About Courier Newsroom

Copper Courier is owned and operated by Courier Newsroom, a civic media company with eight state-based newsrooms. Our mission is to protect and strengthen our democracy through credible, fact-based journalism that seeks to create a more informed, engaged, and representative America.

We reach audiences who are not regularly engaging with civic information, and who are unlikely to subscribe to paywalled journalism. As part of that effort, we deliver much of our reporting on the social platforms our readers use most frequently.

Courier’s newsrooms practice independent, point-of-view journalism. You can read about Copper Courier’s values in the statement below. The managing editor of each site, in addition to Courier Newsroom’s VP of Content, has sole discretion and control over the editorial process.

Courier Newsroom is a public benefit corporation owned by Good Information Inc., and is supported by reader contributions, sponsors, philanthropic donations, and corporate underwriting. We maintain an editorial firewall between our newsrooms and underwriters, sponsors, and donors. We do not accept funding from any national or state political party, party committee, candidate, or campaign.

See Courier’s website for additional information about our national team and our funding model.

Contributions or gifts in support of The Copper Courier’s journalism are not tax deductible as charitable contributions.
Copper Courier is part of the Courier Newsroom network. All payments will be made to Courier Newsroom.

The Copper Courier: Here’s Where We’re Coming From

The Copper Courier is a civic media newsroom run by Arizonans, for Arizonans. Our reporters write about the communities they live in—not as outsiders looking in, but as individuals with unique perspectives and experiences that help them tell the stories that matter to those around them.

Our aim is to build a better information ecosystem online that values truth over clicks and democracy over profit margins, and we strive to provide factual, accessible reporting that lives online where our readers can easily find it, learn from it, and share it—not behind a paywall or disingenuous headline.

We value and cherish our role as the Fourth Estate, and seek to report on news that empowers our readers. We believe that knowledge is power—but information has been weaponized, and it is our responsibility to report in an equitable manner that not only informs our readers, but equips them with the information they need to know to participate effectively in our democracy.

At The Copper Courier, we strive to deliver the news through solutions and service-based journalism. As watchdogs of elected officials and government bodies, our journalists report on the successes of public programs—when there is success—how taxes are invested in our communities, and how our readers can make our government work for them, as well as how to hold public servants accountable when our trust is breached.

As we follow the ripple effect of decisions from Washington on families and communities right here at home, we underscore the innovations and ideas emerging at the city, state, and county level that too rarely reach a broader audience. The Copper Courier amplifies the voices of those building a government that works for all of us—and we hold accountable those who threaten it.

Finally, an Arizona news outlet that keeps it 💯—just like the temperature.

Our Values

At The Copper Courier, we hold a set of values that guide our reporting on the issues most important to the communities we serve. Those values include the following:

Our reporting will be rooted in facts, science, and the communities we serve.
We will strive to tell the truth—and will tell you when we get it wrong—because we believe that good information is the lifeblood of democracy, and that democracy will fail when factual journalism is out of reach.
We will be intentional about centering the voices of the people in our communities, using our platforms to amplify their experiences and opinions, especially those who are most impacted by the issues being decided in the state legislature and in Washington.
As a civic news organization, our journalists will focus their reporting around efforts to strengthen communities, rebuild struggling economies, expand access to health care and child care, address the climate crisis, and reduce inequality in all forms—and covering the leaders championing those efforts. We will be relentless in our coverage of attempts or actions to undermine democratic institutions, especially voting rights, and ballot access, and we will make a special effort to report on public actors who are advancing those efforts.
We will never manufacture “both sides” to our stories, giving equal weight to conspiracy theories or junk science. We will always provide proper context in our reporting to help ensure we don’t continue the spread of misinformation or disinformation, and will “show our work” by linking to sources and giving our readers the opportunity to fact check us for themselves.
We will be committed to holding accountable elected officials or politicians who betray our values, cause harm, or seek to cause harm to the communities we serve.
We will not use political jargon; instead, we will work to break down inaccessible political language for our audiences.
We will publish our work where our audiences are: When they move to new platforms or technologies, our brands and journalists will follow.
We will prioritize hiring and contracting reporters, editors, and producers who live in the communities we serve, and we will remain committed to staffing our teams and sourcing our stories with the people who reflect the diverse and inclusive country in which we reside.

True to our commitment to have values that best serve the communities we report on, our core values are not set in stone, but are a continuously evolving set of guidelines that reflect what is most important to Arizonans.