Colorado Politics Paywall: How to Read Colorado Politics Articles for Free
Colorado Politics meters its statehouse, court and campaign coverage. How the Clarity Media paywall works and how to read a full Colorado Politics article.
Paywall behaviour last tested
Colorado Politics is the Denver-based political news site and weekly print edition owned by Clarity Media, the company behind the Colorado Springs Gazette and the Denver Gazette. It covers the General Assembly, the governor's office, the state's congressional delegation, the courts and the ballot measures that make Colorado elections so long, and it runs a steady stream of guest columns from lobbyists, legislators and advocates. During a campaign season its stories are shared constantly, and a reader following a link from a newsletter or social media often lands on the subscription prompt. This guide explains how the paywall works and how to read a full story.
How the Colorado Politics paywall works
Colorado Politics uses a metered paywall. Non-subscribers can open a limited number of articles before the body is replaced by a prompt to subscribe, and the count is kept in a browser cookie. Some longer pieces, particularly court reporting and analysis, are marked for subscribers from the first visit.
The gate is applied in the browser. The site delivers the full text of each article in the page so that search engines can index it, and a script then checks your cookie and hides the body if you are over the limit. A crawler-style reader that fetches the page without running that script receives the complete article. Our explainer on metered versus hard paywalls sets out why that distinction matters.
Our tests on 10 October 2026 through Skip the Paywall:
- A 1,804-word Colorado Politics investigation into how widely 10th Circuit judges vary in the speed of their decisions loaded in full, all 38 paragraphs.
- A 1,002-word Colorado Politics report on a panel debating stiffer fentanyl penalties loaded in full, all 34 paragraphs.
- A 776-word Colorado Politics guest column opposing Amendment 87 loaded in full, all 16 paragraphs.
Read a Colorado Politics article in full
- Copy the article link. Colorado Politics links look like coloradopolitics.com/2026/10/08/headline-slug/, sometimes with a trailing number.
- Paste it into the box on the home page and press Read Article.
- The story appears in a clean reader view with the headline, byline and full text.
Other approaches
- Newsletters. Colorado Politics sends free daily and weekly email briefings that summarise the day's stories and link to them.
- Library access. Denver Public Library and several Front Range systems offer the Gazette titles through PressReader, and the Colorado Politics print edition is available in some library newspaper collections.
- Private windows. The meter lives in a cookie, so a private window resets it.
- Related free sources. Legislative calendars, bill texts and court opinions are published free by the state, and much of what Colorado Politics reports can be traced back to them.
How it compares with other Colorado news
The Denver Post and the other MediaNews papers in the state load in full, and so does The Daily Sentinel in Grand Junction. The Colorado Springs Gazette and the Denver Gazette, which share an owner with Colorado Politics and almost certainly the same paywall, were not tested, so we cannot vouch for them yet. The full list of sites that work is kept current.
Subscribe if you read it regularly
Colorado Politics is a small specialist newsroom covering a beat that most general papers have cut back on, and it depends on subscriptions. If you follow the statehouse or Colorado elections closely, a subscription is the right way to keep that coverage going.
Try it with an article
Paste the URL of an article from Colorado Politics and read it in a clean reader view. Free, instant, no signup.
Frequently asked questions
Who owns Colorado Politics?
Clarity Media, the Anschutz-owned company that also publishes the Colorado Springs Gazette and the Denver Gazette. The three titles share reporting and, as far as we can tell, the same subscription system.
Do guest columns count against the meter?
Yes. Guest columns are ordinary articles on the site and are metered in the same way as news reports. One loaded in full in our test.
Does the reader work on the Denver Gazette?
We have not tested it. It uses the same publisher and very likely the same paywall as Colorado Politics, so it probably behaves the same way, but we only list sites we have confirmed.