New white paper by Corey Hutchins of Colorado College shares findings from a 2023 CMP-supported working group — and explores solutions.
Local newsrooms have long struggled to attract workers — journalists, editors, digital producers, business leaders, sales and revenue professionals, and more — who represent the diversity of their communities. In recent years, as the local journalism workforce has contracted, Colorado newsrooms also have struggled to retain workers, provide training and mentorship opportunities, and develop career paths for advancement. These long-standing workforce issues in journalism have only been exacerbated in the wake of the pandemic, political polarization, and “The Great Resignation.”
In 2023, Colorado Media Project (CMP), Colorado Press Association (CPA), and Colorado News Collaborative (COLab) formed a working group to examine these issues and identify opportunities for addressing them collaboratively with newsrooms, colleges and universities, and other partners. The working group was one of five supported by grants from CMP and the Colorado Workforce Development Council.
CMP commissioned and published this report — researched and written by Colorado College's Corey Hutchins — in order to contribute to ecosystem learning and continuous improvement of Colorado’s journalism workforce pipeline.
Some takeaways:
Colorado has a strong formal network for student journalists at the high school level via the Colorado Student Media Association, but lacks one at the higher-ed level.
For journalism internships, payment is typically up to a newsroom when a Colorado student is getting school credit. Some pay, others don’t. (Note: All newsrooms that received grants from CMP to host interns in 2023 did provide stipends.)
Colorado journalism faculty members note that their students often seek internships in public relations, advertising, or marketing rather than in a newsroom. Such internships might be easier to get, illuminating a potential barrier in Colorado’s college-to-newsroom pipeline.
Some newsrooms that hire interns want to see published work, but some students might not yet have it. At least one faculty member has set up a campus news organization to try and mitigate this problem, so students have clips or work to show.
In addition to sharing ideas surfaced by newsroom and higher education leaders who participated in the working group, the report captures takeaways from newsroom-hosted student internships supported by CMP through its Advancing Equity in Local News program in 2023, and from a cohort-based program that COLab provided for students placed in Colorado newsrooms in summer 2023. The report also includes:
Notable national models Colorado might seek to emulate
A roundup of Colorado higher-ed institutions where students are producing local journalism in local newsrooms for course credit or for internships
A mini-case study on how small local newspapers and community radio stations are acting as a “farm team” in the journalism workforce pipeline — and how one publisher is embracing that role
Survey results from roughly a dozen Colorado newsrooms about when they are recruiting interns — and for what positions
Thanks to team members at the Colorado Press Association and the Colorado News Collaborative for their contributions to this report, and to Corey Hutchins, who also writes the weekly Substack newsletter Inside the News in Colorado, for leading the research, analysis and writing for CMP.
And a very special thanks to all of the newsrooms and student interns who contributed, as well!