Funder Resources

2022 Statewide Survey of Attitudes Toward State & Local Media

Where do Coloradans get their local news — and how? Who do they trust, what are they paying for — and why? What roles do Coloradans think local journalists should be playing in our democracy — and how well do they think they are doing? A 2022 Colorado Media Project/Corona Insights survey of more than 1,800 Coloradans provides 10 key takeaways that reflect current views of local news outlets and journalists — and trends that are shaping their future.

Case Study: Collaborative Memberships to Build Community

With support from Membership Puzzle Project, Colorado Media Project selected five newsrooms — The Durango Herald, The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, KDNK Community Radio, Chalkbeat and The Colorado Sun — to join its five-month experiment of testing a collaborative membership program. The goal was to broaden support for newsrooms and explore a membership model driven by community support.

CMP Annual Report 2019

Our work in 2019 reaffirmed just how many community members care deeply about the future of local news in Colorado. We also learned that newsrooms across the state ranging from legacy newspapers to digital startups are eager to build capacity, engage with community, and increase collaboration. Join us to reflect on these and other important lessons, and help us apply them forward into further learning and growth in 2020.

CMP Community Report

In the summer of 2018, during the initial research and development phase of the Colorado Media Project, we led a broad collaboration to study the changing media landscape across our state. Read our executive summary, or take a deep dive into the various components — from our 2,000+ survey of Colorodans, to digital prototypes and business concepts, to a benchmark study of Colordado’s digital and nonprofit outlets — and more.

Coloradans Crave Connections with Arts & Culture

In 2019, with support from the Bonfils-Stanton Foundation and Gates Family Foundation, the Colorado Media Project worked with Colorado Public Radio/Denverite and Rocky Mountain Public Media to explore these questions:

How do Coloradans want to know about and engage with arts and culture in our state and how can media outlets and art organizations serve those needs? How do underrepresented communities in particular feel they are being served by arts and culture organizations and media coverage of arts and culture?

Colorado News consumer survey

About 2.4 million digitally-savvy Coloradans are interested in state, local, and neighborhood news, and read more than headlines, a Colorado Media Project survey of 2,000+ residents has found. And about 1 million of these Coloradans are willing to pay for local news - the first time this market has been quantified.

Colorado’s Digital and Nonprofit Media Landscape: 2018 Benchmark Report

The Colorado Media Project — in partnership with the Institute for Nonprofit News — set out to learn more about the state’s local news landscape, surveying 14 independent news outlets in Colorado to gain information about their mission, coverage topics, audience, staff size, business model, and more.

Communities of Color Call for Action

What will it take to ensure that local news coverage reflects, respects, and meets the information needs of the state’s communities of color? What actions must newsrooms, community members and funders take to create a future in which communities of color share and shape the power of local news media? CMP initiated and funded The Voices Project, led by COLab and community liaisons, and the calls to action from community members and journalists of color continue to guide our grantmaking strategy.

Guide: How to Design and Launch a Collaborative Membership Offering

This guide is based on an experiment led by Colorado Media Project — with support from Membership Puzzle Project and consulting from Hearken — tests how news organizations can identify organizations and institutions with shared target audiences to work together to develop a shared service or product that benefits both organizations’ bottom lines, as well as the public they collectively seek to serve. The guide focuses your efforts on a new service or offering that builds opportunities for community connection, collaboration and contribution.

Public Pathways for Supporting Coloradans’ Civic News and Information Needs in the 21st Century

New ideas, new approaches, and new products and services are desperately needed to ensure the reimagining and very survival of high-quality journalism in Colorado, especially in underserved communities. Indeed, Colorado already has promising entrepreneurial efforts by existing news organizations and digital native upstarts that are injecting a spirit of innovation that can serve as an example to the nation. We hope that the ideas contained in this paper inspire more Coloradans to envision what’s possible for local news and civic engagement in the 21st century.

Reimagining Colorado’s Public Square

Why should concerned citizens and residents, including state and local officials, care about what’s happening in Colorado’s local journalism industry? This September 2023 report updates key data on news deserts, newspaper ownership from CMP’s 2019 white paper, “Local News is a Public Good,” and shares four actions that foundation leaders, elected officials, and the public should can take to build a healthier local news and information ecosystem in Colorado.

The Future of Printing in Colorado

What happens if — and when — Colorado’s few remaining commercial printing presses stop? Set against the backdrop of this summer’s sudden closure of a vital Front Range business resource impacting more than 80 community news publications, this new September 2023 white paper presents a clear-eyed view of challenges and a range of potential solutions facing the industry.

The News About Local News: 10 Takeaways from Colorado Journalists

In the summer of 2020, two surveys assessed Colorado journalists’ views of their own news outlets and coverage, and of the state of the broader news ecosystem in Colorado. In their answers, journalists highlight strengths, identify weaknesses, and propose solutions for improving local journalism in Colorado.

This report presents 10 takeaways from these surveys and discusses the implications of the findings.

Who’s Doing Local News?

Where are Colorado's journalism producers and news deserts? What new sources and forms of local civic news and information are popping up, to fill news gaps? And who owns all of these media outlets? Gain insight on your local news diet from this continuously updated map from Colorado College’s Corey Hutchins and his students, developed in partnership from University of Denver, CMP, COLab and Hearken.