Mic'd Up

_{Newsies pick up three awards in CBA competition}

The Colorado Broadcasters Association held its annual Awards of Excellence Gala April 11^th in Denver, celebrating over 400 industry professionals and their strongest journalism work produced in 2025.

And no surprise here, KOTO News was among the award recipients.

Every year, CBA does a call out to radio and television stations from across Colorado. The 2026 competition saw a record number of entries — from 546 radio stations and 470 television stations.

Categories range from Best News Feature to Best Sports Feature and everything in between. Broadcast professionals nationwide judge the entries.

KOTO has a legacy of producing award-winning journalism, dating back to the Jon Kovash era. As he once said, “submitting for an award from CBA (and winning!) helps attract young and talented news interns and burgeoning journalists.”

Awards aside, KOTO has seen the best and brightest folks cycle through the news department over the years. Our summer news interns have been topnotch. Under the leadership of KOTO News Director Julia Caulfield, they get hands-on experience pitching stories, conducting interviews and producing content on deadline. Eliza Dunn, who worked as a news intern over the summer of 2024, will start work full time at KOTO in September as the rural reporter (and we are beyond thrilled to have her back.)

Julia has helmed the KOTO News Department since the fall of 2019 and has raked in myriad awards. Read: This ain’t her first rodeo, folks. And it won’t be her last.

For work produced in 2025, Julia captured Best News Feature for a sound-rich piece detailing the goat inhabitance on the Valley Floor. She also won Best Sports Feature for highlighting a sport that doesn’t always get the limelight in a ski town — curling! The Telluride Curling Club marked 10 years in the Box Canyon last year.

In addition, Julia, and reporter Mason Osgood (who moved to California and we will never forgive him for it), picked up Best Regularly Scheduled Newscast for their reporting on Oct. 23, 2025 and Dec. 10, 2025.

Give it up for Julia, Luis, Mason and the many journalists over the years who have kept the KOTO’s news legacy alive. Tune in M-F at 6 p.m. for local news and public affairs programming. We air local news in Spanish on Mondays, and you’ll also hear reporting from across the region and state throughout the week via Rocky Mountain Community Radio — a coalition of 21 non-commercial radio stations in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.

The award-winning feature stories: