Denver Urban Spectrum

Denver Urban Spectrum is a monthly publication that has served the Denver metro area since 1987, spreading the news about people of color, and covering stories not normally addressed in the mainstream media.

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COLORADO MEDIA PROJECT SUPPORT

Community News Network 2022-2024; #newsCOneeds 2023

Community News Network Award: $135,000 over three years to support digital innovation, ownership transition, and national affiliations for this respected monthly magazine serving Coloradans of color, with a focus on Black communities.

Community News Network 2022 Update: While the first year of Denver Urban Spectrum’s CNN grant was spent planning, this year they are in full implementation mode. They have augmented their staff with new, clearly defined roles and leadership growth plans, and are in the midst of completing their CMS transition to Newspack, with support from a CMP Digital Transition grant. They have completed two spring fundraising campaigns, successfully increasing their recurring donors, and honing their ability to deliver personalized messages from staff to readers. Finally, they have been accepted into the third Knight x LMA BloomLab Cohort. 

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.

Enterate Latino

Enterate Latino is one of the only Spanish-first original sources for local civic news and information on the Western Slope. Publisher Hector Morales Panaguia is a staff of one — working with local professors, community and civic leaders, and other volunteers to translate and publish a monthly print product. Hector then personally delivers the paper to tiendas, libraries, and other places where immigrants congregate — from Grand Junction to Parachute.

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COLORADO MEDIA PROJECT SUPPORT

Community News Network 2022-2024

Community News Network Award: $80,000 over three years to support local reporting and production of this monthly newspaper, which is a vital resource for mono-lingual Spanish speakers on the Western Slope.

Community News Network 2022 Update: During the first half of 2023, Enterate Latino has increased both their distribution and their advertising, demonstrating the impact of both team of paid collaborators and writers they are now able to employ, and their web update, which helps drive advertising and engage community response. Like many newsrooms across Colorado, they face challenges with cost and reliability of delivery and printing services.

El Comercio de Colorado

El Comercio de Colorado is an award-winning, biweekly, bilingual print and digital newspaper serving the diverse Latinx community from the Metro Denver and Northern Colorado regions.

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Community News Network Award: $135,000 over three years to support Spanish-language coverage of a newly created congressional district in Northern Colorado, and a social media manager to strengthen digital distribution of this bi-weekly newspaper serving Latino Coloradans.

Community News Network 2022 Update: El Comercio de Colorado’s regional expansion project is focused on establishing a local community forum, joined by influencers and leaders in the region, to host a community conversation with regional candidates in Aurora, Greeley, Commerce City, and Thornton. The organization itself is grappling with the fallout of the closure of the Chieftain press, and has been working closely with the CPA-led Printing Working Group to explore potential solutions, in addition to making ongoing investments in improved SEO for their burgeoning digital presence. Their publisher, Jesus Melean-Sanchez, has also been engaging with the Colorado Department of Health to streamline processes for public agencies buying ads in his paper, and has lent his experience to several collaborative projects with other outlets serving Colorado’s Spanish-speaking communities.

Rocky Mountain Community Radio

Rocky Mountain Community Radio (RMCR) is a coalition of non-commercial radio stations in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming. Member stations broadcast diverse news and music programming.

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COLORADO MEDIA PROJECT SUPPORT

Community News Network 2022-2024

Community News Network Award: $120,000 over three years to support Rocky Mountain Community Radio’s new managing editor position to expand thematic story collaboration, partnerships and distribution for this network of 19 mostly-rural or mountain community radio stations, who collectively reach more than 415,000 unique listeners per week

Community News Network 2022 Update: Maeve Conran was hired in July 2022 as RMCR’s first Managing Editor, where she continues to provide vital and transformative capacity to the RMCR network. She has enabled significant increases in content sharing, established standardized content formats, served as a daily editor, built capacity to track content sharing, and filled ad-hoc staffing and capacity needs across stations. Weekly RMCR staff training sessions have had robust attendance, and are generating an evergreen library of training materials; a regional “news roundup” radio program is being shared across stations and will be available weekly beginning this month (repurposing radio content into a single magazine format for additional distribution); and a “Phase I” analysis of RMCR station digital capacity conducted by Public Media Company has just been completed, with “Phase II” plans now underway to design and implement the use of a new shared digital platform for select stations and explore templates and tools that will help all stations share digital content more fully. This project is an example of the incredible impact small newsrooms can experience though the addition of highly-qualified shared staff.