Denver, October 16 - Press Forward Colorado today announced that nine local media outlets have been awarded $900,000 in grants as part of the Press Forward national foundation’s first open call for funding.
These nine Colorado newsrooms - Alamosa Citizen, Asian Avenue Magazine, Aurora Sentinel Community Media, El Comercio de Colorado, KVNF Mountain Grown Community Radio, Ouray County Plaindealer, San Miguel Basin Forum, Sopris Sun, and World Journal - will each receive $50,000 per year for the next two years to support their work serving their communities, and closing coverage gaps for communities of color, rural communities, and linguistically diverse communities.
In this pivotal time for the future of local civic news, CMP seeks candidates and nominations for its next Director. The Director will play a crucial role in advancing CMP’s mission to support sustainable, equitable, and community-centered journalism in Colorado. Reporting to CMP’s Executive Committee, and employed by CMP’s fiscal sponsor, the Rose Community Foundation, this leadership position requires a dynamic and strategic individual with a passion for public service and accessible civic information, exceptional relationship-building skills, and deep expertise in fundraising, strategic communications, coalition building, and organizational management.
Locally owned and non-profit newsrooms serving communities across Colorado are invited to apply to join the 2024 #newsCOneeds Year-End Giving Challenge, and apply for matching grant funding from CMP.
The Spotlight: Colorado Fund aims to empower local Colorado-based news organizations to produce high-quality, in-depth, nonpartisan investigative reporting focused on a single topic. The guiding purpose of this fund (and the projects it supports) is to raise public awareness about critical issues facing our state and to catalyze positive change in our institutions and communities.
Across Colorado from Greeley to Pueblo -- through partnerships with print, digital, radio, and television stations -- Rocky Mountain Public Media's Above the Noise initiative aims to set the table for civil conversations that build trust among neighbors and empower communities to cope with the rise of artificial intelligence, deep fakes and widespread misinformation.
Today, we are delighted to join the National Trust for Local News and Colorado Community Media in announcing plans for a new community press to serve Colorado. NTLN expects to begin printing CCM's 23 weekly newspapers in May 2024, and aims to offer "mission-driven" printing services to other local papers and community-based partners in the coming months.
Today, Colorado Media Project is excited to announce $360,000 in new commitments to ecosystem partners who are dedicated to helping our state’s local newsrooms explore and pilot innovative solutions to wicked problems that they are facing right now, in communities across the state. And we invite you to join us.
The Colorado Community Media properties -- 24 in all -- were purchased by The National Trust for Local News. This is a new nonprofit organization whose mission is to support local news organizations like CCM so they can remain in local ownership and control, and make the transformations communities want from their local news organizations. This is the first deal of its kind in the nation.
News coverage can be seen below here:
New Deal: Colorado-national consortium buys community papers - Washington Post
How Colorado Sun Shone on 24 Newspapers - Denver Westword
‘Tell Stories That Matter:’ Colorado Community Media Sold to Journalism Partnership
Join CMP on Thursday, May 25, for Replanting Community News: Why a new chapter for 24 weekly newspapers matters for Colorado — and the nation, a panel discussing this transaction.
On The Colorado Sun’s first anniversary, editor and co-founder Larry Ryckman writes: “None of us set out to be small business owners, but we did it because it was important and needed to be done. As I have often said, this is not a crisis for journalists. It’s a crisis for communities and — I’m really stepping onto my soapbox here — for our very democracy.”
Today’s news that Denverite, a beloved three-year-old digital news organization, is becoming part of Colorado Public Radio — which has been acting on big plans to expand its news staff — injects a new spirit of optimism into the local news conversation in Colorado. We talked to Kevin Dale, CPR’s executive editor, and Dave Burdick, Denverite’s founder and editor, about what this change means for both organizations, their loyal listeners and readers, and Colorado’s local news ecosystem.
About 2.4 million digitally-savvy Coloradans are interested in state, local, and neighborhood news, and read more than headlines, a Colorado Media Project survey of 2,000+ residents has found. And about 1 million of these Coloradans are willing to pay for local news - the first time this market has been quantified.
The Colorado Media Project — in partnership with the Institute for Nonprofit News — set out to learn more about the state’s local news landscape, surveying 14 independent news outlets in Colorado to gain information about their mission, coverage topics, audience, staff size, business model, and more.
The prototyping process is all about the end user. Cultivo conducted empathy interviews with Coloradans from across the state, to hear first-hand about their personal experiences and challenges with Colorado local news today. Then they rapidly developed and user tested four digital prototypes to address common pain points with novel solutions. Read the final reports from GeoStory, StoryHound, Inspectre News, and The Daily Snack.
On August 23, Molly de Aguiar, managing director of the News Integrity Initiative at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY and former media program officer for the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, offered Colorado's philanthropic leaders some key lessons for strengthening the local media landscape.
JB Holston is dean of the University of Denver school of Engineering and Computer Science, and is also leading the Colorado Media Project. Read more about his vision and his view of the process at the Colorado Independent here
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