Charlie Simon
Staff Writer
Diane Alters, who has taught classes and workshops here at Colorado College in journalism, has recently become the new managing editor of the Colorado Independent, a web-based news website that focuses mainly in policy and political news.
Alters has embraced her new role. “I’m really excited about this chance to what I think is a kind of journalism that we need, you know sort of hard hitting, independent journalism that makes a difference,”she says.
Alters worked at the Boston Globe and the Sacramento Bee before coming to Colorado College. She has been working at Colorado College for a number of years, first in Communications, but has been teaching blocks for the past three or four years, in addition to arranging journalism workshops that have brought such notable reporters as Dave Phillips and Mark Maremont to CC.
Although Alters is already in her second week as managing editor at the Independent, she will continue to teach occasional classes here at CC, including a journalism institute Block A this summer, along with two regular classes and one half block class next year.
In her new role at the Independent, Alters hopes to push the newspaper towards what she describes as the, “cutting edge,”of journalism, using many of the same skills that she has taught journalism students here at CC.
In particular, Alters says she hopes to incorporate some of the, “visuals and the multimedia stories,” that she has taught journalism students here at CC into her new work at the Independent, along with a greater emphasis on Twitter and social media.
The prospects of theColoradoIndependentmay appeal and excite Alters, who describes one of the greatest benefits of her new job as giving her the ability to “write about news that actually gets people thinking,”but she will miss some of the teaching she will have to cut back on here at CC. Alters says Colorado College students are “great—they’re really fun to teach.”
Under her watch, Alters is already overseeing changes to the Independent, including starting up a new ad-watch feature to monitor ad spending and ad buying in upcoming political campaigns.
Alters is embracing the uncertainty that accompanies her new role, acknowledging that journalism is changing, and that it still may be a tough job market for journalists. But she says this is part of what makes her new role so exciting, she’s now in the thick of what she says is, “a big experiment”in journalism.