In all our work, Colorado Media Project strives to develop capacity, foster collaboration, and build community to support local news as a public good in Colorado. Here are highlights from 2019.
CAPACITY
Facilitating a marriage. Colorado Media Project worked with local philanthropy to help bring about the marriage of Colorado Public radio and Denverite, now going strong at nine months and counting.
Dave Burdick of CPR and Denverite.
Panel discussion on the “Local News is a Public Good” report at CU-Denver.
Melissa Milios Davis of the Gates Family Foundation presents the findings of the report, “Local News is a Public Good.”
Erika Owens oof OpenNews opens the M3 Unconference at the University of Denver.
Local News is a Public Good. In October, CMP published a report, “Local News is a Public Good: Public Pathways for Supporting Coloradans’ Civic News and Information Needs in the 21st Century.”
Joint membership pilot. Beginning in early summer, with financial and logistical support from the Membership Puzzle Project, CMP launched a joint marketing and membership pilot project with five Colorado newsrooms: Chalkbeat Colorado, The Colorado Sun, Durango Herald, Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, and KDNK Community Radio.Stay tuned in 2020 for a manual for Colorado newsrooms (and beyond) on how to launch and conduct joint membership campaigns
#newsCOneeds Year-End Matching Challenge. In collaboration with the national NewsMatch campaign for nonprofit newsrooms, CMP expanded its end-of-year matching program for Colorado newsrooms in 2019, offering $5,000 matching gifts to 18 newsrooms, including nonprofit startups, community radio stations, and locally owned newspapers. Four local funders pooled resources to support the program joined: Bohemian Foundation, Delta Dental of Colorado Foundation, Gates Family Foundation, and Rose Community Foundation.
Talent and training. CMP funded travel for Colorado journalists to help them attend national conferences and local gatherings, such as the Collaborative Journalism Summit, Migrahack, and Disinformation tracking training. We sponsored a pop-up newsroom featuring reporters from Westword and Denverite and celebrated the achievements of Colorado Sun’s highly successful first year of operation.
M3: Machine Learning, Migration, Mountains Journalism Unconference. A partnership of CMP, OpenNews and the University of Denver, M3 drew journalists from states as far flung as Vermont and Florida. Many of them were data specialists, who attended the ‘unconference’ to share ideas and gain inspiration from one another.
Countering disinformation. CMP welcomed First Draft News at University of Denver in October for a flagship training on how journalists can detect, track, and counter viral online mis- and dis-information. Some 50 local journalists attended, with healthy representation from such Colorado newsrooms as CPR, The Denver Post, The Colorado Sun, and 9News.
Collaboration
Migrahack brought together hundreds of journalists, students, community members, and technologists in a two-day hackathon at the University of Denver. The work inspired stories from CPR and Chalkbeat on the state’s unaccompanied minors, as well as student projects.
At Colorado Migrahack, DU undergrads Zach and Zoe brainstorm a podcast that demistifies immigration for people of their peer group.
Celeste Bustamante, professor at the University of Arizona, addresses the audience at Colorado Migrahack.
Center: Laura Frank of Rocky Mountain Public Media brainstorms with her team of Migrahackers.
Center-left: DU Media Professor Lynn Schofield Clark presents the Anvil of Freedom Award to LA Times immigration journalist Cindy Carcamo.
CMP celebrated collaborative reporting projects, including The Colorado Sun’s “Parked” collaboration with more than a dozen newsrooms, exploring mobile homes as housing of last resort. (Read CMP’s case study!) CMP will soon publish another case study on the Colorado Independent-Rio Blanco Herald Times investigative piece on an officer-involved shooting of a mentally ill man and its lasting impact on the town of Rangely.
Community
Arts & culture: With support from the Bonfils-Stanton Foundation and Gates Family Foundation, CMP worked with Colorado Public Radio/Denverite and Rocky Mountain Public Media to explore what Coloradans really want from arts and culture collaboration. We gathered research from a new statewide survey of 2,000+ survey of Coloradans, conducted nearly in-depth conversations with community members and hosted a community design meeting at Redline Gallery, and presented our findings at an event in History Colorado where attendees worked on a collaborative art project.
Michael Gadlin, host of Rocky Mountain Public Media’s Arts District, led attendees in a partipatory art project – a collage made up of clippings from Colorado newspapers and materials from Colorado arts and culture events. The final artwork will hang in the new COLab newsroom.
Ashley Dean of Denverite presents ideas for arts and culture engagement to the community design thinking forum at Redline Gallery.
Community members gather at the City of Longmont Museum for a public forum to imagine the future of journalism.
Rossana Longo, a bilingual equity reporter at community radio station KGNU, presents her vision for the collaborative future of local news, citing the indigenous concept, la minga, a Quechua term that means “collective work”.
Community Listening Session in Longmont. In October, nearly 70 residents, journalists, elected officials, community leaders and students packed a room at the Longmont Museum to imagine the future of local news. The collective visioning process was part of “Local Voices for Local News,” an event organized by CMP and Free Press, a national organization that helps bring newsrooms and communities closer together, to better meet local information needs. The gathering involved community members in outlining the sort of local journalism that would help their communities and the broader region thrive, and will serve as a model for statewide conversations in 2020.
Local and National Advisory Committees. CMP formed two advisory boards in 2019, one local, one national. Members ranged from prominent journalists to philanthropists, nonprofit leaders, community advocates, and experts in local news sustainability. We provided regular updates and sought advice from advisors throughout the year, and many actively participated in such projects as arts & culture, public pathways, and #newsCOneeds fundraising.
First Draft social gatherings. Throughout the year, CMP hosted several opportunities at local bars, the Denver Press Club, and other locations -- an opportunity for local journalists to get together and hoist a drink in the spirit of collaboration.
On that note, it’s appropriate we all hoist a drink for 2020, and the future of local news in Colorado!
Thanks to our supporters!
Bohemian Foundation
Bonfils-Stanton Foundation
Delta Dental of Colorado Foundation
Democracy Fund
Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation
Gates Family Foundation
Membership Puzzle Project
Peer Learning and Collaboration Fund
PEN America
Project X-ITE, University of Denver
Rose Community Foundation
See list of CMP executive committee, staff, and advisors