Editor’s note: This special edition of The Roundup is being sent to all contacts to share an exciting announcement from Aspen Journalism and Aspen Public Radio. If you haven’t yet, please consider subscribing to our weekly letter from the newsroom bringing you the best of local, nonprofit and investigative reporting.
Multimedia Social Justice Desk staffed by Eleanor Bennett
We are pleased to announce that Aspen Journalism is launching a new reporting initiative this week with Aspen Public Radio, co-funding a multimedia Social Justice Desk that will be staffed by Eleanor Bennett, who for four years until May 2024 was an Aspen Public Radio reporter and the host of Morning Edition at the public radio station.
After spending the summer in an intensive Spanish-language immersion program, Bennett has signed up to produce roughly one story a week and one long-form feature per month for both organizations. In this new role, Bennett is immersing herself in diverse communities from Aspen to Parachute, working to deliver multimedia in-depth and investigative reporting on challenges impacting a just society, including affordable housing, healthcare, employment, education, transportation and legal access.
We are thrilled for this new opportunity to collaborate, drive impact and serve the public. Read more from our joint press release, linked below.
While we take stock of this great news, it has also been a busy week on the editorial calendar, leading off with a two-part series that posted Sunday and Monday from our extraordinary resident history writer Tim Cooney. While his other recent Aspen Journalism work includes summer 2023’s stunning three-part series on the campaign that white settlers in our region led to expel the native Ute Indians, Cooney here turns his pen to the present.
Ever wondered what happens at the Aspen Ideas Festival?
For 20 years, The Aspen Institute’s signature think-in has transformed the Aspen Meadows campus for a peak-summer intellectual feast that is not easily comprehended in its entirety or summarized.
Never one to shy from a challenge, Cooney spent nine full days this summer attending the festival and its prequel companion event Aspen Ideas Health back in June, committed to bringing you as full an accounting of what transpired as possible. The result is a significant undertaking that presents in rich detail the experience of being at the festival that is both deeply ingrained in Aspen’s community consciousness but also set apart. Tim’s retelling covers everything from the darkest corners of social media to the promise and peril of artificial intelligence; from Bill Maher’s mocking to Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s prescription for mindfulness; from Colorado’s experiment in wolf reintroduction to Gen. David Petraeus’ sizing up of the wars in Gaza and Ukraine.
Also in this edition of The Roundup, Water Desk Editor Heather Sackett followed one of the key tenets of good reporting by getting boots on the ground in the places you write about, when she hiked up Pearl Pass Road in order to see where the city of Aspen and the National Resources Conservation Service had installed a new SNOTEL (that’s snow telemetry) station. The site, dubbed the Castle Peak station, was identified to close a gap in the network around the watershed that captures data points including Schofield Pass, Independence Pass and up the Fryingpan. Generating real-time, publicly available data on snowpack depth and water content, air temperature, wind, solar radiation, humidity, precipitation and soil moisture from the headwaters of the Castle Creek basin that serves as the city of Aspen’s municipal water source will help local utilities officials with forecasting and planning. With snowmelt accounting for around 80% of water consumed in the western U.S., the new data station will also add to the picture scientists use to understand the impacts of climate change.
Thank you, as always, for reading Aspen Journalism and supporting nonprofit, in depth and investigative local news.
– Curtis Wackerle
Editor and Executive Director
Aspen Journalism
Multimedia Social Justice Desk staffed by Eleanor Bennett in collaboration with Aspen Public Radio
Aspen Journalism and Aspen Public Radio are dedicated to this collaboration, working to deliver multimedia in-depth and investigative reporting that empowers community.
By Aspen Journalism Staff
Masterminds mull in the mountains
Maher mocks, Silicon bros boast, Petraeus plays political football
By Tim Cooney | September 30, 2024
Not in chronological order, and without necessarily chasing the headliners, the following looks at some interesting highlights of Ideas Fest with continuing relevance — particularly space exploration, social media, and AI.
Embedded with the eggheads
Privileged parley, wellness worms, bamboo tower, gene scissors, AI aspirations
By Tim Cooney | September 28, 2024
When viewed from outside today’s privileged event, with venture capitalists and CEOs populating the multi-faceted panels, skepticism can arise; yet, few other conference locales can match such a disarming Shangri-La for crosspollination.
New SNOTEL to help Aspen’s water planning
Castle Peak site collects weather, snowpack data
By Heather Sackett | September 26, 2024
Perhaps most importantly, SNOTEL data helps scientists understand climate change impacts to water supply and predict how much water will be available come spring.
There are always stories that need a journalist to pursue them. These Aspen Journalism investigative stories are published for you, the community, and our collaborators as a public service, thanks to the generosity of our readers and funders. Will you join them?
