Corey Hutchins

A year to the month after landing his first job out of college, Ja’Ronn Alex says he is on paid leave from his reporting position at a Western Slope TV

Hello, and welcome to 2025 at Inside the News in Colorado. Each January, I write a year-in-review column for the Colorado Sun, rounding up reporting from this newsletter by month across

Staff at the alternative weekly newspaper in Boulder are looking to buy the publication and convert it to an employee-owned newsroom. Boulder Weekly is currently running a fundraising campaign to

A man’s reported physical attack on a non-white Grand Junction TV journalist, partially caught on camera, landed a 39-year-old taxi driver in jail over the holidays. The incident came with

Around the same time a well-known reporter and champion for the Boulder Daily Camera announced he will leave the newspaper, the national news outlet Axios said it is hiring a

Those in the business of publishing Colorado newspapers might have found some relief this week as a new printing press rumbled to life in Denver. Called the Trust Press, the

🥧 This week’s newsletter was produced in holiday-week mode, so it’s in roundup form. Hopefully, it complements your hangover or food coma. Happy holidays and safe travels. 📰 Is a Colorado newspaper a “citizen?” The Colorado Supreme

Last week, Rocky Mountain Community Radio announced the hire of a full-time reporter, Caroline Llanes, who will cover issues involving rural climate around the state. The journalist will work on

Of all the results and storylines tumbling out from the latest statewide election in Colorado, something on the Western Slope alarmed one of the state’s veteran political reporters. Charles Ashby,

Smashed. Hammered. Completely wrecked. That was the state in which the publisher of a small rural newspaper found himself by 11 p.m. on Election Night — in full view of

From Spanish-language publications, Asian magazines, and what one Nigerian-American publisher likens to a “community center in print,” some of the state’s ethnic media outlets are banding together. The new initiative,

One week after news that $900,000 in Press Forward grant money will flow to nine Colorado newsrooms across the state, the nonprofit Colorado Sun announced it will haul in $1.4 million from

Nine local news outlets across Colorado will each haul in $100,000 from the national Press Forward fundraising campaign that seeks to bolster the state of local journalism. The outlets are:

A cluster of Colorado news organizations this week launched a new collaborative local reporting effort backed by nearly $400,000 in grant money from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. “The growth

You’ve heard the saying: three’s a trend. Over roughly the past year, Denver7 has drawn three journalists away from its competitor 9NEWS and into larger roles at the Scripps ABC

One of five newspapers on Colorado’s rural Eastern Plains that recently announced it will close has come back to life. An unlikely revival of the hedge-fund-owned-and-shuttered Burlington Record in Kit

After launching the Denver Gazette digital publication four years ago, Clarity Media is seeking to expand its footprint statewide. “On Oct. 15, The Gazette will launch The Colorado Network, a

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 new online outlet called the Rocky Mountain Reader launched this week, promising to “highlight the vast and varied literary landscape of Colorado.” Founded by longtime Colorado journalist Kathryn Eastburn, the nonprofit

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,

On Thursday, inside a hotel conference ballroom in Northglenn, a packed room of journalists, funders, media advocates, and community members heard an opening salvo in what could be a major

Earlier this year, Democratic lawmakers at the state Capitol rankled some journalists and their advocates when they chose Sunshine Week to pass a bill that exempted themselves from the state’s

A troubling announcement late last month that the Brush News-Tribune would be one of multiple Eastern Plains newspapers to print its final edition hit home for the executive editor of

A news coverage colony collapse might be hitting the Eastern Plains. Following news last week that three newspapers out there are calling it quits — in Baca County, Kit Carson County, and

Three newspapers with two different owners on Colorado’s Eastern Plains — the Plainsman Herald, the Burlington Record, and the Lamar Ledger — announced within days of each other that they

This is a special early edition of Inside the News in Colorado in light of recent events… This Sunday’s front pages of the Denver Post and the Colorado Springs Gazette could hardly

The general manager of a large Colorado TV news station, the editor of a leading statewide radio broadcaster, and an editor of a statewide powerhouse nonprofit digital news site all

🏝 This week’s newsletter was produced in out-of-the-country mode with spotty internet — and it’s a holiday, anyway — so enjoy this in a different format. 🗞 HARD PRESSED: Amid a diminished

Following an expert performance moderating a televised debate among six congressional candidates earlier this month, 9NEWS anchor Kyle Clark earned plenty of attention. This newsletter previously reported how some were

The publisher of a weekly newspaper in a rural Colorado county has sued another newspaper in hopes of getting legal clarity about an obscure but important aspect of the local

Funding for Colorado newsrooms isn’t secure, burnout and shortages are affecting staff, and keeping up with journalistic best practices while maintaining quality is a struggle. That’s the assessment from a

Colorado seems like a bust for the Canadian-owned local news publisher that tried to replicate its success in the United States and chose the towns of Longmont and Broomfield for

A dozen years ago, critic and commentator John Moore left the Denver Post. Typically, a journalist accepting a buyout at a local newspaper might not make headlines at a rival

A picturesque town at the edge of Rocky Mountain National Park will be the latest setting for a new digital news outlet angling to “fill a void” left by a

Three months after two wealthy local developers announced they would relaunch the iconic Indy alternative weekly newspaper in Colorado’s second-largest city, the first edition has rolled off the presses. In

A rural Colorado newspaper publisher says he has faced threats and harassment as his town has lurched into the paranoid style of extremist right-wing politics. “The events of the past

KOAA News5 in Colorado Springs says authorities pressured it not to air video it legally obtained — but the TV station did it anyway. Not only that, the local NBC

In a rare development, two local news organizations in Colorado Springs — the daily newspaper and a commercial TV station — have ripped each other over the way they are

In Colorado, the mountain snowpack is melting, green shoots are poking through mulch, and some college journalism students might still be scrambling for summer newsroom internships. In the spirit of

Thousands of dollars have poured into the Colorado Sun this week and dozens of people have signed up as new members of the nonprofit news organization. The sudden surge in

More than two dozen Colorado newsrooms have launched an unprecedented collaboration to better cover the 2024 elections. Led by the Colorado News Collaborative, also known as COLab, the statewide initiative,

Over the years, Colorado Republicans in this one-party state that is controlled overwhelmingly by Democrats have attributed their electoral decline in part to “the media.” You hear it plenty from

The board president of the Colorado Press Association, Brian Porter, resigned his position this week after the news editor found himself the subject of news coverage. His departure came a little more

News on the newspaper printing front in Colorado in the past year — or few years — has been bleak. In 2021 the Sentinel in Grand Junction made the “heartbreaking” decision to dismantle its

This year has already been brutal for the local media business with layoffs lashing newsrooms coast to coast at outlets large and small. Colorado has not been immune. This week,

💊 This week’s newsletter was produced in recovery mode, sidelined by an unfun medical issue — so it’s just a roundup. 🍽 Local Colorado Springs independent Substack journalist Matthew Schniper, who covers

This week, a cluster of Colorado foundations announced they have joined a national fundraising campaign to galvanize support for local news. The nationwide movement is called Press Forward, which already had

Two high-profile businessmen and major developers in Colorado’s second-largest city have become the new owners of the defunct Indy alternative weekly and its sister publication the Colorado Springs Business Journal.

This week, John Hickenlooper, who represents Colorado in the U.S. Senate, spoke at a CU Boulder conference where he warned of a “historic inflection point” involving artificial intelligence. “The biggest

Colorado Media Project, which underwrites this newsletter, announced this week how more than $360,000 will flow to journalism projects at more than two dozen newsrooms and organizations across the state.

Earlier this month, a mysterious billowy object similar in size and shape to a paper IKEA floor lamp floated over a chain link fence and exploded near downtown Colorado Springs.

UPDATE: Saturday, Jan. 20, 3:20 p.m.: Reached by phone, Paul Choate, a local restaurant owner in Ridgway, said he is reluctant to say much while he’s in the process of obtaining

 This week’s newsletter was produced transcontinentally, so it’s just a roundup. Hopefully it compliments your post-post-holiday sloth. Staff of High Country News, the venerable Paonia, Colorado-based magazine, announced their intention this week

Hello, and welcome to 2024 at Inside the News in Colorado. Each January, I write a year-in-review column for the Colorado Sun, rounding up reporting from this newsletter by month

Colorado’s second-largest city, which is about the 40th largest in the nation, seems poised to lose its alternative weekly newspaper — at least in the form the Indy has served

For the past six months, a journalist for the Daily Yonder, a national nonprofit news outlet focused on rural America, has been reporting stories from Colorado’s Four Corners region based out

Late last month, a Colorado judge made the remarkable decision to order Justin Wingerter of BusinessDen to return documents the reporter legally obtained through an open records request and to

On a Sunday in March of 2009, a crane company pulled up to 101 W. Colfax Ave. in downtown Denver. There, workers began removing the letters “Rocky Mountain News” from

A reader emailed recently to ask if I knew of a good roundup of Colorado-based podcasts. “We’re updating our list of potential media outlets for paid advertising for next year,”

Grant Houston started the weekly Silver World newspaper in Lake City right out of college when he was 23. For 46 years he has provided a public record for the

For the past few years, a movement has been spreading in Colorado. In multiple cities and towns, journalists have left local legacy news outlets to start one-person newsrooms of their

A coalition of news organizations has banded together to serve Spanish-language audiences in the Roaring Fork Valley. The initiative counts a mix of nonprofit, for-profit, public and commercial, digital and

The email came — notably — on Friday the 13th. In October. The spooky season. When ghouls and ghosts and goblins haunt the dusky twilight of our western autumn. “Crisis

Two 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

Andrew Travers, an editor of the Aspen Times who was fired last year amid a censorship scandal, has now sued his former newspaper and its parent company. Allegations in a

A report this week from a cluster of journalism advocacy groups paints a dire picture for the future of Colorado’s news printing industry, and offers some potential solutions. “For a

Colorado News Collaborative this week unveiled what it calls a first-of-its-kind online guide that will “help newsrooms find diverse sources” while also helping community members connect with local reporters. “We

The Colorado Sun, one of the nation’s brighter spots in digital local news sustainability, has been a few things in its five years since launching. First, it was an LLC

Two years after launching the Broomfield Leader as a for-profit digital local news site, the Canadian-owned Village Media has shut it down. The move once again underscores the difficulty of

Whether someone plunged a knife into a college student in Boulder last week might not be the most pressing news story in Colorado. But how coverage of it played out

For the past year, Colorado has been a state-based testing ground for an international project seeking to bolster trust in local news. The Journalism Trust Initiative, a project of Reporters Without

Roughly 18 months after choosing Denver as the test market for an original local news experiment, the national app NewsBreak plans to pull the plug. “While disappointed with this decision,

“I’m not dead.” That’s the answer I’d hoped to hear — and did — from Trevor Hughes when he picked up the phone around midday Monday. Hughes is a senior

An Illinois company that owned a cluster of eight newspapers in Colorado’s San Luis Valley has sold them to a young Wyoming publisher who has been snapping up community newspapers

Following what one city staffer called an “extensive review,” city leaders in Aspen this week anointed the locally owned Aspen Daily News as the city’s “newspaper of record” over the

Typically, when a news organization decides to remove a piece of reporting from its website after publication, a best practice is to acknowledge it publicly and explain what happened. Sure,

Countering last week’s news of two Eastern Plains newspapers cutting back their print days, two small hyperlocal publications in southern Colorado say they are expanding their offerings. The Florence Reporter, which launched last

Starting next week, two newspapers on the Eastern Plains will cut the number of days they publish a printed edition. “The decision to eliminate the Monday and Tuesday print editions,

After years of trying to disinfect what it characterized as a toxic swamp of an online comments section, Colorado’s flagship newspaper decided to simply drain the damn thing. Comments on

Media advocates in Colorado swarmed into action this week to help several local newspapers continue publishing a physical edition after a large out-of-state company announced it would shut down the

The labor union representing workers at the Pueblo Chieftain ripped into the paper’s owner Gannett this week when the nation’s largest newspaper chain announced a decision to shutter its printing

This week, a city council member in Englewood who is at the center of controversy answered a phone call from a local reporter and responded to a series of questions.

Haven Orecchio-Egresitz is currently a journalist for the national outlet Insider but spent her career as a local reporter in Massachusetts. There, at the Berkshire Eagle, Cape Cod Times, and

For more than a year, a sword of Damocles has been hanging over a leading local TV news station in Denver. A hedge fund called Standard General was poised to

Four years ago, Colorado legalized online sports gambling. The lucrative business and gobs of money that orbit it have changed the behavior of individuals and institutions alike. The University of

This week, Colorado lawmakers stopped making laws. Until next year, anyway. For one reporter who has covered state legislatures for nearly 20 years in four states, the end-of-session drama this

The important and impressive Voices Initiative is out with another report for Colorado — this time about Indigenous communities and their recommendations for improving relations among them and local media.

Dylan Anderson has become the latest local journalism entrepreneur in Colorado to leave a shrinking newspaper only to launch a digital newsletter and website in the backyard of his former

ChatGPT and its artificial intelligence brethren are the latest technological advancements to rumble through local newsrooms. The so-called chatbot — the GPT stands for “generative pre-trained transformer” — is a

This week, the social media platform Twitter added a label to NPR’s account that called the national broadcaster “state-affiliated media” and “government-funded media.” In response to what NPR has said was inaccurate

A Colorado couple who ran a string of mountain town newspapers under the banner of Arkansas Valley Publishing has sold them to an Arizona-based company. The new owners are O’Rourke

Two large broadcasters — Colorado Public Radio and Denver7 — have joined forces to launch a new public affairs show focused on the “stories and experiences of underserved communities.” The

In the Roaring ‘20s, the Ku Klux Klan didn’t just control the levers of political power in Colorado from the governor’s office down to the biggest-city mayor. Klan members also

Call it Bloody Wednesday. “March 15 is going to be a hard date to forget here at Sixty35 Media,” read an announcement to readers from the alternative weekly in Colorado

The Voices Initiative is out with a new report for Colorado — this time about Asian, South Asian, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islanders here and their recommendations for local media.

A longtime reporter who covered the legislature for The Denver Business Journal has turned in his press pass and joined the ranks of those he once covered — taking a

Nestled in the foothills west of Denver, the small Golden Transcript newspaper is the latest to publicly grapple with some of its own haunted history. This week, the paper produced

At the beginning of the first episode of a newly released national podcast called Alphabet Boys, which focuses on Colorado, journalist Trevor Aaronson offers a warning to listeners. “We are going

A simmering dispute could boil over between Colorado’s oldest weekly newspaper and the local government of the state’s second-smallest county. At issue is two out of three Gilpin County commissioners