In early 2021, Coloradans from across backgrounds, generations, regions and professions began meeting to tackle a series of questions: What would it take to ensure that local news coverage reflects, respects and reaches out to the state’s communities of color? What actions must newsrooms, community members and funders take to create a future in which communities of color share and shape the power of local news media?

The Colorado News Collaborative (COLab) in partnership with Colorado Media Project, and with the support of multiple co-sponsors, has convened community-led working groups to support an effort to answer those questions and push for action.

This work has given birth to four separate but related projects centering the voices of Black, Latinx, Asian American and Pacific Islander, and Native/Indigenous Coloradans that continue to engage journalists and non-journalists to spark more questions, ideas and plans of action that will take us into a future where the media’s power is shared and expanded by communities of color.

We invite you to join upcoming conversations that can lead local newsrooms to center the stories, experiences and information needs of all Coloradans. Sign up to learn more and participate here: https://bit.ly/TheVoicesInitiative

The original Black Voices Colorado and Latinx Voices Colorado conversations, resulting in two separate working group reports, took place as part of News Voices: Colorado — a project of Free Press in collaboration with the Colorado News Collaborative (COLab) and Colorado Media Project.