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The O. Zone: Please help shape Colorado election coverage with Voter Voices survey

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May 22, 2024, 10:53 am

For nearly two years now I’ve worked with the Colorado Newsline, an award-winning, non-profit news and opinion website based on Colorado’s Front Range that allows full reposting of its excellent articles on news websites around the state, including the two I own — RealVail.com and RockyMountainPost.com. Newsline is very transparent about its funding sources.

During that time I’ve also been a freelance reporter for Newsline, covering issues from immigration to health insurance to air quality regulations to water quality in mobile home parks to public lands policies, railroad safety, and oil transport.

As a 30-year resident of Colorado’s Western Slope, all of these issues are important to me, and I hope they are to you as well. But I’m not always sure. I can tell by my Google Analytics numbers on the sites I own what articles get the most readership (seemingly anything on trains), but maybe I’m missing critical issues or angles on stories Colorado voters would like to see more of. Perhaps Colorado Newsline could be doing better on that front as well.

Enter a new project Colorado Newsline is participating in with more than 30 other news organizations around the state called Voter Voices 2024. The project includes a short survey I hope as many Colorado voters as possible will take before the June 25 primary election.

Launched last month, Colorado Newsline Editor Quentin Young says his site is committed to provide better election coverage by “demoting the horse race and elevating constituent interests. In other words, we want to focus less on polls, dollars and endorsements and more on families, individuals and every resident who is affected by the outcome of elections.”

My take is policy over politics and personalities. After collecting as many responses from Colorado voters as possible from all the participating news organizations, including my own one-man show in the mountains, COLab and others will create a database to chart election coverage that’s shaped by the voters.

“Equipped with that knowledge, our election stories will be more informed, and we’ll be able to approach politicians and candidates with a much deeper understanding of your interests in the state,” Young writes. “Our questions for politicians will be guided by voters, and we’ll be able to challenge them when their rhetoric doesn’t match the priorities of the people they mean to represent. Voters who agree to speak directly with journalists can serve as sources throughout the election season. We want to prioritize constituents over candidates seeking power.”

When you’re filling out this quick survey, please strongly consider allowing your name to be used and offering yourself as a source to reporters who really want to hear what voters care the most about this critical election season.

At RealVail.com and RockyMountainPost.com, I’ve already started asking some tough questions of candidates in rural races that are seeing less and less coverage during these tough times for small-town news outlets. A survey like this would have been helpful in shaping my questions, which may not align at all with what you care about, but it’s not too late to start asking candidates about an even wider array of issues – shaped in part by your survey responses.

As a freelance writer, I have to chase topics that will get me paid, so a broader, more regional database of the critical issues for voters will be helpful to me on that front. But I’m also often asked to fill the gaps in coverage at our short-staffed local publications and have to say no because I don’t freelance much locally and therefore have no funding to chase local news.

So feel free to reach out to me at RealVail.com and let me know your local policy priorities that you’d like to more coverage of, and, if you have the means, also consider funding RealVail.com and dropping me a note to let me know how you’d like those dollars spent (no promises, but I will strongly consider your views).

Especially if those views are expressed by filling out Colorado Newsline’s Voter Voices 2024 survey. RealVail.com also helps fund, in a very small way, Colorado Newsline and other independent news organization, so please consider donating to Newsline as well.

Thanks very much for your help on the Voter Voices survey. Your voices really do matter this election season.

Editor’s note: The O. Zone is a recurring opinion column by RealVail.com publisher David O. Williams. 

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David O. Williams

Managing Editor at RealVail
David O. Williams is the editor and co-founder of RealVail.com and has had his awarding-winning work (see About Us) published in more than 75 newspapers and magazines around the world, including 5280 Magazine, American Way Magazine (American Airlines), the Anchorage Daily News (Alaska), the Anchorage Daily Press (Alaska), Aspen Daily News, Aspen Journalism, the Aspen Times, Beaver Creek Magazine, the Boulder Daily Camera, the Casper Star Tribune (Wyoming), the Chicago Tribune, Colorado Central Magazine, the Colorado Independent (formerly Colorado Confidential), Colorado Newsline, Colorado Politics (formerly the Colorado Statesman), Colorado Public News, the Colorado Springs Gazette, the Colorado Springs Independent, the Colorado Statesman (now Colorado Politics), the Colorado Times Recorder, the Cortez Journal, the Craig Daily Press, the Curry Coastal Pilot (Oregon), the Daily Trail (Vail), the Del Norte Triplicate (California), the Denver Daily News, the Denver Gazette, the Denver Post, the Durango Herald, the Eagle Valley Enterprise, the Eastside Journal (Bellevue, Washington), ESPN.com, Explore Big Sky (Mont.), the Fort Morgan Times (Colorado), the Glenwood Springs Post-Independent, the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, the Greeley Tribune, the Huffington Post, the King County Journal (Seattle, Washington), the Kingman Daily Miner (Arizona), KUNC.org (northern Colorado), LA Weekly, the Las Vegas Sun, the Leadville Herald-Democrat, the London Daily Mirror, the Moab Times Independent (Utah), the Montgomery Journal (Maryland), the Montrose Daily Press, The New York Times, the Parent’s Handbook, Peaks Magazine (now Epic Life), People Magazine, Powder Magazine, the Pueblo Chieftain, PT Magazine, the Rio Blanco Herald Times (Colorado), Rocky Mountain Golf Magazine, the Rocky Mountain News, RouteFifty.com (formerly Government Executive State and Local), the Salt Lake Tribune, SKI Magazine, Ski Area Management, SKIING Magazine, the Sky-Hi News, the Steamboat Pilot & Today, the Sterling Journal Advocate (Colorado), the Summit Daily News, United Hemispheres (United Airlines), Vail/Beaver Creek Magazine, Vail en Español, Vail Health Magazine, Vail Valley Magazine, the Vail Daily, the Vail Trail, Westword (Denver), Writers on the Range and the Wyoming Tribune Eagle. Williams is also the founder, publisher and editor of RealVail.com and RockyMountainPost.com.