How KUNC’s Adam Rayes reached rural ranchers in Colorado’s Republican River Basin

Photo by Adam Rayes | Water flows through this channel from a pipeline to the North Fork Republican River, one of the few tributaries of the river in Colorado with consistent flows. Adam completed a three-part series on the future of this river that provides much of the water for Yuma County in Eastern Colorado.

Since late last year, Adam Rayes at KUNC in Greeley, Colorado has been working to reach people in eastern part of his state. Yuma County sits in the far reaches of the station’s signal, and it’s far less populated than the urban corridor where the KUNC is based. The issues people are facing there have impacts far beyond the prairies and plains. We asked Adam to tell us how he built trust among ranchers who are facing dwindling water supply in this rural community, and how his engagement informed the three-part series he wrapped in January.

Tell us who you are, and share a brief summary of the reporting project?

I’m Adam Rayes. I’m a 23-year-old Rural and Small communities reporter with KUNC, an NPR member station based in Northern Colorado. KUNC’s listening area extends from the state’s northern border and a bit of Wyoming down to North Denver and then from the CO’s Eastern border to areas just west of the mountain range. 

This reporting project is part of KUNC’s effort to do better at covering the many rural and small communities in our area by narrowing our focus on just one: Yuma County, a county on the state’s eastern border of about 10,000 people, ranked 2nd for agriculture sales in the state. 

These first set of stories focus on the Republican river basin that the county is contained within. Water is crucial to the agricultural economy out there and it is quickly disappearing from the basin’s streams and groundwater reserves. 

How did community engagement inform your reporting? 

I drove the 2 hours to Yuma last November to sit in on an advisory meeting organized by the Colorado State University extension out there, an opportunity to just listen to agriculture producers. No note-taking, no recording, little interjecting — only listening. The people in that meeting repeatedly listed the dwindling water supply in the Republican River as one of their top concerns — and in a variety of ways that we’ve tried to represent in our reporting. 

One person in that meeting wasn’t comfortable with doing a recorded interview with me herself, but suggested I connect with her husband. He later told me the only reason he agreed to an interview was that she had told him to trust me based on the 15 minute conversation she had with me at the advisory meeting. 

I also spoke to everyone I met about this issue. In coffee shops, restaurants and the hotels I stayed at. That last one led to a recorded interview with an owner of a local BnB who had to sell most of her farmland because the water level in her irrigation well was too low to sustain her economically. 

How did you build trust in the community you were reporting on?

We don’t just get the community involved in the beginning, when we’re coming up with story ideas.  We hope to be constantly checking back in with these community groups and individual sources in the middle of the reporting process,  to make sure there aren't any angles we're missing,  and then after the story comes out to get criticism and thoughts on what we should cover next.

I also make sure to deeply explain the reporting process to everyone who hadn’t dealt with the media before. And give them a lot of my time to ask questions about me and the story (and answer the personal questions honestly! While explaining how I work to put my experiences and biases aside in my reporting), talk about what they might be worried I get wrong from the interview with them, maybe even check some quotes with them to make sure they didn't misspeak, etc. 

That sort of heavy communication really built trust with my sources and made them willing to vouch for me with others they know might be willing to speak on the topic.

How are you bringing this reporting back to the community?

Right now we’re working to connect with local newspapers and AM radio stations to get these stories published/aired locally. We’ll see how that goes. Also hoping to work with local organizations to get these stories and a link to a feedback form to more folks. For example, I hope to work with the university extension to reach back out to members of that advisory group to get their feedback and thoughts on future coverage. We’re also planning a follow-up roundtable/listening session on issues of drought.

Otherwise, I was actually surprised with how eagerly many of my sources shared the stories with others in the area as they came out. Several spread the parts of the series that came out both before and after the one(s) they were quoted in. I’m not used to sources being that eager about every part of a series like this and I’m not sure whether to attribute it to their strong interest in the basic subject matter or the engagement efforts I’ve employed. 

What lessons do you take away from this project in terms of strengthening your engagement?

There were a lot of aspects of the engagement work I did on this project that yielded nothing (like when I tabled at a local farm equipment auction) despite high expectations. Other engagement work  yielded great results (like the extension advisory meeting) despite low expectations. What I’ve learned above all else is that this kind of work takes time and requires a lot of trial and error.