In the seven years we’ve owned the Plaindealer, it has become pretty obvious that we need more resources to help cover stories related to public lands, environmental issues and climate challenges.

We have a whole list of stories “we need to get to someday,” beyond what we can manage in the time we have each week, keeping up with everything that happens around here.

One thing is for sure: It’s never boring.

We’ve tried our best to bring you reporting on these topics as they come up. We’ve covered wildfires and stories about wildlife management, like prairie dogs and wolves. We’ve published in-depth articles about the draining of Crystal Reservoir and the attempts to transfer it to local control. We’ve reported on how public lands are being loved to death and federal lands employees have lost their jobs. You recently read about the “iceless” fest at the Ouray Ice Park, and the ice farmers’ battle against Mother Nature.

But we’re stretched thin and we need more help. These are important stories that affect everyone who lives here, and they deserve to be told.

The good news is we’re getting help, and we’re excited to tell you more.

Not only will the Plaindealer continue to be a host newsroom for Report for America, a national service program that connects newsrooms in underserved areas with more reporting resources, but we’ve also been chosen to be part of an exciting new collaboration. It’s an honor for the Plaindealer to be selected for a new partnership to produce not only journalism for publication here in the weekly newspaper, but also on a wider, regional scale.

We’ve agreed to be the host newsroom in Colorado for the new Western Environmental Reporting Collaborative, in which we’ll partner with High Country News. You might be familiar with that publication already — it’s a nonprofit magazine regarded as a leading source of news in the West. Though some of its leaders live in Paonia and Gunnison, contributors live all over the place. High Country News produces in-depth, independent reporting and we’re excited to partner with them.

The new reporter we hire will spend the majority of their time reporting local stories here in Ouray County for the Plaindealer and 25% of their time on coverage for High Country News. We hope this will allow us to contribute to larger editorial projects in a collaboration that is expected to grow.

Initially, the project will include reporters in Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Arizona and Nevada.

But over the next three years, the plan is to expand to cover 12 Western states, with additional reporters covering federal agencies, Congress and the White House.

In the collaboration, reporters will cover topics we know you care about – public and private lands, wildlife, water, wildfire and drought, with a focus on rural and Indigenous communities.

These stories will be available for all the partners to publish.

If you know journalists who would like to apply, the position is advertised online at reportforamerica.org and the deadline for application is Feb. 16. The reporter will start working in July.

We’re thankful for this partnership, and we’re also so fortunate to be continuing to work with Report for America. The organization has not only helped us attract talented journalists who might not otherwise consider coming to work for a weekly newspaper in such a small, rural area, it has also taught us to engage and harness the support of our community to keep a 149-year-old newspaper operating.

We’ll tell you more in the coming months how you can help us. But for now, we just wanted to tell you the good news – and we know you will be as excited as we are that the Plaindealer is the inaugural host newsroom for this project in Colorado.

During the interview process, we talked about how one of our strengths is the community support we’ve experienced since we started hosting Report for America journalists in 2020.

Our readers are smart and engaged, and they care about quality journalism. We want to continue doing this important work – we couldn’t keep doing this without you, and we look forward to telling you more soon. Our top priority has always been delivering quality information to you, and this will help us do even more of that.

Thank you for reading and caring about your community newspaper.

Erin McIntyre is the co-publisher of the Plaindealer. Email her at erin@ouraynews. com.