Recession coverage in Colorado

Michael Roberts of Denver Westword writes about the recent recession coverage done by the Denver Business Journal and a local television station and how it’s similar to what’s being done by ColoradoBiz magazine and another local TV station.

Roberts writes, “When asked about Cote’s assertions, DBJ editor Westergaard expresses surprise. ‘I have never seen anything about Channel 7’s relationship with ColoradoBiz magazine,’ he says. ‘I never saw any of those segments, and I never heard anything about a partnership. The fact is, this is a good idea — and some of the other papers in our company had already launched features in their papers called ‘Beating the Recession.”

“True enough: Both the Sacramento Business Journal and the Philadelphia Business Journal have been issuing stories under the ‘Beating the Recession’ heading for some time. And earlier this year, Channel 4 began to use the phrase for positive economic stories, too. ‘When we discovered that, it just made sense for us to get together,’ Westergaard says. ‘We’ve been trying to establish a relationship with a broadcast outlet for a long time. We used to have one with Fox, and we had some talks with them — and we talked with Channel 9, but they already have a relationship with the Denver Post. So we let Channel 4 know we were interested, and they said, ‘Come on down and talk.’ And we liked the ‘Beating the Recession’ idea, because it was a narrow focus to business coverage, and it was something we could produce without taking away from the things we were already doing. It was kind of repurposing stories we were already reporting and writing, which made sense to us — and they were happy with it, too.’

“Regarding the Channel 7/ColoradoBiz series, Westergaard stresses, ‘If there’s a similarity, it’s purely coincidental.'”

Read more here.