Hello! Dave Burdick here, editor of Denverite — hold your applause.
We ran a story yesterday about the Colorado Sun, a new happy band of journalists who'll start publishing sometime later this summer. I want to tell you why I gave some of my money to them, and why I think you should give your money to them — and to Denverite.
Local journalism is in crisis.
Small newsrooms like ours, and those of the Colorado Independent, Chalkbeat Colorado, BusinessDen and others locally, are stepping up to cover stories that are going uncovered — and to cover some stories differently than we see them being covered at present.
The Sun will do that, too.
The staff they're starting out with is great. We know that because they've all been here doing their work for years. We don't know which stories they'll be working on, but we know the types of investigative and enterprise reporting experience they bring to the table — and we're looking forward to reading more of their great work and sharing it with Denverite readers.
They've met their first fundraising goal already, and they're now looking to meet stretch goals so they can add visual journalism. (Yay, visual journalism!)
As for us? You may already know who we are and what we've been doing for the last two years, but just in case:
- We explain how the city works in our morning newsletter. We answer pressing questions and goofy questions. We wish users a happy birthday because they are people and so are we. We shout out other news orgs. We tell people what's up, whether we reported it or someone else did — because no single media outlet can get the job done in our metro area anymore.
- We go to city council. We report on the important changes happening in and to our city and we don't miss a chance for an internet-exploding cat photo. (It was Councilman Jolon Clark's cat. Look it up.)
- We go to neighborhoods and neighborhood meetings. We find out how people are feeling about the big development coming in across the river, how they're feeling about their neighborhood's name, how they're feeling about their city.
- We solicit readers’ questions and answer them, whether they're about a single stoplight making a reader crazy or about the forces of gentrification, a complex issue deserving of a nuanced approach.
Newsrooms like Denverite's and the Sun's need growing support from news consumers — people who've been reading newspapers for 60 years and people who are just now finding the joy of better knowing and understanding what's going on around them. The Sun says they've got two years of runway and, to be honest, that's a real luxury in today's landscape. I've never had a job where I felt like I could absolutely count on two years of stability. And ... that's where you come in.
Give to the Sun. Give to Denverite. Give to Chalkbeat. Give to the Colorado Independent. Give to Colorado Public Radio. Help us build and sustain an amazing news media ecosystem in Denver and Colorado. It's a brave, new world and it calls for brave, new news junkies.
