Aspen Journalism is an independent news organization and a 501c3 nonprofit corporation. Our mission is to produce quality in-depth journalism, as we believe well-informed citizens make better decisions. Our approach is both investigative and collaborative.

We're currently collaborating with four newspapers in Colorado, the Aspen Times, the Glenwood Springs Post Independent, the Vail Daily and the Summit Daily News on the coverage or the upper Colorado River system. We also recently collaborated on a story with High Country News about a "money-for-water" program underway in the West.

Your donation to News Match and Aspen Journalism will help put dogged reporters on important yet-hard-to-cover beats - land use, water, social justice, education, local government - and will result in relevant reporting that raises awareness and spurs change. Don't delay, donate today, and double your donation!

Our coverage area radiates outward from Aspen to Snowmass Village, Pitkin, Eagle, Garfield and Summit counties, the Western Slope, Colorado and the West. The Roaring Fork River is both a large tributary of the Colorado River and a major supplier of water for the Front Range, hence our ongoing coverage of water and rivers in Colorado and the West.

We've also covered education, land-use, local government, housing, transportation, energy, wealth, real estate, the ski industry, and development.

In our seven years of operation, we've successfully demonstrated our founding concept of serving the community as an independent news organization that is "local, online, nonprofit, investigative, and collaborative."

To do that, we've worked with a lot of good freelance journalists, including:

Sarah Tory

Allen Best

Heather Sackett

Lindsay Fendt

Catherine Lutz

Tim Mutrie

John Colson

Tim Cooney

Paul Andersen

Madeleine Osberger

Bob Ward

Brady Hurley

And we've collaborated with many local and regional news organizations, including:

The Aspen Times

The Aspen Daily News

The Glenwood Springs Post Independent

KDNK

High Country News

The Denver Post

Coyote Gulch

Some of our best work over the last seven years includes:

a 2014 searchable list of owners of deed-restricted housing owners;

coverage of Colorado's water planning process;

a list of billionaires who own property in Pitkin County;

coverage of two potential dams on the Crystal River;

a searchable list of all nonprofits in Aspen and Pitkin County;

coverage of schools from Aspen to Glenwood Springs;

coverage of the potential Maroon and Castle creek reservoirs;

a series of stories on ski area energy use;

coverage of a proposed hydro project on Castle Creek;

in-depth coverage of the status of Base Village during the recession;

a deep dive into how the Aspen Art Museum building was approved; and

a series of in-depth historical stories with rich photo illustrations;

Our journalism advisory board includes:

Roger Adams, former news director, Aspen Public Radio

Dave Danforth, columnist at, and former owner of, the Aspen Daily News

Charles Davis, dean, Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Georgia

Charles Firestone, executive director, Aspen Institute Communications & Society Program

Laura Frank, president and general manager for news, Rocky Mountain PBS

Sarah Gilman, contributing editor, High Country News

John Masters, executive director, GrassRoots Community Network

Mike McPhee, former reporter, Denver Post

Rem Rieder, former editor-at-large and media columnist, USA Today

Curtis Robinson, co-founder of Roaring Fork Sunday and former editor at the Aspen Daily News

Carolyn Sackariason, former news director at Aspen Public Radio and former editor at the Aspen Daily News

Steve Skinner, columnist at Aspen Daily News and former GM at KDNK

Andy Stone, former columnist and editor at the The Aspen Times

Mike Webb, vice president, BerlinRosen

And our board of directors includes:

Harry Teague, chair
Harry is the founder and principal designer at Harry Teague Architects. He has lived in the Aspen area since 1972, when he received his M. Arch. from the Yale School of Architecture. Teague’s work, which includes the Benedict Music Tent in Aspen, has been widely recognized and appreciated.

Edgar Boyles
Edgar is an Emmy-winning cameraman and director of photography at Wildwood Films in Aspen. Edgar has 40 years of experience filming in mountainous and remote locations.

Mark Harvey
Mark is a rancher, writer, filmmaker, and photographer. He is the author of “The NOLS Wilderness Guide” and the producer and director of the documentary “A Land Out of Time.” Mark is the current president of the board of EcoFlight and has served on the board of High Country News, the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies, and Public Counsel of the Rockies.

Tim McFlynn
Tim is the executive director of Public Counsel of the Rockies, the chair of Pitkin County Open Space and Trails Board, and a Manaus Fund board member.

Michael McVoy
Michael is an Aspen-based investment adviser, the former co-publisher of The Aspen Times, and a Manaus Fund board member.

Executive Director

Brent Gardner-Smith is the founder, executive director and editor of Aspen Journalism. He is currently reporting on water and rivers. Brent's also been a reporter at KSNO, the Aspen Daily News and The Aspen Times, the executive director at Aspen Public Radio, and a raft guide at Blazing Adventures. His work has been recognized by the Colorado Broadcaster's Association, the Colorado Press Association and the Society for Professional Journalists. He has a master's degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and a bachelor's degree in English from California State University Chico.

Our editorial independence policy

Please note Aspen Journalism retains full authority over our editorial content. We maintain a firewall between news coverage decisions and sources of revenue. Our news judgments are made independently and not on the basis of donor support. We cede no right of review or influence of editorial content. Acceptance of financial support does not constitute implied or actual endorsement of donors or their products, services, actions, or opinions. We disclose our donors on our "About Us" page. And we do not accept anonymous donations.