The Gazette newspaper in Colorado Springs softened its coverage after legal threats involving a local housing development, according to a new book published this month.

The revelations appear about a third of the way into “Murder the Truth: Fear, the First Amendment, and a Secret Campaign to Protect the Powerful.” The author is New York Times business and investigations editor David Enrich.

In the book, Enrich recounts an episode in Colorado Springs in which lawyers involved with the Gold Hill Mesa housing development aggressively responded to the paper’s critical reporting — and got what they wanted in the end.

In 2019, at the suggestion of his editor Vince Bzdek, reporter Conrad Swanson investigated complaints by some homeowners about the development, which according to the paper, was “built on top of a century-old mine tailings pile.”

But following a legal pressure campaign against the paper after publication of his initial front-page exposé, which accurately reported the State Geological Survey’s concerns about the stability of those mine tailings, Swanson felt stymied, he told the book author.

Here’s an excerpt from the chapter in “Murder the Truth” titled “Coordinated campaigns of harassment”:

From Swanson’s standpoint, the threats seemed effective. Almost immediately, he told me, he noticed a change in the newspaper’s attitude toward his reporting. His previous articles had skated into the paper, and he’d exchanged hardly a word with Chris Reen, the publisher, who rarely got involved with the reporting or editing of articles. Now Swanson was called to Reen’s office, and phrases, sentences, and entire paragraphs were chopped at the publisher’s behest. Bzdek continued to support Swanson’s reporting, but he acknowledged to me that it was unusual and suboptimal for Reen to have inserted himself into the editing process. “There was a high concern with us being careful with that story,” Bzdek said.

As Swanson continued to dig into the story and legal threats mushroomed around his reporting, he kept publishing stories. He would have liked to publish more but “Bzdek spiked them,” Enrich writes in the book.

Another excerpt:

He viewed them as “ancillary” compared to the more ambitious Gold Hill Mesa stories that he wanted Swanson pursuing. Swanson, however, felt that the legal threats had spooked his supervisors.

Swanson left the Gazette for the Denver Post a few months later.

At the time, this newsletter reported: “One entity likely happy to see him switching papers is Gold Hill Mesa, the neighborhood development he’s been investigating for the past few months. It’ll be interesting to see how the Gazette keeps on that one.”

Enrich picked up the story from there:

The ambitious articles that Bzdek cited as a rationale for having killed Swanson’s other stories never materialized. Indeed, going forward, Gold Hill Mesa found the Gazette’s occasional pieces to be softer — or, as an executive put it, “way more fact-based” — than the exposés that Swanson had authored. Richard Hanes, one of the lawyers who’d threatened the Gazette, was also satisfied. “They stopped writing,” he told me. “That’s all we wanted them to do.”

Less than two months after Swanson left, the Gazette invited Gold Hill Mesa to sponsor a community forum that the newspaper was hosting. The development company accepted, though it publicly warned that litigation against the Gazette remained a possibility. “Our attorneys are still there in the wings, waiting and watching,” a spokeswoman noted ominously.

After another round of testing, Colorado Springs allowed Gold Hill Mesa to resume construction of houses and other buildings. The city even agreed to kick in millions in taxpayer financing to help defray the costs.

Bzdek, who indicated to me that he read the book, said in an email this week that the paper’s reporting had impact and the Gazette has only stopped reporting on the development “for now.”

The Gazette anecdote makes up just 10 pages of a roughly 270-page book that chronicles the way wealthy and influential people in recent years have used lawsuits and threats of litigation to weaken, cow, and sometimes flat-out destroy national and local news organizations.

Such outlets include the irreverent online tabloid site Gawker, bankrupted after a billionaire financed a lawsuit against it by Hulk Hogan, and the small and once-venerable Carroll Times Herald in Iowa, sold after a police officer’s legal wrangling over a reporter’s fact-based reporting.

At the heart of “Murder the Truth” is what the author describes as a years-long campaign to erode the seminal Civil Rights-era New York Times vs. Sullivan U.S. Supreme Court decision that brought libel and defamation under the protection of the First Amendment.

The 1964 ruling makes the United States unique in the way it affords strong guardrails for the press against litigation when journalists publish things that are true or do so without “actual malice” or a reckless disregard for the truth.

That standard, once championed by high-profile people on the political right and left alike, including U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas who later changed his mind, has made libel lawsuits against journalists hard to win.

In the era of Donald Trump, a goal of the powerful is simple: “to change the laws and the First Amendment to make it harder for individuals to critique powerful institutions and individuals,” according to the flyleaf of “Murder the Truth.”

In the prologue, Enrich describes his book as “the story of a largely under-the-radar legal movement that is weaponizing the obscure field of libel law — a campaign whose growing momentum has closely tracked the country’s increasing flirtations with authoritarianism.”

The Gazette anecdote in the book is notable in part because of the track record the paper has, along with its sibling the Denver Gazette, for doing tough and sustained accountability reporting in other areas. The papers have investigated judges, spurred reform in government, and also stood up to the state’s Democratic attorney general when he tried to suppress the Gazette’s reporting. The Gazette also has a documented history of former reporters accusing it of soft-pedaling coverage or spiking it when that coverage hits closer to home. In “Murder the Truth,” Enrich notes that “one of the world’s largest law firms” that represented Gold Hill Mesa also represented companies “controlled by Phil Anschutz, the paper’s owner.”

The details of what happened at the Gazette are not ideal. And it’s worrisome to imagine that they could likely happen again — at that paper or elsewhere.

No news organization is perfect, including the one you’re currently reading. It’s actually very hard for a news outlet or independent journalist to treat everyone the same without fear or favor — even if they say that’s what they do. Relationships matter among humans and they complicate things.

The story and others like it in the book underscore a much broader issue of complications involving newsroom ownership and management, a crisis facing local news, and the ways those who wish to shape coverage might be able to take advantage.

Based on what Enrich heard in talking with publishers, journalists, and lawyers across the country for his book, he was not surprised the threats and backroom business relationships seemed to work in Colorado Springs.

“It just speaks to the increasing effectiveness of this type of attack,” he said over the phone this week. “Using a high-priced law firm that happens to have some other connection to get your way — not with the journalists but with the publisher — and then exploiting any weakness or advantages.”

This week, Swanson’s copy of “Murder the Truth” landed in his mailbox in the Pacific Northwest, where he now reports for the Seattle Times covering climate change and its intersection with environmental and political issues.

Reflecting on the saga from six years and two newspapers ago, he said each time he has left a newsroom he has always felt as though he left something unfinished. But, “I think that’s maybe the biggest,” he said of the stories he wrote that are recounted in the book.

Swanson credited the series with changing the trajectory of his life and opening up new categories of reporting for him, particularly around science and the environment. He’s proud of what he was able to get in the paper, but he feels like there could have been more.

“It’s some of the biggest pieces that I look back on in my career and say, shit, I really wish I could have kept going,” he said in a phone call. “There’s a lot more there. And I think it’s a perfect opportunity for accountability reporting.”

For his part, Bzdek, who described the book favorably, said via email that the only thing he would add is that the Colorado Geological Survey and city gave Gold Hill Mesa “a green light on development after they addressed some of the issues raised in our reporting, and that’s when we stopped investigating, for now.”

In Colorado, there’s ‘more to be concerned about than to celebrate’ during Sunshine Week

This week is Sunshine Week.

That’s the annual seven-day send-up to our state and nation’s laws that allow journalists and citizens access to open records, meetings, court proceedings, and more.

This year, though, according to Jeff Roberts, who runs the nonprofit Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition, “there is far more to be concerned about than to celebrate, both nationally and here in Colorado.”

In a column this week in the Aspen Daily News, Roberts offered a rundown of the ways in which “threats to government transparency” are “subtle but still serious.”

Here’s an excerpt related to proposed new laws in 2025 at the state Capitol in Denver where Democrats control both chambers and the governorship:

A bill approved this session hides the identities of ranchers and others who seek and get compensation from the state for property damage caused by wildlife — despite the wildlife commission recently naming two ranchers who are receiving nearly $350,000 in state funds.

Another successful bill keeps secret the details of “name, image and likeness” contracts between state universities and student-athletes, some of whom are worth six-figure deals to exploit their star status. If you suppress that information, you can’t scrutinize whether NIL deals are fair or treat men and women athletes equitably.

There also is a significant new exemption to the Colorado Open Meetings Law.

A year ago, ironically during Sunshine Week, the legislature unbound itself from major portions of the law, redefining “public business” as it applies to the General Assembly and letting lawmakers communicate behind the scenes in an unlimited way — via email, text message or other means — even though the law still declares that “the formation of public policy is public business and may not be conducted in secret.” Democratic legislators used the newly enacted provision to exclude reporters from caucus meetings before an August special session on property taxes.

Last week, journalists gathered at the Denver Press Club where they “passionately and creatively aired their grievances about open government (or the lack thereof).”

The “Transparency Slam” event, hosted and chronicled by the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition, invited journalists to see who could come up with the most egregious Colorado transparency fail.

Rae Ellen Bichell, Colorado correspondent for KFF Health News, won first prize after recounting a response from a court clerk in Elbert County who told her, “Before documents can be returned, payment is required. Please provide a blank check.”

“I’m a millennial. I don’t mail things. I don’t have stamps,” Bichell told the judges. “Seriously, that was my first thought. And then I talked to an older colleague who was like, I think you should be more worried about the blank check.”

In Northern Colorado this week, a cartoon by Dick Mulhern in the Estes Valley Voice digital news site “captures the sentiments of journalists across the state of Colorado,” the outlet reported. The toon is of a Sunshine Week logo and a man reading the local news with a thought bubble emanating from his head that reads “Not in Colorado!”

Meanwhile, in southern Colorado, the Wet Mountain Tribune this week published a front-page story about its publisher, Jordan Hedberg, filing an open-meetings lawsuit against the Town of Westcliffe.

“Colorado Open Meeting Laws are strange in that they place enforcement of the law not on some police or state prosecution power but instead rely on private citizens to file lawsuits against governments,” Hedberg wrote. He added that the Tribune “is not a party of the law­suit.”

In honor of this year’s Sunshine Week, the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition published a special report by journalist Sandra Fish.

For its report, which sought to understand who is filing open records requests under the Colorado Open Records Act, the organization “examined more than 12,000 CORA requests made last year to the governor, treasurer, attorney general, secretary of state and legislature, along with selected other state agencies, county clerks, school districts and cities.” The CFOIC noted the figure is “likely only a fraction of the requests made to all local, county and state government bodies.”

What did they find? Here’s a snapshot:

• “Most requesters are individuals or businesses and include lawyers, private investigators and nonprofit think tanks. About 6% of requests came from journalists.”
• “Governments denied or partially denied about 2% of requests in which information about responses was evident. Denials often were made because information about individuals or companies was considered confidential.”
• “Nearly 18% of requests with response information either had no records available or were referred to other agencies.”
• “Seven agencies redacted names of requesters in 140 instances, claiming they were confidential under other laws.”
• “Most requests are mundane,” but “seven requests to lawmakers were about UFOs.”

Read the full report here.

Trump’s tariffs are impacting a small Colorado newspaper

Republican President Donald Trump’s proposed 25% tariff on lumber products from Canada, which includes newsprint paper, is having an impact in southern Colorado.

“Just devastating to have to pay that much more in printing,” Brian Orr, who publishes the World Journal newspaper in Walsenburg, told Dan Boyce of Colorado Public Radio.

From the story:

The president’s tariffs on Canadian lumber (and many other products) were announced on March 4. Two days later, a one-month delay on the tariffs was announced for products covered under the USMCA trade agreement, exempting newsprint from the higher import costs until April 2.

“I’m just crossing my fingers, hoping that it doesn’t come to that,” Orr said.

The World Journal prints at the Santa Fe New Mexican’s printing plant, which gets its paper from U.S. suppliers, according to its press circulation manager, Josh Harris.

“Still, in the days leading up to the Trump Administration’s expected tariffs, the New Mexican press announced about a 4 percent rate increase for its approximately 75 client publications, including the World Journal,” Boyce reported. “That’s because Harris does not expect U.S. paper costs to remain flat if the tariffs are implemented.”

In response, the World Journal, which has a commitment to its print product that circulates in a large swath of Colorado terrain that makes internet access spotty, is now encouraging readers to switch to digital-only subscriptions if they can.

The paper is also “reducing the number of print copies he sends to certain newsstands,” CPR News reported. “Those efforts will help the company save on printing costs, but Orr insists he is not giving up on a physical print edition.”

The newspaper publisher told the station: “I’ve seen a lot of changes … Might not look exactly like we do now, but we will always be here and always be making a paper.”

How this newsletter is going national (kind of)

This week, the Five Dubs podcast by the Maryland, Delaware, and D.C. Press Association had me on the show to talk about this newsletter.

Specifically, host Rebecca Snyder wanted to talk about why more states should have a newsletter reporting on local media and a new effort to help make that happen. Watch the conversation below:

The Center for Community News at the University of Vermont asked me to conduct a landscape study to see how many sites or newsletters like this exist elsewhere, particularly with an affiliation with a college or university.

Spoiler: they are few and far between.

A next step, I expect, will be to identify people working in journalism higher-ed who might like to start one in their state.

If that’s you — or you know of someone who might make a good fit — get in touch: coreyhutchins [at] gmail [dot] com.

Colorado SPJ announces winners of four annual statewide journalism awards

On April 5, journalists from news organizations and colleges and universities across Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and New Mexico will convene at the Slate Hotel in Denver.

The Colorado Pro chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists is this year’s host for the annual four-state conference. The event coincides with the SPJ Region 9 “Top of the Rockies” awards. See the schedule here.

This week, the Colorado Pro chapter of SPJ’s board, on which I sit, announced this year’s annual individual awards. They are:

• First Amendment: Rachael Johnson, senior staff attorney for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, who is leading the organization’s pro bono legal work in Colorado as part of its Local Legal Initiative.
• Keeper of the Flame: Michelle P. Fulcher, who recently retired from Colorado Public Radio.
• Journalist of the Year: Sam Tabachnik of the Denver Post.
• Educator of the Year: Doug Bell, a “teacher in many classrooms,” and Derigan A. Silver of the University of Denver.

Read more about the 2025 honorees here. Typically, the winners aren’t announced (and they don’t even know) until the ceremony. But this year, the state SPJ board voted to announce them publicly prior to the event. Hope to see you there on Saturday, April 5.

More Colorado media odds & ends

⌛️ The Better News Media Contest and the A-Mark Prize for Responsive Journalism “are now open for entries until 11:59 p.m. tonight,” the Colorado Press Association announced today, March 21.

👟 “The recent eviction of a Capitol reporter who shall go unnamed for wearing sneakers on the Senate floor is prompting this reminder, and a call to anarchy: The state Senate HAS NO RULES that apply to a dress code,” wrote Colorado Politics reporter Marianne Goodland in her Capitol M column this week.

🤖 More than 60 daily newspapers owned by the Alden Global Capital hedge fund, including in Colorado, this week published editorials crusading against Google and OpenAI. The Denver Post published a broadside on its front page Tuesday, accusing the Big Tech companies of having “long trained their ravenous bots on the work of newsrooms like this one,” and wanting to “throw out long-established copyright law by arguing, we kid you not, that the only way for the United States to defeat the Chinese Communist Party is for those tech giants to steal the content created with the sweat equity of America’s human journalists.” A Google spokesperson told the New York Post, “We support America’s existing fair use framework, and we’re confident that current copyright law enables AI innovation.”

👀 Megan Tackett, the director of development and a former editor of the Aspen Daily News, wrote about a time when she and her then-partner were having a pleasant conversation with a couple at a bar. When the man “stood up to use the restroom, I noticed his shirt,” she wrote. “A black T-shirt. A detailed gallows scene. And, in bold white letters across the back: ‘HANG A JOURNALIST.’”

👻 Denver Mayor Mike Johnston “and 14 of his top advisors, appointees and lawyers nicknamed themselves ‘Strike Force’ and communicated about the city’s migrant crisis through an end-to-end encryption app,” CBS News Colorado reporter Brian Maass wrote. “The app, Signal, proceeded to automatically delete their initial conversations.”

🥾 The Colorado Republican Party “was left scrambling, looking for a new location for its annual fundraising dinner after The Antlers in downtown Colorado Springs on Monday abruptly canceled the March 28 event featuring keynote speaker Steve Bannon, a former top Trump adviser, in response to an online uproar,” Stephanie Earls reported for the Gazette. She added that the new location as of March 20 would be Boot Barn Hall in Colorado Springs, “a spacious country-Western music venue that frequently hosts GOP gatherings and recently changed its official name to Phil Long Music Hall.” That venue is owned by J.W. Roth, who is the co-owner of the Colorado Springs Independent newspaper, as Heila Ershadi of the Pikes Peak Bulletin pointed out. “The Bulletin reached out to several staff members at the Independent for comment on the owner’s ties to the Bannon event, but by press time either had not heard back or the staff member had declined to comment,” she wrote. Speaking to this newsletter, Indy publisher Fran Zankowski said the paper’s owner had nothing to do with the Bannon booking. “It’s pretty much the same as what we put in our paper about opinion pieces,” he said. “In this case, it’s another business that one of the owners happens to own” and “does not necessarily reflect the opinion of this newspaper.”

🔀 Alex Edwards is moving from the Denver Gazette to the Colorado Springs Gazette where he said he’ll be “covering things on the business side.”

📰 An anti-capitalist newspaper is taking root on Colorado’s Western Slope. “We’re up 10 percent new subscribers every month since the election,” said Jacob Richards, editor of the Revolutionist, a monthly print newspaper based in Grand Junction.

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.