KGNU is an independent, noncommercial community radio station that has served Denver and Boulder for over 40 years. We seek to stimulate, educate and entertain our audience, to reflect the diversity of the local and world community, and to provide a channel for individuals, groups, issues and music that have been overlooked, suppressed or under-represented by other media. The station seeks to expand the listening audience through the excellence of its programming without compromising the principles stated here.
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Advancing Equity 2023, 2022; #newsCOneeds 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019
2023 Advancing Equity Award: $25,000 to support KGNU's paid journalism internship program that provides real-world training and mentorship to BIPOC students, and to participate in a peer-to-peer cohort that shares lessons from KGNU and other best-in-class models.
2023 Advancing Equity Update: KGNU’s summer internship program is up and running. The first two AELN-funded interns (Jinx and Por) were in the midst of onboarding in early June, joined by an RFA Reporter, two additional interns supported by Workforce Boulder County funding, and several volunteer high-school interns. Over the summer, both interns have been stand-out participants in CPA’s Workforce Pathways/Internships Working Group. By the end of the summer, they’ll be joined by two more AELN-funded interns, Ilvonne and Juanita, for the fall semester. KGNU has been a leader in exploring working with workforce development funding programs from both government agencies and public universities, documenting timing and schedule challenges that make engaging with CU Boulder’s Public Interest Internship Experience program difficult for their newsroom, and the benefits of having payroll for some interns administered through government workforce agencies.
2022 Advancing Equity Award: $25,000 to provide paid internships to support emerging storytellers and journalists of diverse backgrounds from the various journalism and communications schools across the Colorado Front Range.
2022 Advancing Equity Impact: The paid news internship program has been an absolute game changer, allowing KGNU to attract young diverse talent that would not have been available to the station in a volunteer capacity. The paid interns filled roles from on-air hosting, to reporting, to headlines production in English and in Spanish, fund drive pitching, social media posting, digital editing, voice work, and more. They gained hard and soft skills during their internships providing them with the experience needed to enter the field of media successfully.
Hosting several paid interns at once in the News & Public Affairs Department helped create a core group that served as a magnet to attract others students. This also generated an important safe space where a sense of belonging, collegiality, and collective growth was key to their success and that of the program. Their energy was fantastic and created a fun and friendly atmosphere that other students eagerly volunteered to be a part of.
A greater impact of the internship program is its function in creating a pipeline of diverse talent ready to enter the media ecosystem. KGNU was happy to provide professional references and written letters of recommendation for several of the interns as they applied to other programs, jobs, and internships with one intern taking on a new internship at the Denver Post and another awaiting a final decision from Joe Neguse’s office for an opportunity to intern with the congressman.