Chalkbeat Colorado

Chalkbeat Colorado is a nonprofit, digital newsroom covering education in Denver and statewide, as part of a nationwide network of mission-aligned newsrooms committed to covering one of America’s most important stories: the effort to improve schools for all children, especially those who have historically lacked access to a quality education.

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SUPPORT FROM COLORADO MEDIA PROJECT

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

2023 Advancing Equity Award: $25,000 to support Chalkbeat's efforts to strengthen its service to Spanish-speaking parents and caregivers, by producing more content and resource guides in Spanish that fill critical information needs, developing new strategies to reach Spanish-speaking audiences online and in person. Potential strategies include community ambassadors, a local reader advisory board, and community partnerships. Chalkbeat will also share lessons learned from Chalkbeat's Source Auditing Tool with other newsrooms in Colorado. 

2023 Advancing Equity Update: Chalkbeat Colorado has launched a Spanish-language education news site and continues to develop an array of evergreen resource guides. The launch of the site is supported by an offline engagement campaign, including community feedback, distribution of PDF versions of articles with QR links to the site at schools and community organizations, a direct mail campaign, and content-sharing partnerships with major Spanish language newspapers in Colorado. Chalkbeat is establishing their team as a trusted resource that community members can direct their education questions to for helpful answers. 

Bucket List Community Cafe

Bucket List Community Café is an online community journalism site for Denver. We have a unique niche at the intersection of community and journalism. Everyone has a story, and we build community by sharing our stories. We are North Denver’s home for information, inspiration, and interaction. We share news, issues, culture, events, people, pets, food, fun and more so that you can know what is happening on your street and across town. We are hyperlocal and strive to represent the diverse voices within our community.

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SUPPORT FROM COLORADO MEDIA PROJECT

Advancing Equity 2023; #newsCOneeds 2023, 2022, 2021

2023 Advancing Equity Award: $5,000 to support Bucket List Community Cafe in working to develop and offer a paid journalism scholarship program that provides mentorship and cohort support to BIPOC students.

2023 Advancing Equity Update: This digital start-up newsroom is currently hosting eight paid interns, three of whom are receiving additional scholarships supported by their CMP grant. Their internship cohort is over 35% BIPOC. As a start-up business with only one full-time staff member, their interns have found CPA’s Workforce Pathways/Internships Working Group to be a valuable additional source of training and mentorship. Their participation has helped CMP better understand the challenges facing small newsrooms hosting internship programs, and given them access to models of good organizational and internship program structures from other participating newsrooms.

Boulder Reporting Lab

Boulder Reporting Lab is a nonprofit digital newsroom that provides the people who live, work, learn and play in and around Boulder, Colorado, with high-quality, trustworthy, local-first reporting and essential information to make sense of issues and events happening around them, navigate their lives and build community

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SUPPORT FROM COLORADO MEDIA PROJECT

Advancing Equity 2023; #newsCOneeds 2023, 2022

2023 Advancing Equity Award: $5,000 to support the Boulder Reporting Lab in working with peers to develop and offer a paid journalism internship program that provides mentorship and cohort support to BIPOC students. 

2023 Advancing Equity Update: Boulder Reporting Lab hosted a summer intern from CU Boulder's College of Media, Communication and Information. A rising senior who was new to journalism, the student gained invaluable on-the-job skills and newsroom training, working with BRL's professional journalists to report and write multiple stories of varying scope throughout the summer and helping produce its morning newsletter. The intern also participated in the Workforce Pathways/Internships Working Group. 

Colorado Public Radio

Colorado Public Radio (CPR) delivers in-depth, insightful and impartial news and information from around the world, across the nation and throughout Colorado, examining its relevance to our state and connecting it to our community. CPR's programming includes meaningful news, music, and cultural experiences to everyone in Colorado using the power of the human voice in all its forms.

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SUPPORT FROM COLORADO MEDIA PROJECT

Advancing Equity 2023

2023 Advancing Equity Award: $10,000 to support Colorado Public Radio (CPR) in establishing a baseline assessment for source tracking, identifying areas for improvement, implementing strategies to increase source diversity, and sharing lessons learned with other newsrooms in Colorado. 

2023 Advancing Equity Update:  CPR has completed the first set of ongoing data collection for their source tracking project, and is engaging their team in analysis, with a specific focus on engagement and representation of diverse communities in their daily coverage. This will help them understand whether the sources that inform their coverage accurately represent Colorado as a whole - and whether regional coverage represents the communities of specific regions of the state. By the fall, they plan to publish an article sharing the work they’ve done with other newsrooms, and explaining what they’ve learned about how Colorado’s BIPOC communities are receiving and participating in the news they produce. Both CPR and Denver Post have discovered the need for additional trust-building with community members to support a successful source audit, as community members have communicated concerns and uncertainty as to how the personal data collected will be used.

Denver Newspaper Guild

The Denver Newspaper Guild Local 37074 is a union of Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska newspaper employees, and employees working for unions and nonprofit organizations in the state. The Guild negotiates contracts, ensures that those contracts are honored and strives to make our workplace the best it can be, just as our counterparts do in more than 100 cities in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. For more than 70 years the Guild has worked for good wages and benefits, fair working conditions, and a voice on the job. Our membership is a diverse group, but has a common bond in the belief that respect for workers’ rights builds stronger jobs and stronger communities.

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SUPPORT FROM COLORADO MEDIA PROJECT

Advancing Equity 2023, 2022

2023 Advancing Equity Award: $10,000 to support ongoing efforts to strengthen the capacity of Denver Post reporters to connect with non-English speaking Coloradans, with an emphasis tracking improvements against quarterly source audits.

2023 Advancing Equity Update: This grant has enabled the Denver Post to provide translation services to reporters working on stories in Spanish-speaking communities, which has helped their team establish stronger relationships with both the community-based translators, and the communities involved in the stories. This has led them to engage Cynthia Lozano, recommended by another CMP grantee, as a Latinx Community Engagement consultant, to advise the Post’s distribution strategy of Latinx/focused stories via community channels, including social media and whatsapp groups. Both CPR and Denver Post have discovered the need for additional trust-building with community members to support a successful source audit, as community members have communicated concerns and uncertainty as to how the personal data collected will be used.

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2022 Advancing Equity Award: $10,000 to support externally-led DEI training for Denver Post journalists and local news leaders.

2022 Advancing Equity Impact: We were able to use the grant to provide fantastic DEI training that was journalism-focused. Our training was attended by our entire newsroom, including management and leadership. We now have a common language to speak as a newsroom when it comes to DEI – a starting point that provided opportunities for further discussions and development but made it so that we are on the same page and gave us a wonderful base education on topics ranging from microaggressions in the workplace to bias in our news coverage.

The training taught us about the "fault lines" that make us unique and also make us subject to bias and, potentially, discrimination. By learning about race, gender, sexual orientation, generation, geography and class as they apply to journalists and the journalism we do, we are better educated when interacting with communities different from our own.

KGNU Radio

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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Support From colorado media project

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.

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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.

Mountain West News Bureau

Mountain West News Bureau is a collaboration of public media stations that serves the Western states of Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. Our mission is to tell stories about the people, places and issues across the Mountain West. From land and water management to growth in the expanding West to our unique culture and heritage, we'll explore the issues that define us and the challenges we face.

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SUPPORT FROM COLORADO MEDIA PROJECT

Advancing Equity 2023

2023 Advancing Equity Award: $10,000 to strengthen the ability of Colorado newsrooms to report in and with Indigenous communities, via cultural sensitivity trainings developed with Indigenous partners; participating members of the Mountain West News Bureau will also receive story reviews and coaching from a Native reporter.

2023 Advancing Equity Update: The Mountain West News Bureau hosted three virtual trainings, in partnership with the Colorado News Collaborative and their Voices Initiative team. This partnership helped MWNB expand the audience of journalists involved in the trainings beyond their member stations, with over 50 journalists attending the first training. They also plan to continue these trainings at the Rocky Mountain Community Radio conference in Fort Collins, and at the Colorado Press Association’s annual convention in Denver.

Open Media Foundation

The Open Media Foundation (OMF) is an innovative media and technology nonprofit organization dedicated to putting the power of the media in the hands of the people, enabling everyone to engage in their community and bring about the change they wish to see in the world.

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SUPPORT FROM COLORADO MEDIA PROJECT

Advancing Equity 2023, 2022

2023 Advancing Equity Award: $15,000 to continue strengthening Open Media Foundation's Career Engine service, which supports Colorado newsrooms in finding and hiring diverse jobseekers for journalism job opportunities, with a goal of posting and filling 52 media job openings in 2023

2023 Advancing Equity Update: OMF consistently delivers over 50 applicants per job posting hosted on their Career Engine service - but have seen a decrease in overall newsroom hiring this year. In response to changes in Colorado Workforce Development Council training program availability, OMF staff has sought training from the League of Women Voters/Colorado Press Association Earn your Press Pass training program.

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2022 Advancing Equity Award: $25,000 to support a dedicated project manager to enhance services offered by Open Media's Career Engine, to offer recruitment and retention expertise to Colorado newsrooms

2022 Advancing Equity Impact: In Colorado, over 90% of media organizations surveyed reported a desire to hire more diverse candidates—yet also reported a struggle to find diverse applicants for their job openings. Early on, we learned that there was no magic bullet to receiving more diverse applicants. One of the best practices across industries is to use costly services to post jobs as widely as possible, generate greater numbers of applicants, and even though the percentage of diverse applicants may still be small, the sheer number of diverse applicants will be higher. This requires filtering through a larger number of applicants than most employers have capacity for.

At the same time, we have evaluated the diversity of applicants coming from over 40 job boards to ensure employers know which boards have the best ROI in terms of attracting qualified applicants of color.

This has paid-off by helping over 40 employers in the Colorado Media & Journalism industry hire employees averaging twice as many POC as the national averages. Similarly, employees hired through our service are also twice as often female as the male/female average reported by RTDNA and ASNE.

A majority of the organizations we surveyed stated that our data collection and organization services would be “very useful” for their hiring process. We also learned most organizations would like their staff to better reflect diversity and the demographics of Colorado and would like for their sources to better reflect the demographics of Colorado. The value of our program has been made clear by employers now beginning to pay for our service, which we hope to add some long-term sustainability for the program.

Rocky Mountain PBS

Over a million Coloradans turn to Rocky Mountain PBS to discover provocative and inspiring local, national and international programming; find diverse viewpoints; score front row center seats to world-class performances; and experience lifelong learning opportunities every month. Rocky Mountain Public Media is the parent company of Rocky Mountain PBS, KUVO Jazz, and The Drop.

Rocky Mountain PBS began in Denver in 1956 as Colorado's first public television station. It is now Colorado's only statewide television network, with stations in Denver, Pueblo/Colorado Springs, Steamboat Springs, Grand Junction and Durango. Rocky Mountain Public Media is Colorado’s largest statewide, member-supported, multimedia organization.

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2023 Advancing Equity Award: $10,000 to support Rocky Mountain Public Media in completing IDEA trainings for their content teams, and to explore opportunities to lead peer-to-peer learning opportunities with Colorado newsrooms

2023 Advancing Equity Update: This summer, 70% of RMPBS’ staff have completed foundation DEI training with their Chief DEI Officer. The next phase of their work includes working with external consultants to provide 1-1 coaching and management training, and decentralizing their content strategies, with a focus on digital expansion. In managing one of the largest and most sophisticated organizational approaches to addressing DEI issues in Colorado, RMPBS highlights the value of bringing in experts and advisors from outside the news industry to support their learning and work.

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SUPPORT FROM COLORADO MEDIA PROJECT

Advancing Equity 2023, 2022

2022 Advancing Equity Award: $10,000 to support internally-led DEI training for RMPM news content team.

2022 Advancing Equity Impact: The long-term impact we will create through our DEI work is the systematic reform of racism within our own organization, within the media, and within communities. This year we focused on the following attributes leading our journalism work: trust, lived experience, and empathy. Ultimately, our goal is to ensure all Coloradans feel seen and heard in our work and to dismantle white supremacy in media. The metrics above demonstrate a meaningful shift toward these ends, but this is daily work that we engage in as we strive to be accountable and in partnership with communities.

This year, our DEI team completed training for 30 staff members in our organization, 7 of which are on the content team (multi-media journalists). We also increased our content team by 8 members and diversified our staff to be more reflective of the communities we serve. We currently have 18 multimedia journalists on our content team and about half have completed foundational DEI training. Overall, 40% of our content team self-identify as QTBIPOC.

Another milestone achieved this year related to this project is expanding the reach of our storytelling by shifting our Colorado Voices program to a weekly broadcast in addition to the digital daily responsive stories and creating virtual community engagement opportunities called “Community Circle”. This year we produced 606 daily responsive stories, 25 half-hour broadcast episodes of Colorado Voices, and 3 virtual Community Circle events discussing our content.

Sentinel Colorado

Sentinel Colorado is a print and digital paper serving Colorado's most diverse city, Aurora. The Sentinel Community Shareholder model is an innovative effort to preserve and expand critical, fact-based journalism in Aurora via community ownership.

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SUPPORT FROM COLORADO MEDIA PROJECT

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

2023 Advancing Equity Award: $10,000 to support Sentinel Colorado in working with peers to develop and offer a paid journalism internship program that provides mentorship and cohort support to BIPOC students.

2023 Advancing Equity Update: This year, the Sentinel is on track to host 16 interns, 12 of whom are first or second-generation immigrants, representing Aurora’s diverse communities, in their first Summer Journalism Camp. This project was inspired by their participation in CPA’s Workforce Pathways/Internships Working Group, and they have established strong recruitment partnerships with Colorado State University Fort Collins, and Metro State University Denver. The Sentinel has identified at least one, and potentially up to three Summer Journalism Camp participants who intend to participate in a year-long internship program, and is exploring the possibility of running an additional fall semester Journalism Camp. 

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