Broadside News Group

Broadside News Group is an independent news publisher operating more than sixty publications across the United States. Founded in Denver, Colorado, the company acquires, rebuilds, and operates local news properties that serve communities largely ignored by national media conglomerates. Our mission is rooted in a simple conviction: that the decline of local journalism is not merely an industry problem but a civic emergency, and that the response demands publishers willing to invest in places and people that the market has written off.

The scale of the crisis is well documented and staggering in its implications. Since 2005, more than 1,800 newspapers have closed across the United States. Entire counties have become news deserts — places where no professional journalist covers the school board, the city council, the county budget, the court docket, or the police blotter. Research from the University of North Carolina's Hussman School of Journalism has shown that communities that lose their local newspaper see declines in voter turnout, increases in municipal borrowing costs, and the quiet erosion of civic participation that occurs when residents no longer have a shared source of reliable information about the place where they live.

Broadside News Group was founded to address this crisis directly. We do not publish a single national product. We own and operate dozens of local and specialized publications — each built around a community, a region, or a subject that warrants sustained, independent coverage. From Denver neighborhood politics to statewide coverage in Florida, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and beyond, our network is designed to fill the gaps that corporate consolidation and digital disruption have left behind.

The death of local news is not just a media story. It is a democracy story. When communities lose the press, they lose the capacity to govern themselves. The crisis that drives our work

Broadside News Group traces its origins to Denver's North Denver neighborhoods — the tight-knit communities along the Platte River and Federal Boulevard where neighborhood politics, school board fights, and development battles were once covered by a patchwork of weeklies and community papers, most of which no longer exist. The company began as a small collection of community news sites covering Denver City Council districts, Denver Public Schools board politics, and the rapid redevelopment reshaping neighborhoods like Sunnyside, Highland, and Berkeley.

Those early publications were built on a belief that hyperlocal reporting — the kind of journalism that names names, follows the money, and shows up at every meeting — could be sustained digitally if the operating costs were managed with discipline and the editorial standards were kept high. The North Denver coverage drew readers not because it was flashy, but because it was reliable. Council votes were reported the night they happened. Development proposals were analyzed before the public comment period closed. School board budget decisions were explained in plain language before parents had to live with the consequences.

From that foundation, the network grew outward. The Denver network expanded to cover neighborhoods across the city — from Cherry Creek and Capitol Hill to Globeville-Elyria-Swansea and Montbello. Colorado state-level coverage followed, with publications dedicated to statewide politics, courts, and policy. As the model proved sustainable, Broadside News Group began acquiring and launching publications in other states, building state-level publications built to serve those communities.

The expansion into vertical subject areas — dedicated publications covering politics, law, health, technology, labor, and other specialized topics on a national scale — added a second dimension to the network. These publications serve readers who need depth and expertise on a specific subject, complementing the geographic focus of the state and local sites.

Today, Denver remains the heart of operations. The company's leadership, technology infrastructure, and institutional knowledge are headquartered in the city where the work began. Denver is not merely where Broadside News Group was incorporated. It is where the company's identity was formed — in the neighborhoods where local coverage still meant following the money, reading the documents, and paying attention when no one else would.

Broadside News Group operates on a model designed for sustainability in an industry that has struggled to find it. We acquire or launch local news domains, invest in content and publishing infrastructure, and operate them as independent publications under a shared set of editorial standards and ethical commitments. The goal is not to build a single, monolithic publication. It is to build a network of sites, each with its own voice and community identity, supported by shared technology and resources that reduce cost without compromising quality.

The technology platform that makes this possible is developed and maintained by Novel Cognition, the parent company. Novel Cognition provides the publishing systems, content management tools, distribution infrastructure, and AI-augmented editorial technology that enable a technology-driven publishing network to produce and distribute content at a level of quality and consistency that would otherwise require a much larger operation. These tools do not replace editorial judgment. They eliminate the operational friction that buries small publishers in administrative work and enable us to focus on what matters: the coverage itself.

Editorial standards are non-negotiable. Every Broadside publication is held to the same standards of accuracy and accountability. Our editorial standards are public and binding across the network. When a publication gets something wrong, the corrections policy requires prompt, transparent correction. When a reader has a complaint, there is a process for addressing it.

Community identity is preserved. When Broadside News Group acquires an existing publication, we do not rebrand it, strip its archives, or merge it into a generic template. The publication keeps its name, its voice, its focus, and its relationship with its community. What changes is the investment: in technology, in publishing infrastructure, in the systems that allow the publication to serve its audience over the long term rather than lurching from crisis to crisis.

Sustainability is structural. The network model means that individual publications do not bear the full cost of the technology, legal, and administrative infrastructure that supports them. Shared services reduce per-publication overhead. This structure allows us to operate in markets — small cities, rural counties, specialized subject areas — where a standalone publication might struggle to break even.

Broadside News Group welcomes inquiries from readers, sources, researchers, and prospective partners. We take every communication seriously and respond to all substantive correspondence.

General inquiries: For questions about Broadside News Group, our publications, partnerships, or business matters, please visit our contact page.

Corrections and complaints: If you believe any Broadside News Group publication has made an error of fact, please consult our corrections policy. We are committed to correcting errors promptly and transparently.

News tips: If you have information about a story that you believe warrants investigation, we want to hear from you. Tips can be submitted through any of our individual publication contact pages or through the general contact form. We protect the confidentiality of our sources.

Read our Editorial Standards, Diversity Commitment, and Ownership Disclosure.