Full-time respect: 2022 was milestone year for journalist Eden Lane | John Moore

Ten years ago, I wrote a Denver Post profile of multimedia journalist Eden Lane calling attention to some national media history.

By then, Lane had self-produced five seasons of her weekly televised love letter to the Colorado arts community called "In Focus With Eden Lane," which would air on Colorado Public Television through 2018. She was believed to be the first recurring transgender journalist on mainstream television in the United States.

“But I don’t think of being transgender as any part of my identity, any more than I do that I am left-handed,” she told me at the time.

She just wanted to work — and that, she has. As a freelance anchor, producer, reporter and editor, Lane’s work has appeared on Rocky Mountain PBS, The Huffington Post, NewsNet, E.W. Scripps and on local channels 7, 9 and 12. She’s covered politics, the performing arts, film, LGBTQIA+ issues, community affairs, home technology, fashion and more.

But until this year, something was starkly missing from that work history: No one had ever offered her a full-time job, with all the perks, respect and credibility that go with it: A salary, health care and a retirement plan. For the better part of 15 years, it cost Lane more to bring her greatly appreciated arts coverage to Denver airwaves than she earned from making it.

She applied at TV stations throughout the country. Even back in 2012, Lane estimated she had made it through the hiring process far enough to have met the bosses at more than 50 news stations face-to-face — and yet — nothing. Curious, indeed. 

That all finally changed in May, when Lane was hired as the full-time arts reporter for Colorado Public Radio. With a salary, health care and, yes, a retirement plan. For Lane, it was a culminating, legitimizing personal moment a second lifetime in the making. And best of all: Her hiring had nothing to do with her gender. It had to do with her having firmly established herself as a credible and respected journalist in the community over a very long time.

“I think we were damned lucky to find somebody with Eden’s love of the arts and her experience with broadcast in Denver,” said Kevin Dale, executive editor of CPR News. “We couldn’t have asked for a better combination for someone to cover arts for CPR News.”

Lane has made the most of the opportunity, demonstrating a trademark work ethic that already has produced more than 50 major arts features since May. Like immediately responding to the Club Q massacre in Colorado Springs by interviewing cast members of a nearby production of "It's a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play" who were deeply and directly impacted by the tragedy — not only about by exploring the challenge of spreading holiday cheer at that time, but what it is like for some queer artists to live and work in Colorado Springs.

And the entire arts community is benefiting — not only from Lane's output and experience, but from Colorado Public Radio’s reach as well. CPR News attracts about 250,000 weekly listeners and 1.2 million web visits, Dale said, giving Lane the largest ongoing local audience of her career. Everybody wins.

Among the storytelling highlights of Lane’s first year at CPR:

• Englewood’s Brewability makes space for work – and play – for people with disabilities

• UNC graduate gets ready to make his Tony Awards debut as cast member of Broadway’s most nominated show

• She was a world-class violinist who became homeless. Now her instrument is getting a new life, and a new concerto, in Greeley

• In Fort Collins, a program keeps the music alive by placing pianos around and asking people to play (and paint) them

• Two years after COVID shutdown, Shakespeare in the Wild debuts in Centennial

Shakespeare in the Wild founder Leigh Miller said Lane’s microphone is only as good as the relationship she has built with the community over 15 years. Meaning … it's a pretty good microphone.

“Eden knows the community, she loves the community and she has the acumen for the job,” said Miller. “When she heard what we were doing, and who was doing it with us, she didn’t have to be told why it was a newsworthy story. She already knew. We feel so fortunate that she chose to spend her time with us.”

Lane also has a unique understanding of the performing-arts community because she is an artist herself, having attended The Juilliard School and performed on Broadway. In recent years, she has performed for the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Mass., and for Local Theater Company in Boulder. In 2022, she is a woman truly coming into her own.

Her parting words from 2012 ring even more true a decade later:

“I would say my experience is evidence that no matter who you are, or how you began, when you embrace yourself, and if you put in the work, and you give yourself the space to explore all of your potential and be authentic — then you can do it.”

Note: The True West Awards, now in their 22nd year, began as the Denver Post Ovation Awards in 2001. Denver Gazette Senior Arts Journalist John Moore celebrates the Colorado theater community by revisiting 30 of the best stories from the past year without categories or nominations.