After years of shedding reporters and newsrooms, Colorado is home to a new experiment in sustainable journalism. In early May, the National Trust for Local News announced it was acquiring Colorado Community Media, a network of 24 newspapers in the Denver Metro area, via the Colorado News Conservancy, a new public benefit corporation. The Colorado News Conservancy is to be majority owned by the journalist-owned, online-only Colorado Sun. The deal was financed through impact investment funding from FJC, the Gates Family Foundation, the Colorado Trust, and the American Journalism Project, in a first-of-its kind model.
What does this mean for people who rely on Colorado Community Media? How will this relationship change the news ecosystem in Colorado, and what consequences could it have for local media nationally? We will hear from leading people behind this deal, Melissa Milios Davis (Gates Family Foundation), Lillian Ruiz (National Trust for Local News), and Larry Ryckman (Colorado Sun), about how it works and what they hope it will produce.
MEDLab’s radio show and podcast, Looks Like New, asks old questions about new tech.
Each month, host Nathan Schneider and the Looks Like New team speaks with people who work with technology in ways that challenge conventional narratives and dominant power structures. The name comes from the phrase “a philosophy so old that it looks like new,” repeated throughout the works of Peter Maurin, the French agrarian poet and co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement.
You can hear Looks Like New the fourth Thursday of every month at 6 p.m., or online as a podcast on iTunes and Stitcher.