A recent survey counted 25 news providers in Larimer County. What do you want from them?
Coloradoan Conversations is the Coloradoan's opinion forum. Each week we'll pose conversation-starting questions online at Coloradoan.com/opinion, moderate online discussion, and then recap the best discussion points.
This week's Coloradoan Conversation:
From 6 to 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 16, Northern Colorado Deliberative Journalism Project partner Poudre River Public Library District will host its next edition of The Scoop community conversation series, focusing on the future of journalism in Northern Colorado and beyond.
The event will be held at the Old Town Library, 201 Peterson St. in Fort Collins. It is free for the public to attend, but registration is encouraged at www.poudrelibraries.org/events.
The community discussion and mediated debate will focus not just on the Coloradoan, a Deliberative Journalism Project partner, but how area residents find trustworthy, fact-based news today and how that will change in the future.
According a recent mapping project conducted by the nonprofit Colorado Media Project, there are 25 identified providers of news in Larimer County across television, radio, digital and print media. They range from niche magazines like Craft Beer and Brewing to "legacy media" newspapers like the Coloradoan, Loveland Reporter-Herald and Estes Park Trail-Gazette. They include community organizations like Fort Collins Public Media and one-man online sites like Jason Van Tatenhove's Colorado Switchblade.
The Colorado Media Project also recently conducted a statewide survey of attitudes toward state and local media. Among its key findings:
Nearly half of Coloradans are interested in state and local news, are digitally savvy and engage with the news beyond headlines.
Coloradans said the most important purposes of state and local media were to inform residents about emergencies, hold leaders accountable and inform residents about public affairs.
While most Coloradans said they trusted local news organizations to report the news fully, accurately and fairly, fewer residents said this in 2022 than in 2018.
With those discussion points as a backdrop, let's start to seed the conversation for Wednesday. What are your hopes for the future of news in Northern Colorado, and how do you see the role of local news providers playing out today? With an increasingly diffuse media landscape to follow, how might community stakeholders improve your ability to find factual, trustworthy news of local relevance?
Click on the "View Comments" box at the top or bottom of this story at Coloradoan.com/opinion to join the conversation. Print-only readers can participate online or by sending their thoughts to opinion@coloradoan.com.
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This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: A recent survey counted 25 news providers in Larimer County. What do you want from them?
