Colorado news outlets got some ‘breathing room’ with federal relief PPP loans

Colorado news organizations were among millions of businesses nationwide that accepted federal money to help weather a financial battering from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Data released this week by the U.S. Small Business Administration shows millions of dollars flowed from the federal Paycheck Protection Program to more than a dozen media outlets that do business in Colorado. They include newspapers like The Durango Herald, broadcasters like Rocky Mountain Public Media, and digital newsrooms like The Colorado Independent and The Colorado Sun.

These forgivable loans, which recipients might not have to pay back as long as they spend the money on payroll and other approved expenses, are meant to keep small businesses from shedding employees during the pandemic (not that all businesses relying on federal assistance did). The money comes from one of the nation’s largest economic stimulus packages ever.

Readers of this newsletter have been reading since March how the pandemic carved into newsroom budgets and led to layoffs, furloughs, reduced print days, and more. In April, some Colorado news organizations said they applied for PPP loans. That month, the Poynter Institute, a journalism thought leader, stated in a headline that such outlets would “cast aside historic taboos” by asking for federal assistance. Colorado has been a state where debate and discussion about the efficacy of expanded public-sector support for the local news business have been taking place more than elsewhere. Just last month, for the first time ever, a state program of the governor’s office offered $100,000 to a news organization that gladly accepted the opportunity.

That said, there wasn’t much debate in newsrooms here about whether or not to accept federal relief, says Jill Farschman, CEO of the Colorado Press Association. As COVID-19 continued to tear through media industry balance sheets, the association offered webinars about the PPP application process and kept its members abreast with frequent emails about the program.

Now we have an idea which outlets benefited from the money and how. According to the new PPP loan data, between $5 million and $10 million went to Swift Communications, a Nevada-based media company that operates 11 newspapers in Colorado including Vail Daily, The Steamboat Pilot, and the Craig Press.

As for Colorado-based news organizations, some of the largest beneficiaries were Rocky Mountain Public Media (the parent company of RMPBS), and Grand Junction Media with each getting between $1 million and $2 million. Grand Junction Media operates the Daily Sentinel newspaper and a handful of radio stations. “Like most media organizations, Rocky Mountain Public Media saw an immediate and steep decline in corporate sponsorship revenue with the arrival of COVID-19,” said its president Amanda Mountain. “Applying for and receiving the PPP allowed us to protect our staff levels so that we could increase our service to the community at the precise time they need us most.”

Another million-dollar recipient that shows up in the data is Way FM Media Group in Colorado Springs, which has a stated mission of “influencing this generation to love and follow Jesus through culturally relevant media.”

Denver-based My24HourNews, founded by former U.S. Senate and gubernatorial candidate Erik Underwood, received between $350,000 and $1 million, according to loan data. The company’s website says it delivers news “using our own proprietary platform to cut through the noise of being inundated with news and information that you did not sign up for.” Underwood said the money helped keep the company’s workers on the payroll.

In Durango, records show Ballantine Communications, which owns The Durango Herald, a newspaper that suffered some of the first coronavirus-related newsroom layoffs in Colorado, received between $350,000 and $1 million. It was a process its CEO Doug Bennett found manageable despite questions that arose in the program’s early days.

“The PPP money was one of the best government programs we could have hoped for during what was a tumultuous time,” Bennett said. “We were trying to understand the impact of the shut down of the economy to our business while our viewers and readers expected even more than ever from us reporting the news.” The money meant the company could “take a breath for 60 days” to try and figure out how best to move forward, he added. “We were able to keep our staff employed at a time advertisers were cancelling at alarming rates.” There’s still plenty to figure out in Durango, he said, but the loan helped “weather the worst of the storm.”

The 2-year-old Colorado Sun, a public benefit corporation launched by ex-Denver Post staffers, applied for and received a loan, and has included this disclosure in its coverage of the program: “The Colorado Sun received a $212,000 PPP loan for 13 employees.” While the virus burned through advertising revenues at traditional newspapers, it also smoldered other forms of cash flow for different media outlets. “We were just ramping up our live events operation and that’s completely off the table for 2020, and probably 2021 as well,” Sun editor Larry Ryckman said. “It certainly cut into our revenue.” The federal money helped the outlet make it through a tough period, and because it wasn’t a program designed specifically for media but open to any business affected by the virus, Ryckman said there wasn’t a big debate about whether or not to apply for government support. “We might have had second thoughts or deeper discussions had this been something directly aimed at media, at newspapers, at journalists,” he said. “And this was not.”

Out in the Denver suburbs, the Macari-Healey Publishing company that runs Colorado Community Media and its nearly 20 newspapers took in $256,000. The small-business rescue loan came at a time when “many advertisers” were postponing or canceling buys, said owner and publisher Jerry Healey. “It provided us the breathing room to manage this crisis and implement a plan to move forward, while not missing an issue, reducing [full-time employees] or circulation.”

Down in Colorado Springs, John Weiss, who owns 6035 Media, said his company received more than $300,000 for its seven newspapers that include The Colorado Springs Independent, The Colorado Springs Business Journal, The Pikes Peak Bulletin and some military papers. The company had to make modest pay cuts after July, he said, but hired two marketing people and is looking to hire two new journalists including a seasoned investigative reporter. Since March, the business lost $200,000, but he expects it will be profitable again in September. “It’s really hard for businesses to advertise when they’re closed,” he said, adding the PPP loans “allowed us to weather the storm.”

Other news organizations that received between $150,000 and $350,000 include Colorado Public Television, BIZWest, Arkansas Valley Publishing, Boulder Weekly, High Country News, The Aurora Sentinel, and Channel 1 Networks.

The next step for some news organizations could be trying to make sure they can achieve maximum or complete forgiveness of these loans, essentially turning them into grants. Media companies likely won’t want to take on new debt (or increase it) as they continue to struggle with revenue.

Underwood, of My24HourNews, has a different take. “If you’re a company and can pay back the loan rather than taking forgiveness, in my personal belief, you should,” he said.

For this item, I found media PPP loan recipients through searchable databases provided in coverage by ColoradoPolitics, The Colorado Sun, and The Washington Post. Play around with the search functions yourself to see if I missed any, and let me know. The Sun reported the data had some “eye-popping errors” so keep that in mind, too. “There was also a lot of missing information in the SBA data,” the Sun reported. “Most applicants didn’t answer the questions about the business owner’s race, gender or veteran status. Another 1,377 did not list the number of employees they had.”

Also, the Small Business Administration doesn’t publicly name companies that sipped in loans less than $150,000. So, the nonprofit Colorado Independent, which received $50,000 and where this newsletter is published, does not show up. Neither does PULP in Pueblo because it got less than $10,000 or The Denver Press Club, which received around $20,000. Other smaller news outlets also might have gotten federal money and aren’t showing up by name in databases, like The Ouray County Plaindealer, which also saw some relief.

Last week this newsletter reported how and why some government secrets a newspaper learns can wind up in print, using as a case study a mistakenly aired secret city council session noticed by a journalist at the Loveland Reporter-Herald.

This week, we examine how just because a newspaper learns about news percolating in the community doesn’t always mean it will publish a report about it. The Coloradoan in Fort Collins on Sunday ran a column by its editor, Eric Larsen, explaining a local controversy in this context.

From the piece:

“The Coloradoan and USA TODAY Network are committed to furthering the fight to eradicate all forms of systemic racism,” Larsen went on in the column. “We have much work to do, inside our newsroom and in our community, to learn how to be allies in that struggle.”

Following its owner Gannett’s merger with another giant newspaper chain, GateHouse, it now has a sister newspaper in The Pueblo Chieftain. “Amid the turmoil of the coronavirus pandemic, two important things happened,” editor Larsen wrote in a note to readers.

One of them was the merger. The other is that both papers have developed a partnership with The Colorado Sun, the 2-year-old digital public benefit corporation launched by ex-staffers of The Denver Post that recently surpassed 10,000 paying members. The collaboration will help fill what Larsen called a “Denver-sized hole in the combined coverage of two newsrooms that bookend Colorado’s Front Range.”

More from the editor at the Coloradoan:

These papers add to more than two dozen others across the state that publish Sun content. What’s different about this one, Ryckman told me, is that it’s more than just the papers being able to run Sun journalism. The Coloradoan and Chieftain, which will pay for the arrangement, will be able to work with Sun journalists on story development, too. On Election Night, for instance, the Sun shared its content plans with the Coloradoan so the paper could be better equipped for its print deadlines for coverage the following day. “It’s more of a syndication and partnership, really,” Ryckman says, adding that the outlet has different arrangements with different outlets.

The Gazette in Colorado Springs reported how COVID-19 is hitting Hispanics hardest. The Coloradoan published its note to readers about the racist videos and the Sun partnership. The Loveland Reporter-Herald ran an AP story about July 4 headlined “Troubled times mark holiday” above the fold. The Longmont Times-Call reported on a local murder. The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel looked at how fireworks sales are booming during the coronavirus pandemic. The Durango Herald covered local listening sessions where residents shared examples of racism and discrimination. The Boulder Daily Camera reported how pandemic restrictions thinned crowds for the holiday. The Denver Post reported how a “cacophony of crises” threatens Colorado’s higher education institutions.