Marshall Zelinger

7/10/2020

Panelist Profile

Session: The Art of Public Messaging – How Do You Reach a Skeptical Audience?

Marshall Zelinger will explore the art of public messaging on this panel, addressing important questions and challenges. Where has industry lost its way in winning the hearts and minds of the public? What can it do to improve? Who are the pragmatic stakeholders on the other side of the issue and what do they think about our message? What can we learn from their examples? And perhaps most importantly, going forward, how can we effectively convey our message to a general public that may be pre-disposed against the oil and gas industry?

Reporter
9News

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session info

About Marshall Zelinger

Marshall Zelinger is a Reporter at 9NEWS in Denver, Colorado.

If you're holding onto a vanilla latte or a story idea, Marshall Zelinger will be your best friend.

Marshall is an Aurora native from a time when people only knew Aurora as the Illinois-home of Wayne's World.

If you went to Tollgate Elementary, Aurora Hills or Laredo Middle School or Smoky Hill High School, 'Hi!' If you didn't, 'Hi!' to you too.

You'll find Marshall contributing to Next with Kyle Clark during the week, covering breaking news, investigations, politics and anything that involves kindergarten-like show-and-tell.

Marshall joined 9NEWS in January 2017 after having worked for 7 years at Denver's KMGH, just down the street. Before that, Marshall worked at KRDO in Colorado Springs from 2004 until 2010. Marshall began his journalism career in Chico, California in May 2003.

Marshall graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2002 with a degree in, you guessed it: journalism!

If you're keeping track of Marshall's employment history, his work has ranged from a bagel store to a bet-taker at Arapahoe Park horse track.

When Marshall graduated from CU, his goal was to be a sports anchor. That didn't happen. Even though he's always been a news reporter, Marshall still got to cover two Denver Broncos Super Bowl appearances -- in New York and San Francisco -- and one Colorado Rockies World Series in Boston.

Marshall also traveled to Texas to cover the evacuation of residents from New Orleans to Houston following Hurricane Katrina. He also extensively covered the 2008 and 2012 Republican and Democratic National Conventions in Denver, St. Paul, Tampa and Charlotte.

The Aurora Theater Shooting was profound for Marshall for two reasons. One, his childhood bedroom window overlooked the Aurora Mall. Second, he covered the story from start to finish, from the shooter's apartment at 4 a.m. the morning of the shooting to the courtroom when the life-in-prison sentence was announced.

Marshall was also sent to Newtown, Connecticut to cover the elementary school shooting in 2013.

In 2017, Marshall broke the story of cheerleaders at Denver's East High School that were forced into doing the splits as well as the story of forged voter signatures appearing on petitions that helped a U.S. Senate candidate qualify for the ballot. If you've never done a web search for "Marshall Zelinger and Jon Keyser," you're welcome.

Marshall is not a humblebrag. If he was, he would tell you he was lucky to be part of a team honored with a George Foster Peabody Award for "Investigating The Fire," a 30-minute documentary into a deadly fire set by the Colorado State Forest Service in 2012. He would also tell you about his nine Emmy Awards, including six for his demonstrative live reporting. Or his two national Walter Cronkite Awards for Excellence for his political investigative reporting. He might even mention the two Colorado laws that changed because of his reporting.

Since he's not a humblebrag, Marshall fills his time running long distances, eating copious amounts of cereal and entertaining his 13-year-old dachshund named Kosher.

Send him your story ideas… or where he can find the rare box of Apple Jacks with Marshmallows.

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