Summary of current initiatives
Coloradoan Conversations - The Coloradoan brought back their opinion page in the spring of 2022, with some assistance from DJP partners. Each week, they ask a question or two about local issues, and gather responses on their platform. To read the comments and offer your own, you do need to register (which is free and does not require a subscription). A CPD group helps analyze the responses, and the Coloradoan completes a “recap” story for many of the questions, summarizing key perspectives that emerged.
The SCOOP - On the third Wednesday of each month, the DJP hosts an event related to the project. The event is held from 6 to 7:30pm at the Old Town branch. Fall 2022 topics included FC housing issues and local journalism (in November, we dug into results from the Colorado Media Project’s Survey of state and local media use. The next event, on Feb. 15, will focus on tools for de-polarization. RSVP with the library.
Reimaging Local Jourrnalism discussions - In the spring of 2022, CPD Director Martin Carcasson developed a discussion guide for use by communities, and the CPD hosted online forums in April, May, and August using the document. Additional forums will likely be held in late spring, depending on interest. The document includes a link to provide feedback and questions about the framework. Questions or comments can also be sent to CPD Director Martin Carcasson at mcarcas@colostate.edu.
Responding to Mis-Information project. In the spring, the DJP hosted a webinar on addressing misinformation, and in the summer, participated in a project with the the Colorado News Collaborative (CoLab) and the DMNS’s Institute for Science and Policy, The CPD developed a viewpoints document to spark discussions on the issue, and then a broader National Issues Forum style discussion guide that lays out four approaches local communities could explore to address misinformation. An event was held at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science in June 2022, i to refine the documents. Additional discussions may be scheduled with interest here in northern Colorado. The links to the documents above also provide opportunities for feedback and questions about the documents. Questions or comments can also be sent to CPD Director Martin Carcasson at mcarcas@colostate.edu.
Dedicated journalism and Honors classes and the NoCo Conversations Hub website - The website will be publicly released at the February 9 event, and will continue to be developed as a local community resource. Supported primarily by CSU Journalism instructor Jenny Fischer and students in her JTC 420 class or independent studies, the Hub will include original local reporting on local issues as well as highlighting reporting on key issues tied to the project. Our goal would be to serve as an aggregator of sorts, one place that residents can go to see connect to reporting from all the various media outlets in Northern Colorado.
Past Events
The “Building Civic Capacity” Series.
One of the key tasks announced in the fall was to find ways to build civic capacity to strengthen our local information ecosystem. Several opportunities are developing to support this task in the spring. On March, 2, 2022, the Straayer Center hosted an event on Local News and Civic Ecosystems that was co-sponsored by the CPD and DJP.
On March 21, 2022, we hosted our first webinar entitled, “How to Tackle Wicked Problems in Local Communities: Exploring the Potential of Deliberative Journalism” with an initial talk by CPD Director and DJP Core Team member Martin Carcasson, followed by panel of journalists and journalism educators.
The video of the webinar is available here.
One of the key themes from the DJP meetings in the fall involved concerns about misinformation and trust, both in the sense of how to react to growing misinformation, as well as how claims of misinformation can be used to simply dismiss points of view. Our second webinar was held on Thursday, May 12. It featured Dominic Stecula, Political Scientist at CSU, David Wolfgang from the Journalism and Media Communication Department, Katie Knobloch from the CPD and the Communication Studies Department, Rebecca Powell from the Coloradoan, and Annaclaire Crumpton from the Poudre River Library District. The video is available here.
Small Group Deliberations on Local Journalism were held March 23, 24, and 26, 2022
During the fall meetings, we discussed that the DJP will often focus on doing deeper dives on particular issues, to really develop an understanding of the issue and provide the community with opportunities to engage. The first issue we are doing that with is journalism itself, building off our fall meetings. During the week of March 21st, the DJP and the CPD hosted several online small group discussions reacting to a National Issues Forum style discussion guide being developed by the CPD. The guide focuses on reimagining local journalism and talking through a broad range of potential ideas. We will likely schedule additional opportunities at a later time, but anyone can read the guide here, and click the link on the bottom of the first page of the guide to provide input on the guide. We will continuously work to refine and update the guide.
DJP Public Check in (April 4, 2pm-3pm)
The DJP Core Team meets every Monday at 2pm, and on April 4, 2022 we opened that meeting to the public for updates on the projects and a chance for people to connect.