Colorado Times Recorder
The Colorado Times Recorder was launched in 2016 to help fill the information gap created by the declining number of news outlets and reporters in Colorado. We also cover our state’s congressional delegation in Washington DC.
We aim to be fair and accurate. Our work is nonpartisan, with a progressive orientation, which means we emphasize coverage of Colorado stories that advance or illuminate the progressive values of freedom, justice, responsibility, opportunity, and equality. Conversely, call out/correct/challenge bigotry, racism, misinformation, and conspiracies, particularly — at this moment — election conspiracies.
We accept opinion pieces and story ideas from readers. Submit them in any format — text, photos, audio, video, graphics — here.
Please let us know if we get anything wrong. We readily correct all errors that we — or you — discover.
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All our articles are free for republishing on print or digital platforms, as long a tagline is added stating that the piece originally appeared in the Colorado Times Recorder — with a link to our news site.
Awards
The Colorado Times Recorder received two second-place awards in the 2024 Society of Professional Journalists Top of the Rockies contest for “Columns and Op-eds” and “Extended Coverage,” and third place in the same contest for “Beat Reporting.”
Citations
The Colorado Times Recorder has been linked and/or named in stories that appeared in ABC News (and here), Alternet, Anonymous Qanon Podcast, Arizona Mirror, Aspen Daily News, Aurora Sentinel, Axios, Axios Denver (and here), Boulder Daily Camera, Business Insider, CBS News, Buzzfeed, CBSN, CNN, Colorado Independent, Colorado Newsline, ColoradoPolitics, Colorado Springs Gazette, Colorado Sun, Columbia Journalism Review, Daily Beast (and here), Denver ABC affiliate News7 (and here), Denver NBC affiliate 9News (and here), The Denver Post (and here and here), Durango Herald, Esquire, Evergreen Canyon Courier, FiveThirtyEight, Forbes, Fort Collins Coloradoan, Fox News, Grand Junction Sentinel, the Hill (and here), Jezebel, Kaiser Health News, LGBTQ Nation, London Daily Mail, Los Angeles NBC affiliate NBCLA, Mother Jones, MSNBC Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC All In With Chris Hayes, National Catholic Reporter, NBC News (and here), New Republic, Newsweek, New York Post, New York Times (and here, a tweet here, and our video here), New Yorker, Politico, Politico Magazine, Politifact, Pueblo Chiftain, Radio INK, Raw Story (and here and here and here), Right Wing Watch, Rolling Stone, San Francisco Gate, Salon, Snopes, Talking Points Memo, The Nation, Vanity Fair, Washington Examiner, Washington Post (and here, here and here), Westword, Vice, Yahoo! News, and others.
We were once retweeted by LeBron James.
Our Team
Editor and Founder
Jason Salzman. Jason is a progressive journalist and former media critic for the Rocky Mountain News. He’s the author of three books: Making the News: A Guide for Activists and Nonprofits, which won a Colorado Book award for general nonfiction from Colorado Humanities; 50 Ways You Can Show George the Door in 2004 (written with Ben Cohen, of Ben and Jerry’s); and 50 Ways You Can Help Obama Change America (written with ProgressNow founder Michael Huttner). Jason’s chapter, “Journalism and the Scientific Consensus on Global Warming,” was published in How the West Was Warmed (Fulcrum, 2009). He also co-authored a chapter, “A Search for Soma in Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula,” in Fly Agaric: A compendium of History Pharmacology, Mythology, and Exploration (Fly Agaric Press, 2020). He’s a co-author of, “Local TV News: Getting Away with Murder,” which appeared in the Harvard Journal on Press/Politics (1997). His Rocky Mountain News columns twice received Denver Press Club/Denver Newspaper Guild awards — and his Colorado Times Recorder column garnered a second-place award from the Society of Professional Journalists in 2024. Colorado Times Recorder. Jason’s articles have appeared in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Christian Science Monitor, Chronicle of Philanthropy, ColoradoPolitics.com, Arizona Copper Courier, The Denver Post, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, Nonprofit World, Rewire, Shaman’s Drum, Sierra, Utne Reader, and elsewhere. Jason co-founded Rocky Mountain Media Watch, a nonprofit organization that held the news media to its own professional standards, which became the Colorado Times Recorder in 2022. Jason is co-author of UrbanMushrooms.com, which is an online guide to mushroom hunting in cities, and Wild Mushrooms of Telluride, a guide to the fungus that grows around the city of Telluride, Colorado. Jason is a past president of the Colorado Mycological Society, and for five years, he was a co-director of the Telluride Mushroom Festival, which his father founded. He is co-founder of Effect Communications. He worked along the way as director of Greenpeace USA’s Anti-Nuclear Campaign and as a research associate for the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington DC. He attended Brown University, where he authored a much-publicized referendum asking the university to stock suicide pills for use by students after a nuclear war. Brown awarded him a post-graduate Arnold Fellowship to study the anti-nuclear movement in New Zealand. Reach him at jason at coloradotimesrecorder.com or on Twitter at @bigmediablog.
Writers
Erik Maulbetsch. Erik is a progressive investigative reporter. He writes largely on Colorado politics and policy, with a focus on right-wing extremists, hate groups, disinformation, and conspiracy theorists. His reporting has appeared in stories by the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, NBC, Politico, ESPN, Dow Jones Wire, The Denver Post, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and the Houston Chronicle. He has also worked as a research analyst for Freedom For All Americans, a national organization working for nondiscrimination protections for LGBT Americans, and as communications director of the ACLU of Colorado. He has also worked as a research and communications consultant and as a magazine editor. Reach him by email at [email protected].
Heidi Beedle. Heidi Beedle is a former soldier, educator, activist, and animal welfare worker. She received a Bachelor’s in English from UCCS. She has worked as a freelance and staff writer for the Colorado Springs Independent covering LGBTQ issues, nuclear disasters, cattle mutilations, and social movements. She currently covers reproductive justice and politics for the Colorado Times Recorder. In 2024, she received second- and third-place awards in the Society of Professional Journalists 2024 Top of the Rockies contest for, respectively, “Extended Coverage” and “Beat Reporting.” [email protected].
James O’Rourke. James O’Rourke is an investigative reporter at the Colorado Times Recorder. In 2021, they graduated from the University of Colorado Boulder, where he studied writing, rhetoric, and LGBTQ issues.
Board of Directors
CTR Editor Jason Salzman, president; Communications strategist Katie Reinisch, vice president; Activist and statistician Andy Bardwell, secretary; CTR Deputy Editor Erik Maulbetsch, director.
Internship
We have an ongoing internship program. The position is part-time and paid, with a three-month commitment required. Tasks would include:
- Reporting and posting stories on political events and issues.
- Researching facts presented in the news.
- Editing and recording video and audio.
- Proofreading and fact-checking articles and documents.
- Updating websites and social media sites.
- Social media research.
- Editing opinion submissions.
- You will never be asked to make coffee.
Code of Ethics
At the Colorado Times Recorder, we strive to bring a nonpartisan progressive perspective to Colorado politics and current events through honest, accurate, and fair reporting. We’re dedicated to calling out intolerance, extremism, hypocrisy, and misinformation, and bringing you stories that you won’t find anywhere else. We approach our work with compassion and integrity, aiming to advance a more equitable and fair Colorado while maintaining our commitment to the truth.
Political orientation: The Colorado Times Recorder has a progressive political orientation. That means we write from a progressive political perspective and use our core values of equity, justice, and fairness to guide our work. We strive to be accurate and fair while being transparent and acknowledging that our writers have a point of view. That includes allowing people and institutions a chance to respond before we publish a story that casts them in a negative light. We are not affiliated with a political party.
Corrections and updates: See a factual error in our work? CTR encourages its readers to reach out with corrections or any other issues at [email protected]. We’ll fix any errors as quickly as possible, and because transparency is important to us, we’ll be sure to indicate when a piece has been corrected. We also routinely update stories with new information or additional comments from sources.
Opinions: We welcome well-thought-out, factually accurate opinion submissions from across the political spectrum. Find our submissions form here.
Praise
“There are ideologically-oriented outfits on the left that have also done some very good work covering extremism in Colorado – Colorado Newsline, Colorado Times Recorder.” 9News’ Kyle Clark on the Get More Smarter podcast Feb. 21, 2024. He lamented that there are “so many journalists in so many different newsrooms are making the choice to ignore extremism.”
In an article headlined, “QAnon Looms Behind Nationwide Rallies and Viral #SaveTheChildren Hashtags,” NBC News’ Brandy Zadrozny and Ben Collins reported: “Regardless of their public online postings and event pages, local media coverage of the events has been widespread and credulous, almost never mentioning the events’ QAnon connections. A few local television and radio stations have advertised lists of the events on their news websites. “The Colorado Times Recorder served as an outlier with its report last week: “Denver Anti-Child Sex Trafficking March Rooted in QAnon Conspiracy Theories.” (Emphasis added.)
Jason Salzman has “always been a good guy and stand-up journalist,” Jon Caldara, Director of the right-wing Independence Institute.
The Colorado Times Recorder deserves “accolades in their roles for fighting intolerance, bigotry and creeping fascism, especially as it comes in [the] form of right-wing media.” — Craig Silverman, a columnist for the Colorado Sun.
“Great work… I’m amazed at what you are able to cover and how others don’t address some of the same stories,” Aaron Harber, host of the Aaron Harber Show, a public affairs program.
Jason Salzman “does some of the best work out there, I believe.” — former ColoradoPolitics reporter Joey Bunch.
“No one in Colorado is harder on me than Jason Salzman. A noted Colorado blogger, Jason is as hard left progressive as I am hard right conservative. But I’m cool with Jason b/c with him it’s never personal. He attacks my words, my ideas, but not ME. Those are very different things. If he decides to come after something I’ve said or typed Jason first picks up the phone, calls me & says, ‘Derrick, its Jason. I’m going to publish a piece about [whatever I’ve done to irk him this week] but before I did wanted to get your perspective.’” – Derrick Wilburn, former vice-chair, Colorado Republican Party.
Contact
Email us at [email protected] or see staff biographies above to reach any of us individually. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Office Address
Colorado Times Recorder, 1738 Wynkoop Street, #302, Denver, CO, 80202.