Following in the footsteps of Josie Taris, Aspen Daily News reporter Lucy Peterson began filing stories for Aspen Public Radio this week, expanding the collaboration launched with the newspaper earlier this year to bring more local government coverage to the Aspen Public Radio listening audience.
“It just makes sense,” stated Breeze Richardson, executive director of Aspen Public Radio. “In her role covering the city of Aspen, Lucy is already attending meetings, building relationships with key stakeholders, and learning the nuances of these complex issues facing our community; it’s more efficient for her to bring that expertise to our Aspen Public Radio local newscasts, opposed to us hiring someone full-time to duplicate that work, when what we need is simply a 30- to 40-second version of the story to highlight the news of the day.”
Instead, Aspen Public Radio is planning to hire two full-time reporters in 2025 to focus on Arts & Culture and Climate, bringing more valley-wide investigative reporting capacity to the station.
Peterson is currently a staff writer for the Aspen Daily News — where she covers the city of Aspen, the Aspen School District and more — and came into the role after reporting for The Aspen Times. She was born and raised in Denver and moved to Lawrence, Kansas, where she studied journalism, political science and French at the University of Kansas. While in college, Peterson worked for her school newspaper, the University Daily Kansan, interned at BusinessDen as a Dow Jones News Fund business reporting intern and covered the Kansas Statehouse as a reporting intern for The Kansas City Star.
In August, the Aspen Daily News launched its Journalism Fund to strengthen and build upon its near half-century legacy of local independent journalism in the Roaring Fork Valley. For co-owner and publisher David Cook, this latest expansion of the newspaper’s partnership with Aspen Public Radio represents a core mission of the new initiative.
"A collaboration like this is not only good for the consuming public, to have greater access to local news, but it’s also great for the journalist to be seen in a multimedia format. It really helps them not only develop their own professional skills, but be better known in their profession,” he said. “It’s a win-win for all involved.
“We are excited to see how providing more local news to Aspen Public Radio listeners can strengthen the trust and reliability our community has for the newspaper,” Cook continued. “Aspen and our surrounding communities are an international destination, and we want to be industry leaders in creating a scalable, replicable model for other media ecosystems. This partnership is a huge part of that.”
Aspen Public Radio broadcasts local newscasts and radio features from 7-9 a.m. and 4-6 p.m., Monday through Friday, within national programming; produces a daily local news podcast available each morning; and publishes daily to aspenpublicradio.org.
Lucy Peterson is joining All Things Considered host and reporter Halle Zander, Morning Edition host Megan Tackett, Social Justice Desk reporter Eleanor Bennett and ADN reporter Josie Taris, under the leadership of News Director Kelsey Brunner.
You can learn more about the Aspen Public Radio team here.