Editorial Standards and Policies

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The Colorado Sun is proud to have gained The Trust Project mark, the first global transparency standard that proves a news outlet’s commitment to original reporting, accuracy, inclusion and fairness. Read more.

Our Mission

The Colorado Sun is a journalist-founded, award-winning and nonprofit news outlet based in Denver that strives to cover all of Colorado so that our state — our community — can better understand itself.

In this way, we believe we can contribute to a more vibrant, informed and whole Colorado.

We are committed to fact-based, in-depth and nonpartisan journalism. Our coverage priorities are fluid, reflecting the evolving priorities of Colorado residents. Our areas of special expertise include water and the environment, energy and the economy, state politics, the outdoors, housing, education and health.

We started as a Public Benefit Corporation, meaning we were a for-profit company incorporated with a specific mission, but converted to a worker-controlled nonprofit in September 2023. Our mission continues to be to provide our community with quality, non-partisan journalism — and no paywall. To read our annual reports, please visit coloradosun.com/annual-reports.

Our goal is to produce the best possible journalism. We do that with the help of you, our readers, and community backers.

Every dollar we take in goes directly toward the journalism we produce. Period. That’s our promise to our readers — along with striving to make sure each and every one of our stories are worth your time.We launched on Sept. 10, 2018. We serve all Coloradans, spanning our coverage across the Front Range, Western Slope and Eastern Plains. We have a staff of 28 that is supplemented by eight part-time staffers and contract freelance writers, plus a large number of occasional freelance writers and photographers who help assure our coverage is, indeed, statewide.

Who We Are

Senior Management Team

Larry Ryckman, Editor & President | larry@coloradosun.com

Dana Coffield, Senior Editor & Executive Committee Member | dana@coloradosun.com

Jennifer Brown, Government/Human Services Writer & Executive Committee Member | jennifer@coloradosun.com

John Ingold, Health Writer & Executive Committee Member | johningold@coloradosun.com

Sylvia Harmon, Director of Sales | sylvia@coloradosun.com

Lauren Whynott, Director of Membership | lauren@coloradosun.com

Eric Lubbers, Technology & Strategy | eric@coloradosun.com

Jesse Paul, Political Editor and Writer | jesse@coloradosun.com

Lance Benzel, Team Editor | lance@coloradosun.com

David Krause, Team Editor | davidkrause@coloradosun.com

Danika Worthington, Presentation Editor | danika@coloradosun.com

See our full masthead to find the entire staff of The Colorado Sun.

Meet our Board of Directors.

To otherwise get in touch with The Sun, you can reach us by email at newsroom@coloradosun.com or tips@coloradosun.com. For help regarding your account, reach out to support@coloradosun.com. To report an error, contact corrections@coloradosun.com.

You can also contact us via Signal, WhatsApp or voicemail: (720) 263-2338 or (720) CO-32338.

Our mailing address is:

The Colorado Sun
Buell Public Media Center
2101 Arapahoe St.
Denver, CO 80205

Why does a story’s byline say Colorado Sun staff?

This byline is used for articles and guides written collaboratively by The Colorado Sun reporters, editors and producers.

Ownership & Funding

The Sun is committed to transparency in our own ownership structure and funding sources. We cite conflicts of interest on the same page as the relevant work. We do not accept paid editorial content.

We are a worker-governed nonprofit that relies on memberships, grants and advertising. Our major grant funders include The Colorado Trust, Catena Foundation and the Gates Family Foundation. Here is a full list. Catena Foundation supports our water reporting while the Colorado Trust funds equity reporting. Additional revenue is obtained through sponsorships of events. We receive at most 5% of our advertising from government agencies.

As a matter of policy, funders exercise no control over The Colorado Sun’s editorial decisions, and all funders are publicly identified.

Editorial Independence

Our news gathering is independent of commercial or political interests. In order to avoid any conflict or interest or appearance thereof, we do not accept gifts, including paid travel. When we rely on an organization for access to an event, we are transparent about the relationship and note it within the relevant work. The newsroom is insulated from advertisers by a firewall.

An organization or individual who financially supports The Sun will not be entitled to favorable coverage, protected from negative coverage, or allowed to have a say in our news agenda or opinion content.

Original Founding

We launched in September 2018. Civil helped The Colorado Sun get started with financial and technical backing. We no longer are partnered with them. (We also got help from a large number of Kickstarter backers.)

The Sun changed from a Public Benefit Corporation, in which the original founders served as shareholders, to a worker-governed nonprofit in 2023.

Ethics Policy

The Colorado Sun is in the business of truth. We seek it, we record it and we present it to the public so that our state — our community — can better understand itself. In this way, we believe we can contribute to a more vibrant, informed and whole Colorado.

But for this to work, our journalists must tell the truth without any other agenda, and readers must be able to trust that they do. Any lapse in ethics by our journalists, or any reason readers have to doubt our motives, creates a mistrust that undermines our important mission.

As a news organization, we promise readers that our journalists always seek the truth earnestly and with integrity, independence, compassion and accountability. If we ever stray from this promise, readers should call us out and demand that we make amends.

Our journalists will avoid as much as possible conflicts of interest and situations that raise doubts about their integrity. When these conflicts are unavoidable, our journalists must disclose them to their colleagues and to our readers — including in the text of stories, when appropriate. When in doubt, we are transparent.

When we make a mistake, we are humble, admit our error and correct it. While truth may be our business, the trust of our readers is our most valuable asset. We aim every day to work on behalf of the people of Colorado, to earn their trust and to bring their truths to light.

>> Read our full ethics policy

Verification & Fact Checking Standards

This news organization commits to doing its best to publish accurate information across all of its content. We take many steps to ensure accuracy:

We investigate claims with skepticism
We question assumptions
We challenge conventional wisdom
We confirm information with experts
We seek to corroborate what sources tell us by talking with other informed people or consulting documents
We verify content, such as technical terms, stats, etc., against source documents or make clear who is providing the information
We may share relevant components of a story with a primary source or an outside expert to verify them

We guide our journalists to ask the following questions when they double-check information:

How do you know?
How can you be sure?
Where is the evidence?
Who is the source, and how does the source know?
What is the supporting documentation?

We stand by the information we present as accurate, and if it’s not, we will change it as quickly as possible and be transparent with our readers about the magnitude of the error. We welcome feedback from our readers and sources regarding the information that we publish at newsroom@coloradosun.com or corrections@coloradosun.com.

In August 2023, we created a page to provide readers with a list of our corrections. You can find it here.

>> Read more in our Ethics Policy

Diverse Voices Statement

The Colorado Sun was founded with the intent of using the truth-telling power of journalism to contribute to a more vibrant, informed and whole Colorado. To accomplish that, our journalism must tell the stories of all of Colorado — meaning we must strive to include diverse voices and experiences, especially those from outside dominant cultural perspectives. We must also be cognizant of the harms media institutions have actively or inadvertently perpetuated against historically disadvantaged communities. We must work to break down stereotypes and bigotry.

This is an ongoing effort by The Colorado Sun and we must never grow complacent in this work.

Our commitment to diversity reflects our acknowledgement of the many identities, experiences and ways of being that exist in the world and are deserving of representation. Reflected in our newsgathering and our staff composition, these characteristics may include race, gender identity, sexuality, ability, religion, socioeconomic status, veteran status, nationality, geographic location and other community signifiers.

Our commitment to equity reflects an understanding of the need to create equal opportunity for all, recognizing that what may constitute opportunity for one person may be a barrier to another.

Our commitment to inclusion means we strive to create a workplace and to create journalism in which people of all identities feel welcome, valued, supported and heard. We also will deploy these values when selecting outside members of our nonprofit board of directors and related management committees.

>> Read our full diversity, equity and inclusion goals

Diverse Staffing Report

To fully engage in reducing barriers to participation and inclusion in our journalism, The Colorado Sun must have a staff that reflects the diversity of its statewide audience, including in top management.

Since launch, we have reached gender parity and are proud that three of the top four managers are women and one is a person of color.

As we have added staff we have attempted to recruit among under-represented groups and have significantly improved our diversity.

But our work is not done. We will continue to prioritize diversity in recruitment, internships, hiring and collaboration, while also creating a workplace that is equitable, inclusive and provides staff members with the opportunity for professional growth and advancement. This includes encouraging and supporting employee participation on our nonprofit board of directors and related management committees.

Corrections Policy & Practice

The Colorado Sun is committed to telling readers when an error has been made, the magnitude of the error, and the correct information, as quickly as possible. This commitment and transparency are applicable to small and large errors, short news summaries and large features, podcasts and newsletters. If our audience cannot trust us to get the small things right, how can they trust us on the big things?

Report an error

Please report possible errors to corrections@coloradosun.com.

Journalists must make sure the information in the proposed correction is accurate before inserting it into the article in place of the mistaken information. A correction notice must then be posted on the article and on our corrections page.

Email corrections@coloradosun.com to alert us of any possible errors. That will kick off our corrections process.

The correction process:

A reporter and/or editor will promptly determine if we made an error by reviewing the disputed facts and attempting to substantiate the story as reported with firsthand sources.
If an error has occurred, we update the article and add a correction.
Corrections should appear anywhere that carried the error, including social media, newsletters and podcasts.

When we don’t run a correction:

For typos, we correct the error without adding a correction note.
During breaking news, there are times when initial reports turn out to be incorrect. When this occurs, we update the story and explain the change in the article. We do not add a correction note.

Other corrections policies

When an inaccuracy has occurred, a correction note will be placed at the bottom of the article outlying the mistake and the corrected information. If the correction is deemed severe, it will be placed at the top of the article.
If we have sent out incorrect information in an alert, we should send out an alert informing people that the earlier alert was wrong and give readers the accurate information.
When we publish erroneous information on social networks, we should correct it on that platform.
We do not attribute blame to individual reporters or editors (e.g. “because of a reporting error” or “because of an editing error”). But we may note that an error was the result of incorrect information from a trusted source (wire services, individuals quoted, etc.).

Clarifications

When a report is factually correct but the language used is not as clear or detailed as it should be, we will rewrite the section and add a clarification note to the story. We will also use clarifications to note if comment or response from a new source.

Retraction and take-down requests

In general, The Colorado Sun does not grant requests to retract or take down news articles unless the article is so fundamentally and factually flawed that no correction or follow-up reporting could fix it and its continued presence online is causing active harm to public understanding of discourse.

>> Read our full ethics policy

>> See our recently corrected and clarified articles

Policy on Sources

Anonymous sources

We avoid quoting anonymous sources as much as possible. There may be rare exceptions when the news value of a quote from an unnamed source outweighs the lack of transparency that anonymity creates. In accordance with The Associated Press, those instances would be if:

The material is information and not opinion or speculation, and is vital to the report.
The information is not available except under the conditions of anonymity imposed by the source.
The source is reliable, and in a position to have direct knowledge of the information.

In those instances, and only with the approval of an editor, an anonymous source may be quoted or cited. We always examine requests for anonymity for possible ulterior motives.

Any time an anonymous quote is used, the journalist reporting the story must know the true name of the source and how to contact them. The journalist must provide that information to an editor.

On/Off the record

As journalists, we sometimes use terms that are unfamiliar to the general public. So, at The Colorado Sun:

“On the record” means the information provided is able to be used, including in quotes, with the person’s name attached as a source.
“Not for attribution” means that the information can be published and can be used in quotes but not with the source’s name attached to it. This has to comply with the rules for anonymous quotes.
“On background” means that the information can be published as general contextual information, but it cannot be used in quotes and cannot have the source’s name attached to it.
“Off the record” means that the information provided cannot be published or used in quotes and cannot have the source’s name attached to it.

Paying for information

We do not pay sources for information or for interviews, and we do not pay subjects in exchange for permission to take photos or video of them.

Treatment of inexperienced sources, including children

We take special care to identify ourselves and explain how the information provided will be used. We explain how we operate, and we answer questions about the potential consequences of providing information as best as we are able.

This is especially true when dealing with children. When interviewing or photographing children, we make an effort to speak with their parents or guardians so we can explain the purpose of the story and how the information or photo will be used.

>> Read our full ethics policy

Reader Engagement & Feedback

We don’t just cover Colorado, we are Coloradans ourselves. And in turn, we want every Coloradan to be a part of our news coverage. Here are ways to share your feedback, engage in our work and shape our journalism.

To share general feedback or ask questions, email us at newsroom@coloradosun.com.

To suggest a story, send a note to tips@coloradosun.com.

To add information to a story or request a correction, contact corrections@coloradosun.com.

Find contact information for individual reporters on our full masthead.

You can also contact us via Signal, WhatsApp or voicemail: 720-263-2338. Send letters to:

The Colorado Sun
Buell Public Media Center
2101 Arapahoe St.
Denver, CO 80205

Join us at events

Want to ask Colorado’s top officials — or our reporters — your own questions? Submit a question to one of our in-person and online events. Or, join us at our annual SunFest, a daylong conference gathering everyone from senators and policymakers to local authors and bug experts.

Know a teen interested in journalism? Tell them to apply to Rise and Shine Journalism Workshop, our free weeklong summer camp that introduces middle and high school students to the inner workings of journalism.

Find our stories and share your feedback with us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Mastodon, Threads, Reddit and BlueSky. You can find individual reporter’s social media handles on their reporter pages. Keep your eyes out because sometimes we may take to social media to crowdsource for stories.

The Colorado Sun is no longer active on X, formerly known as Twitter, although you may still find some individual staff members on the platform.

Fill out our surveys

Give us more direct feedback in our annual audience survey that gets mailed to newsletter

Subscribers.

>> Learn more on our newsletter and subscription options

Have thoughts on how we hear from readers?

Share them with our Presentation Editor Danika Worthington at danika@coloradosun.com.

Privacy Policy

We take your privacy very seriously and only track the digital data that is necessary to provide a quality user experience. On the rare occasions we do collect your information, we will tell you how and why we are doing it. We will not not sell, rent or swap your data.

>> Read our full Privacy Policy

Artificial Intelligence

The Colorado Sun will not publish any automatic generated content. Staff may sometimes use AI to aid their jobs, whether by creating transcripts of interviews, suggesting alt text for images or to support backend operations. This work is always checked by humans.