Maximum mission. Minimum capacity.
The central challenge facing Colorado news media is a capacity bottleneck.
Colorado newsrooms are still producing substantial, original local journalism — most are increasing their coverage — but thin staffing and business capacity are limiting their ability to grow, adapt and become sustainable.
The time to expand capacity is now — while the system is still strong enough to build on.
Index
Maximum mission. Minimum capacity.
THE CENTRAL FINDING
Each year, the Colorado News Collaborative (COLab), Colorado Press Association (CPA) and Colorado Media Project (CMP) survey more than 200 Colorado news outlets to understand their staffing, finances, audiences, output and needs. This year, 164 news organizations responded about their work in 2025. Participation has grown from year to year, so the survey is a broad portrait rather than a census. Where possible, this report follows the same outlets over time to identify trends.
Key Points
The data show a local news system caught in a capacity bottleneck. Colorado newsrooms are still producing substantial amounts of original, local journalism, and many have clear visions of how they want to grow and adapt: build audiences, strengthen revenue, develop new products, use new technology and deepen community engagement. But the same small teams responsible for today’s news are also being asked to build tomorrow’s operation. With too little time, staffing and business capacity, good ideas compete with essential work that already must get done.
Remarkably, Colorado newsrooms are holding the line anyway. That resilience is impressive — and easy to misread. To the consumer, continued output can mask the strain underneath it. The central challenge is not a shortage of mission or ideas; it is the capacity to turn them into durable change. That creates a window to act while news outlets, audiences, trust and collaboration are still in place.
- Newsrooms are holding the line. The typical responding outlet produced 30 original stories a month — nearly a new story every day of the year — with original work representing 85% of its total content. And nearly nine out of 10 outlets we tracked over time maintained or actually increased the percentage of their coverage devoted to local news from 2022 to 2025. Three out of four maintained it; about one in six increased it.
- The capacity underneath that work is thinner. Among the same outlets followed across all four years, median editorial staffing fell from 3.75 full-time equivalents (FTEs) in 2022 to 3.1 in 2025; non-editorial staffing — the people doing everything else for the business — fell from 2.0 to 1.5.
- Capacity is the bottleneck. News organizations want to hire, build audiences, strengthen revenue, develop new products and use new technology. But the most common challenges they named were funding and revenue, followed by staffing and burnout. The work of building a stronger future is competing with the work of producing today’s news.
- Colorado has a window to act. Among respondents who described their anticipated 2026 finances, more than two out of three said they were stable or planning expansion; 29% were uncertain and 2% said they were at risk of closing. The news ecosystem is still working, but it is stretched thin. Investment can expand its capacity now, while organizations, journalists, audiences and community relationships are still in place.
The picture is clear: Colorado local news is not short on effort, ideas or public purpose. It is constrained by too little capacity to pursue all of them at once. Investment in people, revenue systems, shared tools, training and collaboration can loosen that bottleneck and give news organizations room to build as well as produce.
Holding the line is an achievement. It is not a long-term strategy.
THE FINDINGS
A lot of news. Too little room to build.
The picture that emerges from the most recent Colorado News Survey shows an immediate tension: small staffs are producing often increasing amounts of overwhelmingly original journalism while also being asked to build the revenue, audiences and tools that could make that work more sustainable — all without the capacity to do so.
The output is real. So is the constraint underneath it. For most outlets, the constraint starts with people and time. Among the 123 outlets reporting some editorial staff, 39% had one or fewer FTEs and half had two or fewer.
Follow the same outlets over time, and capacity shrinks
The clearest trend comes from following the same organizations over time. Among 34 outlets with editorial staffing data in all four surveys, between 2022 and 2025, the median fell from 3.75 FTEs to 3.1.
The business side moved in the same downward direction. Among 24 outlets with non-editorial staffing data in all four surveys, the median fell in those four years from 2.0 FTEs to 1.5. These are the people responsible for all the jobs that are not directly producing news reports.
The annual survey snapshots can look deceptively stronger over time because more and more organizations respond each year. That’s partly because different outlets respond each year, and many of those are very small. When we follow the same 34 organizations across all four years, a different pattern emerges: median editorial staffing fell from 3.75 FTEs in 2022 to 3.1 in 2025, even as the annual median rose to 2.5. In other words, changing who answers the survey can hide a slow decline within the same newsrooms.
And when organizations start small, small losses matter. A team of roughly three editorial FTEs and 1.5 non-editorial FTEs may be responsible for reporting, revenue, fundraising, audience growth, technology and the day-to-day work of running the organization. Every loss narrows the time and attention available for both today’s work and tomorrow’s needs.
The journalism is holding despite the bottleneck
LOCAL COVERAGE
That high output of content is largely original — outlets are not filling sites, pages, and airwaves with republished material. Nearly three-quarters of respondents said at least 75% of the news they published or broadcast was original; for the typical outlet, original material made up 85% of its content. Local coverage held up, too: among 36 outlets that reported what percentage of their coverage was local in every survey, 32 said that percentage was the same or higher in 2025 than in 2022. Only four were lower.
It’s remarkable how much local news remains. It’s troubling how little supports it.
The audience did not disappear. It scattered.
REACH
Colorado local news still reaches substantial audiences, but those audiences are spread across websites, newsletters, print, broadcast and other platforms. Because those measures count different things, adding them together would create a misleading statewide total.
¹ 126 responses. ² 98 responses. ³ 74 responses.
For even a small outlet, serving a single community increasingly means maintaining several products and platforms — all through the same limited staff.
The organizations themselves are just as varied. The survey included major broadcasters, public media, community newspapers, digital outlets and solo publishers: 101 for-profit entities, 59 nonprofits, two public-benefit corporations and two employee-owned organizations. There is no single ‘typical’ outlet — but much of the ecosystem is small.
A better year for some. Still no clear financial footing.
REVENUE
Colorado local news still reaches substantial audiences, but those audiences are spread across websites, newsletters, print, broadcast and other platforms. Because those measures count different things, adding them together would create a misleading statewide total.
There was no single revenue story in 2025. Among for-profit respondents, 47% said revenue fell and 28% said it grew. Nonprofits reported the opposite pattern: 53% grew and 24% declined. The survey cannot pinpoint the cause, but the two groups operate with different revenue mixes. For-profit outlets are generally more exposed to advertising and other commercial revenue — areas respondents frequently described as under pressure — while nonprofits can also draw on grants and donations. That philanthropic support can fuel growth, but respondents noted that it is often tied to specific projects rather than the core operating costs needed for long-term stability. So the nonprofit gains are encouraging, but they should not be read as evidence that nonprofits have solved the sustainability problem.
Only 85 respondents provided usable annual revenue figures. The median among them was about $326,000, with the middle half ranging from $100,000 to $925,000. Because many outlets did not provide figures and organizations vary widely in size, those numbers are context — not an estimate of Colorado’s local-news economy.
The larger point is uncertainty. It is hard to invest in staff, products or audience growth when an organization does not know how much financial room it will have to maintain that investment.
Ambition is colliding with capacity
WHAT RESPONDENTS SAY
The capacity problem is clearest in what news organizations say they want to do next. Respondents described plans to hire, develop interns, strengthen audience relationships, improve digital products, expand coverage, raise money and build new revenue streams — all while keeping today’s journalism going.
The same constraints surfaced again and again: unreliable revenue, too few people, rising print and distribution costs, difficulty selling advertising or sponsorships and the challenge of building audiences. Each problem makes the others harder to solve.
Every newsletter, event, new product, fundraising push or technology experiment must be done by someone already carrying a full workload. For a small team, trying something new often means deciding what else will be left undone.
This is the bottleneck: the work required to build a stronger future is competing with the work required to produce today’s news. The system can look stable from the outside because people compensate by stretching across roles and postponing work that could create more capacity. In a 2025 Pew survey, 57% of Americans still believed their local news outlets were doing well financially. Continued output can make a strained system look healthier than it is.
The opportunity is to expand capacity now
WHERE OPPORTUNITY ENTERS THE PICTURE
The financial outlook is not one of collapse, but of vulnerability — and that creates a window to act. Among 106 respondents who described their expected 2026 financial outlook, more than half (53%) called their outlook stable and more than one in seven (16%) planned expansion. Another 29% were uncertain and 2% said they were at risk of closing.
That is important. It shows despite being stretched thin, Colorado still has a functioning local-news system: organizations, experienced journalists, audiences and community relationships remain. Rather than rescue it after collapse, Colorado would be much better served if we found ways to give it more capacity to adapt while those assets still exist.
Why invest while the line is still holding
Colorado does not have to guess what becomes harder after local-news infrastructure disappears. Northwestern University’s Medill Local News Initiative counted 212 U.S. counties with no local news source in 2025 and another 1,525 with only one. Colorado has its own warning signs. As media analyst Corey Hutchins noted, when the Limon Leader closed in 2025, Lincoln County became the state’s second county without a dedicated newspaper.
But Colorado also has assets to build on. Newsrooms are collaborating, funders are investing and statewide organizations are adding different kinds of capacity. COLab develops shared services, tools and collaborations; CPA provides advocacy and peer learning; CMP invests directly in newsroom sustainability and coverage gaps; and the Colorado Broadcasters Association provides broadcast-specific professional development, including sales training. CMP alone reports raising more than $9.1 million for local news since 2018 and distributing more than 310 grants. Together, these organizations and others expand what individual newsrooms can do by spreading expertise, technology, training and experimentation across the ecosystem.
Sources: Medill Local News Initiative, State of Local News 2025; The Colorado Sun, Jan. 1, 2026; Colorado Media Project; Colorado Press Association; Colorado Broadcasters Association.A public infrastructure worth strengthening
WHAT COLORADANS SHOULD KNOW
The survey describes an industry challenge, but the stakes extend far beyond the news industry. Local journalism helps communities understand what their government is doing, what is changing around them and who their neighbors are. Its value — and the consequences when it weakens — are shared by everyone.
Local journalism is often treated as a private preference: something individuals may choose to buy, ignore or replace. But its value — and the consequences of its decline — belong to everyone.
When local news weakens:
- Government decisions receive less scrutiny.
- Residents know less about what is happening around them.
- Rumors face less competition from verified information.
- Community organizations lose a trusted way to reach people.
- Elections become harder to understand.
- Corruption and mismanagement become easier to hide.
- People become less connected to the places — and the neighbors — they share.
The reverse is also true. When local journalism is strong, public institutions are more accountable. Residents are better equipped to participate in civic life. Communities understand themselves more clearly. And people have a trusted place to turn when life becomes complicated.
Local news is not merely a product. It is civic infrastructure.
We rely on local news as public infrastructure, but too often fund it like a private preference.
Act while there is something strong to build on
THE CHALLENGE
Colorado’s local news organizations are not short on mission or ideas. They are still producing local journalism, experimenting, adapting and looking for better ways to serve their communities.
But resilience is not the same as sustainability. A one-person newsroom cannot indefinitely add responsibilities for audience engagement, technology, fundraising, product development and business strategy to the same job. A tiny organization cannot repeatedly absorb a departure, illness, cost increase or lost advertiser without consequences. People can fill gaps. They cannot do it indefinitely.
Commitment can stretch resources. It cannot replace them.
Investment can turn resilience into lasting strength:
- More reporting capacity for accountability, public-service and community coverage.
- More business capacity to build sustainable revenue.
- More room to innovate with useful technology, stronger audience relationships and new products.
- More resilience when a small organization faces an inevitable setback.
- More durable institutions to serve communities for years rather than survive from crisis to crisis.
What support makes possible
CAPACITY IN ACTION
Invest in the capacity behind the journalism
WHAT COLORADO CAN DO NOW
If lack of capacity is the bottleneck, the answer is not simply to ask newsrooms to produce more. Colorado can strengthen local news by investing in the people, systems and shared infrastructure that make the journalism possible.
- Fund core capacity, not just individual projects. News organizations need support for reporting, revenue, audience development, technology and operations — the underlying work that makes everything else possible.
- Build more things together. Shared tools, technology, expertise and services can give small outlets capabilities they could never afford to create alone.
- Invest in implementation. Good ideas are not enough. Newsrooms also need coaching, technical help and time to turn promising strategies into working revenue systems, products and workflows.
- Give organizations room to experiment. Innovation requires some margin for risk, learning and failure — something tiny staffs rarely have on their own.
- Treat local news as civic infrastructure. If communities benefit collectively from reliable local information, sustaining it cannot rest entirely on individual subscribers, advertisers and overextended journalists.
The goal is not simply to help newsrooms produce more. It is to give them enough capacity to become stronger, more adaptable and more durable.
Colorado has an opportunity to expand capacity: to add the staffing, revenue, partnerships and shared infrastructure that let news organizations do more than hold the line.
The good news is that Colorado does not have to rebuild a lost system. It can expand the capacity of a working one.
The opportunity is now: while experienced journalists are still working, local outlets still have audiences and trust, and statewide collaboration is already producing results. The task is to give that system enough room to adapt and grow before an opportunity for investment becomes a rebuilding challenge.
Don’t wait to rebuild what Colorado can still reinforce.
Strong communities need strong local news.
COLORADO NEWS COLLABORATIVE
ABOUT COLAB
Within the journalism ecosystem in Colorado, the Colorado News Collaborative (COLab) is the direct services arm, working with nearly 200 media partners to accomplish our mission: Stronger communities through stronger local news. COLab tests and develops shared services for Colorado news media, supporting news outlets in what we call the “Four Rs”: Reporting, Reach, Revenue and Resources.
ABOUT CPA
Founded in 1878, the Colorado Press Association is the non-profit trade association representing 130+ community newspapers and online news sites. Membership accesses expertise in state legislative issues, press credentials, education and training, job opportunities, internships and industry news.
ABOUT CMP
Colorado Media Project is a community-informed, multi-funder coalition dedicated to supporting innovations that make the state’s local media ecosystem more sustainable, collaborative, inclusive and accountable to the public it serves. It’s home to Press Forward Colorado, a local affiliate of the nationwide Press Forward initiative to raise $1 billion to catalyze a local news renaissance.