Next month, Denver will play host to the annual Collaborative Journalism Summit organized by the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University.
Each year, the summit moves from city to city. Organizers choose where based on a city’s level of interest in collaborative media efforts — and their execution of them.
“We’ve been in Philly, Chicago, D.C., Detroit and were supposed to be in North Carolina when the pandemic hit,” said the center’s director, Stefanie Murray. “This year we chose Colorado and Denver, specifically, because of the incredible collaborative efforts we see all over the state.”
For the past several years, Colorado has been a pioneer of an ethos toward collaboration over competition among newsrooms. More than in many states, journalists and newsrooms in Colorado tend to partner often, though they will compete when and where it makes sense. Other states often look to Colorado for inspiration.
Taking place May 15-16 at the Delta Hotels Denver Thornton, the summit is “designed to be a fast-paced event full of sharing and learning,” organizers said. “Both days are typically packed with sessions, so prepare accordingly.”
The schedule includes panels, “lightning talks,” “fireside chats,” keynote, and plenary sessions.
I’ll be on a panel with University of Denver journalism professor Kareem El Damanhoury and Melissa Milios Davis of Press Forward titled “So you’ve mapped your local news landscape — now what? How to keep up the collaborative momentum.” (You’ll probably learn some behind-the-scenes aspects of this newsletter you’re reading.)
Other Colorado journalists and national players will host panel discussions as well. Find out who the keynote speakers are here.
If you’re on the fence about attending, the center posted seven reasons to register for it. Here are the first three:
1. Learn from journalism’s most innovative collaborators
The Summit brings together trailblazers who have transformed collaborative journalism from concept to impactful reality. You’ll hear from Wendi Thomas and Ayanna Watkins of MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, whose investigative partnership with ProPublica led to nearly $12 million in medical debt being wiped clean for 5,300 patients.
The Summit also features speakers from Outlier Media sharing how its Detroit-focused collaboration helped residents recover lost funds, and Earth Journalism Network explaining its cross-border environmental reporting model.
Sessions will cover everything from the Chicago Media Project’s innovative use of AI and WhatsApp to reach migrant communities to Dallas Free Press’s unconventional arts-journalism partnership that’s reaching entirely new audiences.
2. Discover Colorado’s collaborative journalism ecosystem
Colorado has emerged as a national laboratory for collaborative journalism, with its ecosystem featuring more than 180 news outlets working together across content creation, community engagement, and capacity building.
Our opening keynote focuses on what Colorado news leaders have learned from years of successful collaboration. You’ll hear how eight news organizations are collaborating to fill a Spanish-language news desert in Colorado’s Roaring Fork Valley and learn about the Colorado News Mapping Project, which became a catalyst for further collaborations across the state. Colorado College and University of Denver representatives will share concrete solutions from their experience that you can apply in your communities.
The state’s thriving collaborative media landscape provides a perfect backdrop for understanding what’s possible when news organizations unite around shared goals.
3. Find solutions to pressing industry challenges
The Summit will directly address the economic, technological, and audience challenges facing journalism today. The Press Forward plenary session will detail how this national coalition is investing more than $500 million to strengthen local newsrooms and build necessary infrastructure through coordinated grantmaking.
Find the other four reasons here. Register for the conference here.
Sponsors of the summit include Colorado Media Project, which underwrites this newsletter, and Gates Family Foundation, which supports the Colorado College Journalism Institute.
See all the other sponsors who are making the summit possible this year here.
More Colorado media odds & ends
⛰🔥✍️ This newsletter is in field-trip-with-limited-service mode, which means content might be lighter than usual and I might not have been able to respond as quickly to emails, voicemails, and DMs.
🏅 Journalists from across four states gathered April 5, 2025, in Denver for the SPJ 2025 Region 9 Conference: Fundamentals and the Future, “soaking up wisdom from some of the region’s top news professionals,” the Society of Professional Journalists Colorado Pro chapter, of which I’m a board member, stated. See photos and videos of the event, held at the Slate Hotel here.
🏆 Find the full list of this year’s Region 9 SPJ winners here.
👻 “Five news outlets have quietly removed a years-old news story from their websites about the 2019 arrest of a prominent former Colorado Springs City Council member, who ran in a Republican primary for a state House seat in 2023,” wrote Jason Salzman and Erik Maulbetsch for the progressive nonprofit Colorado Times Recorder digital news site. “Whatever the reason, they should have at least posted an explanation to readers of their action, said Fred Brown, co-author of the ethics code of the Society of Professional Journalists.”
📡 The Colorado Broadcasters Association “hosted its highly anticipated Annual Awards of Excellence Gala on Saturday, April 5th,” the CBA stated. “A vibrant crowd of over 400 radio and television professionals gathered to celebrate the pinnacle of Colorado’s broadcast achievements in 2024, recognizing the dedication, innovation, and impact of the state’s broadcast community.”
🏆 Find a full list of the Colorado broadcast award winners here.
👀 Multiple media outlets this week reported Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet plans to announce a run for governor very soon. In recent weeks, Bennet has spoken about the importance of local news and journalism. “Local news that holds officials accountable and engages citizens is foundational to our democracy,” Bennet said in a statement last week as he signed on to a resolution designating April 2025, the month he reportedly plans to announce his gubernatorial bid, as Preserving and Protecting Local News Month. “As local news and journalists continue to face financial and political pressures,” Bennet added, “we must defend their vital role in preserving the truth through a free, robust, and independent press.”
🎙 “Three hard-working women [have] made their mark in sports broadcasting,” reported Patrick Saunders in the Denver Post. “Covering big-league baseball was their launch pad and proving ground in a business that can still be tough on women.”
⛰ Lauren Watson has a deep dive into the Colorado-based Outside magazine in Columbia Journalism Review. The subhed: “Layoffs, acquisitions, and a contributors’ revolt.”
⚖️ Colorado Public Radio asked a U.S. District Court “to unseal the docket and judicial records connected to three federal law enforcement raids conducted in Denver and Aurora in January and February,” Jeff Roberts reported for the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition.
🚔 Meanwhile, Roberts reports that a judge “is examining how much body-worn camera footage must be provided to the public when there is an incident of alleged misconduct by law enforcement.”
📰 “All this really happened last week. Only readers of real news media knew the truth,” wrote Sentinel Colorado editor Dave Perry in a column.
👀 After running a story about a business owned by a co-owner of the Colorado Springs Independent hosting a speech by Steve Bannon, “the Bulletin received a phone call from the Independent informing us that we would no longer be allowed to share the approximately 20 distribution racks, which had been an outlet for the Bulletin for years, and any Bulletin newspapers found on them would be thrown away by the Independent,” wrote Pikes Peak Bulletin Managing Editor Heila Ershadi. “The staff member cited the article as a reason for terminating the rack-sharing arrangement.” (Is a new newspaper war in the Springs the Bulletin, now under new ownership, vs. the Indy, now under new ownership, instead of the Indy vs. the Gazette?)
📻 With a mission to include more female voices in local media, Aspen Public Radio is launching what it calls the station’s first Women’s Desk. The initiative “will seek to understand the status of women through economic, sociocultural, regulatory, technological and news-making contexts,” the station reported.
🏅 “Sixteen Conifer High School students each received the Leadership Award in Scholastic Journalism from The National Scholastic Press Association April 4,” according to the NSPA in a press release published by Colorado Community Media. “The nation’s largest association serving scholastic media, gave the award to about 1,500 high school journalists throughout the country.”
💸 A Delaware judge ruled this week that the conservative TV outlet Newsmax made false and defamatory statements against the Colorado-based Dominion Voting Systems “with on-air claims that the voting-machine company helped rig the 2020 U.S. presidential election,” Isabella Simonetti reported for the Wall Street Journal. “The judge said that even though the statements were defamatory, Dominion would need to prove damages at trial.”
🗣 Kent Maxwell, founder of Colorado Firecamp, where I’ve spent the past three days with students, is accusing the Chaffee County Fire Protection District of “a deliberate violation of Colorado Sunshine/Open Meeting Law” for the way it named a new fire chief, reported Hannah Harn in the Chaffee County Times. The board issued a statement saying it “fully complied with the applicable law.”
📬 “A second letter asking Gov. Jared Polis to veto Senate Bill 25-077 has been sent from an odd-bedfellows coalition of transparency advocates and members of the news media,” Sherrie Peif wrote for Complete Colorado, the news and commentary arm of the libertarian-leaning Independence Institute think tank. Jon Caldara, President of the free-market Independence Institute; Jason Salzman of the progressive Colorado Times Recorder and CBS News Colorado sent a letter on April 8 asking Polis to veto the bill that would severely cripple Colorado residents’ ability to obtain open records.”
📲 “Two bills aimed at protecting kids on social media have divided Colorado’s attorney general and governor — both Democrats,” Shaun Boyd reported for CBS News Colorado. “The measures require social media companies to verify a user’s age, cooperate with law enforcement, and provide safety tools to limit kids’ usage.”
🏫 “As local newsrooms across the country have fewer resources to cover policy and politics, community reporting programs at U.S. colleges and universities” — including in Colorado — “have stepped up to provide dedicated reporting on this critical beat,” according to a new report by the Center for Community News at the University of Vermont, where I am helping conduct research on a separate project.
🗞 Chicano journalist Juan Espinosa of Pueblo says “journalism defends democracy.”
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.