John Moore, one of Colorado’s most respected and honored arts journalists for more than 20 years, has joined the staff of the Denver Gazette to write about trends and personalities in arts, entertainment and popular culture throughout the metro area.

Moore has been contributing arts news and a weekly column for the Denver Gazette since January 2021.

“I am really looking forward having John Moore with The Denver Gazette full time,” said Managing Editor Jim Bates. “I doubt there is anyone who knows the arts scene better than him — especially the performing arts. Having him more than once a week instantly makes us a better newspaper.”

Moore has been published in more than 50 publications ranging from the New York Times to The Washington Post to Auto Racing Digest covering sports, the arts, politics and popular culture. At The Denver Post, he was included among American Theatre Magazine’s list of the 12 most influential theater critics outside of New York. From 2013-20, he covered local arts for the entire Colorado arts community in a pioneering journalism mission created by the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.

He has received awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, Best of the West, Colorado Press Association, Denver Press Club, Society of Black Journalists, the Women’s Sports Foundation, Westword and Out Front Magazine, among others. He also was presented the Colorado Theatre Guild’s inaugural Journalistic Excellence in the Arts Award in 2013.

Moore is the co-founder of The Underground Music Showcase, otherwise known as The UMS, now the largest annual music festival in Denver, entering its 22nd year.

In 2013, Moore founded The Denver Actors Fund, a non-profit that has made $925,000 available to Colorado theater artists in medical need. For his contributions, Moore was presented the 2019 Lucy Jordan Humanitarian Award by Actors Equity Association.

As a playwright, Moore’s play “Waiting for Obama” was presented as a featured selection of the 2016 New York International Fringe Festival. The play, about a Colorado Springs family divided over the gun issue, “captures the political and social logjam of a society that can’t even agree on its constitution,” wrote the London Daily Mail. “Yet there’s also a sweetness to a story that puts its faith in a humanity trampled underfoot by the rush to righteousness.”

Moore also teaches an intro to journalism class at the Fremont Correctional Facility in Canon City through the University of Denver’s Prison Arts Initiative.

The first half of Moore’s journalism career was in sports, with stops at The Denver Post and Frank Deford’s The National Sports Daily in New York, among others.

Read some of John’s recent work: