Park Hill Character Great Ball of Fire
By Cara DeGette
GPHN Editor
If you watched Kyle Clark’s May 30 debate starring Lauren Boebert, Mike Lynch, Richard Holtorf, and the rest of the GOP gang running for Congress on Colorado’s Eastern Plains, it was a feast.
The forum featured a hearty menu of options: guns, a DUI, a high-speed chase with a state trooper, Beetlejuice, vaping, heavy petting, flipping the bird, fashion-policing women in Congress …
A few days later late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel had a field day dissecting the madcap event: “Colorado is gaining some serious ground on Florida here.”
Kimmel gave a hearty two-thumbs up to the 9News anchor’s moderating skills. “Like a drill sergeant,” was the term the comedian applied to Clark’s style and precision.
“Did Kyle just win the debate? He’s the moderator! Oh, this guy, Kyle — his name’s Kyle Clark — he shot out of a cannon . . . That’s how you run a debate right there! Give that man a raise!”
The Jimmy Kimmel segment went viral, as did highlights from the debate itself. The actor George Takei, who played Mr. Sulu in Star Trek and is a prolific tweeter, weighed in: “More of this, please.” A Reddit thread rated Clark’s performance as “masterclass.” Clark, many begged, should be tapped to moderate a presidential debate.
Clark’s show, Next with Kyle Clark, is Denver’s most-watched news show and has been for over five years, according to 9News. After the debate, Clark, a Park Hill resident for a decade, sat down with the Greater Park Hill News to talk about holding politicians’ feet to the fire, accountability journalism, his wildly successful Word of Thanks project, and why he dukes it out daily with the trolls on social media.
The interview occurred in Clark’s well-tended garden, his “happy place,” where he assured all the good quotes would happen.
‘Have a great night!’
This is Clark’s 19th year as a TV journalist. He spent his first two years out of college at a station in Rochester, New York. It was the city closest to the rural area where he grew up — a deep red upstate county that picked Trump over Hillary Clinton by a 2-1 margin.
Clark is the product of public school teacher parents. When he was younger he thought he would travel the country, in the style of a Charles Kuralt or a Steve Hartman, interviewing interesting characters in interesting places. He was also interested in working with the most talented photojournalists in the country. He’d never been to Denver, but 9News had that talent.
Clark started at the Denver station as a reporter, then became an anchor. Eight years ago he and his colleagues decided to do something radical. They decided to just say no to the fear-mongering model that is synonymous with much of what is local TV news: ‘Let me show you the 10 worst things that happened today: murder, murder, car crash, fire, weather, and sports … Have a great night!’
“Why does that have to be local news?” Clark asks. “I’m bothered by the idea that TV journalism is by necessity, shallow, or is not involved in doing real accountability journalism.”
He is also bothered by the harm that TV journalists can inflict. The worst of local television, especially crime reporting, creates irrational fears and turns neighbors against neighbors.
And so, Next With Kyle Clark was born — “Smart. Funny. Honest” is the tagline, with a heavy dose of analysis, commentary, and holding public officials accountable. It’s designed for people who are already at least vaguely aware of what’s happening in the world. Agree, or disagree, the idea is to reinforce shared community values, and start conversations.
The equal opportunity critic
Like many journalists, Clark grapples with the best approach to covering politicians with extreme views — many of whom have built their brands on outrageous behavior and nonsensical beliefs.
“How do you cover someone like Congresswoman Lauren Boebert that is both fair to her and fair to every other elected official who does not behave like her?” he says. “We can’t give her a pass [just] because she makes it a part of her daily schtick, right?
“But we know, because we saw this with Donald Trump, that politicians who say false things get a bulk discount. Joe Biden says something that is false — [snap] — national story! Donald Trump says 50 things that are false — that’s just Monday.
“It is a tremendously unfair standard.”
Viewers with right-leaning political views often hammer Clark for being too hard on Republicans. Boebert aside, who can forget 2022 gubernatorial candidate Heidi Ganahl and her obsession with furries? Last month, Clark devoted plenty of airtime covering Dave Williams, the chairman of the Republican Party of Colorado. Williams kicked off Pride Month with a not-subtle dog whistle about “godless groomers” and a press release claiming “God Hates Flags.”
But Clark is an equal opportunity critic. Just when lefties think Clark’s in their corner, he’ll take a dig at a worthy Democrat. Mayor Michael Hancock and Sen. John Hickenlooper have gotten the Clark treatment. He’s tussled with former DPS school board member Auon’tai Anderson. He’s zinged Gov. Jared Polis for publicly crowing about refunding Coloradans’ tax credits after first trying to kill the refund plan.
In late June, Next reported that between last July and the end of this year, Mayor Mike Johnston will have spent a staggering $155 million on his plan to solve the homeless crisis in Denver. That is $65 million more than the mayor said it would cost. Next journalists were responsible for obtaining the famous Boebert tapes from her Beetlejuice performance. This spring Next also aired a video from inside a migrant shelter in Denver in which a city official tells newcomers to move on to other cities — warning of a bleak future if they stay in the Mile High City.
“One of the highest purposes of journalism is to hold power to account,” Clark says. “I think we can do that in a variety of ways, but one way is to ask difficult questions of people who want to assume power.
“Every journalist should be doing accountability journalism, with very few exceptions. There aren’t enough journalists to spare at this point.”
Bringing in the brass band
To say Clark “actively engages” on social media is like saying he “occasionally” wears plaid jackets.
He’s been called the enemy of the people, and a national treasure. On Twitter, he collects his share of nastygrams, countered with a cavalcade of praise, like this recent post: “America! Protect Kyle Clark at all costs! This man is doing the lord’s work, one interview at a time!”
Clark holds his own. One troll recently criticized the anchor’s coverage of Pride Month and smeared LGBTQ+ people as degenerates (and worse).
Troll: “Kyle Clark is just another spineless virtue-signaling cheerleader for Satan.”
To which Clark responded: “Spineless virtue signaling cheerleader for Satan” is too wordy. Please give me a shorter nickname.” The anchor then urged people to join him and kick in a few bucks to benefit the Center on Colfax, “for free mental health care for LGBTQ+ Coloradans dealing with this hate all the time.”
Under the ownership of Elon Musk, Twitter (now X) is notably more toxic. So why, exactly, is Clark still there? Hard sigh. “Part of it is genuinely useful to my job — staying up on things,” he says. “And part of it is an addiction to the call-and-response thing, It is a shame what’s happened to Twitter, some of the hate speech.”
Clark’s also on Threads, a lefty platform where he gets his share of liberal grief when he is critical of something some Democrat did. “I am like, do you not understand how journalism works? Ohhhh, you saw me light up a Republican so you think that’s what I do all day. Well, welcome to the show.
“I love to defend our work and why we do it,” he says. “The kids call it receipts — I love to give people receipts.”
Clark’s favorite critics are people who seem decent enough for some banter — like the guy “Jeff in Brighton” who recently provided his feedback with this gem: “If bulls#!t was music you’d be a brass band.” Clark responded by bringing Denver’s Guerrilla Fanfare Brass Band into the studio to close out the Next segment with a lively rendition of When The Saints Go Marching In.
Clark won’t engage with the worst of them, the ones who post seriously vile and threatening messages. He takes those threats seriously and so does his employer. But then he considers the journalists who are covering the wars in Gaza and Ukraine. And none of the hate directed his way, he says, compares to the ugly stuff that women in journalism routinely get hit with.
Strangers doing for strangers
Four years ago, several months into the pandemic lockdown, Clark was anchoring Next from his basement in Park Hill. Viewers will recall that familiar backdrop: the circular log storage cubby next to a fireplace. It was there he cooked up Word of Thanks, an ongoing micro-giving campaign — people giving as little as five bucks at a time — to raise money for small nonprofits.
The idea, Clark says, is to intentionally build community every week, with “total strangers doing for total strangers.”
“The first week we asked folks to give to the Civic Center Conservancy [in Denver] to help clean up after some of the protests,” Clark says. They figured they needed in the ballpark of $75,000 to $100,000 to clean up all the damage.
“Next viewers in a week raised $90,000. At that point, we were like, ‘Oh, this has some legs.”
Every week Clark personally matches the first $250 given. “I‘ll never ask anyone to support a cause unless I do, too.”
As of the end of June, Next viewers have funded 210 campaigns, raising nearly $13 million. They’ve raised tens of thousands for Greater Park Hill Community’s food programs, payed off a school lunch debt in Greeley, and built a football field in a small town in southern Colorado.
They’ve provided energy assistance to people in the San Luis Valley, bought holiday gifts for every child living in public housing in Denver for two years, raised a quarter million for resettling refugees from Afghanistan, funded airlifted medical supplies to Ukraine, helped victims from the Marshall Fire rebuild, funded a foundation that works with young Black men to help them get college-ready…. And on, and on.
“It’s just people giving from all over the place … a real force for good.”
Old enough to be a birder
When he and his wife moved to Denver, it was practically sight unseen. Clark says he figured he would stay a few years and learn from the pros. But then, he fell in love with the place and with the people. Moving to Park Hill was a cinch; the neighborhood’s tree canopy was the closer.
“The trees remind me of where I grew up,” Clark says. “It’s a wonderful neighborhood and people said great things about it, but it truly was a matter of, when we drove through it was looking like home.”
His wife Vanessa, a former journalist, works in the nonprofit sector and stays out of the spotlight. Her influence, though, is durable. “The best advice she usually gives me is, ‘don’t say it like that, there is a better way to say it, be more tactful, be more careful,’ ” Clark says. The couple has two daughters, 6 and 3, and a network of neighbors who are also close friends.
Like Word of Thanks, Clark’s backyard garden was another product of the pandemic. This spring a Say’s Phoebe showed up — the first time he’s ever seen that bird. At first, he was excited when he enticed it back several times with the birdsong that he pulled up on his phone. But now Clark’s bothered he may have ruined the bird’s plans for a summer romance. The encounter made Clark, at 40, realize he’s now old enough to be a serious birder.
“I [had] never lived in the city before, but feel like we have a small-town feel in Park Hill. People know each other, they take care of each others’ kids, everyone watches out for one another, everyone is very invested in the community.”
Another true story: “I was in Safeway shortly after I moved here,” he says, “and was walking down the aisles. People kept saying hello — like three people said hello. And I am thinking, ‘I’ve been on 9News for like three weeks and there’s no way that people are recognizing me.’ And then I realized, ‘Oh! Coloradans are just nice and friendly and if you pass them and make eye contact people say hello.’ ”
That politeness is not as common as maybe it should be. The pace of Colorado — not frantic, but not slow — reminds Clark of the place he grew up.
“It would crush us to leave. It would crush us to leave.”
