We are going to see a lot more independent journalists filling the gaps of failing community newspapers.

I first met Corey Hutchins when we wound up in the same Substack writers’ group that met weekly for a month to learn new ways to better our respective substack outlets.

Corey is the interim director of Colorado College’s Journalism Institute, the Colorado-based contributor for Columbia Journalism Review’s United States Project, a member of The Washington Post’s Talent Network, and a journalist for multiple news outlets. His background is in alternative weeklies, long-form accountability journalism projects, political reporting, and writing about local media. The Colorado Media Project, where he writes case studies, is underwriting his Substack newsletter ‘Inside the News’ column appears at COLab, both of which he writes about.

We had reached out to each other at about the same time, both of us wanting to interview the other.

So we decided to interview each other about the state of local journalism here in Colorado and the nation and how it may survive its current state and evolve into something new through the efforts of independent creators.