Nearly three years ago, after losing a City Council race in Denver’s District 1 in the northwest part of the city, veteran Democratic political consultant David Sabados decided to shift gears. Together with veteran journalist Sabrina Allie, he founded Denver North Star, a free monthly newspaper delivered to homes and businesses in the same neighborhoods where he had campaigned.

Until earlier this month, Sabados was editor and publisher of the Denver North Star and a sister publication he launched last fall, the bilingual GES Gazette, covering the Globeville, Elyria and Swansea neighborhoods on along Interstate 70 and the booming arts district of River North. After accepting a position as communications manager for the Metropolitan Area’s Regional Air Quality Control Council, Sabados announced on April 15 that he had hired an editor and would continue to be the publisher of hyper-local newspapers.

Born and raised in Colorado, Sabados, 39, grew up in Evergreen and graduated from Highlands Ranch High School and the University of Northern Colorado at Greeley. He had planned to teach English in high school, but he came across politics and decided to make a career out of it.

A former president of the Colorado Young Democrats, Sabados was elected vice president of the state Democratic Party — a post that came with a seat on the Democratic National Committee — by a single vote in 2017.

His consulting firm, Compass Strategy Group, ran numerous races at the local and state level for a decade, counting among his victories the election of Arturo Jimenez to the Denver City Council, from Jovan Melton to the state legislature and Val Flores to the State Board of Education. Noting that his candidates often won despite spending as much as 10 to 1, Sabados joked that he had carved out “an interesting niche – the underfunded candidates.”

As executive director of Coloradans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, Sabados helped lead the state’s repeal of the death penalty, and he was a key organizer of the public campaign finance system of Denver, which will go into effect with the municipal elections next year.

Our interview with Sabados has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Colorado Policy: What prompted you to hang up your hat as a political consultant and politician a few years ago to launch, among all things, a monthly print journal?

David Sabados: The first issue of the Denver North Star came out in October 2019, but the idea was born that spring. I ran for the Denver City Council – unsuccessfully, you may recall – and there just wasn’t much of that kind of hyper-local press. There were people covering the mayoral race, but there was really nothing that talked about these issues at the district level, the development in different parts of the city, and there was no source anymore. local information for our community. For decades Northwest Denver had one newspaper, the North Denver Tribune, and I think our community was really worse off because it closed. So I reached out to Sabrina Allie, who also ran unsuccessfully for council and had a background in media, and I said, “Hey, why not start a newspaper in our community?”

I had a solid 20 year experience as an editor at UNC shimmer in college, but most of my background in the press came from the other side, speaking with reporters for campaigns. I closed my last client, which was death penalty repeal – after we were successful in repealing the death penalty – and I haven’t pursued any more clients. I have always looked for different ways to serve the community where there is a need. Sometimes he helped get people elected, sometimes he helped pass laws, and sometimes he started a newspaper for our community. To me, these are all different aspects of community service.

pc: But what made you decide to go for a print publication? You have a website, but the North Star is primarily an old-fashioned newspaper.

Sabados: We wanted to print it to make it easily accessible. I love digital-only media, there are several that I read on a daily basis, but there’s still something – what’s the word I’m looking for – something important about being able to sit down and take a hour and read a physical publication about your community, a publication that is a stand-alone document. You’re not going down a rabbit hole of linking to one another like you can online. Whether it’s a weekly or a monthly, a reader can pick up a newspaper and say, “Here’s what’s happening in my community this week or this month,” and all of that information is contained here. . There’s something a community still loves about it.

In fact, I get a lot of positive feedback that it’s still in print. And it also makes sense as a business model, because we’re a free publication delivering to North Denver homes. Advertisers love it because they know it’s going straight to people, and they have an option that’s not unlike direct mail for them, but it’s also seen as more respected, because you can send someone a postcard about your pizzeria opening, or you can put an ad in your local paper, and people looking will look in the paper.

pc: Coming from a political background, were there things you wanted a newspaper to do that the media you dealt with hadn’t?

Sabados: I think it’s more that we wanted to have a different focus. I don’t expect the Denver Post, Colorado Politics, or the Denver Gazette to address a neighborhood zoning issue because, for most of their readers, it’s irrelevant. If they’re covering a city council vote, they’ll say, “Council passed this 10-3, full stop”, where a post focused on just one part of the community can go deep, council member X has voted Y , then explain to them why they voted that way, because that’s the person who specifically represents that community.

We didn’t have a city council election – it’s just getting started – but we did have a school board election, and I think we had one of the most comprehensive coverage of school board candidates in Denver. We could do full bios with questions and answers for the candidates in a way that I wish I had in this 2019 election, not that I think it would have changed anything.

That’s why we started our second journal last October, the GES Gazette, and we’re working on issue eight. It is a bilingual English-Spanish publication focusing on the Globeville, Elyria and Swansea neighborhoods and the artsy RiNo district.

pc: Now that you’ve covered politics and government, how has your perspective changed about being on the other side, trying to get a message across in the news? Are there things you would do differently if you were back on the political side?

Sabados: To be honest, I have a much better view of how to present stories. My inbox – like yours, like everyone else’s – is flooded with bullshit, and even the most interesting pieces sometimes get lost, and sometimes you don’t realize what’s interesting or relevant because it’s happening so many things. I think I have a much better idea of ​​how to approach the media, to cut that off and say, “Hey, this is an article that’s actually relevant to your publication, to your audience. I don’t not present to 18,000 other media outlets, because I think it’s important to you.”

pc: How has the media landscape changed since you started the newspaper?

Sabados: I think it’s gotten better – there’s the second newspaper I started, there’s a community newspaper for Five Points, there’s the City Cast Denver podcast, and, of course, the Denver Gazette. There’s more media now, ironically, than a few years ago, which goes against a national trend, and it’s all mostly hyper-local.

We started publishing just months before the pandemic hit. We’ve had wonderful feedback from people saying, “Thank you for delivering a document directly to me with information about my immediate community,” and saying it cuts the noise. It was accessible at a time when people were at home all the time. It was the exact opposite of that doomscrolling, wasn’t it? It was the exact opposite of the Twitter holes people fell into. It was just different.

pc: You recently started working – your new day job – as a communications manager for the Regional Air Quality Council, which resulted in you hiring Eric Heinz as your full-time newspaper editor. How much will the new concert cost?

Sabados It’s a government-adjacent non-profit, that’s what I called it, created by the state. The entity does everything from work on the state’s EPA-related Air Quality Implementation Plan, to collaborating with many city governments on their efforts on everything from electrification to cycling and walking ability, to how to reduce your own pollution and to personally take meaningful action to improve air quality.

pc: Do you ever want to get back into politics?

Sabados: It’s a little early, but maybe I’ll announce it to the town hall? (Laughs) The line you’re supposed to give is never say never, but that’s the honest answer. I have absolutely no intention of showing up for anything, but when I posted on Facebook that I was taking a step back from the daily newspaper, I immediately started wondering if I was showing up for the council district or in general, and the answer is, I absolutely am not. It is not a springboard. I ran because the time was right for me to run, and it was the race I wanted, but it didn’t work out. And like I said, you find other ways to serve – you lose a municipal election, you start a municipal newspaper, talking about those same issues. It’s public service for me.