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 the Gazette in Colorado Springs.
“My dad, mom, granddad and grandma owned and operated that paper for 50 of those 139 years,” wrote Vince Bzdek in a personal column this Sunday. “Its loss is like a death in the family combined with a rip in the universe, one I’m not sure we’ll ever really recover from. I worry that the town may not, either.”
Bzdek, along with all five of his siblings, worked in some capacity at the paper located in Morgan County about an hour and a half northeast of Denver. His column revealed teenage antics in the newsroom alongside evocative Norman Rockwell nostalgia of small-town America and its relationship to a local newspaper.
An excerpt from the Aug. 4 column:
It’s not a coincidence that the public square has become a polarized and dysfunctional place in the same time period that many newspapers have been shrinking or disappearing. Newspapers moderate the public debate in a better and more productive way than social media does, bringing people together rather than pushing them apart. Newspapers were the hearth the whole city gathered around.
When the social ties that newspapers foster disintegrate, something vital rots away. We become islands unto ourselves, less tolerant of our neighbors. Our connection to each other collapses.
Elsewhere in the column, Bzdek ripped into the institution known as Alden Global Capital, which financially controls a string of local newspapers in Colorado including the Denver Post and the Brush News-Tribune.
“Alden Media, the hedge-fund owner that shut the Brush paper down, isn’t tied to the community in any way, like my parents and grandparents were. Alden could give a crap about community,” Bzdek wrote. “Alden has already gutted The Denver Post and most other newspapers it owns, only interested in sucking what profit it can out of their dying news carcasses while they cut them back to next to nothing. ‘Vulture capitalism’ is the epithet they’ve earned.”
Yowzers.
It’s nice to see a Post rival punching up at wealthy absentee ownership. In recent years, Bzdek’s digital Denver Gazette newspaper has swiped harshly at the Denver Post’s newsroom, erecting billboards and running an attack-ad campaign that urged readers to “Leave the Post in the past.”
More from the editor about Alden in his column:
But Alden wasn’t looking for creative solutions that might serve the community in Brush. It was looking to cut some pretty meager costs. They also just shuttered the Lamar Ledger that reaches more than 3,000 homes in Prowers County and the Burlington Record in Kit Carson County, about two hours north.
His parents and grandparents “were the exact opposite of Alden,” Bzdek writes, calling them “deeply involved in their community, bringing people together, giving the voiceless a megaphone to shout their hometown pride.”
Now, he said, without its newspaper the town of his youth is “as quiet as a tomb.”
Anonymously sourced CU Buffs locker room story under fire, ‘ramifications’ mused
Last Friday, a writer with Athlon Sports named Steve Corder set off a firestorm on Colorado fan sites and among the broader sportswriter and commentator community.
At issue is an Aug. 2 item he authored that relied on a “few” anonymous sources he said were former University of Colorado Buffs football players. Together, they allegedly described a violent and chaotic atmosphere in the Boulder locker room of coach Deion Sanders and feared “retaliation” if they put their names behind their comments.
The piece, which included alleged anecdotes about fights, gambling debts, guns and more, spread to the New York Post and Daily Mail, both with large online audiences and reputations for aggregating items sure to generate traffic. (Both outlets quoted CU’s athletic communications department saying it “has no comment” on the story.)
Since then, fans, sportswriters and commentators have dog-piled the author, questioning his verification process and raising the possibility of legal implications if the story falls apart.
Responding to what multiple sites called a “bombshell” report, Coloradan Adam Munsterteiger, who has published the digital site BuffStampede since 2003 that covers the CU football program, slammed the post as “clickbait drama” and called into question the credibility of the author.
“There is some bad information in that story,” Munsterteiger said. He added that in his time covering the CU program he has heard from ex-players who sent him intel about why things didn’t work out one way or another.
“You know why I don’t do much with that? Because it’s sour grapes,” he said, adding that in a given season there can be somewhere around 100 different players on a team who have different perspectives and might have an axe to grind. He accused some who write about the CU program and aren’t based in Colorado as doing “hit pieces from afar.”
While Munsterteiger personally said he thought the story was “BS,” he felt forced to acknowledge it on his platform because it’s “out there” and circulating. Like others, he pointed to a previous story the author published that’s authenticity had been challenged.
Writing in Awful Announcing, Brendon Kleen opined that the site where the story originated matters.
“Perhaps Athlon being a smaller outlet is working in Colorado’s favor in more ways than one,” he wrote. “While they can threaten legal action and potentially scare the company, the school is likely also benefitting from the lack of attention it’s getting versus a story like this in The Athletic or the local newspaper.”
The news has made its way into more traditional Colorado media given that multiple questions about it peppered a press conference a player gave this week following a practice session.
Reporting on the media briefing, the Denver Gazette’s college sports reporter, Tyler King, quoted Buffs long snapper Camden Dempsy saying: “Our team is a family. It’s the same thing as someone coming in and snooping on your Thanksgiving dinner and speculating what’s happening. That’s not true. With those pieces, it doesn’t highlight the good that our players are doing. It doesn’t correlate at all to what’s happening, what results our team is putting on the field. You’ve got the best recruiting out here, you’ve got a team with the second-highest team GPA in history.”
Some in the sports community wondered if Coach Sanders himself might have subtly addressed the issue in a post on Twitter/X Wednesday.
“When a person u don’t know talks about a person u do know what’s the goal of the person u don’t know? When a person u do know responds to a person u don’t know now that person is known,” the team leader who goes by the nickname Coach Prime wrote. “I choose to keep that person u don’t know Unknown and Thirsty to be known.”
One former player who was specifically mentioned in a particular anecdote of the story as being bullied by a teammate posted a screenshot of the allegation along with a laughing emoji and one of a baseball hat, which in internet speak can mean something is “cap,” or false.
Longtime Miami-based sportswriter Dan Le Batard, speaking Wednesday on a talk show he hosts, noted that if such eye-popping allegations had come from a publication “that had a lot of mainstream access” it would be a sports scandal that would “knock the Olympics off of your television.”
For his part, Corder, the author of the Athlon Sports piece at the heart of all this, appeared on Le Batard‘s show, which has more than 200,000 subscribers.
He defended his work, saying, “I’m confident in my reporting.”
Asked why he thought more traditional beat reporters in Colorado haven’t matched his narrative of violence and chaos in the Buff’s locker room, Corder said he believed they “are content because they have access” to the team and its high-profile coach. He promised more would come out about it in the near future.
Also on the show, he said gun use among players is “rampant.” However, following the interview, multiple commentators said they believe Corder misinterpreted what “strapped” means in football terms and conflated it with a connotation to firearms.
Writing for Glory Colorado, a site that covers the University of Colorado’s football team as part of the FanSided Network, Andrew Hughes said, “Of course, some Colorado Buffaloes reporters do a bit of sunshine pumping, but the AthlonSports report has bothered others on the beat and, most notably, Deion Sanders — who alluded to potentially taking legal action on the publishers of these rumors.”
More from Hughes:
Coach Prime bringing up penalties and ramifications indicates that he understands what the stakes for AthlonSports and Corder are if their claims are untrue. But if he doesn’t take action, it’ll be hard to be convinced that the report didn’t contain true anecdotes from former players.
The “penalties” and “ramifications” quote appears in an edited video clip of Sanders posted Aug. 5 on Twitter/X from a user identifying themself as an independent Colorado Buffs content creator.
“For what it’s worth, similar stories have been spoken in media circles for a while,” Hughes wrote. “But publishing the story without clearance from the former players who told those anecdotes that they’d put their names behind the quotes could come at a cost to the publisher.”
Using anonymous sources can be tricky.
Reporters must try hard to ensure their sources are in a unique position to speak with authority on a subject — and are who they say they are. Reporters also have to make sure sources aren’t providing bad information to push an agenda or echoing flawed intelligence. And in the case of a future civil defamation lawsuit, journalists who rely on anonymous sources should think carefully about deals they might make to protect their sources while soliciting information.
For his part, Corder said on the Dan Le Batard Show that he is not worried about any potential legal action. “I vetted my sources, I checked and double-checked,” he said. “I have multiple people that I trust.”
Whether this particular storyline goes beyond a week of online drama remains to be seen.
College students in Colorado produced hundreds of stories in local news outlets last year
More and more we’re learning about the ways students in U.S. higher-education institutions are helping fill gaps in local news.
New research this week from the Center for Community News at the University of Vermont offers a picture of how that looks by the numbers.
The center identified more than 17,228 pieces of journalism students produced that appeared in more than 1,311 outlets across the country.
Researchers got that figure by surveying leaders at 73 news-academic programs across 37 states and Washington D.C. “to quantify the extraordinary reach and impact of university-led local news reporting.”
The report included three higher-ed institutions in Colorado, including Colorado College where I teach and shared data for the survey.
At CC, we identified roughly 185 individual stories students produced for news organizations last year. (One student was a breaking news intern for the Denver Post who racked up a dizzying number of bylines in that role; two other students produced roughly three dozen items during an internship for KRCC. Other students reported one-off pieces for practicums, published items for newsletters, helped an alt-weekly with its “Best Of” coverage, and generated plenty of bylines in internships or for class.)
Colorado State University identified roughly a dozen stories for the report, said professor Jenny Fischer, and the University of Colorado in Boulder provided data as well.
“I worked with editors around Colorado on stories and had students interact with them directly,” said CU’s Beth Potter. “We also collaborated with folks at the University of Missouri and students around the country on a model legislation story about ‘fetal personhood.’”
➡️ 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. ⬅️
Estes Park Trail-Gazette publisher walks away
As newspapers owned by the Alden Global Capital hedge fund sputter on Colorado’s Eastern Plains, one in Northern Colorado is losing its longtime publisher.
“After 48 years (13 of which were spent here in Estes Park) in an industry that I love, it’s time for me to step aside,” wrote Mike Romero of the Estes Park Trail-Gazette.
From his goodbye column:
The industry has changed, and I am saddened by the lack of interest in the fact-based truth we provide in favor of social media or blog posts that cater to what people want to read to support their stand or beliefs. The cries of fake news that politicians cry every time they get caught in lies have diluted what we do. These issues have hurt the industry, and most mainstream media companies continue to lose ad revenues that support the writers and journalists who discover and write about the news, thus losing reporters, etc.
This has happened here in Estes as well. I am fearful that the fourth estate established by our founding fathers is in its last days, and what we are left with after will be very similar to that of third-world countries where honest journalists are jailed for writing and exposing government misuse of power and resources.
Romero acknowledged he might have “upset and challenged many” with his editorials and said they were “never written out of spite or anger and were always intended to bring about conversation that would lead to better outcomes for our community.” He’s hanging it up at the end of the month.
It is not a stretch to wonder whether the Trail-Gazette might soon go the way of its orphaned sister papers the Burlington Record and Brush News-Tribune.
If that happens, unlike in those areas, a new journalist-founded local digital publication is well-equipped to fill in the gaps of coverage.
The Estes Valley Voice, a digital public benefit corporation, launched this summer at what its founder Patti Brown says was “such a fortuitous time.”
Last week, more than 100 people turned out to an event the Voice hosted where it screened the documentary “Stripped for Parts: American Journalism on the Brink.”
The film “looks at how many newspapers have been the victim of ‘distressed investing’ and ‘vulture capitalism’ by corporations that buy local papers, sell off the real estate and other assets, shut local offices, close the printing facilities, and pare the journalism staff to the bare-bones to create what is called a ghost paper.”
Filmmaker Rick Goldsmith spoke to the Voice about it.
Says Voice founder Brown: “There seems to be a lot of support for this adventure in our community.”
Local wildfire TV coverage conspiracy theorists now?
In recent years, particularly after the deliberately anti-media campaign and presidential administration of Republican Donald Trump, all sorts of people come up with wild conspiracy theories about the news and the credible journalists who report it.
This week, some viewers questioned journalists directly about whether they were really out in the field reporting on a wildfire in Jefferson County.
One prolific Colorado Twitter/X user asked whether a news anchor was “really standing in front of a green screen to make it look like he’s outside covering the wildfires in Colorado.”
Another viewer named Brad wrote in to the ‘Next’ team at 9NEWS to say “In your stories about the fires it is so obvious that you are standing in front of a green screen and dressed as if you’re out there. What a farce.”
In order to show just how ridiculous such a statement was, anchor Kyle Clark read it on air during his Aug. 1 broadcast from the field and said, “All right, Brad, just for you” — before unplugging his microphone, turning his back on the camera, and jogging off into the distance to show it was a real broadcast from an on-location dispatch in the wild.
The best part? Brad saw it — and wrote back.
The following evening, Clark read his response: “Touché, Kyle, your response made me smile.” The viewer added: “I’ve learned to be more careful regarding those I listen to. I was truly impressed how quickly and humorously you responded. God bless you and yours.”
Clark said on air that he respected the response, adding, “Do you know how much better the world would be if everybody out there could take a joke and change their mind when they get new information? That’d be a whole new world. Be like Brad.”
Now, a message from the Colorado Press Association…
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More Colorado media odds & ends
⛰ Jeff Roberts of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition wrote this week about how the Ouray County Plaindealer “successfully fought ‘excessive’ redactions” in police internal affairs records.
📺 Kim Christiansen at 9NEWS created a tribute to the station’s Olympics reporter, Matt Renoux, who underwent thyroid cancer treatment shortly after his wife went through her own cancer ordeal. “This year, he’s reporting from Paris with a new perspective.”
🤖 A truly bizarre and cautionary story out of our neighbor Wyoming involves someone a newspaper hired who “had no journalism experience,” said “he hadn’t realized he needed to give credit” to other sources, “expressed uncertainty about how to do so,” and “said he was using AI as a supplemental tool for research and ‘to give color and context’ to his stories” and “called AI ‘a great way to leverage your time.’” (The person is no longer with the newspaper after “getting caught fabricating quotes.”)
🆕 Robbie Patla has joined the Gray TV-owned KKCO/KJCT in Grand Junction as a multimedia journalist.
💨 Following a recent announcement from Anna Lynn Winfrey that the reporter has left the Pueblo Chieftain newspaper for the Columbus Dispatch, now Chieftain reporter Josue Perez has announced he’s joined the Newark Advocate in Ohio.
🧠 The Colorado Springs Indy is the latest local news organization to take note of the important journalism that Colorado-based national New York Times reporter Dave Philipps is doing to help us understand how repeatedly firing weapons might be affecting the brains of members of our military. Philipps recently appeared on Colorado Matters with host Ryan Warner.
📚 Denver author Peter Heller this week published in the New York Times a list of books people should read about Denver and Colorado. (I’d add “The Holly: Five Bullets, One Gun and the Struggle to Save an American Neighborhood.”) Meanwhile, the Times this week also listed the nonfiction book “Cheap Land Colorado” by Ted Conover as one of six paperbacks to read.
💨 “The week after I published my three-part series investigating Andrew Wommack’s Charis Bible College, Wommack announced to staff that he will be stepping down from leadership,” wrote Logan Davis of the Colorado Times Recorder.
⚾️ “Cool to go to my first professional baseball game in Colorado last night on the invitation of a tourism board,” wrote Zanny Merullo Steffgen. “Grateful for these opportunities that come along with freelance travel journalism.”
🌶 Eleanor Sheahan, a multimedia journalist for KOAA TV in the Springs, says she will be in Pueblo during certain dates and times this month to hear from people in the community for potential story ideas.
🙏 Thanks to the Science Writers Association of the Rocky Mountains for hosting a virtual panel discussion last week with Sreenath Sreenivasan and me about AI in the newsroom moderated by Kenna Hughes-Castleberry, SWARM’s programming chair and the science communicator at the JILA physics research institute at the University of Colorado Boulder.
I’m Corey Hutchins, co-director 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.