Target: Colorado. New statewide digital news outlet is launching to cover politics and policy

A new statewide nonprofit digital news outlet with robust but undisclosed funding will launch in the coming months to cover public affairs in Colorado.

An editor and a trio of yet-to-be-hired reporters will make up a newsroom that’s so nascent it doesn’t yet have a name. Quentin Young, who just left his position as opinion page editor of The Boulder Daily Camera, will lead this latest journalistic endeavor.

Funded by and linked to the national States Newsroom, the new site will become the latest local news startup in Colorado to set up shop amid several years of traditional newspaper retrenchment. It comes as the state’s media scene enters a notably new phase of collaboration. Indeed, it was part of this new transformational period, specifically for The Colorado Independent where this newsletter appears as a column, that made way for this new outlet to launch.

The States Newsroom, an apparently well-funded national network whose spread into a dozen states hasn’t received much national attention, helped fund The Indy for about two years as a partner but not a fully-funded affiliate. But as The Indy moves away from daily coverage and joins a partnership with the Colorado Press Association and Colorado Media Project to produce more collaborative journalism, the move offered an opening for the States Newsroom “to go ahead and create an outlet that does what we do for Colorado,” says Andrea Verykoukis, deputy director of the States Newsroom. A standalone Colorado presence will add to the network’s affiliates in states from Arizona to Maine, Louisiana to Maryland. Its latest, the Tennessee Lookout, launched this week.

How a new newsroom focusing on politics and policy will find a lane that sets it apart in Colorado where politics is heavily covered will be left to Young to figure out — after he decides on a name. Since at least February, Verykoukis has been calling Colorado journalists to pick their brains about the state’s media landscape. She heard multiple times (at least once from me) that our legislature is covered enough already.

“We want to find the areas elsewhere in state government and throughout the state that aren’t getting coverage,” Young told me over the phone this week, adding he expects they’ll dig into certain state agencies, look for enterprising stories from Colorado courts, and explain how federal policy is affecting state residents. The newsroom will benefit from a correspondent in Washington, D.C. who reports for newsrooms across the network. They’ll also have a freelance budget for photographers and correspondents in far-flung parts of Colorado.

With a staff of four, the new site without a paywall will have to balance feeding the beast with daily churn while producing long-form, impactful work that takes time. I know from experience that’s not easy. The site will also have to pick its shots in compelling ways to earn a committed following from a fragmented audience in a state where politics and policy perhaps isn’t as captivating to the average resident as, say, outdoor recreation.

I’ve written recently about another new startup in Colorado, the Google-backed Longmont Leader. But while that one is hyperlocal in scale, and also an admitted “experiment,” Verykoukis says this new outlet is not. Funding to expand The States Newsroom into 25 states will go through 2021, she told me, and “we don’t believe our philanthropic funders are doing that to abandon it.”

To reiterate here: 25 states. That’s some big money, right? About that. Whatever site emerges here in Colorado might have to overcome initial skepticism in some quarters about transparency in its funding, although, as I’ve written recently, the extent to which readers care much about that anymore is an open question.

“We have a philanthropic model; it’s kind of old fashioned in that we don’t disclose our donors,” Verykoukis told me when I raised the issue. “We get support from foundations and readers and we so far haven’t disclosed that.” She added that she hasn’t ruled out doing so, and they won’t take corporate sponsorships or underwriting. (I wonder about what a lack of disclosure might mean if this outlet does wind up wanting press credentials to cover the legislature, but that’s a little cart-before-the-horse.) The network has a detailed ethics policy that includes this line: “Editorial decisions are made by journalists alone.” Verykoukis says “it’s fair to say that we have a progressive editorial policy” and that it shouldn’t shock anyone that an opinion page editor has opinions. “Like a newspaper had an editorial view but the reporting is straight reporting,” she says.

Young, who will run the shop, says obviously he’s on record being for or against certain issues from his opinion perch at the Camera. But “I don’t have it in me to do ideological journalism,” he says, adding he hopes to build his team with writers who have backgrounds in journalism, not advocacy.

“I’m satisfied that their intention is for me to do nothing but good, solid, traditional journalism,” he says of the new network funding the state’s latest newsroom. “That’s my job and that’s what I’m going to make sure we’re doing.” A job listing is here for those interested.

For years, outlets with murky funding have relied on a saying: judge us by our work. It looks like Coloradans will have an opportunity to do more of that in the near future.

Authorities say they believe an administrator in the Brighton City Attorney’s Office in Adams County accessed a sealed arrest affidavit in a high-profile El Paso County child murder case, and they accuse her of leaking it to the public.

Fourth Judicial Deputy District Attorney Michael Allen held a news conference in Colorado Springs this week to say they’re taking action. The case involves the death of 11-year-old Gannon Stauch whose stepmother is facing first-degree murder charges. The grisly protracted true-crime story attracted major national attention online after the boy went missing; his body was later found in Florida. When authorities eventually arrested the child’s stepmother, who had appeared in local TV news interviews and said in one of them “he is not dead,” reporters and members of the public understandably wanted to see the affidavit. In Colorado, authorities have the annoying ability to keep information secret as long as they say it would be contrary to the public interest to disclose. And they get to decide. In this case, the deputy DA explained why they didn’t want the information leaking out.

From The Gazette in Colorado Springs:

In April, a Denver Post editor said on social media that “someone leaked the arrest affidavit … prompting an El Paso County judge to unseal the thing.” (The Post’s story about that is here.)

“I understand and respect the public’s right to know and I respect the press in the important job they do, but sometimes information has to be kept closed and protected for a reason,” the Gazette quotes the deputy DA saying about the leak. The paper reports that if found guilty of misconduct, the alleged leaker “could face up to a year in jail and up to $1,000 in fines, according to the statement.”

Last week, this newsletter examined the ways in which some for-profit newspapers in Colorado are asking for money from readers in ways they haven’t before, what they say they plan to do with it, and the extent to which they say donations aren’t tax-deductible.

Eric Gorski, managing editor of the education-focused nonprofit newsroom Chalkbeat, mentioned later to me how he believes the issue goes beyond tax deductions. “I’d argue the most important difference is that we as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit operate in the public good,” he said. “We aren’t motivated or guided by profit.”

Now some for-profit newsrooms are noting their affiliations with nonprofit entities when asking for new money. From a note to readers this week by the publisher of The Steamboat Pilot, which is owned by the Nevada-based Swift Communications:

The Local Media Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that represents “3,000 newspapers, TV stations, radio stations, directories, pure plays and research & development partners.”

“The support of our readers has been invigorating, but I’m also proud of the local advertisers who have stayed with us throughout this pandemic,” Steamboat Pilot publisher Logan Molen wrote. “We know the hits on our economy have been far and wide, and we understand how hard it is to remain in business when the challenges come so fast and furious.”

I’d be remiss when writing about The Steamboat Pilot if I also didn’t direct you to its committed local coverage about the pandemic here.

The Coloradoan in Fort Collins profiled a family who escaped domestic violence now living in a shelter “in the middle of a global pandemic.” (A recent Southeast Express* story calls domestic violence a hidden casualty of the pandemic.) The Summit Daily News reported how county officials were bolstering outreach to Spanish speakers during the pandemic. The Loveland Reporter-Herald reported cases topped 386 in the county. The Longmont Times-Call covered how the virus is impacting area flight schools. The Greeley Tribune explored a “cloud of uncertainty” for local businesses waiting to reopen. Under the headline “Canceled Culture,” The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel reported on the area’s “festival fallout” from the virus and its effects on tourism. The Denver Post reported on how the virus was slowing work in Colorado’s oil fields. The Durango Herald looked at what the “numbers tell us about our response to the coronavirus.”

Aaaah-oooooo! Here come the howlers

It starts with a few people letting loose with some tentative yelps. Then neighbors emerge from their homes and join, forming a roiling chorus of howls and screams that pierces the twilight to end another day’s monotonous forced isolation.

Well, I hate to say it, folks, but as more editors get laid off from newsrooms around the state or have their work outsourced to far-flung cities, Coloradans aren’t going to have to wait until 8 p.m. to hear the chorus.

Consider this social media post from a former Pueblo Chieftain editor, Anthony Sandstrom, along with a photo of the howler:

The Pueblo Chieftain, owned by a family for roughly 150 years, recently sold to GateHouse. The company is known to slash staff, and its recent merger with Gannett led to nationwide layoffs that hit the Pueblo paper. “The ‘shit’ they’re trying to pull is getting rid of good people and making it to where there aren’t people to proofread,” Sandstrom went on. “And the people in the layout farm in Texas make $12/hour and don’t care.”

This is “what happens when the paper gets sold to Gatehouse and all design goes to Austin,” added journalist and Pueblo-watcher Kara Mason.

In recent weeks, I’ve tracked in this newsletter how some of the state’s smaller newspapers have been unadvisedly giving bylines to people paid to promote causes, politicians, and government agencies without offering readers a proper disclosure. Sometimes when the press agent didn’t even ask for it.

Around last week it happened again. The Pagosa Springs Sun published a news release under the byline of Laurie Cipriano. Nowhere did the item say Cipriano does communications work for the U.S. Census.

“We typically cut off promotional paragraphs about the writer and their credentials from press releases, but they have a byline,” a Pagosa Springs Sun editor told me previously about this practice, adding, “We recognize most press releases we receive are meant to make someone or something look good and are written by paid staff or volunteers, and we edit as necessary to keep it newsworthy and appropriate for our publication.”

That’s not a best practice. Readers should know when an item in their local paper (especially one that appears online and could attract a wider audience) comes from a publicity agent, lest they think a reporter for the paper actually wrote it. A one-sentence line should suffice unless the actual point is that the paper doesn’t want its readers to know the paper is running press releases as news.