Ethics & disclosures

Who owns this

Cortez Current is published by Charles P. Borchini Jr. of Cortez, Colorado, who is its sole owner. It is self-funded by the publisher and supported by advertising. It takes no money from any government, party, campaign or advocacy group, and has no investors. Advertising does not buy coverage.

The publisher also runs We Gotcha Served LLC, a process serving business, and you should weigh that when reading our coverage. Cortez Current covers police, sheriff and court news. We do not report on any case in which that business has served papers, with one exception: a case of significant public interest may be covered, from public court records and official releases only, and the story will say that the publisher’s company served papers in it. All court coverage comes only from official releases and public court records.

If a story ever touches that business, it will say so in the story.

The publisher also served on the Cortez Planning and Zoning Commission from November 2025 to September 2026 and is no longer a member. While he served, Cortez Current did not cover matters he took part in.

How stories get made — read this part

Most of what you read here is produced by an automated system. Every morning, software built on an AI model (Anthropic’s Claude) reads a fixed list of sources — the City of Cortez, Montezuma County, the towns of Dolores and Mancos, the Cortez Police Department, CDOT, KSJD, the National Park Service, the high school’s schedule and MaxPreps, Ertel Funeral Home — and writes the day’s stories.

The Cortez Current is a one-person operation, and I’m responsible for everything it publishes. I use AI tools to help draft and summarize source material. I prepare some articles myself and proofread them before they are published. I read the others after they are published. Some routine items are compiled from public records and published without my reviewing each one individually. When an error is brought to my attention, I correct it promptly.

The system works under fixed rules:

• Official notices from a government agency are reproduced word for word, with the agency and date named at the top and the original linked at the bottom. We change nothing but obvious typos.
• Everything else is written from public documents and credited reporting, in plain language, and links to its sources so you can check it.
• It publishes no opinion, no speculation about motives, and no endorsements.
• It never names a juvenile, including student athletes. It names crime suspects only as police named them, and never names victims.
• Crime, accident, death and missing-person reports run only from the police, the county or KSJD — never from social media.
• It skips anything it cannot verify from an official source, and logs what it skipped.

The publisher sets those rules, reads the site’s output, and answers for everything on it. Stories with a byline other than “Cortez Current Staff” — the City of Cortez, Montezuma County, CDOT — are that agency’s own words.

Images

Photographs and graphics come from the agency that issued the story and are credited in the caption. When an image was generated by AI rather than photographed, the caption says AI-generated illustration — no exceptions. We do not use AI images on obituaries or on any story about an identifiable person.

What we don’t do

• We don’t accept payment, gifts or favors in exchange for coverage, and we don’t sell “sponsored” stories.
• We don’t endorse candidates or ballot measures. Opinion pieces, when we run them, are clearly labeled as opinion and kept separate from news.
• We don’t reproduce other publications’ reporting. A brief that credits KSJD is our summary of facts they reported, linked to their story.
• We don’t rewrite funeral-home obituaries. A notice here carries only the stated facts and links to the full obituary.

Police blotter and arrests

The Police Blotter is compiled from Cortez Police Department incident reports. It names adults who were arrested, summonsed, cited or served a warrant, as the report names them. It does not name victims, witnesses or juveniles.

An arrest, a summons or a charge is an accusation, not a conviction. When charges are dismissed or a case is resolved, we update our coverage. To ask for an update, email cortezcurrent@pm.me with the story’s address. It helps to include the court case number or a court document showing the outcome.

Mistakes

Because most stories are read after they publish rather than before, readers are our first line of review. Every story has a “Request a correction” link that opens a short form with the story’s address filled in. When we correct a story we say what changed and when, at the bottom of the story. See the corrections policy.

Contact

Questions about anything on this page: cortezcurrent@pm.me.