The Estes Valley Voice’s online newsroom went live 100 days ago today and we have lots to celebrate, including the receipt of Colorado Media Project Above the Noise Community Events grant from the Rose Community Foundation for our civility initiative, Civility in the Estes Valley Begins with Me.
We have published more 170 news stories, and more than 1,800 people in the Estes Valley are receiving our newsletter. We are a hyperlocal, independent, and journalist-led news firm. We’re extremely proud to have been so widely accepted and look forward to a future telling the stories of our community.
Publishing in pixels
In late August, I attended the 2024 Colorado Press Association Conference in Thornton and met with journalists around the state who are doing exactly what we are doing in the Estes Valley – reporting local news and telling stories of their community.
Last month, I attended the LION Publishers 2024 Independent News Sustainability Summit in Chicago with several hundred writers, editors, and publishers from across North America who are forging new media platforms in communities large and small.
While one conference was Colorado-focused and the other was international, one theme was loud and clear: the future of local news is online and independent.
In April 2023, Mary Jo Hotzler, the editor of On the Minds of Moms magazine and chief content officer at Forum Communications Company wrote an opinion editorial that was published in AG Week, a print and online agricultural and food science research magazine. While the focus of AG Week is primarily on agribusiness, Hotzler’s article spoke to readers about the reasons a community needs to support local journalism.
She wrote, “when a community loses its newspaper and is left with no credible, consistent source for local news, it’s called a news desert. But what happens when the newspaper is hanging on by a thread and no longer has the resources or ability to actually cover its community? These so-called “ghost newspapers” are increasingly common, and the problem is no longer limited to rural, sparsely populated areas.”
While New York hedge funds and private equity firms continue gobbling up more and more local news outlets across the country (more than half of all U.S. news publications), the Estes Valley Voice is unwavering in its pledge to make sure Estes Valley residents receive news that is important to our lives.
This is significant as we come into the 2024 election cycle on the national, state and local levels. The Estes Valley Voice is committed to providing information about the offices and issues that will be on ballots for voters in the Estes Valley.
We will publish our Estes Valley Voter Guide this coming week. Our primary focus will be as granular as possible and look at the people and issues affecting the Estes Valley. Specific issues will be local and the candidates we present will be those who will represent the Estes Valley.
When we look at individuals involved, we will look at this as a hiring decision not a political one: What are the offices that candidates are running for? What are the job descriptions of those offices? What are the salaries of those offices? What budgets do the people elected to those offices control? Who are the candidates? Why do they want to run those offices? What other offices have those candidates held? What are the things you, as a voter – as the employer – need to consider when you cast your vote to hire someone to fill that job?
The Estes Valley Voice will not endorse candidates. But we will try our best to vet who is running for each office on the ballot and provide information so you, the voter—the HR manager, the person doing the hiring—can try to make an informed decision.
We will also try to cut through the clutter of the many initiatives that will be on the November ballot to provide readers with information about the issues and the choices they have in front of them. The media have an important role to play in civic engagement, and the Estes Valley Voice will do our level best to provide the community with clear, unbiased, and nonpartisan information.
Rose Community Foundation grant and Civility in the Estes Valley Begins with Me initiative
The Estes Valley Voice is small but growing. We are not a big-shouldered media conglomerate owned by a hedge fund located in New York City. We have a team of amazing journalists and content creators who have signed on to the mission of providing local, independent journalism to the Estes Valley community.
We show up at public meetings and report on what our elected, employed, and appointed leaders are doing with public money and public agencies. We are chronicling the stories of the people and the events of the Estes Valley.
Media and political science studies have shown that journalism plays an important role in community engagement in the political process. Voters who have a robust, independent, and non-partisan media are less polarized, more informed, and more likely to participate in elections.
And that is where the civility initiative and the Rose Community Foundation grant come in. The Estes Valley Voice wanted to promote civility in the public square around political discourse during this election season and beyond.
We are bringing filmmaker Don Colacino to Estes Park on Monday, Oct. 28 for a screening of his film Trusted Sources followed by a panel discussion about civility, political discourse, and the role of the media. Mayor Gary Hall and Elisabeth Jameson, an Episcopal priest who lives in Estes Park will join Colacino for the post-film discussion. The event is free, and tickets will be available through Eventbrite.
How do we practice civility when we disagree, and often strongly, about political issues? How and where do we get and vet the information that informs our opinions?
And how do we continue to practice civility beyond the election season? The divisions were so hot after the past two elections that many people did not speak to family members at Thanksgiving dinner tables weeks after the elections. For many people, the divisions have not healed, but instead the chasms have grown deeper.
We encourage people to read “The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves” by Alexandra Hudson as a springboard to conversation. The author’s webpage, Civic Renaissance is a wonderful resource. The Estes Valley Voice is distributing lapel buttons that read: Civility in the Estes Valley Begins with Me, and we are inviting readers to sign on to the community civility pledge.
Thank you to our readers and subscribers for reading and supporting the Estes Valley Voice. And thank you to a team of writers, editors, and creatives who have shared a vision and leaned in to this endeavor: Suzy Blackhurst, Barb Boyer Buck, Dick Mulhern, Brett Wilson, Sarah Present, Harrison Daley, Terry Rustin, Hank Lacey, Elisabeth Sherwin, and Lincoln Roch, and an editorial board with passion for the Estes Valley community and for local, independent community news, Andy Brittan, Jim Jameson, Deanna Ferrell, Sybil Barnes, and Reed Woodford.