2023 Aspen Journalism Annual Report

Aspen Journalism is a nonprofit, reader-funded newsroom providing communities in the Roaring Fork watershed and upper Colorado River basin with independent, investigative, data-driven reporting on complex issues of water, environment, social justice and history — coverage that is unique in our local media landscape.

Executive summary 

Aspen Journalism finished 2023 with impressive milestones. We estimate that our stories reached their largest audience ever, via our longest lineup yet of outside news organizations that published our work. We grew the size and scope of our coverage with a newsroom employing the equivalent of 3.5 full-time journalists including two fulltime and 10 freelance journalists who produced 72 investigative stories and 50 data dashboards. We hosted three free community events and raised $493,966, our largest annual sum to date.

We provided the community with vital reporting on long-term and acute issues related to the environment and community. Our coverage focused on water policy and politics, the health of the natural environment, land use challenges, socioeconomic pressures, governance questions and our shared history. 

For the third year in a row our core staff and leadership consisted of Editor and Executive Director Curtis Wackerle, Managing Editor and Water Desk Editor Heather Sackett and Data Desk Editor Laurine Lassalle. We also deepened our work with freelance journalists and reporters whose work with AJ came in collaboration with another news organization. In all, 10 journalists from outside our core newsroom produced 26 of our stories in 2023.   

Overall editorial production was up from 2021 and 2022 and represented our second most productive year in terms of the number of in-depth stories of the last five years. An increasing proportion of our work in 2023 was of the especially in-depth and investigative variety.

Production was led by Sackett under our water desk, as she continued her work documenting the most important trends and challenges related to water use and management in the Roaring Fork Basin and the wider upper Colorado River basin. Lassalle deepened her skills as a data-driven investigative reporter, producing important work on land use and environmental trends. And we benefited from a partnership with Aspen Daily News to fund long-time local journalist Rick Carroll’s investigative reporting. 

As a nonprofit organization with a mission to inform citizens, we offer our journalism for free to any other news organization that wishes to publish it, under a creative commons license. Through these collaborative relationships, we extended our reach to 27 news organizations that republished our work at least 207 times in 2023. We put on three public events — a talk with immersive journalist Ted Conover in January, a film screening and discussion about the soul of community in March and a forum on regional housing issues in December. We invested new resources in social media and grew our audience on Facebook and Instagram. We continued to publish engaging newsletters sharing and adding value to our work, growing the readers reached by The Roundup, from Wackerle, and The Runoff, authored by Sackett.

Aspen Journalism 2023 Staff

In addition, we worked with the following freelance journalists in 2023. For more on their contributions see our desk-by-desk breakdowns below.

ALLEN BEST | Water (Best collaborated with AJ in his capacity as editor of Big Pivots.)

AMY HADDEN MARSH | Environment 

ANDREW TRAVERS | Affordable housing

CATHERINE LUTZ | Social Justice 

ELIZABETH STEWART SEVERY | Environment and social justice

JOHN STROUD | Social justice

PAUL ANDERSEN | Social justice

RICK CARROLL | Environment and social justice 

SARAH TORY | Environment

TIM COONEY | History

We were also supported by: 

Photographers Will Sardinsky, Dan Bayer, Kelsey Brunner and Flynn Rodriquez
Copy editor Dale Ulland
Translator and interpreter Edgar Barrantes

Marketing and Development Manager Claire de L’Arbre
Development consultants Dara Gever and Rebecca Mirsky

CPA Mike Marolt

This adds up to an editorial staffing capacity of roughly 3.5 FTEs, and an organizational staffing capacity of 4.25 FTE.

Aspen Journalism 2023 Board of Directors 

Mark Harvey, President
Tim McFlynn, Vice President
Cristal Logan
Pete McBride
Michael McVoy
Laurie Michaels
Jane Pargiter
Carolyne Heldman Rovira
Omar Sarabia
Harry Teague

Thank you to Carolyn, Omar and Laurie for joining the board in 2023.

Aspen Journalism’s board of directors and staff also participated in a day-long retreat in April — the first such exercise for the organization — led by facilitator Alexandra Fiorillo from the firm Grid Impact. Held in a seminar room at The Aspen Institute grounds, the retreat provided a forum for exploring the challenges and opportunities facing the organization, while identifying areas of alignment regarding our values and priorities.

By the numbers, in 2023 we published: 

72 Investigative Stories

42 Water Desk Stories

16 Environment Desk Stories

8 Social Justice Desk Stories

3 History Desk Stories

3 Local Public Data Desk Stories

50 Data Dashboards

12 Tracking the Curve updates (ceased publication in March after 500 posts since 2020)

80 Water Meetings Attended 

32 Newsletter Editions

27 Editions of The Roundup

5 Editions of The Runoff

Awards Won in 2023 (for work produced in 2022)

Colorado Press Association, four awards, more information here.

• FIRST PLACE: Best environmental story
  Dealing with methane escaping from Coal Basin’s shuttered mines sparks debate by Sarah Tory, Environment Desk
• FIRST PLACE: Best editorial collaboration
  Across the Western Slope, pandemic attitudes and responses varied from county to county by Laurine Lassalle, Aspen Journalism Data Desk Editor and Caroline Llanes, Aspen Public Radio
  Resort communities saw lower COVID-19 death rates than more western rural counties by Laurine Lassalle, Aspen Journalism Data Desk Editor and Caroline Llanes, Aspen Public Radio
• FIRST PLACE: Best social justice or equity reporting
  The most tenacious freelancers of the new West by Hector Sales, Social Justice Desk
• SECOND PLACE: Best agriculture story
  Stream management planning watered down by agriculture by Heather Sackett, Water  Desk Editor and Reporter

Society of Professional Journalists, six awards, more information here. 

• FIRST PLACE: Social justice reporting | Hector Sales, Aspen Journalism

The most tenacious freelancers of the new West by Hector Salas, Social Justice Desk

• FIRST PLACE: Information graphic
  Out-of-district fundraising a key source for Boebert, as Frisch gains ground in third quarter by Laurine Lassalle, Data Desk Editor
• FIRST PLACE: Business news | Andrew Travers, Aspen Journalism
  Habitat for Humanity eyes manufacturing homes locally as future housing solution,  Andrew Travers, Social Justice Desk
• SECOND  PLACE: Agriculture or environment feature
  Dealing with methane escaping from Coal Basin’s shuttered mines sparks debate by  Sarah Tory, Environment Desk
• THIRD PLACE: Climate reporting
  Uinta Basin Railway opposition unites Colorado towns, Utah backcountry residents by Amy Hadden Marsh, Environment Desk
• THIRD PLACE: Politics news
  Out-of-district fundraising a key source for Boebert, as Frisch gains ground in third quarter by Laurine Lassalle, Data Desk Editor

An innovative local model

The nonprofit newsroom model was pioneered at a local level by Aspen Journalism’s founder, Brent Gardner-Smith, spurred by the contraction plaguing the newspaper industry across the country in the wake of the Great Recession. Gardner-Smith, who began his journalism career in Aspen in 1984, understood that the challenges faced by local commercial news in facilitating in-depth and investigative journalism produced by experienced professional reporters. While earning his master’s degree from the University of Missouri School of Journalism, and inspired by an internship in 2010 at the national nonprofit newsroom ProPublica, Gardner-Smith developed a plan to launch a local, investigative, nonprofit news organization serving those with a stake in Aspen, the Roaring Fork Valley and the greater upper Colorado River basin. At the time, Aspen Journalism’s concept was novel: Seek support from local donors and charitable foundations; give journalists adequate time and resources for in-depth reporting; and publish the work in collaboration with other media outlets. 

The model served to establish a fail-safe for the local press, ensuring that the community always has access to high-quality investigative reporting. Gardner-Smith founded Aspen Journalism as a 501c3 nonprofit corporation located in Aspen, Colorado, in January of 2011. It published its first story a short time later. The organization under Gardner-Smith developed a niche and rose to acclaim for covering water policy and politics in the headwaters basins of the Colorado River, as well as providing in-depth coverage of social and environmental issues affecting Colorado mountain communities. Some of Aspen Journalism’s early work broke important stories regarding the city of Aspen’s conditional water rights to build two reservoirs in the headwaters of Castle and Maroon creeks. After a water court process where multiple parties raised concerns over the potential reservoirs’ impact, the city abandoned the rights to the reservoirs and is investigating other long-term water planning options. We maintain a dedicated focus on water coverage, the value and importance of which has only grown as climate change heralds an aridification crisis threatening water security in the Colorado River basin and elsewhere. 

For its first half-dozen years, Aspen Journalism never had more than one full-time employee, plus the equivalent of a half to three-quarters of a full-time position’s worth of freelance journalism and other support. Beginning around 2018, the organization sought to actively grow the scope of its editorial production, and fundraising, with the establishment of the Connie Harvey Environment Desk. Since then, Aspen Journalism has had a staffing capacity of between 3.75 and 4.75 full-time-equivalent employees.

In 2019, Gardner Smith hired Sackett, passing the torch of water reporting while evolving his role into the editor and executive director helping manage more freelancers while raising more to sustain our efforts. In 2020, Wackerle joined the staff as the editor in chief and reporter covering environmental and social issues, before assuming the duties of editor and executive director in August 2021. At that time, Gardner Smith, who has been serving as the executive director since Wackerle’s hiring, stepped away from the organization to take on a new challenge as news director at Aspen Public Radio.

With a track record of more than a dozen years in operation, Aspen Journalism has shown that our model is successful, with 958 investigative stories published and $3,163,397 raised to fund journalism since our founding.

WATER DESK

Aspen Journalism’s water coverage is distinguished by being in the room when discussions and decision-making about water policy are happening, and for a shoeleather approach to reporting where our journalists are read in on all the source documents and have spoken with experts relevant to the stories we are writing, as well as the everyday citizens who are affected. Our water desk produced 42 stories in 2023, 37 written by Water Desk Editor Heather Sackett, who attended 80 water meetings across the region. Five stories were written by Allen Best, an Arvada-based journalist who publishes the climate and environment newsletter Big Pivots, and collaborated with AJ on an in-depth series on Colorado’s efforts to squeeze water savings from urban landscapes through shifting approaches to grass and landscaping. In May 2024, series, which AJ co-published and helped edit, was honored with an award from the Society of Professional Journalists for best extended coverage in a four-state region. Colorado lawmakers in 2024 also passed a law cracking down on new bluegrass turf plantings in many settings. 

Sackett’s reporting closely followed the implementation of the System Conservation Program by the Upper Colorado River Commission, with seven stories on the issue in 2023. The program, supported by $125 million in federal funding, pays water users to cut back. It sparked disagreements between the UCRC and the River District, remains controversial in Colorado and it’s unclear if the water saved actually results in a measurable boost to Lake Powell.

Sackett also continued AJ’s ongoing coverage of local issues on the Crystal River such as efforts to get a federal Wild & Scenic designation for the river, an emergency grant request from a ditch company to fix sink holes and an augmentation plan study that recommends an expensive aquifer recharge project. She also explored why water managers tend to focus on climate resilience and adaptation while shying away from climate policy action, and how an endangered fish recovery program has seen some success despite failing to consistently meet target flows in a stretch of the Colorado River near Grand Junction. She covered state legislative efforts to promote stream restoration and combat poor water quality at mobile home parks, as well as privately-funded initiatives to increase streamflows by paying ranchers and farmers to cut back.

Aspen Journalism’s Water Desk continued to incorporate data visualization elements into our stories to better illustrate and simplify complicated issues, with 11 stories containing original graphs, charts or maps created by data journalist Laurine Lassalle.

We continued to publish our water desk’s exclusive newsletter, The Runoff, with five editions in 2023 sharing happenings in the water world that are of interest to our readers, but which in most cases we did not write a story about. The newsletter also recaps and, when appropriate, shares updates on recent stories published. 

For a complete list of the stores published by our water desk and the water meetings attended by Sackett, see below. 

2023 Water Desk stories

Scientists studying water supply focus on weeks following peak snowpack
By Heather Sackett, January 18, 2023
The Aspen Times, Glenwood Springs Post-Independent, Vail Daily,Summit Daily News, Ouray County Plain Dealer, Grand Junction Daily Sentinel and Sentinel Colorado.

River District considers criteria for water conservation program
by Heather Sackett, January 20, 2023
Grand Junction Sentinel, Glenwood Springs Post-Independent, The Aspen Times, the Vail Daily, and Summit Daily.

State officials draft bill on stream restoration
By Heather Sackett, February 2, 2023
The Aspen Times, the Vail Daily, the Glenwood Springs Post-Independent, the Grand Junction Sentinel and Steamboat Pilot & Today.

Water managers set criteria for conservation program participation
By Heather Sackett, February 22, 2023
Glenwood Springs Post-Independent, the Grand Junction Sentinel, the Vail Daily.

Low-elevation snow stacks up this season
By Heather Sackett, March 4, 2023
Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, Vail Daily, The Aspen Times and the Glenwood Springs Post-Independent.

Colorado Springs seeks to keep water rights tied to dams, reservoirs
By Heather Sackett, March 11, 2023
Vail Daily, The Aspen Times and Summit Daily

West Slope water managers will not review, approve applications for conservation program
By Heather Sackett, March 17, 2023
The Aspen Times, the Glenwood Springs Post-Independent, the Steamboat Pilot & Today, the Vail Daily, and the Craig Press.

Little information released on conservation-program proposals
By Heather Sackett, March 31, 2023
The Aspen Times, the Glenwood Springs Post-Independent, the Vail Daily, SkyHi News and the Grand Junction Sentinel.

Bill aims to address water quality at mobile home parks
By Heather Sackett, April 7, 2023
The Aspen Times, the Vail Daily, the Summit Daily and Post-Independent. It also ran in Sentinel Colorado and on the websites of public radio stations KAJX and KUNC.

Record March snow fueling above-average spring runoff forecasts
By Heather Sackett, April 14, 2023
Glenwood Springs Post-Independent, The Aspen Times, the Vail Daily, the Grand Junction Sentinel, SkyHi News and Craig Daily Press.

Drought task force to consider conservation programs
By Heather Sackett, April 21, 2023
Grand Junction Sentinel,  Summit Daily News, Pagosa Springs Sun,  The Aspen Times, Aspen Daily News, Glenwood Springs Post-Independent, KKCO News and the Vail Daily.

Community summit kicks off talks on how best to protect Crystal River
By Heather Sackett, April 28, 2023
The Colorado Sun and Aspen Daily News.

Stream restoration bill watered down
By Heather Sackett, May 3, 2023
Vail Daily and The Aspen Times.

Water saved through upper-basin program unlikely to move needle in Powell
By Heather Sackett, May 12, 2023
The Aspen Times, the Glenwood Springs Post-Independent, the Summit Daily, Steamboat Pilot & Today, the Vail Daily, the Craig Press and the Grand Junction Sentinel.

Groups working toward Outstanding Waters designations
By Heather Sackett, June 7, 2023
The Aspen Times, the Aspen Daily News, the Colorado Sun, the Glenwood Springs Post-Independent, the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel and KUNC.

Water managers tend to focus on climate adaptation, shy away from policy action
By Heather Sackett, June 13, 2023
The Aspen Times, the Vail Daily and the  Steamboat Pilot & Today.

Roaring Fork flows to spike early next week as Twin Lakes diversion pauses
By Heather Sackett, June 15, 2023
The Aspen Times

Colorado River endangered fish recovery sees some success
By Heather Sackett, June 23, 2023
Vail Daily, KUNC, Glenwood Springs Post-Independent, The Aspen Times, the Grand Junction Sentinel and Sky-Hi News.

Federal, state officials promise more tribal inclusion in Colorado River negotiations
By Heather Sackett, July 1, 2023
Steamboat Pilot & Today, the Craig Press, the Glenwood Springs Post-Independent, the Vail Daily and the The Aspen Times.

Studies say Janeway site promising for Crystal River backup water supply
By Heather Sackett, July 21, 2023
The Aspen Times

Pitkin County aims to bring back beavers
By Heather Sackett, August 3, 2023
The Aspen Times,  Steamboat Pilot & Today and the Aspen Daily News.

Gunnison ranch to loan water for the environment
By Heather Sackett, August 18, 2023
The Aspen Times, the Grand Junction Sentinel and the Gunnison Country Times.

Colorado River commission reviews lessons learned from water conservation program
By Heather Sackett, August 30, 2023
The Aspen Times, the Vail Daily, the Grand Junction Sentinel, the Glenwood Springs Post-Independent and KUNC.

Crews working to repair Busk-Ivanhoe transmountain diversion
By Heather Sackett, September 6, 2023
The Aspen Times.

Confusion persists about Wolf Creek reservoir in Rio Blanco County
By Heather Sackett, September 15, 2023
The Aspen Times and the Vail Daily.

Water managers vote to continue conservation program, with tweaks, in 2024
By Heather Sackett, September 21, 2023
The Aspen Times and the Vail Daily.

East Mesa Ditch seeking funding for repairs
By Heather Sackett, September 30, 2023
The Aspen Times and the Grand Junction Sentinel.

Improving resilience to drought
Heather Sackett, October 6, 2023
Glenwood Springs Post-Independent, The Aspen Times, and the Vail Daily.

New head of state water board talks conservation programs with River District
By Heather Sackett, October 22, 2023
The Aspen Times, the Craig Daily Press, the Glenwood Springs Post-Independent, the Vail Daily and the Steamboat Pilot & Today.

Weighing options for protecting the Crystal
By Heather Sackett, October 28, 2023
Aspen Daily News.

State lawmakers move to ban nonfunctional turf planting
By Heather Sackett, November 3, 2023
The Aspen Times and the Vail Daily, the Steamboat Pilot & Today, the Craig Daily Press and the Grand Junction Sentinel.

EPA report says Lincoln Creek contamination is naturally occurring
By Heather Sackett, November 8, 2023
Glenwood Springs Post-Independent and The Aspen Times.

Colorado squeezing water from urban landscapes
By Allen Best, November 9, 2023
Colorado Newsline, The Aspen Times, the Vail Daily, the Greeley Tribune, SkyHi News and Steamboat Springs Pilot & Today.

At Colorado River’s headwaters, questions about whether there’s enough water for lawns
By Allen Best, November 15, 2023
Colorado Newsline, The Aspen Times, Vail Daily, the Glenwood Springs Post-Independent, the Greeley Tribune and the Steamboat Springs Pilot & Today.

How bluegrass lawns became the default for homeowners associations
By Allen Best, November 21, 2023
Colorado Newsline, The Aspen Times, Vail Daily, Greeley Tribune.

The outliers in urban residential landscaping: Why these homeowners tore out their turf
By Allen Best, November 30, 2023
Vail Daily, The Aspen Times, Colorado Newsline, Greeley Tribune.

Colorado lawmakers expected to consider state permit program protecting wetlands
By Heather Sackett, December 1, 2023
KUNC and The Aspen Times.

Study finds that livestock growers need more compensation for water conservation
By Heather Sackett, December 8, 2023
The Aspen Times, the Grand Junction Sentinel and KUNC.

Lower basin water managers say it’s time to fix their supply/demand problem
By Heather Sackett, December 15, 2023
The Aspen Times, the Grand Junction Sentinel, KUNC and the Colorado Springs Gazette.

River District inks historic water rights deal for Western Slope
By Heather Sackett, December 19, 2023
Summit Daily, the Vail Daily, the Craig Press, the Steamboat Pilot & Today and The Aspen Times.

Drought task force can’t agree on conservation program recommendations
By Heather Sackett, December 21, 2023
Steamboat Springs Pilot & Today, Vail Daily, the Greeley Tribune, The Aspen Times, Summit Daily and Grand Junction Sentinel.

Colorado River crisis looms over state’s landscape decisions
By Allen Best, December 29, 2023
Colorado Newsline, The Aspen Times, Glenwood Springs Post-Independent, and Greeley Tribune.

2023 water meetings attended

ENVIRONMENT DESK

Our Connie Harvey Environment Desk published 17 stories in 2023, up from seven in 2022 as we benefited from Lassalle’s data-based reporting and research, more freelance contributions and a widening scope of stories concerning environmental values, land use and growth. 

Six of our environment desk reporting projects were from Lassalle, AJ’s data specialist, who produced work of exceptional depth and impact. Among her highlights was a piece analyzing how new short-term rental regulations in Aspen and Pitkin County had limited the supply and growth of a voracious market. Via public records requests, Lassalle built a database of more than 900 STRs across both jurisdictions, and our story included an interactive map showing the location of each of them, along with information on the owner, property manager and permit classification. That map received an award for best information graphic from the Society of Professional Journalists in 2024. For another story, Lassalle analyzed five years worth of residential building permit data to conclude two out of three homes built in Pitkin County since 2018 were subject to the requirements of the Renewable Energy Mitigation Program due to their energy-sucking exterior amenities. In addition, she authored two stories concerning the existing conditions and future prospects of the Aspen-Pitkin County Airport, including an investigation into why a consultant’s forecast from 10 years ago — that the only commercial airliner serving the Aspen market would be phased out by 2025 — overstated the imminence of that plane’s retirement.

We published two stories from Amy Hadden Marsh, a longtime local journalist, tracking the Uinta Basin Railway plans that would impact Glenwood Canyon, following up two stories on the UBR she wrote for AJ in 2022. Throughout the ongoing series, Marsh has provided authoritative coverage on the plans that would create a significant new link in the global oil supply chain running through the Colorado high country, and how those plans have pitted political forces in Colorado against those in Utah.  Marsh also contributed two stories examining wolf reintroduction, delving into the tensions hanging over coexistence.

We launched an initiative where Aspen Daily News helped fund freelance reporting for Aspen Journalism by Aspen Daily News managing editor Rick Carroll, whose three environment stories for AJ in 2023 covered land use, including why the city of Aspen was going after developer Mark Hunt for “demolition by neglect” of the historic Boomerang Lodge. Carbondale-based freelancer Sarah Tory contributed a story about an Aspen Skiing Co.-funded project that for 10 years converted captured coal-mine methane into electricity; however, due to declining concentrations of methane emitted by the now-shuttered coal mine, the project ceased generating power for the grid in 2022. Tory’s story for AJ was the first to report on this change to the project.

Aspen Journalism also renewed our work with Elizabeth Stewert-Severy, who previously served as editor and reporter for the environment desk from 2019-20. Her three freelance stories for the environment desk in 2023 covered the Pandora’s ski area expansion on Aspen Mountain, how public health officials are turning their focus to the impacts of climate change, and challenges balancing elk herd health with the demand for recreation. 

For a complete list of stories from our environment desk, see below. 

2023 Environment Desk stories

X Games bus ridership rebounds but still lagging pre-COVID years
By Laurine Lassalle, February 15 ,2023

Garfield County commissioners defend Uinta Basin Railway against local opposition
By Amy Hadden Marsh, March 27, 2023

New short-term-rental rules limit supply, restrict future growth
By Laurine Lassalle, April 29, 2023

The outsized impact of REMP residences
By Laurine Lassalle, May 27, 2023
Aspen Daily News

Soil-moisture data points to moderate levels
By Laurine Lassalle, June 2, 2023
Glenwood Springs Post-Independent, The Aspen Times and Grand Junction Daily Sentinel

Downtown Aspen assets on the line in Souki lender dispute
By Rick Carroll, June 4, 2023
Aspen Daily News and The Aspen Times

Pandora’s expansion proceeding on track with logging, lift construction
By Elizabeth Stewart-Severy, July 27, 2023
The Aspen Times

Air taxis and drop-and-go’s: In the mix that makes up 80% of ASE operations 
By Laurine Lassalle, July 31, 2023
The Aspen Times

As Boomerang property languishes, city investigates
By Rick Carroll, August 31, 2023
Aspen Daily News

SkiCo-funded methane-capture project no longer generates electricity
By Sarah Tory, August 31, 2023

D.C. Circuit Court hits the brakes on Uinta Basin Railway, but oil transport through Colorado is still on the table
By Amy Hadden-Marsh, September 4, 2023
Coyote Gulch

Pitkin County public health turns focus to climate
Elizabeth Stewart-Severy, September 13, 2023

Plan to donate Castle Creek land for school, hospital housing project faces hurdles 
By Rick Carroll, October 14, 2023

Perceptions vary as Colorado prepares for wolf reintroduction  
By Amy Hadden Marsh, October 28, 2023
Vail Daily

Tension between lethal control and coexistence plays out in wolf-reintroduction efforts 
By Amy Hadden Marsh, October 30, 2023

Colorado wildlife officials aim to reduce hunter crowding, sustain elk herds
By Elizabeth Stewart-Severy, December 3, 2023

Imminence of CRJ-700 retirement overstated in initial airport expansion studies
By Laurine Lassalle, December 16, 2023

SOCIAL JUSTICE DESK

With 11 stories including investigative projects looking at the Aspen affordable housing inventory, valley-wide child care capacity gaps and the corporatization of mobile home parks, 2023 was our most productive year to date for the social justice desk, which launched in 2021.

We started the year with a two-story package from Catherine Lutz, a local freelance journalist, and Lassalle breaking down the Aspen-Pitkin County Housing Authority inventory of 1,652 deed-restricted ownership units, revealing an increasingly segmented marketplace and a growing supply of million-dollar homes. Lassalle in March delivered an examination of child care capacity gaps from Aspen to Parachute that was published in English and Spanish by Sol del Valle.

Andrew Travers in March was the first journalist to report on a new nonprofit entity working to launch a valley-wide buy-down program to preserve housing attainability among existing free market units. 

Longtime Glenwood Springs Post Independent reporter and editor John Stroud spent months surveying the 55 home parks in the greater Roaring Fork region to examine growing concerns about corporate takeover and rising unaffordability. Elizabeth Stewart-Severy reported on officials’ attempts to boost childhood vaccination rates that fell during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Lassalle added data-driven socioeconomic stories — about the historic rise in Pitkin County property values between 2020 and 2022, and about a report showing that two-thirds occupied homes in the city of Aspen are deed restricted. 

Our social justice desk ended the year by kicking off the “In Search of Community” series from longtime local journalist Paul Andersen. The series, which sought to reexamine the forces shaping community along the Aspen-to-Parachute corridor, began with a story in December highlighting a growing effort to promote regionalism; and a second piece before the end of the year sharing the community-centering force of holiday potlucks. The 10-part series concluded in June 2024.

For a complete list of stories from our social justice desk, see below.

2023 Social Justice Desk stories

Inventory shows who lives in APCHA deed-restricted ownership housing
By Laurine Lassalle and Catherine Lutz, January 6, 2023

APCHA’s RO category supports a growing number of million-dollar homes 
By Laurine Lassalle and Catherine Lutz, January 7, 2023

Report sheds light on child care capacity gap across the Aspen-to-Parachute region
By Laurine Lassalle, March 5, 2023
Post-Independent, The Aspen Times, and Sol del Valle, published in Spanish.

Nonprofit coalition aims to buy down homes to create affordable housing
By Andrew Travers, March 13, 2023
Aspen Daily News and Eagle County Housing Authority

Bill aims to address water quality at mobile home parks
By Heather Sackett, April 7, 2023
The Aspen Times, the Vail Daily, the Summit Daily, the Glenwood Springs Post-Independent, Sentinel Colorado, KAJX and KUNC.

Organizing mobile-home owners as investors gobble up parks 
By John Stroud, September 24, 2023

PitCo aims to increase childhood vaccination as Colorado immunization rates drop
By Elizabeth Stewart-Severy, October 8, 2023

With 99% of cases finalized, Pitkin County property values increase 72% with reappraisal 
By Laurine Lassalle, October 13, 2023

More than two-thirds of Aspen’s occupied homes are deed-restricted
By Laurine Lassalle, December 14, 2023

Regionalism evolves as a uniting force from Aspen to Parachute
By Paul Andersen, December 23, 2023
Glenwood Springs Post Independent.

Holiday potlucks and food pantries nourish scents of community
By Paul Andersen, December 29, 2023

DATA DESK

Lassalle applied her data-driven approach to 11 investigative stories written under the environment and social justice desks. She continued to produce a weekly data dashboard featuring interactive data visualizations keeping track of snowpack, streamflow, temperatures, hotel occupancy, Lake Powell water storage volumes and other metrics of interest. 

We discontinued Tracking the Curve, our project tracking the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in Pitkin, Eagle and Garfield counties, in March of 2023, after more than 500 posts. 

The project began with five updates per week in 2020, a frequency that continued through spring of 2022, at which point we cut publication frequency down to two days per week. In November 2022, we reduced the frequency to one post per week. We put an end to the updates because the data had become less reliable due to the rise of at-home testing, resulting in fewer cases and positive tests being reported to the state and local public health departments. In addition to the issue with data quality, the number of weekly new cases reported in each of the three counties stabilized.

HISTORY DESK

Tim Cooney, who has been writing for Aspen Journalism’s history desk since 2015, took on perhaps his weightiest assignment yet, examining how white settlers on the Western Slope clashed with and ultimately removed violently the indigenous Ute tribes who had called the land home for centuries. The detailed historical record, unraveled in a three-part, 13,000-word series that ran on three consecutive Sundays illustrated with historic photos, laid out how treaties were re-written to shrink native territory, setting the scene for the work of federal Indian agent Nathan Meeker to convince the Utes to give up their nomadic lifestyle. The full story of what had been dubbed the “Meeker Massacre,” but which is more accurately portrayed as a battle in a long war against the natives, is taken up in parts one and two. Part three is about what happened after the Meeker events — effectively a eight-year campaign of ethnic cleansing on the Western Slope, concluding in an 1887 military operation to push remaining Utes onto Utah reservations, in which Aspen and the newly established settlements in the greater Roaring Fork region played a major role. 

This history from 140 years ago is as much of an origin story for this community as anything related to silver mining or post-war recreational skiing and Cooney’s work is an important contribution to our collective knowledge. 

“It’s in-depth journalism about big issues! Thank you, Tim Cooney, for your excellent and disturbing series, ‘The Plight of the Ute.’” 

“I’ve supported AJ in the past because of their excellent coverage on water issues. Now I re-up my support because of the excellent writing on the Ute as well. I’ve lived in Colorado nearly 50 years and this work is badly needed.”

At Milk Creek, Northern Utes defend their territory
Tim Cooney, June 24, 2023
Aspen Daily News.

Tensions erupt in violent retribution at Meeker’s Indian agency
By Tim Cooney, July 1, 2023
 Aspen Daily News

Ute removal policy comes to a head in the 1887 ‘Colorow War’
By Tim Cooney, July 8, 2023
Aspen Daily News

EVENTS

Aspen Journalism presented three public events in 2023, which represented a deepening of the organization’s commitment to engaging our audience live and in person. 

In January, we hosted immersive journalist Ted Conover, who sat down for an interview with Wackerle at the Isaacson Pavilion at Aspen Meadows to discuss his most recent book, “Cheap Land Colorado,” and how it relates to work he did 30 years ago documenting his two years spent living in Aspen.  

In March, Aspen Journalism partnered with Paul Andersen to present a convening of local leaders to discuss community issues followed by a free screening of the film High Country, about a fight for the soul of Crested Butte, concluding with a panel discussion with the film’s director Conor Hagen, who was joined on stage by Aspen Mayor John Bennett, Habitat for Humanity President Gail Schwartz and Andersen. 

In December, we packed the tasting room at Carbondale’s Marble Distilling Co. for our event asking the question, “is the dream still livable,” while exploring the need to maintain housing and community in the Roaring Fork Valley.    

The year’s three events followed up our summer 2022 public event at the Hotel Jerome where Wackerle co-moderated a discussion with New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Tom Friedman in partnership with the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies, followed by a private reception for AJ supporters with Friedman.

Website, Newsletter and Social Media 

The above-mentioned events are part or larger strategy to grow and diversify our audience. Other pillars of this approach include increasing our reach via aspenjournalism.org, our email newsletter and social media; and also reaching more readers through both broadening and deepening collaborative relationships with news organizations from outside the greater Roaring Fork region and Colorado high country. 

We publish our work first and foremost on our website, http://aspenjournalism.org, where the reader experience is enhanced by our lack of advertisements or paywalls. 58,000 users visited aspenjournalism.org and spent an average of 1 minute and 43 seconds per page. 

Our weekly newsletter, The Roundup, which we enhanced in 2021 to include insights from our newsroom about the stories published, and was awarded first place recognition for Best Newsletter by Colorado Press Association in 2022, continued to be a critical channel for sharing our stories and communicating with our audience. We sent 27 editions in 2023, mostly written by Wackerle, but occasionally guest authored by reporters to give more insight into their stories. Heather Sackett produced five editions of The Runoff, out water-focused newsletter. Aspen Journalism had 790 newsletter subscribers at the end of 2023, a 7% increase, with an open rate above 50%. 

Aspen Journalism was more active on social media in 2023 on X, Facebook, and Instagram. Traffic to aspenjournalism.org from social media brought in 10,957 users for 12,173 sessions, spending an average of 87 seconds on the website per user. Social media traffic accounted for 18.7% of Aspen Journalism’s total user traffic in 2023 and 16% of overall website sessions. 

Facebook was the platform that showed the most growth, reach, and website traffic for Aspen Journalism. A new approach included sponsoring posts to geographic demographics that reflected the coverage areas of the stories, offering a much wider reach than the immediate Aspen area. Sponsored posts made 116,647 impressions with 9,702 post engagements, on a budget of $1,275. We posted a total of 108 times, a 44% increase from 2022, and new followers increased by 196% from the previous year for a total of 760 Facebook page likes and 811 Facebook followers. Organic reach was 5,315 people.

Significant changes were made in 2023 to the X platform, formerly known as Twitter, which resulted in a reduced distribution of posts that include links, as well as removing the preview on the platform which showed a page title and website. To adjust to this, Aspen Journalism’s captions changed to include the story title and brief summary, and we began posting threads (multiple posts linked together) to include highlights from our stories, which improved distribution and engagement levels. Our page and posts made 32,759 impressions, had 1,467 followers, and we posted and reposted a total of 135 times.

Instagram is Aspen Journalism’s most local-oriented platform with top cities of engaged users in Aspen, Carbondale, Basalt, Glenwood Springs, and Snowmass Village. The Aspen Journalism account grew its followers by 45% to 645, reached 16,456 people, made 47,335 impressions, published 89 posts, a 41.3% increase, and 38 stories (a 31% increase). There were 85 click throughs to the website to read a story, and 526 profile views. The style and strategy of the posts were redesigned in November to include carousel-style images that include visual and verbal summaries of Aspen Journalism stories. We spent a total of $92 to sponsor four posts, but found much larger engagement and click-through rate to the website on Facebook. 

Media reach 

Aspen Journalism remains committed to collaboration, and in 2023 we shared our work with more news organizations (27), with more story pickups (207), more than ever before. We continued our longstanding relationship with The Aspen Times and its chain of newspapers held in common ownership by Ogden Newspapers, which purchased the group in 2022 from Swift Communications. These papers — besides the Times, they include the Glenwood Springs Post Independent, Craig Press, Steamboat Pilot & Today, Vail Daily, Summit Daily News and Sky-Hi News — reach a majority of the residents in the rural-resort region clustered along the Interstate 70 corridor, and we directly share all of our water desk coverage with the editors of these papers. The Aspen Times ran 43 of our stories, for the most total pickups of any other news organization, followed by Vail Daily at 29 and the Glenwood Springs Post Independent at 22.

We continued sharing our coverage — in particular water stories — with the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, which serves the most populated area on the Western Slope and ran 17 of our articles in 2023.

We deepened our collaboration with Aspen Daily News, which ran 15 Aspen Journalism stories from our environment and social justice desks. 

We shared 24 of our stories, particularly those of broader statewide interest, on the AP Storyshare platform, where they are made available to member news organizations across Colorado and beyond. This has resulted in our work being published by many organizations outside our primary service area including the Colorado Springs Gazette, Ouray County Plain Dealer, Sentinel Colorado and KUNC Northern Colorado.  

We also benefited from our collaboration with Allen Best on the five-part urban turf series. Best has long developed and maintained his own news-organization contact list through his Big Pivots newsletter, which is distributed to editors statewide. This led to installments in the urban turf series running in outlets previously not reached by Aspen Journalism including the Greeley Tribune, Colorado Newsline, Ark Valley Voice and Fort Morgan Times. This has led to a continuing collaborative relationship with the Greeley Tribune on water coverage. 

In total, 27 media outlets published our work in 2023. They were:

PRINT

Ark Valley Voice (4)
Aspen Daily News (15)
Aspen Public Radio (1)
Aspen Times (43)
Colorado Newsline (5)
Colorado Springs Gazette (1)
Colorado Sun (2)
Craig Daily Press (7)
Fort Morgan Times (3)
Glenwood Springs Post Independent (22)
Grand Junction Sentinel (17)
Greeley Tribune (6)
Gunnison Country Times (1)
Longmont Leader  (1)
Ouray News (1)
Pagosa Springs Sun (1)
Sentinel Colorado (2)
Ski-Hi News (4)
Sol del Valle (4)
Steamboat Pilot & Today  (12)
Summit Daily (8)
Vail Daily (29)
Yellow Scene Magazine (3)

BROADCAST

Aspen Public Radio (3)
KUNC Northern Colorado (10)
NBC 11 News/KKCO Grand Junction (1)
Rocky Mountain PBS (1)

We are also regularly featured in the newsletters Coyote Gulch and The News Drop from the Colorado River District.

In addition, two public-radio programs featured our journalists in 2023.

Heather Sackett appeared on the KDNK Carbondale/Sopris Sun program Everything Under the Sun in July, to discuss her reporting on the Crystal River. 

Eleanor Bennett of Aspen Public Radio interviewed John Stroud in December about his piece looking at the increasing corporate takeover of local mobile home parks. 

Revenue and expenses

2023 was a successful year financially, with $493,966 raised and $460,526 spent. Both figures represent records for the organization, with our revenue up 16% from 2022. The year’s 259 individual donors plus eight foundation grants also represent our broadest fundraising base to date. 

Click here to interact with the revenue and expenses chart above.

One of the main pillars of our fundraising is an annual grant from the Carbondale-based Catena Foundation, which focuses on environmental and social justice issues and is endowed by Sam Walton, grandson of Wal-Mart founders Sam and Helen Walton. Catena underwrites Aspen Journalism’s water reporting efforts with grant funding approved in three-year cycles. 2023 was the second year of a three-year cycle, and we received a contribution from the foundation in January of $143,000. Our previous three-year grant from Catena generated $100,000 per year. This funding provides for Water Desk Editor Heather Sackett’s salary and benefits and a portion of the salaries and benefits of Editor and Executive Director Curtis Wackerle and Data Editor Laurine Lassalle. It also covers travel and newsgathering expenses for the water desk, as well as a portion of the organization’s overhead.

Our end-of-year campaign, with support from NewsMatch, a program of the Fund for Nonprofit News at The Miami Foundation, and the Colorado Media Project, is also a major pillar of our fundraising strategy. NewsMatch and the CMP provide funds to match donations of up to $1,000, helping us rally community support, which we solicit via a direct mail and email push highlighting the benefit Aspen Journalism provides. Besides raising the lion’s share of our community contributions of less than $1,000 during this cycle, most of our philanthropic-level donors, who give $1,000 or more, also give at the end of the year. Between November and December in 2023, we raised $98,211.39 in 196 donations from 171 individuals. This enabled us to unlock $33,000 from NewsMatch and $5,071 from the Colorado Media Project — revenue that came in spring of 2024, based on our performance during the 2023 end-of-year campaign.

Aspen Journalism also received grants from the city of Aspen ($21,500) and Pitkin County ($20,000) in 2023. These are competitive grant programs awarded annually, with applications reviewed by a committee of community members.

We also received significant funding from the New-Land Foundation ($35,000) in support of our environment reporting; from the Aspen Business Center Foundation ($32,000), run by the local McBride family, in support of our in-depth reporting with a portion specifically to fund Paul Andersen’s reporting on regionalism and community; and from Robert Pew and Susan Taylor of Woody Creek ($20,000) in support of local, in depth and investigative journalism. 

We also received $6,000 in revenue from Aspen Daily News, as part of a pilot project to fund investigative journalism from Rick Carroll, a longtime local reporter and editor who was hired by Aspen Daily News in 2023 following a 16-year run at The Aspen Times. Aspen Journalism collaborated with Carroll as part of his new role at the Daily News to produce reporting edited and published by Aspen Journalism, which was funded by Aspen Daily News.  

More information on other major donors, and additional details, are listed below. 

We believe our donors support us because they value facts and the truth and are hoping for a future that includes a vigorous free press and a vital democracy. So we honor them by working hard to turn their well-founded hope into well-grounded truth, because well-informed citizens make better decisions. Thank you to all who make this possible.

2023 FOUNDATION GRANTS

Foundation grants (excluding contributions that are essentially individual or family donations), including any portion of a multi-year grant specifically allocated as 2023 revenue was $286,718.71 (58%).

2023 PHILANTHROPIC DONORS

Individual donors who sustain Aspen Journalism with gifts of $1,000 or more within 2023. 

2023 COMMUNITY SUSTAINERS

Individuals who support Aspen Journalism with a total annual gift up to $999.
$28,264.73 was donated by community sustainers in 2023.