Crestone Eagle Community Media

The Crestone Eagle serves rural Saguache County, including the towns of Crestone, Saguache and Center, Moffat, Villa Grove and La Garita, extending into the northern San Luis Valley. The Crestone Eagle is the primary information resource for the Crestone community and the greater Saguache County region. The Eagle reports on local, county and state government, and on federal actions that affect our region. It provides news analysis; health, emergency and public safety notices; relevant information about schools, education and community service; and notice of committee meetings and actions.

SUPPORT FROM COLORADO MEDIA PROJECT

Advancing Equity 2023; #newsCOneeds 2023, 2022, 2021

2023 Advancing Equity Award: $10,000 to increase coverage of and engagement with underrepresented demographics in the rural San Luis Valley, such as Latinx, indigenous, and youth populations. This is being achieved through partnerships with libraries, community leaders, and local community correspondents in regional communities in 2023. 

2023 Advancing Equity Update: The Crestone Eagle has hired ten new writers as a part of their regional reporting project, covering equity and inclusion, agriculture, water, and economic beats, as well as a Regional News Project Manager, who is coordinating their work and establishing local community partnerships with libraries, community centers, and schools across the San Luis Valley.

CSU Pueblo - The Today

The Today is published as an academic tool by the students and staff of the Department of Mass Communications and is the officially sanctioned newspaper of Colorado State University-Pueblo. Students working on the Today must abide by the professional ethical standards defined by the Society of Professional Journalists and the Associated Press.

The Today newspaper is published several times in the fall and spring semesters. The Today news website is updated daily during the academic year, excluding final exam periods and holidays

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SUPPORT FROM COLORADO MEDIA PROJECT

Advancing Equity 2023, 2022

2023 Advancing Equity Award: $25,000 to provide Year Two support for CSU Pueblo - The Today’s Discovering Diverse Voices community engagement project, as it launches a student-led community reporting desk in collaboration with the library and Pueblo Star Journal, funds and supports a student to lead the Bureau, and engages community stakeholders in the existing DEI advisory committee.

2023 Advancing Equity Update: The Today had established their DEI Board of community liaisons just before the closure of the Pueblo Chieftain’s press was announced. Supported by these stakeholders, their adaptive response has been to shift their student-led product to a long-form feature magazine, paired with an expansion of their multi-media and digital products, and content-sharing partnerships with radio programs like The DROP from RMPBS, to create a converged media model. Equipped with this platform, CSU students are planning to expand their work beyond Pueblo, with projects from Trinidad to Las Animas telling community-focused multi-media stories, and a student journalism mentorship partnership with majority Black, Latinx, and rural school districts in Southern Colorado.

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2022 Advancing Equity Award: $25,000 to support first-year implementation of Community Story Bureaus, including development of a DEI Advisory Board, recruitment of a DEI Student Leader, and development of plan for leveraging University faculty and resources to support students and citizen journalists in covering issues germane to Pueblo residents.

2022 Advancing Equity Impact: One of the most significant impacts our project has has has been on the student, learning, and education side of journalism education. Journalism education has been struggling nationally, and while other programs have been shuddering their programs, we felt a need to serve our community and region by rethinking what journalism is and how we can future proof it. The grant also allowed us to commit resources and create new student roles (we hope them to be longterm and lasting) that otherwise would not have been possible. Having this integrated into the newspaper has changed the perspective of the newspaper and our course offerings. We have embraced the tenets of the grant across several of our courses and student media (radio immediately and TV is Spring 2023). The students are now community-journalism focused with an interest in journalism beyond "traditional" news. One other impact the grant has had is on community relations. The outreach of the student coordinator has begun to open doors and conversations about what we are doing and how we are embracing Pueblo and diversity through programming. There is still much work to be done, but the journalism aspect is our foundation and I have been working with other organizations (such as Rocky Mountain Public Media) to bring more diverse and community-specific programming to radio and video.

G.E.S. Gazette / Denver North Star

The G.E.S. Gazette is a new bilingual publication for the Globeville, Elyria, and Swansea neighborhoods and RiNo Art District. Each month, the G.E.S. Gazette brings news about local politics, community happenings, arts & culture, and more to residents. The G.E.S. Gazette is supported by its sister paper, the Denver North Star.

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SUPPORT FROM COLORADO MEDIA PROJECT

Advancing Equity 2023, 2022; #newsCOneeds 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019

2023 Advancing Equity Award: $9,140 to expand the G.E.S. Gazette's ability to reach Spanish-speaking residents during the City's spring election cycle, through increased community engagement, a bilingual debate, and increased page counts.

2023 Advancing Equity Update: The majority of the Gazette’s grant project was focused around the Denver spring elections. Their planned bilingual debate for District 9 City Council was the best-attended across the city, and they were asked to host a second debate for the run-off, which was equally successful. Both community members and candidates were enthusiastic in their feedback on the quality of the debates. Building on the success of these events, the Gazette is working to formalize the personal relationships their editor established with community leaders into institutional relationships that will support their bilingual community engagement efforts moving forward. 

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2022 Advancing Equity Award: $6,000 to support the production of North Denver Latinx Stories, written by BIPOC authors from Globeville, Elyria, Swansea and North Denver, via collaboration between the Denver North Star and its newly-established sister paper, the G. E. S. Gazette.

2022 Advancing Equity Impact: This grant helped us ensure more Latino voices in both publications, which is important to ensure we are reflective of our communities. By including more local writers, we were able to include stories on topics we knew were important to the community. We looked at the impact of the pandemic on students, police and the community, and other issues identified by the writer. By providing funds for translation, it helped us create a fully bilingual second paper, even as translation costs exceeded our initial estimates.

KOTO Community Radio

Since 1975, KOTO Radio has provided the Telluride region with high-quality, commercial-free, non-underwritten community radio. Our mission is to inform, educate, and entertain while reflecting the needs, desires, and diversity of our community.

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SUPPORT FROM COLORADO MEDIA PROJECT

Advancing Equity 2023, 2022; #newsCOneeds 2023, 2022

2023 Advancing Equity Award: $10,000 to support KOTO's Spanish-language news program and efforts to engage Latino community members through storytelling and celebration events

2023 Advancing Equity Update: KOTO just hosted their second annual Latinx Heritage Open House event, a great success for connecting the community with upcoming events and recruiting community DJs. Their Spanish-language host Luis Tavares, who was recruited at their first Latinx Open House last year, now runs two successful programs, including the Spanish-language Noticias (a weekly local news headlines roundup), and Off the Record (a monthly public affairs show, for which Louis fields questions from the community in both Spanish and English). This summer, they are exploring additional channels for connecting Spanish-speaking communities with local news and radio programming, including a scan of existing WhatsApp groups for potential partnerships, and potentially conducting a regional audience survey with Corona Insights, following the lead of the Roaring Fork Valley’s El Sol del Valle coalition.

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2022 Advancing Equity Award: $5,000 to support DEI training for staff and stipends for Spanish-language hosts, reporters and partners.

2022 Advancing Equity Impact: The DEI training helped put into place a foundation to make sustainable and meaningful change. The greatest takeaway was, "if you mean it, put it in your budget." We did that for 2022 and with this grant funding, achieved the goal of hiring a reporter to expand our Spanish news programming.

The impacts of this have been twofold. For one, KOTO is more authentically meeting its mission statement, but more importantly, we are engaging all members of our community in KOTO's activities, programming and more. By hiring Luis Tavares, we have at least 15 more people (his family and friends) who want to be involved with KOTO and are encouraging their friends to listen and participate! It's been absolutely wonderful to see the impacts of diversifying our airwaves and making this small step toward meaningful and sustainable change.

KSUT Community Radio

KSUT is a community radio station and NPR affiliate serving Southwest Colorado, including the Ute tribal communities.

The Community Radio Project is a collaborative project led by KSJD News/Community Radio and KSUT Tribal/Four Corners Radio.

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colorado media project support

Advancing Equity in Local News 2023, Community News Network 2022-2024; #newsCOneeds 2022, 2023

Community News Network Award: $135,000 over three years to support "Voices from the Edge of the Colorado Plateau", a collaborative project led by KSJD News/Community Radio and KSUT Tribal/Four Corners Radio, with a new full-time reporter position and community engagement efforts to expand both stations’ existing efforts to amplify Indigenous voices and perspectives in rural Southwestern Colorado.

Community News Network 2022 Update: The Community Radio Project’s shared reporter, Clark Adomaitis, has continued to build strong connections with indigenous community members and leaders in the region, and is exploring opportunities to include Spanish-speaking, immigrant, unhoused, and LGBTQ communities in his equity beat. Both KSUT and KSJD have undergone leadership-level staff turnover, and KSUT is still operating without a News Director, limiting the support available for Clark. 

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2023 Advancing Equity Award: $5,000 to support KSUT and KSJD's collaborative Voices from the Edge of the Colorado Plateau project and staff participation in the design and implementation of sensitivity training for Colorado journalists working with Indigenous communities.

2023 Advancing Equity Update: KSUT and KSJD have provided planning and design support to the Rocky Mountain West News Bureau’s Indigenous Cultural Sensitivity Training project, and helped recruit expert trainers.

KSJD Community Radio

KSJD is a community radio station and NPR affiliate based in Cortez. The station serves the Four Corners Region of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah, including the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and portions of the Navajo Nation.

The Community Radio Project is a collaborative project led by KSJD News/Community Radio and KSUT Tribal/Four Corners Radio.

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Support From colorado media project

Advancing Equity in Local News 2023, Community News Network 2022-2024; #newsCOneeds 2022, 2023

Community News Network Award: $135,000 over three years to support "Voices from the Edge of the Colorado Plateau", a collaborative project led by KSJD News/Community Radio and KSUT Tribal/Four Corners Radio, with a new full-time reporter position and community engagement efforts to expand both stations’ existing efforts to amplify Indigenous voices and perspectives in rural Southwestern Colorado.

Community News Network 2022 Update: The Community Radio Project’s shared reporter, Clark Adomaitis, has continued to build strong connections with indigenous community members and leaders in the region, and is exploring opportunities to include Spanish-speaking, immigrant, unhoused, and LGBTQ communities in his equity beat. Both KSUT and KSJD have undergone leadership-level staff turnover, and KSUT is still operating without a News Director, limiting the support available for Clark. 

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2023 Advancing Equity Award: $5,000 to support KSUT and KSJD's collaborative Voices from the Edge of the Colorado Plateau project and staff participation in the design and implementation of sensitivity training for Colorado journalists working with Indigenous communities.

2023 Advancing Equity Update: KSUT and KSJD have provided planning and design support to the Rocky Mountain West News Bureau’s Indigenous Cultural Sensitivity Training project, and helped recruit expert trainers.

Sopris Sun / El Sol del Valle

The Sopris Sun is Carbondale, Colorado’s nonprofit weekly newspaper. It was born from this community, it endeavors to reflect the diverse faces of Carbondale and the Roaring Fork Valley, and it depends on the greater community for content, advertising, and financial support.

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Colorado Media Project Support

Advancing Equity in Local News 2023, 2022; #newsCOneeds 2023

2023 Advancing Equity Award: $35,000 to support a coalition of 10 newsrooms in the Roaring Fork Valley, as they implement strategies for reaching Spanish-speaking audiences that were developed in the 2022 research and listening phase of their project, and launch El Sol del Valle, a collaborative, digital-first Spanish-language publication.

2023 Advancing Equity Update: The Sopris Sun has hired an editor for El Sol del Valle, the collaborative Spanish-language digital publication and print insert housed under the Sopris Sun and supported by a 10-newsroom regional collaboration. They hosted their first Spanish-language reporting and community engagement training for their contributors. They have received a CMS transition grant from CMP to support their development of their web platform, and implementation of Newspack as their CMS, with high hopes for the revenue-generating capacities it could unlock. As members of the collaborative have experienced some significant staff turnover, they are exploring options around shared staffing to address specific shared organizational needs.