BOULDER — When I pick up a newspaper, or browse through the headlines of an outlet's website, I gravitate toward the news. As a reporter who’s spent a lot of time covering government, environmental issues, and local communities, it’s hard not to. It’s my job.
But what really sucks me in are stories about culture. Local music, arts, events—captivating stories where I can view a community through a colorful lens that reveals how vibrant it really is.
My first job as a reporter was for a paper that did just that: Boulder Weekly. Our newsroom was constantly bouncing between city council meetings, to interviews with musicians, to the kitchens of Boulder’s best chefs, crafting stories for our readers to immerse themselves in.
Just a few months after my time there came to an end, I have a chance to do that again alongside a portion of the old Boulder Weekly team, right here at The Mountain-Ear. In February of next year, we’ll be launching Caribou Current—a brand new, monthly, free publication covering arts and culture in the Peak to Peak and down the hill in Boulder County and Golden.
“Arts and culture coverage connects people with the things they already care about. Especially in a community like the Front Range, where music is important to us [and] art is important to us,” Jezy Gray, Caribou Current’s managing editor, tells me in an interview for this week’s episode of The Mountain-Ear Podcast.
“Giving people reliable, compelling, human-level coverage of the things they care about is a really great way to build a publication that’s fun to read, and hard to put down.”
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be laying the groundwork for the publication—interviewing musicians, curating lists of can’t-miss events, and digging up stories that define the vivid local arts scene—all for you to read, every single month.
We can assure you, too, that nothing is beyond our scope of coverage in the local arts and culture sphere.
“If you’re into death metal, or the ballet, or whatever it might be, I want there to be a little something for everyone—and a little something that surprises everyone,” Gray says.
You’ll be able to dive into that and so much more when our first issue hits the racks on February 5. If you’re just as excited about Caribou Current as we are, you can listen in to this week’s podcast episode here: https://themtnearpodcast.buzzsprout.com.
Got a story you think would be great for Caribou Current? Email managing editor Jezy Gray: jezy@themountainear.com.
