Imagine if you will, a reporter or editor being interviewed by us. That’s right, we interview them. Why? Because too often in our business it’s tough to find time, foster a relationship, and say thank you for all you do to keep the public informed and entertained.

We figured a page in our monthly newsletter would be a good way to do just that – and keep our readers up to speed on what’s happening in media.

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What got you interested in becoming a reporter, when did you begin and how’d you get to where you are today?

I was a news junkie ever since I was five years old, and it started with my love of radio. Top-40 music stations in the ’50s and ’60s infused all sorts of energy and theatrics into their newscasts, and it helped get me interested in the news of the day. At age eight, I stayed up all night watching the Kennedy-Nixon election returns in 1960, and would devour the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and St. Louis Globe-Democrat every morning.

At age nine, I also engaged in my first bit of “advocacy journalism” when I designed the front page of a fictitious newspaper and presented it to my father, who at the time was head administrator at the Missouri School for the Blind. The banner headline on my front page read, “Superintendent’s Son Wants Dog.” The power of the media worked; I got a black cocker spaniel and, true to my love of newspapers, named him Inky.

I worked for my high school newspaper, then got hands-on experience at the University of Missouri because the School of Journalism ran the town’s morning Columbia Missourian, its NBC affiliate KOMU-TV Channel 8 and its NPR radio station, KBIA-FM 91.3. My first job out of college was as a proofreader and then assistant sports editor and outdoor editor for the St. Charles Banner-News in suburban St. Louis. I ascended to the Post-Dispatch when that big Pulitzer Publishing Co. daily bought out the Banner’s subscription list.

And yet I wanted to get out of St. Louis’ stifling heat and humidity, and had dreams of Colorado. I took a week off to apply in person at papers up and down the Front Range, whether they had openings or not, and stumbled on the Longmont Times-Call just an hour after its news editor abruptly resigned. They hired me on the spot, I flew home that Friday night, packed up 27 years of my Missouri life in a weekend, flew back to Colorado on Sunday, started work at the T-C on Monday, found an apartment on Thursday and contracted to build the house I still live in a week later. That was 1979, 46 years ago this past June.

I spent eight years at the T-C, then 10 at the Colorado Springs Gazette and another 10 at the Denver Post before the “vulture capitalists” took it over and started issuing buyouts and layoffs. I worked for a year and a half as a director of communications for a dental consulting company before finding work as an editor at Boulder-based Public News Service and then being hired on at the Boulder County Business Report in 2012. It became BizWest two years later when it merged with the Northern Colorado Business Report, and I will celebrate my 14th anniversary there in April.

After working in sports and then general news, I’ve had to learn much about the business world, including that “VC” means “venture capital” instead of “Viet Cong” and that an “angel investor” isn’t somebody who owns part of a California baseball team. But it has turned out that Northern Colorado just may be the best place to be a business writer; it’s on the cutting edge of so many dynamic industries.. 

Tell us about your day-to-day – how do you gather leads? What are your beats?

BizWest covers Boulder, Broomfield, Larimer and Weld counties, with a combined population of well over 1 million; if it were one city, it would rank ninth largest in the nation, right behind Dallas. I have focused on Larimer County and the mountain communities including Estes Park, but I’m a “general assignment” reporter who may, at the drop of a hat, be called on to cover everything from mergers and acquisitions to city council meetings and industries ranging from energy and agriculture to bioscience, brewing, cannabis and manufacturing. My guilty pleasure is writing about new restaurants.

Leads can come from anywhere: News releases and agendas from government bodies are a fine start, but the best stories come via tips from sources whose trust you’ve earned. For instance, my good reputation with John Cullen, former owner of Estes Park’s iconic Stanley Hotel, helped me land some juicy scoops about the town’s response to menacing wildfires as well as Cullen’s acquisition of the Frozen Dead Guy Days festival from Nederland.

What’s the story you’re proudest of breaking on this beat, and what’s the one that got away?

For the past several years, the Loveland City Council has been worthy of its own TV soap opera, with a colorful and combative cast of characters. I have been energized by telling its story, keeping its citizens and business community abreast of all sides of controversial issues. Being very short staffed with a huge and populous area to cover, there are always big stories that we get scooped on, but we either brush ourselves off and go on or look for the angle our competitors missed and work to make the same story better and more useful.

The story I most enjoyed telling was of a man who opened a cidery in East Boulder. He called the place Locust Ciders, and I always ask how the names of businesses are picked. I just figured that maybe he grew up on Locust Street somewhere. But no, he had s story that really touched my heart. While he was living in Fort Worth, he got mugged and pretty badly beaten up one day. While agitated and in pain as he waited for an ambulance, he began to hear the insects known as locusts in the trees as they began the two-toned afternoon trilling that is so familiar to residents of southern and midwestern states. That sound calmed, soothed and comforted him so much that he decided to name his business Locust Ciders because he wanted his customers to experience that same soothing feeling.

Which of your stories actually moved the needle—changed policy, got someone fired, forced a company to act—and how did that feel?

At Northern Colorado Regional Airport, I had gotten to know both the management, its governing commission and especially the general-aviation pilots whose aircraft are stored there. They were gratified that I helped tell their stories when their hangars were threatened with condemnation. But when one of those pilots called me to tell me that the Federal Aviation Administration had prematurely — a year early — deactivated an electronic guidance system that aids pilots as they descend toward the main runway, I was able to get the word out, the FAA was quickly pressured into reactivating the system, and I won kudos from all sides at the airport for helping ensure safety there.

What’s the strangest place a source has ever agreed to meet you?
An old, dark, pungent and frankly rather scary boxing gym.

What are some of your favorite hobbies – tell us a short story.

I love all sorts of travel, far and near, by car, bus, train, plane and cruise ship. And along the way, I have compiled a collection of road maps that numbers around 12,000. And even though I ended up in print journalism, radio remains my first love. As a kid, I’d go to sleep with a transistor under my pillow, thrilled when I could pick up a distant station through the static. Today all those stations come in crystal clear via the cell phone in my shirt pocket.

What else would you like to share with us?

At the advent of the Internet, we were excited at the thought that people could go right to the stories that interested them the most. I don’t think we realized that the result would be so many people living in their own self-justifying bubbles, right or left. I got into journalism in an era when news consumers wanted to be informed, but now too many of them simply want to be validated, rejecting any bits of information that challenge their previously held beliefs. I don’t see how a society can retain any cohesiveness when most of the populace lives in their own wildly divergent realities. The only answer for a serious journalists is to take Rick Nelson’s advice in his 1972 hit song “Garden Party”: “I’ve learned my lesson well. See, you can’t please everyone, so you’ve got to please yourself.” Just tell the story, as truthfully and even-handedly as you can, keep your own opinions out of it, and let the chips fall where they may. And although “balance” is a worthy aim, don’t get too enslaved by it: If one source tells you it’s raining outside and another source tells you it’s sunny, you don’t have to quote both sides. Instead, go look out the window yourself and report what you see.

“If one source tells you it’s raining outside and another source tells you it’s sunny, you don’t have to quote both sides. Instead, go look out the window yourself and report what you see.” ~ Dallas Heltzell