The Durango Herald, April 18, on the value of local news:
The annual Pulitzer Prize winners were announced this week, and as usual, they include examples of exceptional journalism: sexual harassment in major industries, the U.S. Senate race in Alabama, white supremacists in Virginia and the fires in Sonoma County. But significant stories in other newspapers - of solid but not quite Pulitzer quality - must be missing. Why? Because revenue declines have significantly reduced the size of almost all newsrooms across the country.
Because of an upended economic model, newspapers are struggling to do what they have done well. There may be a proliferation of platforms for short expressions heavy with opinion and shared with many, but the longer stories that take investigative and editing time are less able to be written.
Digital can reach more readers, and is, but reductions in traditional advertising revenues have meant that newspapers are smaller in size and journalists are fewer in number. Smaller newspapers have been merged with larger ones, reduced in size or frequency, or been discontinued. The Durango Herald, The Journal and the Pine River Times have not been immune.
The risk is that some stories that tell of the significant goings-on in communities - the favorable, and the unfavorable that could be improved - are not being told.
Specialized publications cover topics of their choice, but news-of-record newspaper staff attend and report on council, commissioner and school board meetings, planning sessions and business ribbon-cuttings, and they offer organizations a place to introduce their new hires, post events and boast of their successes. Some are aggressive reporting, some are not, but all, along with letters to the editor and opinion columns, are a part of what informs, nurtures and connects a community.
The Denver Post has been in the news because of its editorial board’s very public challenge to the paper’s ownership: Either reduce your profits and return the newsroom to an earlier size or sell the paper to a company that will. What was not said was that because of changing economics, the newspaper’s profits are very likely much lower than they were a decade ago.
This is Colorado Journalism Week, an opportunity to support the journalists who fill the state’s newspapers and the airwaves of the state’s television and radio stations. The companies they work for ask you to subscribe if you do not already, use the classified ads and shop at the advertisers that recognize the value in a paper’s print and digital formats. For all the attention that online shopping receives, studies show that 85 percent or so of sales volume occurs at brick-and-mortar retail locations, many of which are our advertisers.
A strong local news organization has value. Imagine if it were half its size and what would be missing in its coverage of the community. That is a direction we are determined not to take.
Editorial: https://bit.ly/2Hb0a5Y
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The Cortez Journal, April 16, on wildfire prevention and response funds:
The $1.3 trillion spending package passed by Congress in time to avert a government shutdown last month includes something Western states have long wanted: money dedicated specifically to fighting catastrophic wildfires.
For years, once federal agencies have exhausted their inadequate firefighting budgets, they have had to “borrow” - a euphemism for raiding - from other budget areas, including, ironically, money allocated for wildfire prevention. As wildfires have worsened, the borrowing has increased, partly because current funding is tied to a 10-year average, which has led to severely inadequate funding in dealing with fires that are bigger, more intense and occur more often.
Colorado’s U.S. senators, Michael Bennet, D-Denver, and Cory Gardner, R-Yuma, worked together to push for a new emergency fund that will provide money that can be tapped when initial firefighting funds are spent, enabling agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management to know that money budgeted for nonfirefighting activities will be used for the intended purposes. Because wildland fires can now be treated like other natural disasters, federal land agencies will have predictable resources for prevention.
Kudos to Sens. Bennet and Gardner, as well as all the other Western lawmakers who pushed for legislation and funding that had broad bipartisan support but which had seemed unachievable for too long.
The new fund, which will exist outside the regular budget, will start with slightly over $2 billion and, by 2027, will increase to nearly $3 billion per year. The slight catch with those numbers is that last year wildfire costs approached $3 billion, and this year could be as high or higher.
In recent years, the wildfire season has begun earlier and extended later, until no month of the year is safe from catastrophic wildfires. The National Weather Service’s Significant Wildland Fire Potential Outlook predicts above-normal fire danger for this region beginning in May.
The U.S. Drought Monitor map, updated weekly by the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska, shows much of the Midwest and most of the Southwest are experiencing moderate to severe drought. So far, Southwest Colorado’s conditions are designated “extreme drought,” while parts of Southeast Utah are faring even worse. (The Center’s drought intensity designations are, from least to worse, abnormally dry, moderate drought, severe drought, extreme drought and exceptional drought.)
Not all lawmakers agreed with the funding. Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, who is chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, said Democrats had stood in the way of forest reform measures, including faster approval of timber sales.
There are good arguments to be made for addressing the health of forests on public lands by allocating significant funding toward that goal. Bundling such policy decisions into a do-or-die budget bill is not the best way to address them, and that problem is much broader than this one topic.
The federal budget deal does include $100 million for fire prevention projects. Colorado’s state budget, now headed to the state Senate, currently allocates $2 million for community wildfire preparedness, mitigation and suppression.
This is a good budget move, in a year when the need for it may become disturbingly apparent.
Regardless of what is being done to prevent or minimize wildfires, when they happen, they must be fought. The cost of fighting them should not be disruptive to the goal of preventing them. That only makes sense.
Editorial: https://bit.ly/2qJpN2Z
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Greeley Tribune, April 14, on the city exploring an open-space smoking ban:
Greeley City Council members are considering a request that the city ban smoking in outdoor public areas like parks.
The initial reaction of the council members was favorable, and we share their sentiment. It makes sense. Parks are places for kids. They’re places for working out or taking a walk. They’re not places, generally, where you want to encounter someone smoking. And they’re not places anyone really needs to smoke.
The proposal for a smoking ban comes from the Youth Commission, a group of students that is part of Greeley’s Department of Culture, Parks and Recreation. Because it’s a resident-inspired change to the code, it would require a five-member, super-majority vote for the city council.
Right now the council has two vacancies, which means any vote will be delayed until June. If approved, the ban would go into effect Aug. 1 and wouldn’t affect this year’s Greeley Stampede at Island Grove Regional Park.
In the future, if approved, the ban would apply more strictly to regular city parks than to Island Grove, which would be allowed to designate smoking areas.
For regular parks, open spaces and trails, the ban would be all-encompassing, stretching from the sidewalks to the playgrounds.
After a presentation from Youth Commission members Abby Aurzada, Brooklyn Johnson and Johnathon Rodasta, council members said they were supportive. Some thought it could go further - at least in the future.
We think it’s great that such an idea came from students, and we’re glad the council is considering the change. Still, it’s hard to know exactly how much of a problem this is, and while we’re generally supportive, we do think the issue merits some study and discussion.
It’s possible the outright ban isn’t the right solution. Maybe something like the solution proposed for Island Grove, which would create designated smoking areas, is the best solution for all public open spaces. On the other hand, maybe the more strict outright ban is right not only for Greeley’s traditional parks and trails but for Island Grove, too. We’ll need to know more before endorsing any final decision.
We look forward to watching the discussion and learning more about the issue. But we are glad to see the conversations begin.
Editorial: https://bit.ly/2J8JZ5Z
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The Denver Post, April 12, on a learning experience for CU chancellor:
University of Colorado Boulder Chancellor Phil DiStefano stirred up quite the hornet’s nest when he unilaterally announced that he was stripping the CU Student Government of the vast majority of its responsibilities and its budget.
CUSG is one of the largest, most autonomous student government bodies in the nation. For 40 years, it has managed campus facilities funded by student fees, including the University Memorial Center and Recreation Center. The fees managed by the student government are a whopping $23 million a year.
With no warning, DiStefano announced this month that responsibility for managing the fees and facilities would shift to the vice chancellor for student affairs. CUSG would be left with a $1.9 million budget.
Though DiStefano framed it as “relieving the burden of managing professional staff and facilities,” student government officials did not see it that way, nor did hundreds of students who rallied the very next day in opposition to the move, many calling for DiStefano to be fired. The rally, organized by five groups of students competing in a CUSG election that was only days away, was raucous. Students chanted, “DiStefano has got to go!”
A letter from former CUSG officials, many of them now Colorado elected officials, piled onto the condemnation.
DiStefano, to his credit, appears to have gotten the message. He announced the day of the rally that he would delay the decision so that he could hear out students and respond to their concerns. Of course, more credit would be due if he had not tried to pull the blanket out from a 40-year-old arrangement with no notice or consultation in the first place.
The fact is that DiStefano’s concerns about the arrangement are not without merit. Managing $23 million in funds, professional staff and important, expensive facilities is a hefty responsibility for anyone, let alone student leaders who also have studies to attend to. The situation is complicated by the yearly turnover of CUSG leadership.
But even DiStefano didn’t suggest that students have been completely mismanaging their responsibility. Instead, he said the issue was that he had seen student leaders miss opportunities for savings or overlook long-term planning needs.
Well, who bears ultimate responsibility for those failures? Let’s point out a sentence in the second paragraph of DiStefano’s statement: “While the chancellor has ultimate authority over how student fees are spent, the responsibility has been primarily delegated to student government leaders through an agreement with CUSG.”
When responsibility is delegated, the delegator has an obligation to ensure that those assuming the burden are given the tools and training needed to handle it. If, over the years, DiStefano noticed missed opportunities, the ultimate burden was on him to work with student leaders to train them and help give them the perspective and information he felt they were lacking.
Doing that, years ago, would have been the action of responsible, adult university leadership - as opposed to the ham-fisted approach DiStefano took.
If handled correctly from here on out, this experience could end up being an extremely valuable learning experience, both for the students who rose up in support of their rights and for the adults who apparently abdicated their responsibility to teach for years.
Editorial: https://dpo.st/2EWNGsZ
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