By Sharon Almirall
Sandra Fish, Colorado Press Women’s featured speaker at the Park Hill Library on Sept. 28, describes herself as someone who is “really into numbers,” the key element of her career as a data journalist.
“From using a spreadsheet to looking at financial reports, the work initially called computer-assisted reporting has become data journalism,” Fish said.
Fish grew up in a small Iowa town with a family “pretty engaged in news,” She studied at Iowa State University and learned from The Elements of Journalism by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel published in 2001 that journalism’s first obligation is to the truth.
As she retires from a journalism career with its emphasis on truth gained through data journalism, Fish looks forward to moderating forums and hopes to do a bit of freelance work and travel.
Fish talked about her thoughts on retiring and looking back on 42 years of political and technological change. She worked in Iowa, Florida, New Mexico and moved to Boulder in 1994 where she worked at the Boulder Daily Camera. When the Camera installed a PC with a dial-up modem, she was able to receive data.
During her time at the Camera, a Knight-Ridder newspaper, the internet and the web emerged. An Apple and Knight-Ridder research team produced newspapers on a tablet, producing a video about how it would work. She concluded, “the web was not being taken seriously. The industry as a whole was viewing the web as a passing fancy. The business potential was lost.”
She left the Camera in 2005 to teach at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She “got on” Twitter and took a reporting class to an Obama rally with an assignment to cover it as it happened using several platforms. One student tweeted from a flip phone.
She left CU and worked for a New Mexico nonprofit news site for three years. She spent one week of the month at the site.
In 2018, Fish became a correspondent for The Colorado Sun. “I appreciate that The Colorado Sun gave me the opportunity to do geeky things.”
In her observation, “We as journalists are not meeting people where they’re at” and adds that “most people don’t understand how government works. We should be going out into the community, helping people to understand.”
In August, 2024, Fish won the Colorado Press Association’s First Amendment Award, which honors a journalist for championing the freedom of information.
On July 30, 2024, Fish wrote a piece called “Farewell, Sun readers!”. While her letter listed a string of unexpected events in this year’s election season – U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert’s district switch, U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn’s retirement, U.S. Rep. Ken Buck leaving office early, President Joe Biden opting out of reelection and her infamous escort from the GOP assembly by a sheriff’s deputy – her retirement was also unexpected by readers.
Fish wore a sweatshirt describing her personal catchphrase: “Tradition is not Static.” The saying speaks to her responses to questions from the attendees at the CPW event on topics as wide-ranging as the political climate, political donations, election polls, and Artificial Intelligence in journalism.
Photo by Ann Lockhart
