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.
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.”
M3: Machine Learning, Migration, Mountains Journalism Unconference. drew dozens of journalists, students, and developers from Colorado and beyond to talk about collaboration, including upcoming Migrahack September 27 & 28.
Colorado Media Project, OpenNews, and University of Denver, drew journalists from states as far flung as Vermont and Florida. Many of them were data specialists, who attended the ‘unconference’ to share ideas and gain inspiration from one another. Colorado outlets represented at the unconference included the Colorado Independent, Longmont Observer, Chalkbeat, 5280, Vail Daily, and the Colorado Sun, and Colorado Public Radio.
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.
The Gates Family Foundation, Democracy Fund, and the University of Denver’s Project X-ITE announce new, significant commitments the Colorado Media Project. Our goal is to raise $2.5 million over three years to foster trustworthy, sustainable local journalism serving all Coloradans, and we’re more than halfway there.
In a first-ever joint appeal to readers, local newsrooms raised nearly $50,000 in a single day for local news. A $1,500 challenge grant from the Colorado Media Project to each outlet was doubled, tripled, and even quadrupled by local and national donors and foundations — filling newsroom coffers to ensure more and better local journalism in 2019.
In just four months, the Colorado Media Project has produced thought-provoking research and insights. Read our executive summary, or take a deep dive into the various components — from our 2,000+ survey of Colorodans, to digital prototypes and business concepts, to a benchmark study of Colordado’s digital and nonprofit outlets — and more.
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.
How can local journalists better connect with their audiences and serve their communities? This has emerged as a central question for the Colorado Media Project, and the focus of countless hours of interviews with journalists and news consumers throughout the state. Through more than a decade of working on precisely this problem, Molly de Aguiar -- Managing Director of the international News Integrity Initiative and former media grantmaker for New Jersey’s Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation -- has found the solutions to be simple in theory, yet difficult in application.
Media researcher and strategist Dr. Seth Geiger, president and co-founder of SmithGeiger, provided Colorado with a “reality check” on digital media consumption -- where are people across the demographic spectrum spending their valuable time? What media brands and formats are they consuming? And how does local journalism break through the static?
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
By Melissa Milios Davis, Gates Family Foundation
As Colorado's media landscape has continued to evolve, the Gates Family Foundation has invested in a wide variety of high-quality local news outlets. Local news is a key component of healthy, thriving communities – and its absence is harbinger of diminished communities.
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