Monthly Meeting - The Denver Media Rebellion: Lessons learned five years later"

This month, Chuck Plunkett will join us for his talk, "Another Look at the Denver Media Rebellion: Lessons learned five years later."

The first week of April marks the 5th anniversary of the "Denver Media Rebellion," or what folks call the action Denver Post Editors took on the paper’s editorial page to protest the destructive practices of hedge fund owners of the Rocky Mountain News. He will discuss what they were trying to accomplish, and review what has come of that effort. Is Colorado better or worse off this handful of years later?

In addition, he will propose what he considers represents a healthy media market and then view the one we have now to see how things stack up, informed by interviews with journalists and media experts.

Biography
Chuck Plunkett, a professional journalist for more than 24 years, is the director of CU News Corps, a capstone program for journalism undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Colorado Boulder. Before joining the university, he served as the editorial page editor for The Denver Post, where he also served previously as politics editor. Plunkett joined The Post as a reporter in 2003, led coverage of the city's hosting of the Democratic National Convention in 2008, and had a front-row seat to the destruction of the once fine Voice of the Rocky Mountain Empire at the hands of its hedge fund owners, Alden Global Capital. After Plunkett made international headlines for leading a team of writers who called out Alden for its business practices, he was forced to resign. Since then, he has been recognized by many in the industry. Before his move to Colorado, Plunkett worked at The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Pittsburgh.

His awards include the National Press Club's John Aubuchon Press Freedom Award; and the Colby College Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award for courage in reporting and writing -- a prize that includes an honorary doctor of laws degree.

Plunket also won the ACLU Colorado Tajiri Award, for media work on behalf of civil liberties, received jointly with former Daily Camera editorial page editor David Krieger; the University of Denver Journalism in the Public Interest Award; and the Colorado Association of Libraries Julie J. Boucher Community Honor Roll Award for Intellectual Freedom.

See Chuck's TED Talk at https://www.ted.com/talks/chuck_plunkett_when_local_news_dies_so_does_democracy

SCHEDULE

We will serve appetizers from 4:00 to 4:30, then start the program. A small donation is suggested for the food, and wine will be served for a $3 donation. The program will include announcements and a Humanist Moment before the presentation begins.

We hope to see you at 4:00 pm, on Sunday, March 26th, at Jefferson Unitarian Church! It is an in-person-only event.

This program is hosted by Jefferson Humanists, a chapter of the American Humanist Association.
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"Since 2004, nearly 1,800 newsrooms have closed. You've heard of food deserts. These are news deserts. They are communities, often entire counties, with little to zero news coverage whatsoever. Making matters worse, many papers have become ghost ships, pretending to sail with a newsroom but really just wrapping ads around filler copy." - Chuck Plunkett

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