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David Krause named editor of Aspen Times

Aspen Times staff
Anna Stonehouse/The Aspen Times David Krause is the new editor of The Aspen Times, having his first day on the job Monday.

The Aspen Times has hired David Krause as its new editor. Krause, who had been working at the Denver Post since 2000, minus a short stint in Denver television, joined the Times on Monday.

“Dave’s the kind of guy who really appreciates that there is nothing textbook about journalism in a quirky mountain town, yet values the kind of quality storytelling that our audiences expect and deserve,” said Times Publisher Samantha Johnston. “He is humble enough to recognize that the history of this community is rich and deep and that the dynamics of our city and county present a steep learning curve, but he’s also a veteran journalist who is curious and passionate and will get up to speed quickly.”

A frequent visitor of Aspen and the Roaring Fork Valley for more than 20 years, Krause and his family are excited to start their next life adventure at 7,900 feet.



“My wife and I always dreamed of retiring in the valley, but the past few years we said, why should we wait until retirement?” he said. “We have enjoyed living in Denver and the Front Range since 1995, but every time we leave the mountains to head back we started talking about the next time we could come up.”

Krause, 49, most recently was the deputy city editor at The Post and was leading coverage of local government, education and environment. He has sports journalism roots and has been covering the Winter X Games in Aspen for 10 of the past 11 years.



“Because we have such talented longtime locals on our team already, Dave’s collaborative nature will help blend his fresh perspective with their critical institutional knowledge,” Johnston said.

Krause started his newspaper career in 1983 while in high school, working for the Bethany Tribune-Review covering sports for the small, community publication in the suburb of Oklahoma City. At 16, he started at The Daily Oklahoman answering phones in the sports department and taking high school stats. He worked at The Oklahoman during high school and through college. By the time he left the paper in 1995 to move to Colorado, he was helping lead the night operations on the sports desk of the state’s largest newspaper.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in mass communications from the University of Oklahoma, but his first two years of studies were at St. Gregory’s College in Shawnee, Oklahoma, where he also worked part-time at the Shawnee News-Star. He transferred to OU and was hired full-time at The Oklahoman in 1987.

Krause met his wife (a Durango High grad) at the newspaper in 1992 and they moved to Colorado in 1995 when he was named the sports editor of the Loveland Reporter-Herald. He worked there for more than five years before heading to Denver.

In December 2000, he was hired at The Denver Post to work in the sports department and became The Post’s night sports editor in 2002. In 2006, he was promoted to deputy sports editor and directed coverage of major sports events such as the Winter X Games, professional golf tournaments and all of the Denver pro teams’ postseason events. In 2013, he left The Post to be the sports executive producer at KUSA, Denver’s NBC affiliate.

He returned to The Post in 2014 to be the deputy city editor. He was the lead editor on events such as the Gold King Mine disaster and The Post’s yearlong investigation into workers’ safety in the oil and gas industry.

Krause and his family have been visiting the valley for more than 20 years, having camped, hiked, biked and snowboarded the mountains and trails since they moved to Colorado. A Detroit native, Krause was stuck on Colorado the first time he visited in the 1970s.

“The first time I came to Colorado, my aunt and uncle had moved to Pueblo West and we drove up from Oklahoma City,” Krause said. “I was about 10 or 11 and I remember my uncle taking us up to Monarch Pass in July and we had a snowball fight. I thought it was awesome. It’s a tradition I’ve continued with my nieces and nephews when they visit us in the summer.”

He said one of his greatest on-mountain accomplishments is riding all four of Aspen’s mountains in one day with his two children.

“It was something my daughter brought up when she came during the X Games in 2013, so I figured, ‘why not?’ ” he said. “We started on the Snowmass gondola at 8:30 and did two top-to-bottom runs at each resort and moved about by the RFTA buses. We ended at Buttermilk just before 3 o’clock. When we went into a shop to get an Aspen sticker to commemorate the day, the clerk behind the counter said, ‘Wow, I’ve lived here all my life and not done anything like that.’”


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