Corey Hutchins looks back at local news trends in 2022 with Bay Edwards and host Tim Regan-Porter. They discuss the growing role of nonprofit newsrooms, collaborative efforts across the country, government support of local news and public notices.

Next, Bay and Rachel Pickarski do a quick fact check of the first episode’s interview with the Sopris Sun team. Then, Tim and Rachel discuss takeaways from that interview.

This is an experimental episode, in terms of the segments, whether and how often we’ll do them, and whether we’ll release them as standalone episodes like this or integrate them into the interview episodes. Let us know what you think.

Note: There’s a lot of talk about the Colorado news ecosystem in this episode. (Sorry; not sorry.) We did not intend it to be an ad for Colorado, and future episodes will explore interesting works all over the U.S.

Episode chapters:
(0:48) Local news trends with Corey Hutchins
(42:09) Fact check of Sopris Sun episode
(44:53) Takeaways from Sopris Sun episode

Listen to the episode here:

Resources:

Bios:

Corey HutchinsCorey Hutchins is the interim director of Colorado College’s Journalism Institute. For nearly a decade he has reported on the U.S. local media scene for Columbia Journalism Review, and he has been a journalist for longer at multiple news organizations. The Colorado Media Project, where he writes case studies, underwrites his weekly “Inside the News in Colorado” newsletter on Substack where he reports on and analyzes what makes the state’s local news ecosystem unique. He authored the chapter on media for the book “American Decades: 2010-2019” published by Gale, and wrote the entry on public funding for SAGE's Encyclopedia of Journalism, 2nd edition.

 

Bay EdwardsBay Edwards is the assistant director of the Colorado Press Association (CPA). She started at CPA in 2019 as communications coordinator and became assistant director in 2022. She coordinates CPA communications, helps with advocacy efforts and assists members with a myriad of requests. Originally from Massachusetts, Bay left the east coast to attend college at CU Boulder where she graduated in 2017 with a degree in Advertising and Communications. After working in advertising, she came to CPA in April 2019. If she’s not in the office, she can be found somewhere in the mountains, hanging with her cat, Doug, and dog, Sheriff, or cooking up a delicious meal.

 

Rachel PickarskiRachel Pickarski is partnerships manager for CPA. Joining CPA in September 2022, she focuses on creating and sustaining meaningful collaborations between media, local leaders, the education sector and local communities to support and improve Colorado journalism for the communities it serves. Previously, she worked at Public News Service as an Editorial Coordinator and National Assignment Editor and was an operations and audio specialist and assistant editor at Washington Top News (WTOP-FM). Originally from Pennsylvania, Rachel graduated from Trinity Washington University in D.C. in 2015 with a degree in English Literature. She first entered the world of Journalism in 2016 at Washington Top News (WTOP-FM) as an operations and audio specialist and assistant editor. During that time she also worked as a video producer for the Bill Press Live Show. She left D.C. in 2018 to move to Boulder, Colorado. In 2020 she started working at Public News Service as an Editorial Coordinator and National Assignment Editor working to assign public interest stories in collaboration with nonprofits and NGO’s to amplify stories and voices often not seen or heard in mainstream media across 38 states. When not working, Rachel is usually hanging out with her cats, Calvin and Hobbes and going on mountain adventures with friends.

Tim Regan-Porter