PLocal news outlets that fill coverage gaps with original reporting — and have a budget under $1 million — will be eligible to apply for national Press Forward funding.
New white paper by Corey Hutchins of Colorado College shares findings from a 2023 CMP-supported working group — and explores solutions. In addition to sharing ideas surfaced by newsroom and higher education leaders in the working group, the report captures takeaways from newsroom-hosted student internships supported by CMP through its Advancing Equity in Local News program in 2023, and from a cohort-based program that COLab provided for students placed in Colorado newsrooms in summer 2023. It is published to contribute to ecosystem learning and continuous improvement of Colorado’s journalism workforce pipeline.
More than two dozen Colorado newsrooms have launched an unprecedented collaboration to better cover the 2024 elections.
The Colorado Health Foundation, The Colorado Trust, Gates Family Foundation, The Gill Foundation, and Rose Community Foundation have stepped forward to lead Press Forward Colorado as a local affiliate of the nationwide initiative.
Colorado’s local and statewide newsrooms and nonpartisan community and civic groups are invited to join forces with Rocky Mountain Public Media, Colorado State University’s Center for Public Deliberation, the Colorado Press Association, Colorado News Collaborative, and the Colorado Media Project in a statewide campaign to reclaim and reimagine the public square across all of Colorado’s 64 counties.
All Colorado newsrooms are invited to participate in this project to the depth of their choosing. This could range from promoting the initiative and encouraging your audiences to participate in regional events, to asking your community the common questions (to be developed in conjunction with participating newsrooms), to reporting the results and ensuring your community is represented in the statewide reporting, to joining a cohort that will receive additional training and support for community listening and engagement, and/or joining the steering committee for the project.
Why should concerned citizens and residents, including state and local officials, care about what’s happening in Colorado’s local journalism industry? This 2023 white paper updates key data points on local news deserts and ownership from CMP’s 2019 report, “Local News is a Public Good”; spotlights what we know Colorado communities want, need, and expect from local news; and challenges all of us to rise to the occasion.
Sen. Bennet’s co-sponsored legislation would create a 13-member commission to examine new pathways to public funding for local news that meets information needs and addresses inequities in coverage and representation. Journalists from outlets large and small and offered insights into how they're faring, prodded Bennet about what his bill might accomplish, and urged him to examine certain aspects he might not have considered.
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