The Colorado News Collaborative (COLab) is a nonprofit, statewide media resource hub and ideas lab that serves all Coloradans by strengthening high-quality local journalism, supporting civic engagement, and ensuring public accountability.
This dynamic coalition unites journalists from 170+ newsrooms — print, online, radio and television, for profit and nonprofit — with allies and community members to create Better News, More Trust, and Faster Evolution in local journalism.
COLab’s founding partners include these current tenants of the COLab Newsroom, located on the third floor of Rocky Mountain Public Media’s new Buell Center for Public Media in downtown Denver — the Associated Press, Chalkbeat Colorado, Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition, Colorado Media Project, Colorado Press Association, The Colorado Sun, KGNU Community Radio, Open Media Foundation, and Rocky Mountain PBS.
In 2019 Colorado Media Project supported strategic planning for COLab’s founding partners, who set the vision and goals for how they would collaborate among themselves and other newsrooms across Colorado. In 2020, CMP joined forces with Colorado Press Association and the Colorado Independent to provide staff and resources to launch the collaborative.
Today, COLab is an independent organization with a full staff that is governed by a community-based board of directors. CMP is COLab’s biggest institutional supporter and a strategic partner in a number of initiatives, including #newsCOneeds and The Voices Initiative.
To date, COLab and its newsroom partners have developed ambitious editorial projects such as:
“Chasing Progress” which examines socio-economic and health equity among Black and Latino Coloradans over the last decade
“On Edge,” an investigation into Colorado’s mental health safety net system, including profiles of Coloradans facing challenges in a time of crisis
“COVID Diaries Colorado,” COLab’s debut collaborative project, which came together during the first month of the public health crisis in April 2020, and featured intimate profiles of how individuals across Colorado were being impacted