The Northern Colorado Deliberative Journalism Project

The Northern Colorado Deliberative Journalism Project (DJP) is a collaborative project initially co-sponsored by the CSU Center for Public Deliberation (CPD), the CSU Journalism and Media Communication Department, the CSU Political Science Department, and the Fort Collins Coloradoan in the fall of 2022, supported by an initial Local News Ideas-to-Action grant by the American Press Institute. Since its initial development, several additional partners have been added, such as the Poudre River Library District, the Larimer County League of Women Voters, FC Public Media, KUNC, Rocky Mountain Student Media, the CSU Honors Program, and the CSU Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures.

Deliberative journalism is a developing style of local journalism that focuses on helping a community have the difficult, nuanced conversations they need to have to address their shared problems more productively. Deliberative journalism overall seeks to combine the best practices of traditional journalism with key insights from deliberative practice, while also borrowing from social psychology, argumentation, conflict management, and several other recent journalism innovations, such Solutions Journalism, Collaborative Journalism, and Dialogue Journalism. The goal is to re-invigorate local journalism by providing a critically needed service to communities: facilitating quality public discussion.

After some initial community meeting the fall of 2022, the project developed 6 key tasks (which was subsequently expanded to 7 in the fall of 2023.  A document with the 7 tasks as well as an opportunity to comment on them is available here.

The DJP is led by a core team of representative from the various organizations, that meet weekly to discuss potential projects and events.