This week, Republicans in Congress wiped out federal financial support for NPR and PBS. The impacts are now trickling down to Colorado.
The state’s many public media broadcast stations had for months been bracing for the move — and doing what they could to try and ward it off. Now deep cuts are a reality.
“This loss of the next two years of already approved funding puts enormous pressure on public media across Colorado and devastates years of programming plans,” said Colorado Public Radio CEO Stewart Vanderwilt in a statement. “Some smaller stations may not survive it.”
Speaking to KJCT on the Western Slope this week, Vanderwilt said the cuts would mean that “a lot of stories go unreported that are important in communities around Colorado.”
Rocky Mountain Public Media President and CEO Amanda Mountain called the vote a “devastating blow to our collective work here and across the country” that will “hurt those who need us most and where there is no commercial incentive to step up and fill any gaps.”
On the July 21 statewide Colorado Public Radio program “Colorado Matters,” host Ryan Warner interviewed reporter Tom Hesse, who had spoken with public media leaders from across the state.
“One thing that’s important to note is that for public radio and public television, a lot of the infrastructure, programming, content that people see is possible because of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,” Hesse said.
Out on the rural Eastern Plains, High Plains Public Radio, which covers multiple counties, will lose $220,000. The station will look to cut costs where it can, executive director Quentin Hope told listeners.
“None of this will be easy,” Hope said, “but rather than a ‘struggle to survive’ I see this work as a time to ‘realize the potential’ of HPPR.”
That station might be better off than others. It recently won a $750,000 grant from Press Forward to “launch a regional information service to cover Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska and Colorado by partnering with local outlets in rural areas and recruiting community contributors.”
Writing in the statewide digital nonprofit Colorado Sun this week, reporters Parker Yamasaki and Kevin Simpson surveyed some other responses from stations around the state.
KSUT Tribal Radio in the Four Corners, they found, “will be down $330,000, about 20% of its overall budget.”
From the story, headlined “Trump’s cuts to public broadcasting leave 52 local Colorado stations staring at massive budget holes”:
Nearby station KDUR, located on Fort Lewis College campus, is also slated to lose about 20% of its operating budget due to the cut, as reported by the Durango Herald. And KSJD, a third Durango-area station, lost one-third of its budget.
At KSUT, the 20% reduction means they have to reconsider national news segments, like Morning Edition and BBC programs, as well as local programs like Native Voice 1, an hourlong call-in talk show that focuses on Indigenous issues. Tribal stations reportedly have an opportunity to retrieve the revoked funds through a carveout in the bill, but Graham is skeptical that it will amount to anything.
“It’s sort of, at best, a Band-Aid, and at worst a backroom deal to get this bill to pass,” Graham said. “Even though we’re on that list I doubt we’ll ever see funds.”
Elsewhere, at KRZA in Alamosa, General Manager Gerald Rodriguez told Nicole Brady of Denver7 that he worries about losing a voice that’s been in the San Luis Valley for four decades.
A group of Hispanic women had founded the station to talk about issues important to the community.
“People can call in and talk to a live person. They can call and make requests for music,” Rodriguez said in the story. “They can stop in and do an interview about their upcoming events or organizations that they have going on, educational or business programs.”
At KVNF in Paonia, which covers about 10,000 miles of the Western Slope, Station Manager Ashley Krest talked on the air about how the cuts would affect the station.
“It’s not necessarily just the cut of federal funding that’s going to impact us,” she said. “There are other things that we have benefited from in the funding that’s gone out to projects like StoryCorps, which came to this town many years ago and recorded the stories of the friends and neighbors that live in this community in Delta County and put them in an archive in the Library of Congress.”
The federal funding cuts have left stations asking for more money directly from listeners. KUNC in Greeley launched an emergency fundraiser this week.
“We’ve been through challenges before, and every time, our community has stepped up,” KUNC and Colorado Sound President and CEO Tammy Terwelp said in a statement. “I have no doubt they’ll do it again. This is Colorado. We don’t back down. We come together, we show up for each other, and we build something even stronger.”
At the national level, media reporter Max Tani reported that NPR told staff this week that the outlet is meeting with top donors, including an unnamed billionaire, and wealthy donors on the West Coast.
Now, a message from Gary Community Ventures…
✍️ Request for Grant Proposals to Fund Reporting on Child Care
Colorado’s child care system faces an inflection point. On average, the Denver Post reports, parents pay $13,000 to $20,000 a year per child on child care. And despite charging some of the nation’s highest tuition rates, the Colorado Sun has reported many of our state’s child care providers struggle to remain open due to increasing operational costs.
We’ve seen great reporting on how this dilemma impacts rural communities, grandparents, businesses and even our military. Yet many Coloradans remain unaware about how our state’s child care issues directly impact them.
This is why Gary Community Ventures, alongside the Colorado Media Project, seeks to fund journalism projects capable of reaching Colorado audiences frequently left out of the child care conversation. Learn more and apply by Aug. 3. ✍️
Pikes Peak Bulletin hits pause on publication, citing funding woes
This week’s print edition of the Pikes Peak Bulletin nonprofit newspaper in Manitou Springs comes with a sad note.
“This will be the last edition of the Pikes Peak Bulletin until we can stabilize our funding,” it reads.
Here’s more:
We have run into a repeating issue of being told we will receive grant or donor funding and then it being delayed indefinitely, combined with a worsening advertising megadrought.
While we still have our subscribers and a few loyal advertisers, it’s not enough to keep the Bulletin viable. Not even close.
We have experienced a surge in online readership in recent months – but attention and appreciation have not translated into sufficient dollars. Our online crowdfunding campaign brought in about $10,000, plus a $5,000 ad prepay. Most of the donations were between $25 and $100, and a salon owner came up with her own fundraiser for the Bulletin. This shows our grassroots support is real – and also illustrates why so many newspapers today are owned and subsidized by the very wealthy.
The old news business model of revenue from advertisers and subscribers is gone, largely due to the rise of the internet, and there is not yet a solid model to replace it. Currently, grant funding is insufficient – especially with canceled federal grants, the rescission of funds for public media, and a greater number of hungry organizations competing for a bite of the picked-over funding pie.
That’s quite a shame. The Pikes Peak Bulletin was doing good local journalism and was positioned to fill some gaps after the wealthy businessmen owners of the Colorado Springs Independent shut that paper down.
“Right now, we are in a financial hole,” the PPB letter went on.
“As the Law of Holes states: when you’re in a hole, stop digging. This does not mean we have given up. We will continue to seek a path forward to serve the community with stories that inform and connect. That will depend in part on who decides the Bulletin is worth saving — and also on our ability to adapt to a changing media landscape by enhancing our digital news site, offering newsletters and other online resources, and finding new, innovative ways to engage with the broader community.”
More details about next month’s Colorado Press Association conference
More details are emerging about the upcoming annual Colorado Press Association conference.
In an email to members and supporters this week, the CPA mentioned a new format called Challenge Circles that are “designed to help you slow down, focus and reframe what’s in your way — before the rest of the event begins.”
From the email:
We all carry different challenges:
- “I want my reporting to have more impact.”
- “We need to reach a community we’re not serving well.”
- “We really need a stronger reader revenue strategy.”
- “Our newsroom workflow is burning people out.”
- “I don’t know how to lead this change.”
Whether you’re in reporting, leadership, audience, or revenue—or even a funder or civic leader looking to partner with local news to serve your community—there’s room for your kind of challenge. Whether you’re starting with a general hunch or a specific headache, Challenge Circles will help you name it, explore it and clarify what might move you forward.
They happen Friday morning—right after you hear from Jim Brady, Battinto Batts and Laura Frank on real-world collaboration and innovation. Challenge Circles are your chance to pause, reflect and set your intention for the rest of the convention. What you uncover will shape how you navigate the rest of your time—what you listen for, who you connect with and which sessions speak most directly to your needs.
The CPA also announced that Garry Pierre-Pierre, a former New York Times reporter and leading voice on Haiti, the Haitian diaspora and community media, will speak at the conference.
The convention will also include “a roundtable session on public funding,” said CPA head Tim Regan-Porter in an email.
Find more details and early bird registration here.
Help more newsletters like this one spread into more states
More states should have a newsletter like the one you’re currently reading that covers their local media scene.
That was my argument in a new piece at The Conversation this week headlined “I teach college and report on Colorado media — there should be more professors doing the same in other states.”
From the column:
I believe colleges and universities make good places to produce these kinds of state-based media newsletters.
Journalism departments in particular are likely equipped to run them, especially if they have practitioners on the faculty. They are outside of a state’s established media organizations but also adjacent to them.
If you know anyone who works in higher education outside Colorado who might like to start something like this, send them my way.
I’m working with the Center for Community News at the University of Vermont to try and make that happen.
More Colorado media odds & ends
✈️ This newsletter is in travel mode, meaning content might be lighter than usual and I might not be as quick to respond to emails, voicemails, or DMs.
🆕 The Colorado Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, of which I’m a board member, “has named its president for 2025-26, appointed three journalists to its board, and said thanks and farewell to three departing board members,” the organization announced. Deb Hurley Brobst will serve as president; joining the board are Michael de Yoanna, Thelma Grimes, and Michael Karlik.
👀 After Ryan Krueger published a story in VFW Magazine about the Veterans of Foreign Wars opening its first-ever post inside a prison at Colorado’s Sterling Correctional Facility, a “backlash ensued,” he wrote this week for the Prison Journalism Project.
🚔 While Colorado lawmakers have made it easier to obtain police bodycam footage, “barriers to access remain,” Jeff Roberts wrote for the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition.
🏆 Rocky Mountain PBS journalists and producers won “six Heartland Emmy awards Saturday across several categories, including longform documentary.”
🎒 “With longstanding principles of objectivity, truth and fairness in news reporting up for debate in recent years, a homegrown Career and Technical Education course launching in Colorado Springs School District 11 for the fall semester will explore such topics under an overarching theme of ‘ethics in journalism,’” Debbie Kelley reported for the Gazette. Journalist Heidi Beedle previously reported for the Pikes Peak Bulletin how “conservatives from across Colorado” raised funds for the program. She dove deeper for the progressive Colorado Times Recorder.
⚖️ “After months of legal wrangling, shifting defenses, and public outcry, the Estes Valley Voice has secured a significant, albeit bittersweet, victory in its Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) lawsuit against Estes Park Health,” Toni Tresca reported for the Voice.
🆕 The Conversation, which has a presence in Colorado, has launched a Substack newsletter called The Afternoon Story.
🦅 “Generous donations from our end-of-year fundraising campaign totaling $73,000 were essential, bridging the prior budget gap and allowing us to continue publishing,” the nonprofit Crestone Eagle newspaper in Saguache County told readers in an update this week. “We’re also pleased to share that, in large part thanks to contributions from the community, after being nearly depleted in 2024, the Eagle’s reserve fund has been restored to $20,000 — a critical safety net as we move forward. One of the top priorities of the new board has been tightening the budget. At the end of 2024, monthly expenses hovered around $17,000. Through thoughtful adjustments, we’ve reduced that number by approximately $4,000 per month.” The paper, however, said it is “still operating at a monthly deficit of about $2,500, largely due to decreased advertising income.” Donor support is what’s keeping the paper afloat.
🏔 Denver’s 5280 magazine owner Charity Huff “has been nominated as one of ColoradoBiz Magazine’s Top Women in Colorado,” her company, January Spring, announced on LinkedIn.
⚖️ “In a landmark ruling last month, the Colorado Supreme Court declared that statements made in connection with a formal Title IX investigation conducted by a public school district or university cannot serve as the basis for a defamation claim or any other civil tort action,” Jeff Roberts wrote for the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition.
🔗 Rocky Mountain Public Media has developed a partnership with Colorado Ethnic Media Exchange to launch a “monthly essay series, as part of our vision to co-create a Colorado where everyone feels seen and heard,” per a news release. “These stories are sourced from community members across the state — told in their own words and selected from our 64-county community ambassador program.”
📻 Metro State University journalism professor Chris Jennings appeared on KOA news-talk radio to talk about CBS canceling The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. “They’re locked into a contract until May, and the gloves are off (for Colbert),” he said.
🪓 Alden Global Capital, the hedge fund that financially controls the Denver Post and other Colorado newspapers, is seeking to get its claws into the Dallas Morning News, reported Katie Robertson for the New York Times.
I’m Corey Hutchins, manager of the Colorado College Journalism Institute, advisor to Colorado Media Project, 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 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.