💰 What Colorado newsrooms are paying journalists in 2024

The news behind the news in Colorado

Three years ago, this newsletter reported how Coloradans were, for the first time, learning what our state’s newsrooms were paying for jobs in journalism.

The new transparency came as the result of a state law that requires Colorado employers to publish salary ranges with their job postings.

“If we’re talking about a journalist in Colorado who could be employed by a Colorado publication or a national publication, the pay has to be posted for a job in Colorado,” Scott Moss, the director of Colorado’s Division of Labor Standards & Statistics, said at the time.

Still, the Equal Pay for Equal Work Act was relatively new, and not every newsroom was saying what they were willing to pay journalists — despite the possibility of a $10,000 fine per posting and additional financial penalties if a company doesn’t shape up. (The state agency in charge of enforcing the new law was working with companies as employers adjusted to the new regulations.)

By now, employers should know the rules, and it has become custom on social media for those who see Colorado newsroom job listings that don’t include a pay scale to publicly call it out.

Last fall, around this time, this newsletter checked in again to gauge the salary ranges that news organizations across Colorado were offering.

A year later, it’s time to once again see how the market is looking. And since Colorado is a relatively rare state where newsrooms have to publicly say what they’re willing to pay, it might be useful for those in other states if they want to know what’s what out here — with all the relevant caveats.

Below is an idea of local newsroom wage offerings across Colorado based on job listings from the site JournalismJobs, Andrew Hudson’s Jobs List, or elsewhere within the past month or so, from highest to lowest.

Colorado Public Radio said it would pay a news podcast editor and producer $64,200 to $85,500.

The Scripps-owned Denver7, also known as KMGH and The Denver Channel, is hiring for a Northern Colorado Multimedia Journalist it will pay $80,000 to $85,000.

KOAA TV in Colorado Springs, owned by Scripps, is offering $76,000 to $80,000 for a weekend anchor and in-depth reporter.

The Clarity Media-owned Denver Gazette will pay $70,000 to $80,000 for a news editor position.

The Ogden Newspapers-owned Glenwood Springs Post Independent is looking for a senior reporter and assistant editor (same position) that the newspaper will pay $55,000 to $60,000. The paper will also chip in $500 for a “recreation reimbursement” and free shared passes to Sunlight Mountain Ski Resort.

Ballantine Communications, which owns the Durango Herald newspaper, is hiring an opinion editor and is willing to pay $55,000.

KDNK community radio in Carbondale is looking for an “experienced journalist open to innovation who will lead editorial decision making and digital content strategy for the news department,” and will pay $45,000 to $50,000.

The Lever, a “reader-supported investigative news outlet dedicated to following the money and holding the powerful accountable,” founded by Denver journalist David Sirota, is hiring a reporting fellow it will pay $200 per week with opportunities to pitch for its standard freelance rate of $500 per story.

Sky-Hi News in Granby, owned by Ogden Newspapers of West Virginia, is offering $20 to $22 per hour for a reporter.

As for comparisons in the marketing and public relations world, a company in Broomfield is willing to pay $78,000 to $105,400 for a digital media and PR specialist; a Boulder-area ad agency is offering $70,000 to $90,000 for a digital media supervisor, and the Greeley Police Department will pay $72,900 to $87,500 for a public information officer.

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On the ‘click-it line,’ Colorado’s unionized Law360 journalists join nationwide strike remotely

This week, roughly 250 journalists from around the country who work for the LexisNexis-owned Law360 went on strike over what they called “unfair bargaining tactics” and a “refusal to offer fair pay and healthcare.”

In Colorado, four workers for the subscription-based legal news service are involved, said Clara Geoghegan, a bankruptcy reporter for Law360 based in Denver who has been on the job for about a year.

“We’re all involved remotely,” she said over the phone Friday as a union-wide meeting was taking place. “We don’t have a picket line or headquarters that we go into.”

So instead, the journalists are maintaining what they call a “click-it” line, Geoghegan said. “We basically let readers know that we’re on strike and that we’re on an unfair labor practice strike.”

That includes letting readers know that engaging with Law360 content during the strike would be the digital equivalent of crossing a picket line. Journalists have created a website called OutLaw360 where they say “our reporters to continue providing readers with breaking legal industry news that our employer will struggle to provide while we’re on strike.”

On Wednesday, Geoghegan and two other Colorado Law360 reporters handed out flyers at a Denver courthouse alerting their potential audience to the strike.

Besides Geoghegan, the other Colorado journalists who are striking are Daniel Ducassi, Thy Vo, and Alex Wittenberg, she said.

“Earlier this year, Law360 management laid off 10 percent of its Guild-represented newsroom staff in violation of U.S. labor law, hours after LexisNexis officials congratulated themselves on earning record revenue in 2023,” read an item by the Communication Workers of America. “The NewsGuild of New York is challenging the layoffs before the National Labor Relations Board as a violation of the company’s obligation to maintain the status quo of the expired collective bargaining agreement.”

Those layoffs affected one person in Colorado, Geoghegan said.

As for pay at the publication, journalists at the lowest tier make $50,000 minimum and the highest tier in the newsroom is $90,000 minimum, Geoghegan said, adding that most people make in between those minimums and no one has gotten a raise since 2022.

While on strike, the journalists are not getting paid while they hold the line, Geoghegan said, though they might be eligible for some modest strike pay through their union dues after a week.

“Ideally, we want to get negotiations back on track and we want to get a contract,” she said. “Best case scenario is that we get the contract that we’re fighting for.”

LexisNexis didn’t immediately respond to an email I sent roughly an hour before this newsletter went out, so look to the published version for that if and when I hear back.

Colorado Community Media loses its editor amid ‘leadership reorganization’

Over the past month or so, Colorado Community Media lost an editor and business manager as it shakes up its leadership team.

The outlet, known as CCM, is unique in that it’s a nonprofit owned by the National Trust for Local News that runs the string of two-dozen hyper-local community newspapers in the Denver suburbs.

“As part of this leadership reorganization, the editor-in-chief position was eliminated,” Ross McDuffie, chief portfolio officer of the National Trust for Local News, said in a prepared statement. “Last month, the centralization of financial operations also resulted in the elimination of the business manager position at CCM.”

For the past two years, longtime Colorado journalist Michael De Yoanna had served as the outlet’s chief editor. Over the phone on Thursday, he said he will miss working with the “great staff at CCM” and wishes them luck “because CCM fulfills an essential role in accountability journalism.”

Instead of re-filling De Yoanna’s role, Linda Shapley, who is currently CCM’s publisher, will move into a new position of director of editorial and audience engagement.

“I’m really excited to be back in the newsroom,” Shapley, who previously served as an editor for two large metro newsrooms, said on Friday. She says she hopes to focus on digital transformation while staying loyal to those who read the papers in print.

Colorado Community Media will also create a new executive director position dedicated to “leading efforts to sustain and transform” the organization, McDuffie said.

“This new leadership position, which aligns with roles at National Trust for Local News newspapers elsewhere, will play a key role in increasing revenue in conjunction with overall audience growth,” he said, adding that CCM is also recruiting for a senior accounting manager.

Readers will recall that the last several times they’ve read about CCM in this newsletter, the news has been positive.

Earlier this year, CCM launched a bilingual newsletter that complements its roughly two dozen others. In March, the papers made national news when the National Trust bought a used printing press from Canada and shipped it to Colorado with plans to print its papers and also support other newspapers that had abruptly lost their printer in Pueblo. Then in May, CCM expanded when it acquired the Denver North Star newspaper and the G.E.S. Gazette digital site.

Asked to what extent CCM’s editorial team has shrunk or expanded in the past several months, Amalie Nash, who heads up transformation at the National Trust and lives in Colorado, said it is “essentially unchanged.”

Last week, during a staff meeting where CCM employees learned of the reorganization, McDuffie laid out the financial realities of rising print costs and what that means for CCM’s bottom line, according to those who were there. The group and its string of Colorado papers had been rocked last summer when Gannett shut down its printing plant in Pueblo and were jolted again after half of them moved to the Berthoud printing plant, which the Alden Global Capital hedge fund shut down in June.

Colorado Community Media now prints in Kansas and the hope is the organization can stabilize when their new in-house Denver printing press, delayed by roughly three months by construction and permitting, comes online in the next few weeks.

“In Colorado, our focus is on accelerating digital growth, while stabilizing our print business. At the same time, we’re grappling with many of the same business challenges that are prevalent in newspapers across the country,” McDuffie said in his statement. “Ensuring our news organizations are vital and relevant to the communities they serve requires creative thinking and a shared commitment to providing our audience with news and information essential to their lives.” 

In 2021, the National Trust took over CCM from a local couple who were looking to retire, which allowed the papers to stay in local hands and out of the claws of a vulture hedge fund or some cost-cutting corporate chop shop.

Calling itself the largest nonprofit newspaper company in the United States, the National Trust for Local News also runs newspapers in Maine and Georgia.

CU and CSU student newspapers ‘join forces’ on an impressive special print edition

Colorado’s ethos of newsroom collaboration has trickled down to the college level.

This week, the University of Colorado Boulder’s student newspaper, the Independent, partnered with the Collegian newspaper at Colorado State University in Fort Collins for a Sept. 12 special “Showdown” edition. (On Saturday, Sept. 14, the CU Buffs take on the CSU Rams on the football field in Fort Collins.)

Notably, the idea among students at these two rival schools hatched at the Colorado Press Association’s recent annual convention during a roundtable discussion about the challenges facing student journalists.

From a letter by editors Allie Seibel of the Collegian and Jessi Sachs of the Independent under the headline “The Collegian, CU Independent Join Forces for Showdown Special Edition”:

Both the Collegian and the CU Independent are independent newspapers from our universities, something not common in college media. With trust in media facing new lows nationwide and independent publications such as The Collegian and The CU Independent facing unprecedented challenges day after day, it has grown increasingly clear the best way for us to serve our communities is to support and learn from each other, all while poking fun at a decades-old rivalry.

Beyond the importance of independent student journalism, the collaboration between The Collegian and The CU Independent, while, yes, focusing mainly on the sometimes not-so-friendly relationship between the two schools, brought intrastate bonding and friendship. Our management teams got to know each other and now consider one another friends.

News stories include one headlined “While CSU sports tickets are free, CU students pay for a chance to watch games,” while another story reports how the student government organizations at both schools have launched a voter-registration competition around the football showdown.

One section of the special print edition carries dueling point-counter-point columns about why students chose CU over CSU and vice versa. Also in it: a face-off about which college town has the best nightlife scene. There are robust sports, arts, and life sections with original reporting and analysis.

Local ads serving Boulder and Fort Collins fill the 40-page edition that’s packed with news, opinion, and plenty of humor. And — it comes with a voter guide.

“To have two large student publications from the two biggest universities in the state being free and open to publish what they want to and working together — that’s a lovely thing,” Seibel, the Collegian’s editor-in-chief, told Elizabeth Hernandez of the Denver Post.

Similar rivalry editions have bloomed on campuses from Michigan to Oklahoma.

In North Carolina, student journalists have turned their UNC-Duke collaboration into a fundraising opportunity where they’ve hauled in tens of thousands of dollars for independent student journalism in recent years.

As the election looms, Colorado’s AI ‘deepfakes’ law is now in effect

This week, Colorado’s Democratic attorney general, Phil Weiser, issued a public advisory “on Colorado’s new law regulating the use of ‘deepfakes’ in political messaging.”

Democratic lawmakers had earlier passed legislation banning the use of deepfakes in specific communications involving candidates for office without properly disclosing it. The law kicks in 60 days prior to a primary contest and 90 days from a general election. “As the 2024 general election is less than ninety days away, the requirements are presently in effect until the general election concludes,” Weiser wrote in his Sept. 9 alert.

More from the announcement that went out on official Colorado Department of Law letterhead:

Deepfakes are defined in the law as “an image, video, audio, or multimedia AI-generated content that falsely appears to be authentic or truthful and which features a depiction of an individual appearing to say or do something the individual did not say or do.”

“The law includes exemptions for parody and satire, as well as for media organizations airing political advertisements,” reporter John Frank wrote for Axios Denver. “A violation of the law may lead to an injunction, including financial damages and criminal penalties, the attorney general warns.”

The attorney general also offered a little media literacy lesson, including steps a vigilant member of the public can take:

The use of deepfakes in political messaging and on social media is increasingly common, especially with the development of sophisticated systems of artificial intelligence. Given the difficulty in discerning deepfakes, it is recommended that viewers and listeners of political advertisements take the following steps when viewing political communications:

• check to see or hear if the communication contains a disclosure of inclusion of a deepfake;

• verify through trusted sources whether any questionable visual or audio communication in fact includes a deepfake; and

• while the law only applies to communications related to candidates for office, deepfakes can be used in many other ways to influence the opinions of voters, and in general voters should be mindful that bad actors will find ways not protected by this law to influence public opinion using deepfakes, especially on the internet.

“Other states are pursuing legislation like HB24-1147, but the primary obstacle is ensuring that new laws do not infringe on anyone’s First Amendment rights,” reported Ja’Ronn Alex for KJCT in Grand Junction.

Colorado Sun turns 6 with a shakeup at the top

Plenty has happened to the Colorado Sun in the six years since 10 journalists defected from the Denver Post in protest of its hedge-fund owner to start a new statewide digital outlet.

First it was an LLC seeded with money from a blockchain company, then it was a public benefit corporation, and now it’s a nonprofit. And it has grown considerably. The book “What Works in Community News,” which came out earlier this year, dedicated a chapter to the Sun, which also shares its journalism with news organizations across the state.

“A free press is a pillar of a healthy democracy, and we believe that news is a public good,” the Sun stated in a recent column. “Everyone deserves access to the news and information they need as voters and citizens, whether they can afford to pay for it or not.”

This week, the free-to-read outfit turned 6 and announced some more changes. Senior Editor Larry Ryckman is now the Sun’s publisher, and Senior Editor Dana Coffield ascended to editor of the operation where she’ll lead the newsroom.

From an announcement:

We launched in 2018 with 10 full-time journalists, zero members and a lot of hopes and promises to serve Colorado. Today, we have a staff of more than two dozen, we serve about a million users on our website a month and are supported by more than 13,000 members. We are incredibly proud of what we have built and grateful for the support of so many Coloradans who helped make this possible.

Both Sun founders interviewed each other on the “Daily Sun Up” podcast.

“I think we’re on the road to sustainability under our new nonprofit status,” Coffield said, adding that the journalists who founded the Sun were not business people, so it’s impressive they’ve made it a half-dozen years.

The Sun will hold its annual Sun Fest event on Sept. 27 at the University of Denver Josef Korbel School of International Studies. The program will include some 30 panelists.

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➡️ 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. ⬅️

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More Colorado media odds & ends

💵 “Locally owned and non-profit newsrooms serving communities across Colorado are invited to apply to join the 2024 #newsCOneeds Year-End Giving Challenge and apply for matching grant funding” from Colorado Media Project, which underwrites this newsletter. Learn more details and apply here.

🔔 Colorado Springs journalist Noel Black wrote about his recent bout with colon cancer for the cover story of the latest edition of the bi-weekly Independent newspaper.

🎧 Check out “Expanding The Narrative,” a podcast network curated by Denver Urban Spectrum, known as “Colorado’s premiere source of news for communities of color since 1987.”

🎬 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.)

🎙 Marianne Goodland, dean of the Capitol Press Corps, president of the Denver Press Club, and a reporter for Colorado Politics, appeared with her colleague Ernest Luning on City Cast Denver to talk with host Bree Davies about how Democrats and Republicans at the capitol and elsewhere are being less transparent than usual.

🐯 Colorado College journalism students produced “nearly 200 stories for local news outlets in 2023.”

🎥 “Production is set to begin soon on a new Paramount+ limited TV series that will focus on the unsolved murder of [a] Colorado girl,” Jesse Sarles reported for CBS Colorado. “JonBenét Ramsey was murdered in 1996 and the case got heavy media attention for years. The cold case continues to be of high interest to people who are fascinated by all the mysterious details.”

🆕 Ellen Stein, who served as opinion page writer and editor for the Durango Herald and the Cortez Journal between 2016 and 2018, has come in to serve as “Opinion Contributor” for the two papers to handle the November 2024 election. “She’ll participate with the Opinion Board Chair in conversations with candidates and issues’ representatives and in determining recommendations,” the paper reported.

👀 Five members of the editorial team at The Bold publication at the University of Colorado Boulder resigned their positions on Sept. 5. In a public letter light on specifics, the students wrote in part: “As students, we are invested both intellectually and financially in our education, and we have reached a point where our experiences with the student media program have contributed more negatively than positively to our overall experience at CU Boulder.” (“Neither the students who stepped down nor the publication’s faculty student media adviser responded to The Denver Post’s requests for comment,” reported Elizabeth Hernandez of the Denver Post.)

🏆 The Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition gave its Jean Otto Friend of Freedom Award to Erin McIntyre and Mike Wiggins, who have been the owners and co-publishers of the weekly Western Slope Ouray County Plaindealer newspaper since 2019.

🐟 Join Colorado Press Women on Sept. 28 when Sandra Fish talks about “Thoughts on Retiring: Looking back on 42 years of political and technological change.” While the nation “knows Sandra Fish as the reporter escorted out of the Colorado GOP state assembly, those in Metro Denver journalism circles have known ‘Fish’ (as she’s usually called) as a ‘data journalist’ since the term was invented,” the group stated.

🆕 Brooke Stephenson has joined Boulder Reporting Lab as a reporter.

🏈 The latest in a war involving the University of Colorado’s football coach and media led to this headline: “Deion Sanders blasts media over Shedeur Sanders song reports: ‘You know that was a lie’.”

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.