Denver Biz Journal news director leaving for politics site

Mark Harden

Vince Bzdek, the editor of The Gazette in Colorado Springs, sent out the following announcement:

Please join me in welcoming Mark Harden to the Colorado Politics team as the new managing editor.
“I am thrilled to be joining such a dynamic news organization with a dedicated, talented staff,” Mark told me. “I think of Colorado Politics as a 120-year-old startup — young on the digital side and founded in 1898 on the print side.”
We’re just as thrilled. Colorado Politics has reached the point where it needs a full-time air traffic controller, and Mark’s just the guy for the job.
Mark’s journalism career spans 37 years, including 25 years in Colorado. After reporting and editing stints at daily newspapers in San Francisco and the Seattle area, during which he covered several political campaigns and then ran election coverage at the Tacoma News Tribune, he came to Colorado in 1993.
In 15 years at The Denver Post, he served as city editor, state editor and online news editor, among other posts; in the mid-1990s he oversaw the Post’s coverage of politics, state government and elections.
For the last 10 years, Mark has been with the Denver Business Journal, most recently as news director since 2013. The Business Journal has been honored by the Colorado Press Association as the state’s best large-circulation weekly newspaper for five straight years.
Mark has deep digital experience, having run online breaking news at both DenverPost.com and DenverBusinessJournal.com during periods of dramatic audience growth. He led the first live online election-night coverage teams at both the Post and the Business Journal.
He has won national awards for science and business-news coverage, as well as the Morton Margolin Prize for distinguished Colorado business reporting from the University of Denver Daniels College of Business, among other regional honors.
“Better than anyone else in the state,” Mark told me, “Colorado Politics explores and exposes the workings of politics and government in challenging times with great depth and perception, and richly portrays the people who make things happen, both well known and little known. In the days ahead, we will strive to make Colorado Politics an even more vital and useful read online and in print for a broadening audience.”
Mark is married to Linda Kotsaftis, a news executive with KUSA-9NEWS; they have two grown children.
Mark will start in late March and work out of the Clarity office in Denver.
Vince Bzdek

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.