came like a one-two punch.

In Maine, the National Trust’s papers are “facing persistent financial losses,” Aidan Ryan reported in a Feb. 11 story for the Boston Globe. The piece carried a wince-inducing headline: “Once seen as a savior, the nonprofit owner of the Portland Press Herald is now weighing layoffs.”

Freelance budgets are “being cut,” Ryan wrote, adding, “newspapers are getting thinner, and a succession of senior leaders have departed. Executives said they can’t rule out layoffs or the wholesale elimination of some print editions.”

The Globe’s reporting followed that of media writer Rick Edmonds, who published a Feb. 6 piece at the Poynter Institute headlined “What went wrong at the National Trust for Local News?”

In the column, Edmonds noted Hansen Shapiro’s departure and how the Trust had changed its focus from a nonprofit that acquired newspapers to keep them in local hands to one that acquired newspapers and operated them from afar.

From the story:

In the three states where it operates, the trust has acquired groups of newspapers and is creating mini-chains. The trust has raised and spent big money — $38 million Shapiro told me last summer — from leading foundations including Knight, MacArthur and the Gates Family. The great majority of that has gone into acquisitions in Maine, Colorado and Georgia, and there is a reserve fund to buy more.

In the pivot that Shapiro explained to me last summer, the trust assembled a small team of hands-on operators with experience at Gannett, McClatchy and Lee Enterprises. The industry “doesn’t need more coaches” she said. She instead concluded local teams needed expert help to realize their ventures’ potential.

In practice, though, that meant not only ownership but decision-making had migrated up to a central office. The trust had become out of sync with the mantra that news organizations work best when they are owned and run by those closest to the local communities.

The new process proved disruptive at the largest of the trust’s three groups, in Maine. In 2024, the Portland Press-Herald lost its top editor, publisher and other key executives. Executive editor Steve Greenlee, who left in July to become a journalism professor at Boston University, told me in an email, “An incredible opportunity arose at a time of great stress.” He declined to elaborate on the “great stress.”

A local group organized to take potshots at the venture’s intermediate management layer, the Maine Trust for Local News. The critique was that the trust managers were remote and the papers seemed directionless.

Some of those complaints have been similar in Colorado.

The chain has suffered from the same afflictions roiling the rest of the newspaper industry, including online tech companies siphoning away ad dollars, changing readership habits, and high print costs.

“I think the work CCM is doing is so critical and the people there are dedicated to doing it well,” one reporter said this week. “It needs and deserves support, but it’s unclear what support the Trust is providing at this point, and it’s never been obvious to me that they know who we are and the importance of the work we do.”

Multiple people currently there or who have left expressed frustration with what they characterized as a top-heavy structure at the Trust.

‘That crisis is real’

Based on the troubling public developments in Maine, it is not a stretch to wonder how the future might look for Colorado Community Media — especially considering the news, unreported until now, that it plans to close two of its Denver newspapers and might look to shed more.

In a phone interview, Nash acknowledged that the organization missed the mark on fundraising and some other initiatives last year.

“I certainly think that it speaks to the broader issue of just the crisis in local news,” she said. “That crisis is real, and the National Trust for Local News was formed to address that crisis. But certainly, since forming in 2021, it’s not as if somehow we have found the perfect formula and we’ve unlocked that and everything is sustainable and profitable and break-even and we’ve landed on the answer.”

Beyond the announced closures, in the past few weeks CCM lost three reporters and an editor: Kristen Fiore to Westword, Ellis Arnold to Prairie Mountain Media, Nina Joss to a national media nonprofit, and McKenna Harford to City Cast Denver. Joss’s position is being refilled; the organization is still assessing whether it will replace the others.

Journalists who remain are stretched as thin as the air atop a Colorado 14er.

One current editor recently outlined in an email to writers that he is now responsible for editing CCM’s West Metro editions while overseeing reporters in Golden, Jefferson County, Arvada, Evergreen, and Clear Creek County – and editing the Denver North Star and G.E.S. Gazette.

Previously, those jobs were handled by two people.

The National Trust and Colorado

In 2021, the National Trust for Local News made history when it acquired the string of roughly two dozen papers in the Denver suburbs from the Healeys, who were wanting to retire.

Based out of an office in Englewood, Colorado Community Media is a sprawling network of award-winning weekly and monthly newspapers, which often are the predominant sources of original local news in their communities.

“While you may not know us by our fancy formal name Colorado Community Media, you’ll probably recognize us by the masthead in any of our newspapers in the vibrant communities we serve—and we’ve served some of them for more than 100 years,” reads a background statement on CCM’s website.

Titles include the Canyon Courier in Evergreen, the Douglas County News-Press, the Elbert County News, and JeffCo Transcript, among 20 others.

Many of the print papers are responsible for publishing public and legal notices for their local governments, which can bring in a reliable stream of revenue. Those governments, at least for now, are legally required by state law to publish them in a printed newspaper.

To what extent that’s a precarious position remains to be seen. Democratic Gov. Jared Polis, who is term-limited, is on record saying he would sign a law that would move public notices online if lawmakers sent a bill to his desk. (I’m unaware of any serious legislative appetite to do so.)

The unique-in-the-nation move to take over Colorado Community Media under nonprofit ownership along with a new organization called the Colorado News Conservancy drew accolades. Media watchers generally view it as a positive development when newspapers stay in local hands and out of the clutches of hedge funds or private equity vultures.

The deal, financed with a $1.5 million loan from the philanthropic investment foundation FJC, is detailed in a chapter of the 2024 book “What Works in Community News” by Ellen Clegg and Dan Kennedy. One source in the book described CCM as profitable at the time of the sale.

The arrangement also included the digital statewide Colorado Sun, which was then a public benefit corporation, that would run the papers and assist with operations.

Larry Ryckman, the Sun’s publisher, said he is proud to have helped keep the papers from the claws of a hedge fund, but added that working with the Trust had its challenges. When the Sun converted into a nonprofit in 2023, it donated its shares in CCM to the National Trust. The outlet still shares plenty of its reporting with CCM papers.

As for issues at the National Trust, Ryckman said in an interview that his main takeaway would be that “local ownership matters.”

After the Colorado deal, the National Trust took over more newspapers in Maine and Georgia. It started calling itself the largest nonprofit newspaper company in the United States.

Among Colorado’s media-thinker industrial complex, this newsletter included, the National Trust got plenty of positive attention. It was saving newspapers.

At first, it looked like Colorado Community Media was on the upswing. The operation earned praise, including in this newsletter, for launching a bilingual newsletter to complement its roughly two dozen others. (It’s currently trying to expand that into a print publication.) The chain upped its digital game and revamped its website. Linda Shapley, a well-respected Denver newsroom management veteran, came on as publisher and was able to get some modest pay increases across the board. The group hired an editor in chief to rally the troops.

Last year, CCM and its journalists appeared prominently in a documentary called “Trusted Sources” by Colorado filmmaker Don Colacino, where they served as stand-ins for the importance of local news and credible community journalism everywhere. (At least five people included in the film are no longer at CCM.) During the most recent election, traffic boomed; CCM won awards for its journalism.

Last spring, the National Trust raised money to buy a used printing press from Canada and shipped it to Denver. Funders for the printing press included the Gates Family Foundation, the Bohemian Foundation, and The Colorado Trust. (Gates also supports the Colorado College Journalism Institute where I work and the Colorado Media Project, which underwrites this newsletter.)

The news was hailed, including in this newsletter, as a boon to local news publishers. Papers it could help include Spanish-language titles and rural newspapers that could find cheaper printing rates and help keep them from going under.

Colorado Community Media acquired two more newspapers, the Denver North Star and the bilingual G.E.S. Gazette, from a local publisher. The move bolstered the Trust’s reputation for preserving hyperlocal journalism.

The new printing facility, called the Trust Press, held a grand opening earlier this month following a nine-month delay because of construction and permitting issues.

During the time in between, cracks had begun to show.

Some attempts to generate new revenue streams, through initiatives like events, hadn’t really panned out. A major planned brand makeover, including changing the name from Colorado Community Media to the Colorado Trust for Local News, which was slated for last spring, hasn’t happened. (Nash said it is still in the works.)

In the fall, this newsletter reported that Colorado Community Media had to lay off its editor in chief, Michael De Yoanna, along with a business manager.

Multiple National Trust executives traveled to Colorado. During a CCM staff meeting, one of them explained for the assembled CCM employees the financial realities of rising print costs and what that meant for CCM’s bottom line, according to those who were there. The bottom line wasn’t good.

The group and its string of Colorado papers had been rocked in 2023 when Gannett shut down its printing plant in Pueblo. They were jolted again after moving half of their papers to the Berthoud printing plant, only for the Alden Global Capital hedge fund to shut it down a year later. They had to start printing in Kansas.

The National Trust, which hadn’t publicized the news of its Colorado layoffs, put on a brave face when asked about it. Instead of refilling the editor position, CCM shifted Shapley into an editorial director and audience engagement role and searched for a new publisher.

The vibe in the newsroom was that the new printing press might alleviate some pressure once it was up and running. The cavalry could be coming.

Eventually, revenue the press generates will “stay within Colorado,” Nash said, but it doesn’t yet have as many commercial clients as CCM would have liked.

“Frankly, it’s not a profitable business at this point,” she said. “It was a huge investment by the National Trust. We’ve raised about a million dollars toward a one-point-seven-million-dollar project, and so at this point, certainly the press is not at a profitable stage.”

For some in the newsroom, there was a sense that when it came to the cavalry, CCM was left on read.

‘Ready, fire, aim’

Pay wasn’t exceptional when the Healey family owned the Colorado Community Media papers, but after the National Trust swooped in, some journalists hoped that would change — and were frustrated when it didn’t.

Because CCM is based in Englewood, it does not have to pay Denver’s minimum wage, which is $18.81 an hour.

A crew member at a Denver McDonald’s on Peoria Street can start at $21 per hour. A recent posting for a South Metro Community reporter for CCM listed the position at $17.50 an hour; a Jefferson County reporter position was listed at $18.

Online tax filings from the National Trust for Local News show multiple employees making more than $100,000. A “slap in the face” is how one reporter described seeing news that the CEO had earned large pay increases as those at the bottom scraped by.

Another employee, Kathryn White, served as editor of the Denver North Star and worked through the transition after CCM acquired it in 2024. She left not long after for a minimum wage job in the service industry where she says she now has better benefits.

White described a disorganized transition as “ready, fire, aim” and said she could only pay freelancers $50 per story once CCM took over. She had earlier been able to pay $75 to $150. After a few months, the higher-ups agreed to what she called “modest increases” for some reporting.

White had seen the National Trust’s nonprofit 990 tax forms that show its highest-paid employees and registered what she called a significant contrast.

“To have someone making three-hundred-plus thousand dollars, and I can’t pay freelancers,” she said. “I didn’t feel like the journalists were getting valued from that organization at the same level as executives.”

Nash said the Trust’s board sets the pay.

“Since acquiring CCM in 2021, the National Trust moved to a business of more than fifty million dollars of top-line revenue, so to be able to attract the kind of talent and to continue to do that kind of work, they did an analysis and determined that that’s where compensation should be at,” she said. “But I certainly understand. And we share those concerns about wages — and they’re not where they need to be. They definitely are not.”

Asked what it would take to raise pay at CCM, Nash said it will mean figuring out a sustainable business model.

“Philanthropy has not proven to be an answer in terms of raising wages because it requires ongoing, committed investments,” she said. “Typically, when you’re looking to fundraise, you have a lot more luck fundraising around initiatives or acquisitions or something like that.”

Inside the CCM newsroom, Shapley, the former publisher and now editorial director, said she is upfront with new hires about the wages; she encourages them to give her two years where they can grow.

She tells emerging journalists that they will have her support if they can make it to a larger newsroom after earning their chops. She talks of CCM as the “farm team” in Colorado’s local journalism pipeline.

“It’s a really crappy way to staff a newsroom,” she acknowledged. “Unfortunately, that’s the only way I can staff a newsroom right now.”

The future of Colorado Community Media

In December, the National Trust hired Brooke Warner, described as a “veteran news industry innovator,” as the executive director of Colorado Community Media.

“It has been my mission to help local news companies grow and thrive to meet the needs of readers, advertisers, and communities,” she said in a statement upon the announcement. “With the support of the National Trust, I’m excited to lead CCM’s continued development into a sustainable community news business for Colorado.”

Nash said the National Trust has centralized CCM’s finances, provided support for website upgrades, newsletters and other products, and offers editorial and advertising support.

But CCM’s future seems self-actualizing and is likely dependent on the support it can generate among its audience in Colorado.

While the National Trust “has subsidized CCM,” Nash said, “the goal has not been to have ongoing operational support; the goal was that each of the sites that we operate and maintain are able to be financially viable.”

To that end, Warner is making a top-to-bottom assessment to determine CCM’s staffing needs and how to better position it for the future.

Nash said the organization is hoping to bring in more robust digital advertising. They have plans to introduce a reader-revenue membership model. That new initiative is set to coincide with a rebrand to the Colorado Trust for Local News.

Another strategy would be more clearly explaining CCM’s situation to its audience.

“If people hear that we’re in trouble and they want to help, great,” Nash said. “I feel like we should just be as transparent as we can about the challenges, what we’re trying to do to face them, and what the future might hold.”

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The A-Mark Prize for Responsive Journalism and Colorado Press Association’s Better News Media Contest are now open for submissions for reporting done in 2024.

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More Colorado media odds & ends

📺 Micah Smith at Denver7 profiled Sandra Dillard, who was the Denver Post’s first Black female journalist for the TV station. “At that time, as far as I know, I was the only Black female journalist in the state,” Dillard, who helped found the National Association of Black Journalists, said. For her part, Smith said she was recruited for her job at Denver7 at an NABJ career fair. “Sandra has helped pave the way for me and so many others, and I am truly grateful,” she said.

🎧 Colorado Public Radio is launching on March 3 a new daily podcast called “Colorado Today.” The show will be a “roughly 10-minute daily rundown of the biggest and most interesting news in the state.” The show is hosted by Bazi Kanani and Arlo Pérez Esquivel, “two journalists who joined CPR News last year to focus on this podcast. Kanani brings years of experience as a national and international reporter at ABC News and as an anchor and reporter for 9NEWS in Denver. Pérez Esquivel is an accomplished science journalist with a background in documentary production and hosting for PBS.”

🎒 “Not every high school has a flourishing journalism program, where students get the opportunity to learn the crafts of print, broadcast, and yearbook. The programs that are in place, however, are costly,” reported Skyler Stark-Ragsdale for the Aspen Times. “The Aspen High School journalism program relies on fundraising to meet their budget requirements, operating almost entirely outside the budget of the school district. They publish the print student newspaper The Skier Scribbler seven times per year, host broadcast reporting once a week on Skier TV, and release an end-of-term yearbook.”

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🎧 Innovation. Business models. Community listening. Authenticity. Diversity and inclusion. Digital evolution. Tech stacks. Ad products. Audience growth. Healthy newsroom cultures. Journalism with impact.

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🆕 Colorado Media Project, which underwrites this newsletter, has a new director. Kimberly Spencer will “lead efforts to strengthen the local news ecosystem in Colorado,” an announcement reads. “Previously, Spencer led fundraising initiatives for Capital B News and Chalkbeat and was the chief philanthropy officer at the Pivot Fund, an intermediary supporting diverse newsrooms. She has secured significant philanthropic investments and advanced sustainable revenue strategies.”

📺 🐄 Writing in The Fence Post newspaper, Lincoln Rogers profiled 9NEWS meteorologist Kathy Sabine who led the 199th National Western Stock Show. “A lifelong horse enthusiast with a passion for all things cowgirl — she showed horses, she was a barrel racer and also a rodeo queen — Sabine was enthusiastic at being chosen to represent this year’s NWSS parade.”

🤖 On a recent episode of Colorado Springs writer Bob Falcone’s podcast Outdoors With Hiking Bob, the topic was “Artificial Intelligence generated photography, and images that are produced that are falsely labelled as being of specific places, such as the Garden of the Gods or other scenic attractions.”

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🛡 “Journalists at the national and local level should be clear-eyed about the challenges of political accountability reporting today,” wrote 9NEWS ‘Next’ anchor Kyle Clark. “We should be equally clear that we won’t be dissuaded from that reporting.” (His comment came after a man named Nate Marshall, who a newspaper once wrote had ties to a white supremacy group, kept likening Clark on social media to Alan Berg, the talk radio host who was assassinated by white supremacists. “This isn’t subtle but it will not dissuade me from continuing our journalism,” Clark told Marshall.

📡 “In the face of ongoing challenges, Colorado Public Radio remains clear-sighted and devoted to our commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB),” LaToya Linzey, CPR’s senior vice president of people & culture, wrote in a Feb. 14 email to staff. “DEIB work is, at its core, about shifting power dynamics—removing unearned privilege and dismantling systemic barriers that have historically benefited certain groups at the expense of others,” she explained. “The goal is to create a fairer, more equitable system where success is based on merit and capability and not systemic advantage. Achieving equity requires us to balance the playing field; this can feel like a loss to those who have traditionally had more access. However, in the long term, it benefits everyone by fostering a more just, innovative, and productive workplace.”

🏔 O’Rourke Media Group and the Chaffee County Times “have made a few changes to local newspaper circulation,” the newspaper reported. “The Mountain Mail and the Leadville Herald-Democrat will no longer be sold in Buena Vista locations. … Additionally, we have removed a few of our green newspaper racks around Buena Vista.”

👏 Congratulations to Peter Waack, the CEO and president of Rocky Mountain Student Media at Colorado State University, Aaron Leff, who is on the journalism faculty at Front Range Community College, and Julian Rubinstein, the journalist, author and filmmaker who is the journalist-in-residence at Western Colorado University. They were named this week as Center for Community News Champions, an award from the University of Vermont that “recognizes and supports journalism leaders who build partnerships between newsrooms and college reporting programs.” (I was also included.)

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 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, where I’m an advisor, 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.