Rocky Mountain Media Watch will monitor statewide news outlets and spotlight journalistic lapses (including factual errors, omissions, lack of fairness) in coverage of policy issues through 2010. The project will present local perspectives on journalistic issues.

The project will review statewide print media, local TV news and public affairs shows, and news and talk radio.

“We hope in our small way we can keep reporters honest—or at least give them something to think about,” said former Rocky Mountain News media critic Jason Salzman, who’s directing the effort. “We have a progressive perspective, which we’re not hiding, but we’ll do our best to present differing views accurately. We want to be fair, like my columns in the Rocky tried to be.”

The Media Watch work will be posted on Bigmedia.org, the Rocky Mountain Media Watch website and cross-posted on other blogs, and authored by Salzman.

Founded in 1994, Rocky Mountain Media Watch is a Colorado-based nonprofit organization aiming to hold journalists to their own professional standards, like those promulgated by the Society of Professional Journalists and others. RMMW gained national acclaim for its analyses of the local TV news industry in the late 1990s. Over the past five years, the organization has been mostly dormant. Funding for the project, which will run at least through 2010, is provided by a group of donors.

For more information contact: Jason Salzman at 303-292-1524