Each year, the Society of Professional Journalists Colorado Professional Chapter honors outstanding Colorado journalists and allies who exemplify the highest standards of professional excellence with individual awards. These are the chapter’s highest honors.

Now, for the first time, the chapter has created a web page recognizing these champions of journalism. And we’re also inviting you to help us fill in some blanks. (More below.)

These awards are voted upon by the chapter’s board. Awards usually are presented in conjunction with the annual four-state SPJ Top of the Rockies Awards presentation event.

In recent years, one or more honorees have been recognized in each of four categories:

• Keeper of the Flame: A career achievement award recognizing longtime journalists, their contributions to the profession and their role in leading and mentoring young journalists. The honorees have displayed extraordinary dedication to ethical, responsible journalism and professional integrity.
• Journalist of the Year: Honoring journalists who stood out among their peers in producing extraordinary work in the preceding calendar year. They embody the SPJ Code of Ethics to seek truth and report it, minimize harm, act independently and be accountable and transparent. 
• First Amendment Award: Recognizing journalists and allies who embody and support the exercise of a free and fair press, speak truth to power, and go above and beyond to hold governments accountable.
• Educator of the Year: Recognizing the outstanding work of educators at a Colorado school or college as well as journalists who play a significant role in training and mentoring the news professionals of tomorrow.

Click here to access our new page honoring recipients of SPJ Colorado Pro’s individual awards.

Help us fill in the blanks: This page is a work in progress. In some cases, chapter records are incomplete on past winners. If you know of a previous honoree who is missing from the web page, please email their name, award title and year of the award to spjcolorado@gmail.com with “individual awards” in the subject line. If you have a print or online story or social media post verifying the recipient’s award, please include that in your email as a link, a screen shot or an image.

Early next year, we’ll send out a call for nominations for the next round of individual awards. We’d love to hear from you!

And we’d love to welcome new members as we gear up for our 2025-26 cycle of chapter events and programs. Join here, and please pass along the link to your colleagues.