Liberal hegemony in the guise of increasing press coverage? A two part look at the Sun expanding to the Eastern Plains. I thought I’d heard just about everything from Vivaldi!
Liberal hegemony in the guise of increasing media coverage
This is part 1 of a 2 parter today. First, we’ll look at the Colorado Sun getting a grant to expand its coverage out to the Eastern Plains. As you’ll see, there’s a whole lot of hoopla about it, but in the end, I question whether this will be anything but further increasing liberal hegemony into a deep-red part of the state.
Part 2, let’s contrast the lofty words used to sell this expansion with reality, in particular, the reality of who the Sun chose for its local coverage.
Per the first link below, the Colorado Sun recently got a grant from the American Journalism Project (AJP). A pretty hefty one in fact, the Sun got about $1.4 million.
A quote from AJP’s glowing announcement fleshes out the details:
“The American Journalism Project’s new $1.4 million investment in The Colorado Sun will help the nonprofit news organization expand and broaden its reach across Colorado. The outlet transitioned from a public benefit corporation to a nonprofit in 2023. AJP support will help The Sun strengthen its infrastructure by funding several key roles in fundraising, operations, and events while enhancing audience growth, marketing, and the organization’s thriving membership program.”
And a little later down, you see what the Sun will be doing with this windfall. Quoting again:
“As part of its expansion, The Sun will create regional hubs in northeastern Colorado, southern Colorado, the Western Slope and the Eastern Plains. These hubs will focus on local stories and ensure that Colorado’s diverse communities receive the information they need. Beyond geographic growth, The Sun will expand its coverage of key topics and communities. It will also strengthen partnerships with other local news organizations, broadening its scope and bringing more voices and perspectives into its reporting. The Colorado Sun excels at providing in-depth coverage of the issues that matter most to Colorado communities. As the Sun embarks on this expansion, we look forward to seeing how they continue to innovate and serve Coloradans in the years to come.”
As I alluded to up at the top, the reality is far from these soaring compliments, but, before we get to that, let’s look at who AJP is and what their mission is. I promise, it will be relevant soon enough.
The second link below is to AJP’s main page. Since it’s a jazzy, multimedia affair, I took screenshots of how AJP characterizes their work and mission instead of quotes. Those are attached as screenshots 1 and 2.
I think it’s fair to summarize that one of AJP’s core missions, in their own words, is to bolster and/or create local reporting in areas where it doesn’t exist or could be improved. An admirable goal to be sure. As I have said multiple times, I might not always agree with everything, but all in all I’m glad my local paper is there; they’ve put me on to things I might have missed otherwise.
Since you cannot get around the fact that money comes with expectations and that, as Colorado College journalism professor Corey Hutchins said, relationships matter, it’s worth taking a look at AJP’s funding.
The third link below is to AJP’s “Supporters” page. Out of fairness, before anything else, I want you to take a note of screenshot 3 attached. This is AJP’s statement about their policies around their supporters. Any links in the picture can be accessed on that webpage.
I won’t go through the entire list (poke around in there yourself, do as I do and Google foundation/funder names if you’re curious), but even a few of the heavy hitters demonstrate that AJP is largely funded by monied, left of center organizations.
For examples, I chose to look at Quadrivium Foundation, the Knight Foundation (a big on in journalism funding), the Democracy Fund, and the Emerson Collective.
Links 4 - 7 below are to the Influence Watch pages for those groups. Screenshots 4a - 4d show the blurb on each along with who they are giving grants to. The order is the same as above for links and screenshots.
I include the description of each group to give you a quick sense of them. More importantly, next to that I give the first few rows of who each group is giving grants to. Reason being that, regardless of how anyone would characterize them, where any group puts its money unequivocally tells you about them and what they want to do in the world.
AJP’s funders are putting their money into (with perhaps somewhat of an exception for Knight Foundation--their biggest grants on the list go to biomedical research with ones further down branching out from that) liberal influence groups. They are funding leftist causes: names like Environmental Defense Fund, Windward Fund, New Venture Fund, Tides Center are quite familiar to anyone who’s looked into the money behind the politics in Colorado.
It is not at all a stretch to imagine that the money they are giving to AJP has the same intent behind it. AJP loudly proclaims that its funders don’t influence what they do, and I’m not going to tell you it does.
It doesn’t have to.
When you garden, you fertilize and support the plants you want and hinder those you don’t. I might fertilize my tomato plants while mulching to prevent purslane. Both of them could go in a salad, but I like tomatoes and not purslane (it’s a weed no matter what the internet says). If I want one and not the other, I give one food/water while denying the other what it needs to grow.
Those that fund AJP know exactly what they’re getting. They give to them like I give tomatoes fertilizer. They don’t give money to groups like, say, Complete Colorado, to deny them light.
As AJP has it on their page, traditional, for-profit news outlets are withering away. This is bad for those communities, but behind every problem is an opportunity. The people who fund AJP shower them with money so that the gap can get filled by the kinds of papers that AJP is likely to support, the kinds of papers that will cover and say things in a way the funders want it covered.
It’s not top down control of what appears in the newspaper, it’s setting “...common sense, norms, ideas, expectations, worldview, and behavior.”
In part 2, I’ll continue with this and offer concrete examples using the Sun’s coverage.
See you there.
https://theajp.org/strengthening-local-news-in-colorado-a-look-at-our-new-support-for-the-colorado-sun/
https://theajp.org/
https://theajp.org/about/our-supporters/
https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/quadrivium-foundation/
https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/john-s-and-james-l-knight-foundation/
https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/democracy-fund/
https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/emerson-collective/
The Colorado Sun’s eastward expansion
In the previous post today, I covered how the American Journalism Project (AJP) gave the Sun a $1.4 million grant to expand coverage out onto the Eastern Plains.
I put forward the idea that this was hegemony, an example of how common sense is set by amplifying one view and not others. I also made the claim that this is what the people who fund AJP (and ultimately the Sun) are after.
I want to firm up that claim now by pointing to what the Sun’s expansion has looked like
First some quick background material. I will repeat a quote from AJP’s press release about the grant to the Sun (linked at bottom here for convenience):
“As part of its expansion, The Sun will create regional hubs in northeastern Colorado, southern Colorado, the Western Slope the Eastern Plains. These hubs will focus on local stories and ensure that Colorado’s diverse communities receive the information they need. Beyond geographic growth, The Sun will expand its coverage of key topics and communities. It will also strengthen partnerships with other local news organizations, broadening its scope and bringing more voices and perspectives into its reporting. The Colorado Sun excels at providing in-depth coverage of the issues that matter most to Colorado communities. As the Sun embarks on this expansion, we look forward to seeing how they continue to innovate and serve Coloradans in the years to come.”
The Sun does excel at giving coverage to a lot of things around the whole state. I’m thinking in particular of their coverage on wolves (see “Related” below). Long before other papers covered it, the Sun was there doing a decent job of including the impact wolves had on cattle producers.
I disagree with the other contentions made by AJP. The Sun has not at all done a good job of covering the issues that matter most to Colorado communities, at least those communities outside of the progressive core of the Front Range. The Sun obviously pitches their coverage to the people whose values match those of the people running the Sun, to those whose interests match those of the people running the Sun.
The Sun has also done a God-awful job so far at “...broadening its scope and bringing more voices and perspectives into its reporting.” Perhaps I’m being pessimistic, but I doubt $1.4 million will fix that. As you’ll see soon, it likely hasn’t thus far.
I have hashed and rehashed these topics enough that I won’t bore you with extensive detail, but from doing candidate profiles that ask questions no one on the Eastern Plains cares about, to slips about agriculture so basic that even I see them, to complete blank spots on issues like immigration and gun control policy, the Sun does not cover the issues that matter most to all Coloradans, nor do they bring in diverse perspectives.
Put plainly, the Sun doesn’t come anywhere near the soaring words AJP uses while they’re handing over $1.4 million.
Not too long after getting this grant, I noticed that the Sun was running more stories on the Eastern Plains, both with their “rural” reporter Tracy Ross as well as freelance reporter (and Eastern Plains resident) Jeff Rice. If you’d like to see his file of work for the Sun, his Sun author page is linked second below.
In keeping with AJP’s focus on local reporting done by local voices, I can’t help but take Mr. Rice’s sudden explosion of work for the Sun to be something that the Sun began under the auspices of AJP’s grant. It is, after all, 3 pieces between May 18th and June 23rd of this year.
To be clear, however, I could not fully confirm this. I emailed both the AJP and the Sun to see if Rice was hired as a local voice to expand coverage out East (and/or to see if AJP had any hand in choosing Mr. Rice for its reporting). As of this writing, I’ve not heard back on that from the Sun or AJP. If that changes I’ll update.
The reason for the extra time spent on that point is that, if Mr. Rice’s reporting is covered by the grant, a grant intended to give voice to the Eastern Plains, there’s a big (BIG) problem, and that is the man himself. Hell, even if it’s not and it’s just the Sun being the Sun, it’s still a problem.
Mr. Rice was fired from the FencePost (again, see “Related” below), because he can’t keep his tongue in check. He is rabidly partisan. If you don’t share his beliefs, you’re not just disagreeing with him, you’re not only foolish, you’re contemptable.
The picture heading this post is something he shared on his Facebook profile. Screenshots 1 and 2 are from his Facebook profile and written by him. One is some choice commentary about the US Supreme Court. Two is some about the election, including a reference to the sitting congresswoman for this district (Boebert) who Rice refers to as “Congresswoman Ophelia Snatch.”* I’m sure if you find and visit his Facebook page, you’ll see more of this. What I showed you here is not a rare blip.
This is who the Sun hires, this is who they have covering the Eastern Plains.
In the same email I reference above, I reached out to AJP to see if they were aware of Rice’s behavior. I reached out to the Sun as well to see how his behavior squared with their social media policy. For your reference, that policy is copied here as screenshot 3.**
Just like above, I got no answer from either. If that changes, I’ll update.
Read even just the tiny sample of the social media posts by Rice, consider the politics of the deep red Eastern Plains, and consider whether you think Rice is someone that can fairly and fully cover issues here, the kinds of things that matter to people here. Ask yourself whether Rice is someone you would trust to bring you news if you’re one of the deplorables on his list.
We've now hit the point where all the pieces are laid out on the board. Let me now show you how they move.
AJP gave the Sun a grant because of what they cover and they specifically mentioned the Sun bringing in diverse voices. The Sun was given the charge of partnering with existing news organizations, and expanding local news coverage.
Whether the examples I showed you were grant funded or not, you now have work product to put next to the words AJP and the Sun use about what they do.
The Colorado Sun is who they are, they do what they do. AJP knows all about this. There's no sudden shift here, no hiding the ball.
Instead of partnering with existing newspapers out here such as the South Platte Sentinel (whose work has been shared here, which is doing great work on local coverage) or The FencePost (a well read and trusted, albeit mostly Ag, news source), the Sun picks the dude who was fired from the latter for his screeds about people who don't hold his ultra-liberal views.
That's the local voice the Sun picks to amplify in an overwhelmingly conservative part of the state.
I characterized the move fund outlets like the Sun, to help them expand their coverage to other parts of the state, as hegemony-an expansion of the narratives, ideas, and commonsense that don't tell us what to think but rather set the framework for our thoughts--this is what I meant. This is what I believe those funding AJP are after.
All the right words are in the promotional materials and ethics policies. There's plenty of talk about the need for local news to have an informed citizenry. There's talk about reporters watching what they say. There's paragraphs about editorial independence. But the money, as it always does, carries expectations even if they're not explicitly stated.
This is the underside of the move to nonprofit news organizations. This is part of what underlies their expansion. This is something you as a news consumer need to be aware of.
*If this is a reference to something, please enlighten me. I am aware of the derogatory/dirty use of the word "snatch" but cannot find any "Ophelia Snatch" online.
**Pay particular attention to the strictures about commenting publicly on things you are covering. Then note that Rice writes about the US Supreme Court and the Nebraska Canal at about the same time as he's opining about them on his Facebook page.
https://theajp.org/strengthening-local-news-in-colorado-a-look-at-our-new-support-for-the-colorado-sun/
https://coloradosun.com/author/jeff-rice/
Related:
The link below is to an October 2025 newsletter on Jeff Rice and his getting fired from the FencePost.
Sometimes it's not easy to file off the rounded edges and make square corners in a real world that's complicated. This can definitely be said of Jeff Rice.
Quoting from what I wrote back then (and still believe):
"What this story makes me think is that I don’t mention often enough that reporters are neither saints nor devils. They’re human as we all are, and, while it’s okay to criticize what they do, there’s room to point out the things they do that you agree with. I don’t like Mr. Rice’s politics. I appreciate that he is and has been a stalwart supporter of Ag. I don’t like the Sun’s reporting. I don’t like their hypocrisy with regard to what they do vs. what they say they do. I appreciate that they cover some stories that other Front Range papers don’t bother with (wolf reintroduction in depth and including rural perspectives as an example)."
https://coloradoaccountabilityproject.substack.com/p/too-liberal-for-the-fence-post-logan?utm_source=publication-search
I thought I’d heard just about everything from Vivaldi!
That time of the week again. This will be the last post til Sunday and thus it’s time to do something for fun, something not related to politics.
Vivaldi is one of my favorite composers. I love me some baroque music and Vivaldi’s music is one of the quintessential examples of that era. I thought I’d heard just about everything that I really enjoyed from him.
And then by chance La Follia came up one day. Looking up the translation, I learned it means “the madness”.
That’s certainly an apt title. If you need a quick boost to your energy, give it a listen--better than coffee in that mid-afternoon slump. The link is below.
Definitely in my list of Vivaldi favorites now.
That’s it til Sunday. Hope the rest of your Friday goes well. See you then!
p.s. if you think that a “beat drop” is a new thing, think again. Several here. Nothing new under the sun.
UN-related
This past week was mercilessly hot and the fennel bulbs finally started to bolt.
That means harvest.
That also means sausage lasagna!
I’m ready.
p.s. got one more tiny one that was direct sown which may come out big enough for later. We’ll see!
I wonder why the AJP didn't give the 1.4 million to Westword. Westword makes no bones about delivering slightly left leaning journalism and opinion. At least Julesburg would know what the latest front range marijuana prices are.