Thank you to the loyal readers and supporters of The Colorado Independent (2013-2020). The Indy has merged with the new nonprofit Colorado News Collaborative (COLab) on a new mission to strengthen local news in Colorado. We hope you will join us!

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Lobbyists gather in the room immediately outside the doors to the state House chamber at the Colorado Capitol early in the 2020 legislative session. (Jesse Paul, The Colorado Sun)

Coronavirus bills push lobbying to record total in Colorado. Here’s a look at the...

The total spent on lobbying at the Colorado Capitol topped $40 million this session — a record driven in part because of contentious last-minute...

An open letter from an early career Colorado journalist Your weekly roundup of Colorado...

For the first item in this week's column, I'm turning the mic over to Lucy Haggard, a born-and-raised Coloradan and recent graduate of the...
Ben Rosenthal, second from left, with his sister Ariella, mother Inka, father Robert and brother Adam.

Greene: The hardest stories Colorado has one of the highest suicide rates in the...

Dear readers,  The story of Ben Rosenthal’s death last year is not mine to tell. For starters, I never met the 26-year-old from Marin County, California....
Empty classroom at Lakewood High School.

Guest Post: How many teacher deaths are we OK with?

I have a question for the school boards and administrators who have decided that we should go back to 100% in-person learning this fall:...
Kayla Frawley, a single mom, plays with her 2-year-old son, Josiah, in their Denver apartment in 2018.

Guest Post: Child care costs in Colorado — why some moms don’t take the...

I remember crunching numbers all the time when my child was one-year-old and in a Head Start program: How much of a raise would...

‘Deep introspection’ on ‘race and racism’ at Colorado Public Radio Your weekly roundup of...

More and more, news audiences are learning about the experiences of journalists of color as outlets again grapple with the makeup of their newsrooms and their...
One of 8 journalists to receive the 2020-2021 Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism Fellowship, Susan Greene is the inaugural recipient of the Benjamin von Sternenfels Rosenthal Grant for Mental Health Investigative Journalism — a partnership between The Carter Center’s Mental Health Program and Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR).

“Bright lights in dark times”

Dear reader, Our apologies for our recent radio silence. Our new project launch with COLab (the Colorado News Collaborative) has us gathering string and casting nets...

Guest Post: A groundbreaking 2019 law opened records on police internal affairs investigations. The legislature...

Fourteen months before Colorado lawmakers passed the sweeping law enforcement accountability and transparency bill recently signed into law by Gov. Jared Polis, they approved a...

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

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...

MEDIA: Colorado academics and experts join a battle over the U.S. Global Media agency...

Roughly two dozen Colorado academics and experts are calling for the state's federal leaders to safeguard public funding for open-source technology projects. These important initiatives,...