People frequently ask me about the writing I do on the side at my substack, Colorado Accountability Project. One way or another they want to get involved and contribute. They’re often frustrated with how their local media operates and want to start their own local political news operation. They have extra time and want to put it to use looking into where our tax money goes, hold their elected officials accountable, etc.
I’m glad to answer questions like these. Part of the reason I started, and devote so much time to my substack, as well as my Facebook page, is to encourage other people to get involved. But as I’ve watched people flash up and just as quickly flash out, I think that I need to start including a speech similar to the one that the coach in the movie “Rudy” gives to a group of hopeful walk-on football players: “so if any of you has any fantasies of running out of that stadium tunnel with your gold helmet shining in the sun, you best leave them right here.”
Doing the work
The plain unvarnished truth is that being a citizen journalist and setting up an operation like mine is work, plenty of thankless work.
I’ll skip a lot of detail and simply say that I started my writing during COVID as a way to try and reach regular people who I figured could be convinced to get involved, because my efforts to advocate to the legislature weren’t going anywhere. As time has gone by, I’ve added to that original conception, but the main point I want to make here is the “during COVID” part.
That means it’s been about five and a half years of consistent effort, working mostly without anything in the way of notice or praise. It’s really only now that I have anything like a consistent readership, and frankly that depends on the day of the week and weather forecast.
Anyone who wants to do what I’ve done, what Brandon Wark has done at Free State Colorado, what Karen Morgan has done with the Lakewood Observer, or what the folks at High Country Advocate have done will need to reckon with this reality. Renown may be in the cards for you, but it’s far more likely that you will develop a decent-sized readership and be known mainly among politicos and locals from the community you cover.
The case for citizen journalism
This doesn’t mean that starting your own site will have no value. You are needed, and your contribution can make a tangible difference. If you feel moved to get involved by writing or doing videos/audio, if you feel you have a talent for either, your work will add to the health of your local community and the state.
It will be a part of what swings the pendulum back to sanity. It will bring voices to the public square that often don’t get an airing. If you need evidence of that last one, I urge you to critically look at what you see in the mainstream media outlets, especially those in the Front Range and even the ones whose politics you align with.
Some news outfits are better than others, but none have time or interest in finding and sharing stories that all of us would be better off hearing. That’s where you come in. You fill those gaps.
The good news is that if you feel moved to do something, you do not have to jump in with both feet. Remember that you see me now five and half years on from where I started. I added as I went, as I got better at writing, as my interests pointed me to learn about things like making open records requests. Your contribution still has value whether you give a lot or a little.
Getting started
I’d recommend you start small. Give a little bit of your time. Maybe that looks like reading the public notices or going to the city council meeting and sharing the important information via social media with others in your community.
Maybe it looks like using your experience and expertise in something controlled by one of the copious boards and commissions running Colorado to keep us all in the loop of what they’re doing and why it matters. For example, if you used to be in the solid waste business and hear about the Air Quality Control Commission making rules for methane emissions from landfills, you let us all know. Share that information with those who may not have the knowledge, connections, or time to understand what’s going on until they see their trash hauling bills go up.
There are plenty of other ways to contribute, I won’t cover them all, but I hope the point is clear. You don’t need a home studio or a custom website to get started. You may not have noticed this, but everything I do is free. The Facebook page I started is free. Substack is free (that’s why I chose it to expand beyond Facebook). You can do this with little more than your time, a computer and an Internet connection.
You also don’t need to invest hours every week. A sweep of the public notices and copying them up to social media takes me no more than about 20 minutes once a week. If you start and find that you have capacity and desire to expand, do so. But don’t think that you can’t start because you don’t have money and can’t imagine hours per week right now.
As I tell my students in a bid to convince them not to skip assignments, any positive number is bigger than zero, and a zero will kill your grade. Sitting by and doing nothing because you figure it won’t matter, or that it won’t help, is the same kind of faulty reasoning on the part of my students. And it leads to the same outcome. It leads to the Colorado you wake up in every day.
You may never end up running out of the tunnel with your gold helmet shining in the sun, but you can have a tangible impact on your fellow Coloradans, a much more enduring and valuable thing.
Cory Gaines teaches college physics and is a regular contributor to Complete Colorado. He lives in Sterling on Colorado’s Eastern Plains. He also writes at the Colorado Accountability Project substack.
