Aspen Journalism was recently honored by the Society of Professional Journalists with three awards in the Top of the Rockies Excellence in Journalism competition for long-form, in depth and data driven reporting projects completed in 2023.
Top of the Rockies is a regional, multi-platform contest for reporters and news organizations in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming overseen by the Colorado Professional Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. More than 80 news outlets and 30 freelancers submitted over 1,900 entries earlier this year for work published in 2023, and the contest was judged by members of the Los Angeles Press Club. The awards were announced in May at an event held at the Denver Press Club.
“The competition grows each year, and with that, we honor outstanding journalism throughout the four-state region,” said contest coordinator Deb Hurley Brobst. “It’s an honor to recognize the hard work of these journalists.”
Aspen Journalism’s awards included an honor for extended coverage, for a five-part series about the transition away from turf grass necessitated climate change and population growth. The stories, based on months of reporting criss-crossing the state and authored by Allen Best, a long-time Colorado journalist and editor of the nonprofit climate and environment news service Big Pivots, were produced as an editorial collaboration and co-published by Aspen Journalism.
We were also honored in the information graphic category, for AJ Data Editor Laurine Lassalle’s interactive map showing all properties in Aspen and Pitkin County with an active short-term rental permit as of spring 2023, part of a package tracking the impact of new city and county STR regulations; and for business enterprise reporting, for Carbondale-based journalist Sarah Tory’s coverage of why an Aspen Skiing Co.-funded project that for a decade converted methane leaking from a North Fork Valley coal mine into electricity is now a flaring operation that does not generate power.
Top of the Rockies honors are awarded across four divisions based on newsroom-staff size. As we did in the awards for 2022 work, which netted six recognitions, Aspen Journalism played up a level. We competed in the medium newsrooms division for organizations with five to nine full-time-equivalent editorial staff positions, despite our editorial capacity of roughly 3.5 FTE in 2023. The division included at least 17 other news organizations, including WyoFile, the Santa Fe Reporter, Colorado Politics, Aspen Public Radio, Wyoming Public Radio and public radio newsrooms KRCC Colorado Springs and KUNM in Albuquerque.
The full list of winners can be accessed here.
Aspen Journalism, a nonprofit organization founded in 2011 with a mission to provide in-depth and investigative journalism for those with a stake in Aspen and the Roaring Fork Valley region, is supported by local, state and national donors and foundations. Since 2019, AJ has been recognized with 46 awards, including 29 from the Society for Professional Journalists and 17 from Colorado Press Association, which will announce its awards for 2023 work later this year.
For more on the Aspen Journalism stories honored by the SPJ, read on below.
Sarah Tory, 2nd place, business enterprise reporting
Aspen Journalism uncovered a significant bit of news with our submission in the Business Enterprise Reporting category. A project funded by our community’s most high-profile business — the Aspen Skiing Co. — that captured methane leaking from a coal mine in the North Fork Valley and converting it into electricity had long been touted as a poster child for a corporate entity driving real-world climate solutions. However, in the course of her work for AJ going back to 2021 covering efforts to mitigate methane leakage from shuttered coal mines in Coal Basin near Redstone, freelance reporter Sarah Tory learned that Somerset project was no longer functioning as intended a decade after it was implemented. The story she wrote, published in August of 2023 following months of research, carefully explained the engineering and science behind the project and why it no longer functions as it did when it launched. It also broke down the environmental and business strategy underlying the project, and how the entities involved plan to move forward. The story set the record straight as even after the project stopped generating electricity in 2022, numerous media stories continued to reference the project as if nothing had changed.
Allen Best, 2nd place, extended coverage
WATER AND URBAN LANDSCAPE SERIES
Colorado River crisis looms over state’s landscape decisions
The outliers in urban residential landscaping: Why these homeowners tore out their turf
How bluegrass lawns became the default for homeowners associations
At Colorado River’s headwaters, questions about whether there’s enough water for lawns
Colorado squeezing water from urban landscapes
Aspen Journalism collaborated with Colorado-based reporter Allen Best, who publishes the energy and climate newsletter Big Pivots, on a five-part series published in November and December 2023 examining the shift underway in how water is used in urban landscapes. This has become a pressing topic in Colorado where most cities have limited a water supply, meaning that population growth is only possible with increased water efficiency. In a state that gets less than half the natural precipitation required to keep Kentucly bluegrass and other similar imported species green, this has given rise to a movement eliminate as much of this turf as possible, in favor of native grasses and other plant species that require less water. Best dove deep into this topic, embarking on a statewide reporting journey that looked at shifting patterns in water and urban landscapes from every angle — from the individual homeowner to state and local policy makers. The five stories that resulted are perhaps the most thorough look at water and urban turf produced by any newsroom and are a significant achievement in reporting on a pattern shift affecting every community in the state. Subsequent to the publication of the series, Colorado lawmakers passed a bill banning the planting of new ornamental turf grass in many settings.
Laurine Lassalle, 2nd place, information graphic
New short-term-rental rules limit supply, restrict future growth
Our April 2023 story unpacking the impact of new short-term rental regulations that came into effect the year before included an infographic that was critical to helping the reader understand this issue that has had such a tremendous impact on our community. While the story itself was excellent in breaking down the new policies, the infographic gave readers an unprecedented window into the STR market in our community. It was no easy task to build, requiring open-records requests to two government entities and a refinement process to make sure we had the data we wanted. The end result shows where every licensed STR is located in the city of Aspen and surrounding Pitkin County, who owns each property, who is the designated contact for the STR and what type of STR license the property holds. By assembling this data, we learned that the majority of STRs have as a designated contact someone likely connected to a professional real estate or property management firm. We also gave the public a powerful tool to help root out potentially unlicensed STRs, while empowering readers to know who to call if there was a problem with an STR in their neighborhood.