You know, it’s the CEO who lays off employees who is the real victim. Just ask HyperSocial CEO Braden Wallake.

• The union representing Denver Post reporters received a contract proposal from the paper’s hedge-fund owners that included a 0% raise.
• The new below-ground I-70 corridor failed its first test when first responders had to rescue 11 people during torrential rains this past weekend. Pumps designed to drain the roadway failed to automatically turn on.
• Red Rocks settled a lawsuit with the Department of Justice alleging that the concert venue had overcharged for wheelchair-accessible seats by $48,000 over the past four years.
• Fans of Casa Bonita are sweating new reports that the restaurant still doesn’t know when it will re-open. New owners Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South park fame. The two told The Denver Post they “had no clue what they were getting themselves into when they picked up the landmark.”
• RTD’s BroncosRide remains on hold as executives determine whether the service violated federal regulations, including the Americans with Disability Act.
• The attempt by Domino’s to rule the Italian pizza market came to an entirely predictable end. The chain pulled the plug on the last of its 29 locations in the country this week after learning the hard way that Italians aren’t idiots.
• Legendary baseball player Pete Rose declined to discuss allegations of statutory rape, telling a female reporter, “I’m not here to talk about that. … It was 55 years ago, babe.”
• Actress Anne Heche died from injuries sustained in a car accident.
• Author Salman Rushdie was stabbed in the neck at a lecture event, 33 years after the late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a religious decree calling for Rushdie’s death for writing a novel considered blasphemous.

So, who won the week?

• Denver officials removed a plaque at 20th & Blake streets that misrepresented brutal attacks on Chinese residents as the “Hop Alley/Chinese Riot of 1880.” 
• 9News meteorologist Kathy Sabine returned to the airwaves this week following surgery for skin cancer. She shared her experience as a warning to others about the importance of taking precautions.
• Longtime 9News anchor Gary Shapiro announced he is retiring after four decades at the station.
• Little League batter Isaiah Jarvis walked from first base to the mound to hug pitcher Kaiden Shelton when he realized the pitcher was visibly distraught after hitting Jarvis in the head with a pitch.

It was 55 years ago, babe.

Pete Rose to a female reporter declining to address allegations that he had a sexual relationship with a minor in the 1970s. In court filings, Rose has acknowledged the relationship, but said he thought she was 16, the age of consent in Ohio.

• No doubt the venerable Denver strip club Diamond Cabaret has been the source of many a communicable disease outbreak, and this time it might be monkeypox.
• Denver Public Schools paid $2.1 million to settle allegations that it misused AmeriCorps funds.
• Verizon is scrambling to upgrade its 911 call-routing technology in Denver after media reported that its system routed 911 calls to dispatchers in Aurora during a recent high-profile shooting.
• What’s to blame for downtown Denver’s increased violence? Food trucks!
• The U.S. Forest Service halted construction on a Keystone chairlift that would access a new 555-acre, 16-trail expansion. That action was in response to the resort mistakenly building a temporary construction road in protected alpine tundra.
• Glass windows on the exterior of a downtown Denver apartment complex have been shattering due to heat.
• An airline passenger who brought two McDonald’s sausage McMuffins on a flight from Indonesia to Australia was fined the equivalent of more than $1,800 for failing to declare “potential high biosecurity risk items.“
• Jeff Bezos’ $500 million unfinished yacht was towed from its Rotterdam shipyard in the middle of the night because officials refused to allow him to partially disassemble a bridge that it would be too tall to clear once finished. Outraged at the request, locals had threatened to pelt the yacht with eggs and tomatoes when it passed the historic bridge.
• Warner Bros. spent $90 million to make the movie “Batgirl,” but the result was so bad that the studio has completely shelved it – it won’t appear in theaters or on streaming services.
• After more than 14,000 episodes, NBC has relegated “Days of Our Lives” to its Peacock streaming service, ending the soap opera’s 57-year run on broadcast TV.
• Restaurants are tough businesses to start with, and now a review scam is making life even more difficult. Scammers are leaving one-star reviews and then demanding a ransom to remove them.
• WNBA star Brittney Griner was found guilty of drug charges in a Russian show trial. The best odds of her being released are a prisoner swap.

So, who won the week?

• The Denver Broncos new ownership group added Formula One racing legend Lewis Hamilton. It turns out Hamilton’s a bit of a local – he owns a home in Beaver Creek.
• DIA held onto its title as the third-busiest airport in the world. Only Atlanta and Dallas-Fort Worth ranked ahead of it.
• The New York Times added 180,000 digital subscribers in the second quarter of 2022, giving it 9.17 million total.
• Applebee’s got coverage for its latest marketing stunt: a line of chicken wing-flavored lip glosses.

Applebee’s has introduced Saucy Gloss, a line of chicken wing-flavored lip glosses. The collection includes four different flavors, including Get Me Hot Buffalo, Sweet Chile Kiss, Be My Honey Pepper, and Honey BBQ-T, “each with their own taste and hue.”

• What do you not do when you are smuggling 29 pounds of cocaine through Mesa County? Drive 110 mph on I-70.
• Mike Willis, the director of Colorado’s Office of Emergency Management, looks like a dead man walking after a Denver Post profile of his threatening and bullying behavior. There’s no way Gov. Jared Polis wants this guy on the payroll as he campaigns for re-election.
• Want to take a leisurely stroll through a former Superfund clean-up site? Good news! An appeals court gave its approval to continue constructing trails at the site of the former Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant.
• Anglers 1, Fish 1: A 100-pound sailfish that was being reeled in lunged onto a fishing boat, impaling a 73-year-old woman.
• A chess-playing robot broke a 7-year-old opponent’s finger during the “Moscow Open.” In understated fashion, the president of the Moscow Chess Federation noted, “The robot broke the child’s finger. This is, of course, bad.”
• Deranged-billionaire-mad-scientist-frenemy Elon Musk made headlines this week for an alleged affair with the wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin that ended their friendship and led to Brin’s divorce.
• Residents of Yamaguchi, Japan, have come under attack from monkeys “that are trying to snatch babies, biting and clawing at flesh, and sneaking into nursery schools.”
• A jury ordered cable company Charter Communications to pay $7 billion in damages to the family of a woman who was brutally murdered by one of its installers.
• Your boss won’t give you a $1.6 million annual bonus? Just give it to yourself! That line of reasoning led to a guilty plea by Weber Shandwick’s now-former CFO. He embezzled $16 million over a decade from the PR firm.
• Coyotes ate six of Martha Stewart’s pet peacocks. Celebrities … they’re just like you and me!

So, who won the week?

• U2, Gladys Knight and George Clooney are among the honorees at this year’s Kennedy Center Honors.
• The FCC has stepped up enforcement against car warranty spam calls, which means you may get fewer.
• The Denver Broncos started training camp this week, ensuring that 90% of Denver’s sports media coverage will focus on them. The upside? You don’t have to hear about how our last-place Colorado Rockies are doing anymore.

PRSA Colorado announced the Special Award Winners it will honor at its 2022 Gold Pick event in August:

• Dawn Doty, University of Colorado Boulder, Swede Johnson Lifetime Achievement Award
• Jackie Clark, HolcimUS, Public Relations Person of the Year
• Joelle Martinez, Latino Leadership Institute, Business Person of the Year
• Anusha Roy, 9News, Newsperson of the Year
• Nora Thomas, Nora Thomas Ltd., Joe Fuentes Rookie of the Year
• Cori Pope, Keeton Public Relations, Mentor of the Year
• Shannon Hughes, Linhart Public Relations, Chapter Service Award
• Denver Water Public Affairs, Public Relations Team of the Year

2022 Gold Pick Awards Event Details

Thursday, August 25, 2022
Denver Water
1600 W 12th Ave
Denver, CO 80204
4:30-6:00 pm Networking Reception
6:00-8:00 pm Awards Presentation 
Register to Attend

After exiting the U.K. market in the early 2000s, Wendy’s knew it had to up its game when it returned two decades later. Now, the company is letting fans vote for the new face of Wendy’s in the U.K.

Photo: KCENNews screenshot

Contrary to popular belief, I have never been an escort for Senator Ted Cruz.

U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) at the Turning Points USA conference this weekend.

Erik Wemple at The Washington Post: “One line in Bloomberg News’ Wednesday story about the ongoing lawsuit Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News was unimpeachable: ‘Fox … didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment on the filing. ‘Immediately,’ in this case, meant 18 minutes, according to a Fox News spokesperson.”

“That’s how long Bloomberg News reporter Erik Larson gave Fox News to comment for an article alleging that Dominion ‘said some executives and hosts at the network still haven’t handed over any records related to its coverage.’ The headline: ‘Fox Executives in $1.6 Billion Lawsuit Haven’t Handed Over Records, Dominion Says.’ Larson cited a July 18 court filing for the scoop.”

“As it turned out, that July 18 filing was actually the public version of a document filed a month earlier on June 17 relating to a discovery dispute between the two parties. Fox News secured an extension until July 1 to turn over certain documents. After Larson’s initial story was published, Fox News told Bloomberg News that it had met that deadline. Had Bloomberg waited for that comment, it would have avoided some trouble. ‘Eighteen minutes doesn’t sound like fair to me even in this day and age,’ says Leonard Downie Jr., a former executive editor of The Post.”

• Denver Police fired seven shots and hit six bystanders while attempting to shoot a man they say pulled a gun on a LoDo street.
• Two Coloradans were attacked by a crocodile during a vacation at a Puerto Vallarta resort in Mexico.
• Denver’s Westcraft Carpets is ignoring requests from the Denver American Indian Commission to remove its signature caricature sign – “Mohawk Tommy, a shirtless boy sporting a mohawk haircut with a feather in back.”
• A contractor who helped build Tattered Cover’s new location in Westminster has sued the bookstore claiming it was stiffed on $123,000 in work.
• Kenneth Wendt, a Houston-area police officer who coached a 9-and-under baseball team, was placed on suspension after his behavior in a post-game handshake line. Video of the incident showed him aggressively bumping and pushing 8- and 9-year-olds after they defeated his team.
• Pearl Jam cancelled concerts in Europe after lead singer Eddie Vedder’s vocal cords were damaged from smoke caused by wildfires in France.
• American Airlines says it could take three years before it is operating at full capacity again due to ongoing staffing shortages.
• How much faith does Cadillac have in its new Lyriq electric SUV? It’ll give you a $5,500 discount on your purchase if you agree to sign a non-disclosure agreement that prohibits you “from discussing with any parties outside of GM your experience of owning or driving” it.
• Biotech company Biogen paid $900 million to settle a suit that alleged it paid doctors for speaking and consulting services as part of a scam that actually was intended to provide kickbacks to doctors who prescribed the company’s drugs.
• The first polio case in nearly a decade has been detected in New York.
• If you are tired of modern political scandals, here’s one with a retro twist: Loving County (Tex.) Judge Skeet Jones was arrested as part of a cattle-rustling sting operation.
• Candy maker Mars is denying that Skittles are “unfit for human consumption” due to heightened levels of titanium dioxide, a known toxin that is banned in parts of Europe.

So, who won the week?

• U.S. Navy Lt. Amanda Lee became the Blue Angels’ first female demonstration pilot in the 76-year history of the squadron.
• Primatologist Jane Goodall is the inspiration for the latest Barbie doll.

Kraft Heinz has partnered with the BLT Restaurant Group to create the “Veltini,” a Velveeta-infused martini. 

Don’t kill me, I’m just the messenger.

Saudi government media consultant Nicolla Hewitt explaining to representatives of The Washington Post that the Saudis would not allow the paper to attend a government briefing following President Biden’s visit. The background: Washington Post journalist James Khashoggi was murdered and dismembered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul at the order of Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. Hewitt works for Qorvis Communications.

• Denver is the third most expensive city in the country for Uber passengers, behind only New York City and Nashville. The average cost of a six-mile ride in Denver is about $33.
• How bad have travel delays and cancellations been in Europe this summer? Delta added a flight from Heathrow to Detroit with no passengers just to deliver 1,000 pieces of stranded luggage.
• Colorado has the fourth-most lightning deaths in the nation, and Coors Field and Rocky Mountain National Park have been identified as “hot spots.”
• Average monthly car payments in the U.S. have hit an all-time high, and 13% of them are more than $1,000 per month.
• Meanwhile, car manufacturers are looking at subscription services offered by tech companies like Microsoft and Adobe with quite a bit of jealousy. How do I know? BMW has just put heated seats on a subscription plan that costs $17/month.
• A second round of mediation between Comcast and Altitude Sports failed to end the stalemate that has prevented a vast majority of Coloradans from watching the Denver Nuggets and Colorado Avalanche over the past three years. So what have you missed? In those three years, the Nuggets have made the playoffs three times and seen center Nikola Jokić win the NBA MVP award twice. And the Avs, you may have heard, won the Stanley Cup.
• If you are tired of listening to people talk about their Wordle wins, it could get worse. Hasbro is launching Wordle: The Board Game.
• The Timberline Steaks & Grille restaurant at DIA is the highest-grossing restaurant in all of Colorado, but competitors will have a chance to take its crown – if only briefly – while it has its liquor license suspended for 30 days (it served a minor). The restaurant has appealed the decision that could cost it hundreds of thousands of dollars. Records show that 35-40% of the restaurant’s $6.3 million in sales are alcohol.
• ABC News published an obituary for Ivana Trump without removing its “Do Not Pub” warning for editors. It’s common practice for news organizations to pre-draft obituaries of notable people and store them in the system for when they are needed.

So, who won the week?

• Beaver Creek, recognizing the social media power of puppies, has introduced two new “patrol puppies” – Ruby and Telli.
• Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has joined the Walton Family’s successful bid for the Denver Broncos. Rice spent her teen years in Denver, and graduated high school from St. Mary’s Academy.
• Red Rocks and the International Church of Cannabis were featured in the premiere episode of TruTV’s “101 Places to Party Before You Die.”
• The Colorado Avalanche promoted GM Joe Sakic to the role of president of hockey operations.
• Wendy Aiello will be able to see her brother-in-law, E Street Band guitarist Nils Lofgren, when he joins Bruce Springsteen for a concert next March at Ball Arena.

Thomas Gounley at BusinessDen: “After selling its real estate at the corner of Speer and Lincoln last year, television station Denver7 is eyeing a move about three miles north. The ABC affiliate with the call sign KMGH, which brands itself ‘The Denver Channel,’ hopes to move its operations to the existing building at 2323 Delgany St., although the deal isn’t completely done, station general manager Dean Littleton told BusinessDen this week.” …

“The two-story 2323 Delgany St. building is about 85,000 square feet, according to property records. It was originally built as a warehouse, but repositioned as an office building several years ago. The property is in the Denargo Market area of Five Points and the RiNo Arts District.” …

“The move will represent the first major real estate shake-up in two decades among Denver’s primary TV stations, which are all clustered within a mile of each other south of downtown. The last change occurred in 2000, when KDVR/Fox31 moved into its building at 100 Speer, across the street from Denver7.”

Associated Press: “As Uber aggressively pushed into markets around the world, the ride-sharing service lobbied political leaders to relax labor and taxi laws, used a ‘kill switch’ to thwart regulators and law enforcement, channeled money through Bermuda and other tax havens and considered portraying violence against its drivers as a way to gain public sympathy, according to a report released Sunday.

“The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a nonprofit network of investigative reporters, scoured internal Uber texts, emails, invoices and other documents to deliver what it called ‘an unprecedented look into the ways Uber defied taxi laws and upended workers’ rights.'”

“In a written statement, Uber spokesperson Jill Hazelbaker acknowledged ‘mistakes’ in the past and said CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, hired in 2017, had been ‘tasked with transforming every aspect of how Uber operates … When we say Uber is a different company today, we mean it literally: 90% of current Uber employees joined after Dara became CEO.'”

(Editor’s note: Uber Spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker joined Uber in 2015.)

• One day after the Fourth of July parade shooting in Highland Park, Ill., the Dallas Cowboys announced a sponsorship with Black Rifle Coffee Company, which offers blends such as “Murdered Out” and “AK Espresso.”
• Residents of the 15-story Columbine Towers, which is low-income housing mostly for residents over age 70 or those with disabilities, have not had a working elevator in more than a week.
• A former Montrose funeral home operator, pleaded guilty to stealing and selling hundreds of human bodies and body parts.
• A driver caught on I-70 transporting a record 114 pounds of pure fentanyl powder cut a deal to continue his journey to Indiana to lead DEA agents to the drug “kingpins.” He immediately ditched the tracking device placed in his car and hasn’t been seen since.
• With mortgage interest rates climbing, many experts expect the housing market to cool. And that includes Denver-based Re/Max, which announced it will lay off 17% of its workforce by the end of the year.
• Two weeks after helping the Avs win the Stanley Cup, starting goaltender Darcy Kuemper appears on his way out. The team traded for New York Rangers goalie Alexandar Georgiev.
• U.S. Forest Service researchers have named Evergreen/Morrison as the state’s most at-risk areas for wildfires. Colorado Springs is second, Larkspur is third and Boulder is fourth.
• Tennis player Nick Kyrgios, who will play in Wimbledon‘s men’s finals Sunday, was ordered to appear in court in his native Australia to answer allegations that he assaulted his former girlfriend.
• Leaking fuel from actor Tim Allen’s yacht forced a marina and a nearby beach in northern Michigan to close over the Fourth of July holiday weekend.
• Disneyland’s Instagram account wasn’t the happiest place on earth this week after a hacker seized control and posted content rife with racist and homophobic slurs.

So, who won the week?

• Colorado Mesa University named David Ludlam VP of Communications.
• Grand Junction named Sara Spalding Director of Communications & Engagement.
• New Denver Broncos QB Russell Wilson has the top-selling jersey in the NFL.
• President Joe Biden formally nominated DIA CEO Phil Washington as head of the Federal Aviation Administration.

President Biden’s new anti-corruption czar’s name is “Rich Nephew.”

• A mountain lion continues to roam downtown Denver. On the bright side, maybe he will eat a scooter-rider or two.
• If you are planning to fly out of DIA this holiday weekend, good luck! And if you have a shy bladder, you may not want to use the restrooms at the airport. Passengers on planes may be watching you.
• Tyler Tysdal, husband of former Fox31 anchor Natalie Tysdal, was sentenced to six years in prison for defrauding investors in what prosecutors said was a Ponzi scheme. In June, Tysdal sold the family’s $3.1 million home to help pay back investors. The terms of his sentencing agreement shaved years off his prison sentence based on the amount of restitution he made.
• For the second straight year, life expectancy in Colorado dropped. Experts say COVID-19 and drug overdose deaths are to blame.
• The annual Investigative Reporters & Editors (IRE) conference was held in Denver last week, and things may not be going well for those who attended. Amid reports of a widespread COVID outbreak, the conference organizers issued a post-event alert suggesting attendees be vigilant about symptoms.
• An employee at an Atlanta-area Subway was shot and killed after putting too much mayo on a customer’s sandwich.
• The SEC fined Ernst & Young $100 million after hundreds of the accounting firm’s employees cheated on a … wait for it … ethics test.
• The Pac-12 Conference is reeling after two of its most-historic schools, USC and UCLA, announced they are leaving to join the Big 10.
• Independence Day marks roughly half way through the MLB baseball season, which is a good time to evaluate how the Colorado Rockies are doing. A quick check of the standings shows they currently are in last place in the NL West. Safe to say, the Monforts are not the Kroenkes.
• A bar-hopping Japanese IT consultant overindulged and lost a flash drive that held the birth dates, addresses, bank account numbers and tax details of all 465,000 residents of the city of Amagasaki.
• Ben Affleck’s 10-year-old son backed a $250,000 Lamborghini Urus into a $110,000 BMW SUV. Celebrities … they’re just like you and me!

So, who won the week?

• The Colorado Avalanche won the Stanley Cup for the first time in 21 years. And Denver fans largely managed not to riot afterward.
  • A Denver couple had the Stanley Cup delivered to their home after a mix-up with Avs captain Gabe Landeskog’s address.
  • The Avs completed the 2022 championship sweep – the Denver East Angels won the high school national hockey championship and the University of Denver Pioneers won the NCAA hockey championship.
• Windsor native Sophia Smith was triumphant in her return to Colorado as part of the U.S. women’s national soccer team. She scored two goals in the team’s 3-0 win over Colombia at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park.
• Ketanji Brown Jackson was sworn in as the first Black woman in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Denver Post Avalanche fanboy beat reporter Mike Chambers is being roasted by his colleagues nationally for celebrating the Avs win like he was a member of the team.

Chris Daniels at PRWeek: “Employees have been calling the shots in the PR job market, as demand for talent escalated last year and maintained a furious pace. The all-out war to attract and keep talent led to double-digit pay raises, enhanced benefits packages, signing bonuses and staff dictating where and how they want to work. That was then. Now economic factors are turning the job market into one favoring employers. … According to industry recruiters, the PR job market is showing signs of, if not a downturn, at least the fear of one. 

“’Employment contracts are taking a little longer to get approved,’ notes Larry Brantley, president of executive search firm Chaloner. ‘Procurement and leadership are watching spending on new hires a lot more closely than last year. They are concerned a recession is around the corner, so organizations are being a lot more measured and cautious. They don’t want to hire too fast and have to make adjustments and downsize later.’” 

The Colorado Avalanche could only post the second-highest post-season winning percentage (.800) on their way to winning the NHL championship last night, but they did set one new record: fastest team to damage the Stanley Cup. Phil Pritchard, the so-called “Keeper of the Cup” who works for the Hockey Hall of Fame, said the Avs managed to dent the trophy just five minutes after receiving it, which he said was “a new record.“

• The Colorado PUC ruled that customers are on the hook for $500 million in inflated costs for natural gas that Xcel secured during a record-breaking cold snap in February 2021. Each Xcel customer in Colorado can expect to pay an additional $213 spread out over the next 30 months.
• The Sawaya Law Firm has quietly started removing references to its founder Michael Sawaya after he was accused of sexual assault and battery by a client.
• CityCast Denver podcast host Bree Davies is under fire from Colorado HD-6 candidate Elisabeth Epps and her supporters for what they perceive as unfair and misleading interviews with each of the candidates for the position.
• Denver’s Clerk and Recorder Office sent primary ballots that included the wrong candidates to 60 voters in precinct 832. Five of the voters had already cast their ballots, and the process that assures anonymity means that those ballots cannot be identified and removed.
• Douglas County is no stranger to self-inflicted reputational wounds (see: county commissioners, board of education, public health, sheriff’s office). That streak continued as commissioners surprisingly announced they plan to use eminent domain to seize a 1,000-acre park in the county that is owned by Denver. Experts pointed out that the value of the park was approximately $800 million, far more than Douglas County’s annual operating budget.
• Routt County is bracing itself to play host to the annual Rainbow Family gathering. Local and federal authorities are scrambling to prepare for the 10,000-person, month-long event, which has historically led to traffic, trash and environmental issues.
• The Cherry Cricket in Cherry Creek North is the latest “old Denver” restaurant to be involved in a real-estate transaction. The lot on which the restaurant sits sold for $25.2 million. Unlike the Bonnie Brae Tavern, though, the Cherry Cricket is expected to remain open.
• Netflix laid off another 300 employees, the second time in as many months that is has downsized as it adjusts to an avalanche of subscribers cancelling their service. It’s stock price has fallen 70% this year.
• Abadan, Iran set a 2022 record for highest temperature on earth, recording 126 degrees F.

So, who won the week?

• Tennis star Naomi Osaka has partnered with NBA star LeBron James to launch a media company that will create scripted and unscripted television series, documentaries, anime and branded content.
• The Colorado Avalanche are one win away from clinching its third Stanley Cup championship. Meanwhile, the Colorado Mammoth defeated the Buffalo Bandits to win the National Lacrosse League championship.
• Colorado State’s David Roddy was selected by the Memphis Grizzlies in the first round of the NBA draft.
• “Trumpet, a magnificently be-wrinkled and be-jowled bloodhound from Illinois,” won Best in Show at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.

• Denver Public Schools board member Tay Anderson has been accused of a lot of things by a lot of people – some legitimate, some not – but the latest is that school board President Xóchitl “Sochi” Gaytán is now accusing Anderson of intimidation and plotting a possible coup.
• Denver was not selected by FIFA to host World Cup matches in 2026. An expert speculated that other cities’ willingness to offer city- and state-backed financial incentive packages when Denver’s bid had none likely hurt Denver’s chances.
• Colorado kids are in crisis, according to a recent survey by the Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment. The survey of middle- and high-school students found 40% experienced feelings of depression in the prior year, up from 35% since the last poll in 2019, and more than half of respondents said they experienced stress on a daily basis.
• WWE Chairman and CEO Vince McMahon has stepped down while the company’s board investigates whether he used $3 million in company money to cover up an alleged affair with a former employee.
• Montana is reeling from devastating floods, and no one knows where its governor is.
• Golfer Phil Mickelson recently played in his first Saudi-backed LIV golf tournament despite acknowledging that the Saudis are “scary sons of bitches” who killed Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. This week, he played in his first U.S. tournament since the comments, the U.S. Open, and shot an abysmal eight-over 78.
• USA Today has removed 23 articles by journalist Gabriela Miranda that it said included “misattributed quotes and in some cases may have fabricated interviews and sources.“

So, who won the week?

• Coloradans Sophia Smith (Windsor), Mallory Pugh (Highlands Ranch) and Lindsey Horan (Golden) were named to the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team as it attempts to qualify for the 2023 Women’s World Cup.
• Caroline Glover, the chef and co-owner of Annette in Aurora, won a James Beard Foundation award for best chef in the Mountain Region. 
• PR firm financials have rebounded incredibly well from the pandemic, according to Gould+Partners’ latest survey.
• The Colorado Avalanche won the first game of the Stanley Cup finals, and the Colorado Mammoth will play the winner-takes-all third game of the National Lacrosse League championship on Saturday.
• The Golden State Warriors won the NBA Championship.
• Singer Ciara and her husband, new Denver Broncos QB Russell Wilson, will open their first Colorado-based retail clothing store, House of LR&C, in Park Meadows mall.
• Homebrewing legend and Great American Beer Festival founder Charlie Papazian will be the namesake of Metro State University’s new Brewing Education Lab.

O’Dwyer’s: “Profitability was up last year for North American PR agencies, according to an annual industry survey conducted by PR merger and acquisition advisory firm Gould+Partners. Gould+Partners’ latest Benchmarking report, which analyzes key factors affecting PR firm profitability, found that North American PR agencies witnessed operating profits averaging 19.7 percent of net revenues (calculated as fee billings plus markups) in 2021, up from 18.2 percent in 2020 and a 2.3 percent increase from pre-COVID 2019’s 17.4 percent.

“ ‘19.7 percent average operating profit is an incredible comeback for the PR industry,’ Gould+Partners’ Managing Partner Rick Gould told O’Dwyer’s.”

“The survey’s findings discovered that profitability was especially high at the largest firms: PR agencies with revenues in excess of $25 million netted average operating profits of 21.3 percent in 2021—up from 20.2 percent in 2020—indicating both increased organic growth as well as growth via acquisition. Firms with between $10 million and $25 million in revenues netted 20.1 percent profitability last year, up from 17 percent in 2020. Firms accounting for between $3 million and $10 million in revenues netted profitability of 19.5 percent profitability, up from 18.1 percent, while the smallest firms—those with under $3 million in revenues—netted the smallest profitability, 15.8 percent, flat from 2020.”

Brad Bawmann was a force of nature. Not like a tornado or a hurricane, but more like the tides – quiet, measured and calm, yet undeniably important and impactful. He built his firm, The Bawmann Group, into one of Denver’s most-respected, capturing a who’s who of clients, particularly in the healthcare and nonprofit industries.

But work was just a piece of Brad’s life. He was always concerned with issues bigger than himself, and that was demonstrated yet again when he traveled to Krakow, Poland, earlier this year to help refugees from Ukraine. And you couldn’t have drinks or lunch with him without seeing him beam with pride as he shared stories about his wife, Wendy, and his kids, Phoebe and Oliver.

Brad passed away unexpectedly this weekend from complications of pneumonia. He was 59.

Ewan Larkin at PRWeek: “Edelman’s multicultural practice has grown 68% since its launch in November 2020, executives at the firm said this week. Following the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery two years ago, Edelman felt the need to formalize and accelerate its involvement in multicultural communications. The agency began by establishing a racial justice comms taskforce, then expanded by building a U.S. multicultural practice that operates across its sectors.” The practice is on track to amass $8.2 million in revenue by the end of the fiscal year.

• Local marijuana entrepreneurs are pushing the tiny San Luis Valley town of Moffatt, Colorado, to rename itself Kush. And the town’s mayor is on board.
• In 1998, John Elway declined an offer from Pat Bowlen to buy 20% of the Denver Broncos for $36 million. That stake would be worth $930 million today, based on Walmart heir Rob Walton’s bid for the team.
• Federal researchers predict that Colorado will lose half or more of its annual snowfall over the next 60 years.
• After 88 years in business, the Bonnie Brae Tavern has sold to developers and will close.
• Colorado State University president Joyce McConnell had her contract terminated early and will depart the school next month.
• Geico has been ordered to pay a woman’s $5.2 million claim after she contracted a sexually transmitted disease while having sex in her partner’s car that was insured by the company.
• Axon paused its plans to develop a taser drone after three-quarters of its internal ethics board resigned in protest.
• Former press secretary to President Bush Ari Fleischer has been openly and highly critical of the Saudi government, but it didn’t stop him from taking the Saudi-backed LIV golf league as a client.
• Wells Fargo suspended its hiring policy requiring that diverse candidates be interviewed for upper-level positions after managers were found to have conducted sham interviews to meet the policy requirements.
• Burger King’s attempt to celebrate Pride Month by offering burgers that feature just two top buns or two bottom buns – the burger equivalent of same sex couples? – confounded customers and resulted in more bad press than positive buzz.
• A Willy Wonka nightmare come to life: A rescue team was deployed when two people fell into a giant vat of chocolate at an M&M factory in Pennsylvania. They survived.

So, who won the week?

• Rob Walton’s $4.65 billion bid for the Denver Broncos means each of the seven Bowlen kids are in line to receive $518 million. Pat Bowlen bought the team for $78 million in 1984.
• High school graduation rates for Hispanic students in Colorado increased 20 percentage points – from 55.5% to 75.4% – over the past decade.
• President Joe Biden will nominate DIA CEO Phil Washington to lead the Federal Aviation Administration, according to the Seattle Times. Washington joined DIA less than a year ago.
• Colorado Ski Country USA reported its members set a record for ski visits, topping 14 million in the 2021-2022 ski season.
• The Colorado Avalanche swept the Edmonton Oilers and will be in the Stanley Cup finals for the first time in 21 years.
• Transgender advocates are cheering the selection of Justine Lindsay to the Carolina Panthers “TopCats” cheerleading squad. She is the first openly transgender member of any cheerleading team in the NFL.

PRWeek: “Ever wanted your nails to smell like you dipped them in a vat of Velveeta cheese? Nails Inc. and Velveeta have made that dream into a reality with the launch of a nail polish collection called Velveeta Pinkies Out Polish, which includes a nail polish duo and nail stickers.”

Walmart heir Rob Walton’s successful $4.65 billion bid for the Denver Broncos means that each of the seven Bowlen kids will net approximately $518 million. Not bad considering Pat Bowlen bought the Broncos for $78 million in 1984 ($217 million adjusted for inflation).

Emily Flitter with The New York Times: “Wells Fargo is temporarily suspending a hiring policy that led some managers to conduct sham interviews of nonwhite and female candidates following a report by The New York Times highlighting the practice, the bank’s chief executive, Charles W. Scharf, told employees in a letter on Monday. Instituted in 2020, the bank’s ‘diverse slate’ policy stipulated that at least half the candidates interviewed for open positions paying $100,000 or more in annual salary needed to be ‘diverse’ — a catchall term for racial minorities, women and members of other disadvantaged groups.” …

“The Times reported (recently) that a former employee in the bank’s wealth management business had complained that he was being forced by his bosses to interview people for jobs that had already been promised to others, just to meet the ‘diverse slate’ requirement.”

Wells Fargo has a history of diversity issues. You may recall that in 2020, Scharf apologized after blaming the bank’s lack of diversity on “a very limited pool of Black talent to recruit from.”

Linhart Public Relations hired Mallory West as a senior account executive and Josh Gaydos as an account executive. West joins Linhart from Golin in Chicago and she will will handle local and national media relations, content development and digital marketing, along with other communications activities, for several clients including the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, Graebel Companies; Know Labs; Safe Rx; and Spire Storage. Gaydos previously was Director of Principal Operations for the Jaime Harrison for U.S. Senate Campaign in South Carolina. He will support clients such as  Black Hills Energy, Graebel Companies and Transitional Energy.

Linhart also promoted Sari Winston to account executive. She will continue to support a variety of clients, including Chocolove and Safe Rx, with media relations, research, social media, digital marketing and graphic design services.

Congratulations to Laura Ledermann and the team at Denver’s Scream Agency, which is celebrating the agency’s 25th anniversary.

“Scream Agency could never have reached where we are today without our dedicated team and supportive clients who have helped us reach our goals and continue to push us to do better and be better,” says Ledermann, founder of Scream Agency. “It has been a privilege to work with a variety of brands to serve our communities and the planet through our core values.” 

• Denver was named the nation’s 9th most-rat-infested city.
• A lifeguard shortage means that five Denver city pools will not open this summer.
• Colorado home values are inflated by 38.5% above the expected trend line, indicating that our housing market is the most overpriced it has been in three decades. For context, the housing bubble that burst in 2008 was only 20% above the expected trend line. Pop!
• Denver landlords have no legal requirement to disclose lead pipes to their renters. Denver’s Department of Public Health & Environment requires landlords to inform renters about peeling or deteriorating lead paint, but not about lead pipes.
• Southwest Airlines is suing the state of Colorado over the “Colorado Healthy Families and Workplace Act,” a move that could reduce sick leave benefits for all Coloradans. The Act establishes sick leave standards that are in conflict with what Southwest currently offers, and Southwest has already been fined more than $1 million for violations of the Act.
• Two workers died when a coal pile collapsed at Xcel’s Comanche power plant in Pueblo.
• Millions of miller moths will invade Colorado this month. If you find them irritating, you are “selfish” and lack “compassion,” according to CSU entomologist Maia Holmes.
• Wild Animals 2, Humans 0: A woman was trampled by a moose in Breckenridge and a bison gored a woman in Yellowstone National Park.
• Actress Amber Heard has been ordered to pay $10 million in damages for defaming actor Johnny Depp.
• The U.N. says that a sand shortage is about to become a “global crisis.” You read that right: a global sand shortage.
• Deranged-billionaire-genius-mad-scientist
• Elon Musk has ordered Tesla employees to return to the office full-time immediately or face termination.
• Swedish people were roasted this week after a Reddit post claimed that many refuse to feed guests. The post claimed that some Swedish families do not invite their children’s visiting friends to eat with them at mealtime, leaving them instead to play alone while the family eats.
• ESPN basketball announcers Jeff Van Gundy and Mike Breen missed game one of the NBA Finals last night after testing positive for COVID-19.
• JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon says that there is an economic “hurricane” on the horizon, caused in large part by shifting Federal Reserve policies and the war in Ukraine.

So, who won the week?

• Tom Cruise was adamant that “Top Gun: Maverick,” which was ready to premiere in theaters two years ago, should not be dumped on a streaming platform during the pandemic, and that stubbornness is being rewarded. Cruise saw his film deliver the first $100M+ opening weekend of his career.
• Kate Hill’s 1985 hit song “Running Up That Hill” climbed to #1 on iTunes this week after being featured in the season four premiere of “Stranger Things.”
• New CNN CEO Chris Licht has ordered his staff to quit labeling every story it airs as “breaking news.” In an all-employee memo, Licht said the channel will follow “new guidelines for deciding whether a story is truly breaking.”
• The Ukrainian men’s national soccer team‘s attempt to qualify for the 2022 FIFA World Cup was delayed until this week due to the invasion by Russia. The team defeated Scotland 3-1 on Wednesday and will face Wales on Sunday. The winner of that game qualifies for the World Cup.
• NBA superstar LeBron James has officially become a billionaire, according to Forbes.

Jon Schleuss, the president of the largest union of journalists, is calling for the the Biden Administration to urge the FCC to reject an attempt by hedge funds Apollo Global Management and Standard General to acquire TEGNA, the parent company of 9News:

“I urge you to call on the Federal Communications Commission to block the takeover of TEGNA, one of the largest local broadcasting television station groups, by Wall Street mega-funds Apollo Global Management and Standard General. This proposed transaction would kill journalism jobs, undermine local news and raise prices for American families”

“Wall Street firms behind this transaction secured billions of dollars in financing by apparently planning to cut journalism jobs. In addition to forcing dedicated local reporters to take ‘the longest walk a parent has to make’ to tell their children that mom or dad lost their job, such brutal cuts also would undermine local news. With less local news, communities will suffer from lower voter participation, higher taxes, more corruption and increased partisanship.”

Michael Roberts at Westword: “Denver TV stations have long experienced significant turnover, with reporters and anchors typically leaving one outlet in favor of another. But over the past year-plus, the pace of such departures has increased markedly, and many of those moving on have done so not to climb the broadcast-journalism ladder but to start over in entirely new careers. This phenomenon is epitomized by the action at affiliated stations Fox31 and KWGN/Channel 2.”

Those of us who have been in Denver for more than a couple of decades remember when the Rocky Mountain News’ Dusty Saunders was one of the most-read columnists at the paper. He passed away this weekend at the age of 90.

• Denver Broncos wide receiver Jerry Jeudy hasn’t lived up to his potential on the field, and is now becoming an embarrassment to the team off it.
• Colorado leads the country in bank robberies, driven in part by desperate individuals who are addicted to drugs.
• Denver Public Schools is in a high-profile dispute with a North High School teacher who supporters acknowledge “rocks the boat.”
• Weld County egg farm Sparboe Hudson had to destroy 1.4 million hens and lay off 95 employees after being hit by avian flu.
• The shutdown of a production facility in Michigan has caused a nationwide shortage of baby formula.
• Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in L.A. is facing a lawsuit that alleges systemic racism at the hospital system resulted in the death of Black patient.
• Actor Fred Savage, who played Kevin on the original, iconic television show “The Wonder Years,” was fired as an executive producer on the reboot of the show after allegations of inappropriate behavior.
• The mother of a 10-year-old girl who died after taking part in a “Blackout Challenge” she saw on TikTok is suing the social media platform.
• Elon Musk said his plan to buy twitter is “temporarily on hold” over a report of fake accounts on the platform.

So, who won the week?

• Denver Nuggets’ star Nikola Jokic won his second straight NBA MVP award.
• It turns out happy couples in Colorado can have their dogs preside over their wedding vows.
• A Florida man with no flight experience managed to land a small plane when his pilot lost consciousness.

• For more than 25 years, the ineffective investigation into the tragic murder of JonBenèt Ramsey has been a stain on the reputation of the Boulder Police Department. Now. Gov. Jared Polis says he will petition to have the state take over the case.
• The Colorado mountains have become a year-round destination, but resorts such as Vail and Breckenridge are cutting back on their summer activities due to the labor shortage.
• An Alamosa attorney who shot a man in the head had his law license suspended for three years. He’s serving an 11-year prison sentence, so the suspension is mostly symbolic.
• Denver Public Schools will eliminate 76 district administrative jobs — including 15 executives. The move is in response to declining enrollment and will save the district approximately $9 million annually.
• The Lowry Reading Garden bills itself as a sanctuary to appreciate great literature, but the park “misquotes and misattributes the writers it celebrates” in various etchings and engravings throughout the park.
• The National Trust for Historic Preservation named the Chicano/a/x Community Murals of Colorado to its 2022 list of “America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.” 
• TurboTax has agreed to pay Coloradans more than $2.5 million to settle allegations by the Colorado attorney general that the company used deceptive digital tactics.
• Geoff Morrell, the chief corporate affairs officer for The Walt Disney Co., is leaving after just three months on the job “to pursue other opportunities.” His departure follows the recent, high-profile fight between Disney and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis over the state’s “Don’t Say Gay” legislation.
• Tennis legend Boris Becker, a three-time Wimbledon winner, has been sentenced to two-and-a-half years in jail for hiding assets during a bankruptcy filing.
• Comedian Dave Chappelle was attacked and tackled on-stage by a knife-wielding man at a performance at the Hollywood Bowl.
• Pro golfer Phil Mickelson lost more than $40 million gambling over five years, according to federal auditors.
• Water levels at Nevada’s Lake Mead have dropped so far that authorities are finding long-hidden dead bodies.

So, who won the week?

• Esteban Hernandez left Denverite to join the Axios Denver team.
• The possibly misnamed Rock & Roll Hall of Fame announced its 2022 class, and it includes Duran Duran, Eminem, Dolly Parton, Carly Simon, Lionel Richie, the Eurythmics and Pat Benatar.
• The famous axe from the movie “The Shining” will soon take up residence at Estes Park’s Stanley Hotel, which was the inspiration for the Stephen King thriller. An anonymous donor purchased the axe at auction and has loaned it to the hotel’s new movie-memorabilia museum and film center.
• Children’s Hospital Colorado is the first pediatric health care system in the country to provide free education and career training for its staff members.

• The director of Colorado Parks and Wildlife, Dan Prenzlow, is on paid administrative leave after directing a racially charged “Back of the Bus” comment toward a Black employee.
• The Gallery Sportsman’s Club & Range just opened in Lakewood, and it combines a gun range with a … wait for it … full-service bar. Genius!
• The U.S. Department of Agriculture has declared Colorado a “primary natural disaster area” due to our decades-long drought. The move “qualifies farmers and ranchers for emergency loans to recover damages from the ongoing megadrought.”
  • Meanwhile, Denver appears likely to record less than a trace of snow in the month of April for the first time since 1992.
• Allegations of inappropriate behavior against actor Bill Murray have shut down production on the film “Being Mortal” starring Murray, Aziz Ansari and Seth Rogen. Murray has a long history of allegedly abusive behavior on-set.
• Two co-founders of the Black Lives Matter Global Foundation Network and BLM Los Angeles used $6 million in donations to buy a southern California mansion.
• Lawyers for the L.A. Times accused L.A. County Sheriff Alex Villanueva of “abusing his official position” when he publicly alleged that one of its reporters was under criminal investigation for her coverage of a police brutality incident. Villanueva quickly backtracked and claimed he didn’t make the allegation despite video of the press conference during which he said it.
• After a press conference this week by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), media briefly reported that radiation levels at the Chernobyl nuclear site were “abnormal.” That was concerning given the recent occupation of the facility by Russian military forces. However, media almost immediately corrected those reports to say that the official who provided the information actually said – with a heavy Argentinean accent – that conditions were “at normal.”
• Is the U.S. economy headed toward a major recession? Deutsche Bank says yes, while Goldman Sachs says maybe.
• A family of American tourists sparked bedlam at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport when they went through security with an unexploded military shell they had found while touring the Golan Heights.
• Actor Jason Sudeikis is distancing himself from a process server who handed his ex-wife, actress Olivia Wilde, lawsuit papers while she was onstage at a CinemaCon event. A Sudeikis spokesperson said the “Ted Lasso” star actor “had no prior knowledge” that his ex-wife would be served there, and that “he would never condone her being served in such an inappropriate manner.”

So, who won the week?

• Vail Resorts announced that total skier visits were up 12.5% compared to last season.
• Peyton and Ashley Manning have established a scholarship endowment in Demaryius Thomas‘ name at the late Broncos wide receiver’s alma mater, Georgia Tech. Thomas passed away last December at age 33.
• Denver’s Willow Pill won season 14 of the VH1 reality series “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” 
• Music superstar Lizzo announced a concert in Denver this summer, and 9News noted that before making it big the Grammy award winner once lived in Aurora and worked at a local King Soopers.
• Interim president Todd Saliman was confirmed as the permanent president of the University of Colorado’s four-campus system.
• Even though Colorado law limits its liability, Denver Water said it will cover the cost of damage caused when its broken pipe flooded the Berkeley neighborhood.

Novitas Communications has acquired the CCO-CMO Roundtable from Westmeath Global Communications and 6×6 Careers. The roundtable is a quarterly, off-the-record gathering for senior marketing and communications professionals in Colorado, and membership is by invitation only.

Steve Barrett at PRWeek: “BCW calls it earned plus, Edelman dubs it earned creative, Weber Shandwick goes beyond public relations into marketing solutions, Ketchum talks about full-service marketing and communications, FleishmanHillard pitches full-service creative, Lippe Taylor proselytizes earned marketing. As PRWeek prepares to publish its seminal annual deep dive into the agency sector it seems everybody’s talking about this modern take on PR without actually calling it PR.”

“Peruse the websites of these august firms and you’ll struggle to find the phrase PR amid all the talk of ‘solutions,’ ‘synergizing,’ ‘holistic perspectives,’ ‘transformative outcomes,’ ‘pursuit of excellence’ and ‘human-centered thinking.’ But, however it is described, the Agency Business Report 2022 will show that whatever PR has morphed into is extraordinarily compelling and crucial for brands, corporations and organizations of all types. And … it has moved way beyond straight media relations.”

• It’s going to be hot, dry and windy today, so much so that meteorologists say that the wildfire danger in Colorado today is higher than it has been in a decade.
• The pandemic has caused a lot of collateral damage. In Colorado, that includes a 30% increase in both alcohol-related deaths and syphilis.
• Denver Public Schools board member Tay Anderson had his defamation suit against BLM 5280 and Mary Katherine Brooks-Fleming dismissed by a judge, and he could be liable for their attorneys fees.
• D’Evelyn Jr./Sr. High School named a man convicted of domestic violence as the sole finalist for its principal position. He quickly withdrew from consideration when media coverage caused a public backlash.
• The Vail town council said it was “ready to go to war with Vail Resorts” over a proposed affordable housing project in the town and then voted to condemn the land to prevent construction.
• With several key players injured, no one expected the Denver Nuggets to make a deep playoff run, but what has emerged has been a worst-case scenario: down 3-0 to the Golden State Warriors and at risk of being swept out of the playoffs in embarrassing fashion.
•  The conservation group American Rivers has ranked the Colorado River as one of the country’s most endangered waterways. The group says the river and its reservoirs are at record lows.
• Hyundai and its subsidiary Kia account for five of the six most-stolen brands of cars in the Denver metro area.
• The world’s No. 2 men’s tennis player, Russia’s Daniil Medvedev, and the world’s No. 4 women’s player, Belarus’ Aryna Sabalenka, will not be allowed to compete in Wimbledon this year due to Russia’s attack on Ukraine, the tournament’s organizers announced this week.
• Former Denver Bronco Von Miller is facing a “revenge porn” lawsuit alleging he distributed a sexually explicit photo of a former girlfriend to “two well-known celebrities.”
• A Kentucky business that was asked by an employee with extreme anxiety not to throw him a birthday party did just that and now has been ordered to pay him $450,000.
• It was a tough week for streaming services and shows:
  • Jon Stewart’s Apple TV+ show, “The Problem with Jon Stewart,” saw its audience drop 78% from its first to its fifth episode. The show now averages about 40,000 viewers, which is less than 5% of John Oliver’s similar HBO show.
  • Netflix lost 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter of 2022 and expects to lose another 2 million in the second quarter. Its stock has dropped nearly 70% over the past four months.
  • CNN is pulling the plug on its CNN+ streaming service just weeks after its launch.
  • The director of “The Chosen,” an online series about Jesus, has apologized for a marketing ploy that intentionally defaced billboards for the show. Supporters of the series blamed “everyone from Starbucks to ‘Democratic Satanists'” for the apparent vandalism.
• Lucky Charms … they’re magically litigious? The cereal manufacturer likely will soon be the target of a class-action lawsuit after dozens of consumers reported becoming ill after eating the breakfast cereal.

So, who won the week?

• Colorado Rockies pitcher Kyle Freeland signed a five-year, $64.5 million extension this week. Freeland is a Colorado native who played high school baseball at Thomas Jefferson in Denver.
• Meanwhile, it’s almost May and the Colorado Rockies find themselves second in the division and third in the entire National League.
• A beloved therapy dog, Spencer, has been named the official dog of the Boston Marathon.

“Warner Bros. Discovery has suspended all external marketing spend for CNN+ and has laid off CNN’s longtime chief financial officer as it weighs what to do with the subscription streaming service moving forward,” Axios reports.

Arianna MacNeill at the Boston Globe: “A new study from Harvard Business School suggests that when it comes to hybrid work, just one to two days in the office, on a flexible schedule, creates the best outcomes for employees and businesses alike. … The study found that not only were the workers creating more work products, they also showed ‘greater satisfaction,’ and ‘less isolation,'” according to Prithwiraj Choudhury, an associate professor of business administration at Harvard Business School.

Journalists responded to 3.37% of pitches sent by PR professionals in Q1 2022, according to a study from Propel. That is a single-digit decline from the 3.53% of pitches journalists responded to in 2021.

Propel recommends sending emails with subject lines no longer than five words and keeping the pitch between 50 and 79 words. And, while I’m not a journalist, I’m pretty sure they would recommend making sure the beat they cover is relevant to your pitch and to stop following up with variations of, “Just wanted to make sure you got my previous email.”

Syracuse University has finally extricated itself from one of the worst stadium naming rights agreements ever made. As bad as it was, the question is whether it was worse than the current Colorado Rockies’ deal.

The sports business publication Sportico reported, “Syracuse University’s iconic Carrier Dome is no more. The school has reached a settlement with Carrier Global Corp. to end the company’s perpetual naming rights deal for the football and basketball venue. … Thus ends one of the longest running and most sponsor-friendly naming rights agreements in sports history. Carrier gave the school a $2.75 million gift back in 1979 during construction of the building, securing naming rights for the lifetime of the venue. Forty-three years later, the Carrier Dome is among the most recognizable buildings in college basketball and college football. … The dome would likely command upwards of $3.25 million per year on the open market.”

Meanwhile, Denverites may recall that Coors got a sweetheart deal when it received the permanent naming rights to the Rockies’ stadium when it invested $30 million in the ownership group back in 1991. Coors later sold that ownership stake in 2013 for an estimated $75 million, but that transaction did not affect the naming rights agreement. So, Coors actually made $45 million “buying” the permanent naming rights to Coors Field.

My back-of-the-envelope calculations say that Syracuse left about $45-50 million on the table with its deal, while the Rockies have missed out on about $35 million. However, Syracuse’s deal has now expired while the Rockies’ continues. With naming rights valued at about $4 million per year (the Pepsi Center’s deal is for $3.4 million annually while Empower Field is $6 million per year), the Rockies will officially become the worse deal in 2025.

• The Colorado Association of Realtors predicts that the average single-family home price in Denver may reach $1 million by June.
  • That probably seems like a bargain to new Broncos QB Russell Wilson, who along with his wife Ciara just dropped $25 million on a new house in Cherry Hills.
• Meanwhile, Denver was ranked as one of the five least affordable cities in the country, behind only San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles and Miami. That clicking sound you hear is millions of local millennial and Gen-Z renters Googling “trendy, affordable cities.”
• The organizers of the Cherry Creek Sneak, one of the metro area’s oldest and largest running events, announced this will be its final year. Event director Pat Downing said registration numbers “fell off a cliff” following the pandemic.
• The EPA is attempting to reclassify nine Front Range counties between Fort Collins and Castle Rock as “severe” violators of federal ozone standards.
• The Colorado Rockies’ commitment to owning fourth place in its five-team division is impressive. An analysis of the values of MLB teams was released this week, and the Rockies placed fourth in the NL West at $1.4 billion, ahead of only the Arizona Diamondbacks.
  • And, this week, Thrillist ranked the food at all 30 MLB ballparks, and the Rockies once again placed fourth, this time behind the L.A. Dodgers. The publication noted the stadium’s Rocky Mountain Oysters, plentiful microbrews and the Helton burger as the best options available.
• CNN launched its CNN+ streaming service to great fanfare several weeks ago, and it is already flopping. The network planned to invest approximately $1 billion in the service over the next four years, but low adoption rates – reportedly fewer than 10,000 viewers per day – have caused CNN to significantly lower both its investment and subscriber projections.
• NFL quarterback Cam Newton has a history of making ill-advised comments, and he stayed on-brand this week when he complained in an interview about women “who can’t cook” and who “don’t know when to be quiet.”
• Amazon announced it is adding a 5% “fuel and inflation surcharge” for third-party sellers who use the site. For those keeping track, the online retailer reported profits of $33.4 billion in 2021.
• It was not a good week for male actors. Cuba Gooding, Jr. pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of forcibly touching a woman at a New York City nightclub in 2018 and “Game of Thrones” actor Joseph Gatt was arrested for allegedly engaging in sexually explicit communications with a minor.
  • Meanwhile, Frank Langella was dropped from the Netflix show “The Fall of the House of Usher” after allegations of on-set sexual harassment and “Saturday Night Live” cast member Molly Shannon revealed that she was sexually harassed by the late “Diff’rent Strokes” actor Gary Coleman.

So, who won the week?

• The University of Denver Pioneers won the NCAA ice hockey championship, tying the record for most all-time ice hockey championships with the University of Michigan at nine.
• DIA ranked as the third-busiest U.S. airport in 2021, and was one of only four in the world to serve more than 50 million passengers.
• Jerry Schemmel returned to the 850 KOA Rockies broadcast after a two-year absence. Schemmel was laid off in 2020 as part of 900 jobs cut by iHeartMedia.
• University of Colorado interim President Todd Saliman was named the sole finalist for the permanent position.
• Shortly after NFL legend Tom Brady announced his retirement in February, an anonymous bidder won an auction for the football that Brady threw for his final touchdown pass. Twenty-four hours later, Brady unretired. This week, the auction house announced that it has voided the auction and the “winner” doesn’t have to pay the $518,000 bid afterall.

• An RTD bus became slightly stuck in a small sinkhole in Boulder this week, but you would have thought the consequences were catastrophic based on 9News’ click-baity tweets about the issue: “A bus was swallowed up by a sinkhole” and “Bus engulfed by sinkhole.”
• The City of Aurora fired police chief Vanessa Wilson, raising concerns in the community that the dysfunction that she inherited in the department will continue or even get worse.
• Deranged-billionaire-mad-scientist-frenemy Elon Musk has acquired a 9.2% stake in Twitter and joined its board, assuring future headaches for the leaders of the social media platform.
• Attorneys General in six states have sent a letter to the NFL expressing “grave concerns” about the way female employees are being treated.
• A bill in Tennessee would eliminate a minimum age requirement for marriage, which is presumably an unintended consequence but it is Tennessee, so who knows?
• Four members of the Secret Service have been put on leave following the FBI’s arrest of two men now charged with impersonating federal law enforcement in a scheme to get closer to the Secret Service detail protecting First Lady Dr. Jill Biden.
• A study has found that Instagram “systemically fails” to protect high-profile women from abuse.
• In a move that is being described by some as a “blame-the-victim” approach, The New York Times is encouraging reporters to “step away” from Twitter to avoid online abuse.

So, who won the week?

• Lydia Prado of the nonprofit Lifespan Local was named the 9News Leader of the Year.
• The Colorado Rockies may be an inept dumpster fire that owns fourth place in our five-team division, but one day a year optimism reigns: Opening Day. Everyone is a Rockies fan today.
• If you are a fan of road rage, good news! A new state law that allows bicyclists to roll through stop signs will no doubt further anger a subset of drivers convinced that bikes are the root of all road evils.

• Facebook may have rebranded as Meta, but some things never change. The Washington Post outed the company this week as being responsible for a behind-the-scenes smear campaign against competitor TikTok. The details are wide-ranging, but the bottom line is that Facebook/Meta remains evil.
• The City of Denver seems to have some ambivalence about “the Mayor of Pickleball.” Denver Parks & Rec filed a complaint with the Denver Police Department, and DPD arrested the 71-year-old man on charges of vandalism causing damage in excess of $10,000. The Denver District Attorney’s Office, however, is refusing to file charges and is encouraging mediation to resolve the issue.
  • Speaking of the Denver Police Department, Chief Paul Pazen has been mentioned as a potential candidate for Denver mayor, but you have to think last week’s $14 million federal jury judgement against the DPD for its handling of the George Floyd protests, combined with a recent brutal report alleging he was “paralyzed” about how to respond to the protests, has ended those ambitions.
  • Perhaps more embarrassing than the $14 million judgement itself was the Denver Police union’s response. President Nick Rogers, literally wearing camouflage cargo shorts and a beard bundled up in rubber bands, held a “press conference” alleging that downtown Denver would have been destroyed like Kyiv, Ukraine, if not for the heroic actions of officers.
• The Will Smith-Chris Rock “Slap Heard ‘Round the World” was an embarrassing situation on all fronts, and there were three clear losers: Smith never should have gone on stage to confront Rock; Rock never should have made a joke about someone’s medical condition; and the Academy never should have allowed a comedian to mock one of its members live from the stage.
  • How bad was Slapgate for Smith? O.J. Simpson released a video saying that he thought Smith was wrong to have hit Rock.
  • Smith issued an apology on Monday, and if you were under the impression that Rock also issued an apology, you were duped.
• Verizon customers are getting spam text messages from an unlikely source – themselves.
• Hate groups remain prevalent in Colorado, according to a study by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
• If you had any doubts that wildfire season in Colorado has expanded to year-round, the December and now March fires in Boulder County and Estes Park should put that to rest. Can’t say I’m excited about what July will bring.
• The actor Bruce Willis has retired after being diagnosed with aphasia, a disease that impacts cognitive abilities.
• The St. Peter’s Peacocks were the Cinderella of the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament, but one week after losing to the University of North Carolina in the Elite Eight, Seton Hall hired the team’s head coach away.
• Denver’s street sweeping program resumes today, and it is expected to generate about $7.7 million in tickets for Denver drivers who fail to move their parked cars from city streets on designated days.

So, who won the week?

• Colorado Springs was named ninth on a list of “best-performing” cities nationally, ahead of Denver which ranked 14th. The report noted that Colorado Springs is now a top destination for tech workers and recent college graduates.
• The public may be able to ride RTD for free in August under legislation working its way through the statehouse. The proposed pilot program attempts to address air emissions during Denver’s hot, often-smoggy summer.
• Young women are starting to out-earn their male counterparts in certain markets, reversing a trend that has existed since, I don’t know, caveman days. Women in San Diego now earn 105% of their male peers and those in New York City and Washington, D.C., earn 102%.
  • Locally, women in the Denver-Aurora-Lakewood geography earn 95% of their male counterparts, and women in Fort Collins earn 96%.
• The US Men’s National Soccer Team qualified for the 2022 World Cup, rebounding from their failure to qualify for the 2018 tournament.

Five Points real estate has become a soap opera over the past year, no more so than the situation that forced the historic Welton Street Cafe to close last week. A real estate development company, the FlyFisher Group, has been the source of most of the controversy, and the fact that it is a Black-owned company that is behaving in a manner some Black businesses and advocates describe as predatory makes it an even more sensational story.

Conor McCormick-Cavanagh at Westword reported on the situation today, and his story included a phrase that is every PR person’s nightmare: “Westword was accidentally included on all of the emails.” From the article:

“Westword reached out to both Burkett and his lawyer, Kim Ritter, for comment. Ritter forwarded that email to Burkett, who then forwarded the email to Sarah Cullen, a local public relations professional (at SideCar PR) who is serving as a spokesperson for Burkett, with this question: “Sarah any thoughts on this?”

Cullen’s response to Burkett and FlyFisher Group chief of staff Karina Tineo: “Happy to provide the ‘we don’t respond to active lawsuits’ comment like last time. Or we can let him know you’re traveling and ask for questions to see what he has and is focusing on.”

Westword was accidentally included on all of the emails. “First, [the FlyFisher Group] has not filed any lawsuits. Second, I am out of town and third we do not comment on ongoing litigation,” Burkett wrote in an email back to Cullen.

I would describe it as unbelievable, but we’re talking about Facebook Meta, which makes it completely believable. From Taylor Lorenz and Drew Harwell at The Washington Post:

“Facebook parent company Meta is paying one of the biggest Republican consulting firms in the country to orchestrate a nationwide campaign seeking to turn the public against TikTok. The campaign includes placing op-eds and letters to the editor in major regional news outlets, promoting dubious stories about alleged TikTok trends that actually originated on Facebook, and pushing to draw political reporters and local politicians into helping take down its biggest competitor.” …

“Employees with the firm, Targeted Victory, worked to undermine TikTok through a nationwide media and lobbying campaign portraying the fast-growing app, owned by the Beijing-based company ByteDance, as a danger to American children and society, according to internal emails shared with The Washington Post. … Campaign operatives were also encouraged to use TikTok’s prominence as a way to deflect from Meta’s own privacy and antitrust concerns.”

• Minutes after setting up at Denver’s Union Station for a report on escalating crime at the transit hub, CBS4 reporter Kelly Werthmann and an undisclosed photojournalist were accosted and the cameraman was assaulted. Construction company Kiewit became collateral damage in this story because the man who committed the assault – likely someone experiencing homelessness who was wearing donated clothing – had a jacket with a Kiewit logo on it.
• The Central Park Recreational Center and “the Mayor of Pickleball” are locked in a dispute over permanent pickleball lines on multi-use courts. The latest twist involves the Denver Police Department and felony charges of vandalism totaling more than $10,000.
• Despite threats from REI, Patagonia, North Face and others that they would boycott any Outdoor Retailer trade show in Utah, the show’s organizers announced that it will leave Denver after this year and relocate to Salt Lake City. Visit Denver officials estimate the economic impact of the trade show at $40-60 million annually.
• Disney CEO Bob Chapek ‘s strategy of trying to stay out of politics has backfired spectacularly as a revolt led by employees against Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” legislation has put the company in the spotlight. Employees engaged in walkouts and March Madness announcers at ESPN (which is owned by Disney) started several games with two minutes of silence in protest. Chapek’s contract is up for renewal in a year, and how he handles this crisis may be what determines whether he stays at Disney.
• Speaking of Disney, the theme park apologized for a performance by a Texas high school cheerleading squad that included “the team dancing and chanting ‘scalp ’em Indians, scalp ’em’ ‘ while performing moves that appear to appropriate Native American culture in a parade at Disney’s Magic Kingdom theme park.” If only there had been some clue that the Port Neches-Grove High School Indianettes might perform something controversial.
• NFL QB Deshaun Watson has pending civil lawsuits from 22 women alleging sexual abuse, but it wasn’t enough to keep the Cleveland Browns from signing him to a five-year, $230 million, fully guaranteed contract.
• Kanye West may have five Grammy nominations this year, but Recording Academy executives are concerned enough about his increasingly erratic and abusive behavior that they won’t allow him to perform at the televised awards ceremony.

So, who won the week?

• Denver media experienced a euphoric moment when two of its very favorite things intersected: a disaster and the Denver Broncos. Coverage of a relatively small fire at Empower Field received a surprisingly large amount of coverage.
• Approximately $13.5 million of the $436 million philanthropist MacKenzie Scott is giving to Habitat for Humanity is designated for its Denver chapter. It is Habitat for Humanity of Metro Denver’s largest single donation in its history. Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains also received a record $20 million donation from Scott.
• The Denver Nuggets extended head coach Michael Malone’s contract, giving him a chance to set the franchise’s all-time wins record. He currently is third (309 wins), behind Doug Moe (432 wins) and George Karl (423 wins).
• Former soccer star David Beckham handed over control of his Instagram account that has more than 71 million followers to a doctor in Ukraine to highlight the conditions in the country and the “amazing work” medical teams are doing. Beckham is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.

• “Denver police suffered a ‘total leadership failure’ amid the George Floyd protests in 2020, and chief Paul Pazen appeared ‘paralyzed’ about how to respond,” according to new documents obtained by Axios Denver.
• Frank “The Strong Arm” Azar again finds himself in need of a talented lawyer. Months after suing his accountant, and then suing a second accountant he hired to fix his first accountant’s mess, Azar is suing an out-of-state lawyer whom he says is using Google ads to illegally poach clients.
• College basketball fans in our state had a humbling week, going 0-3. The Colorado State men’s team’s March Madness experience lasted only two hours as the Rams were beaten by the University of Michigan Wolverines in the first game of the first round of that tournament. Meanwhile, the University of Colorado men’s team could only make the NIT tournament and then lost its first-round game to St. Bonaventure. And, finally, the University of Colorado women’s team lost its first-round game in the NCAA tournament today.
• The Denver Broncos’ off-season moves have created a media frenzy, and The Denver Gazette got a little too caught up in it when it erroneously reported the Broncos had signed free agent linebacker Chandler Jones. He actually has signed with the Las Vegas Raiders.
• Gig economy workers at Uber and Lyft say that high gas prices may be the breaking point for drivers who were already operating on razor-thin margins.
• U.S. News & World Report ranked Columbia University as the second-best university in the country, but a professor in the school’s math department says its a fraud and that the university is gaming the system.
• As it heads into this year’s tax season, the IRS is hiring 10,000 employees to help it get through 23 million returns it still hasn’t processed from last year.
• CNN is an HR dumpster fire. Former anchor Chris Cuomo filed a $125 million lawsuit against the news network alleging that he was wrongfully terminated by Jeff Zucker, who has since resigned following the disclosure of his inappropriate relationship with a subordinate.

So, who won the week?

• Coors has restarted its brewery tours that famously come with free samples.
• Denver Film’s Sie FilmCenter has re-opened and increased the programming available to movie fans.
• ESPN is determined to make Monday Night Football the biggest game of the week, and it has lured announcers Troy Aikman and Joe Buck away from FOX to make it happen.

The Australian Prime Minister and Cabinet has withdrawn the new logo it introduced for its Women’s Network initiative to promote gender equality. The logo was mocked mercilessly on social media, with one critic asking, “Why have the juvenile idiots in your department made male genitalia out of the Women’s Network logo?”

Anemona Hartocollis at The New York Times: “Everyone knows that students buff their résumés when applying to college. But a math professor is accusing Columbia University of buffing its own résumé — or worse — to climb the all-important U.S. News & World Report rankings of best universities.”

“Michael Thaddeus, who specializes in algebraic geometry at Columbia, has challenged the university’s No. 2 ranking this year with a statistical analysis that found that key supporting data was ‘inaccurate, dubious or highly misleading.'”

“In a 21-page blistering critique on his website, Dr. Thaddeus is not only challenging the rating but redoubling the debate over whether college rankings — used by millions of prospective college students and their parents — are valuable or even accurate.”

• The HOA for Green Valley Ranch has filed an astonishing 68 foreclosure notices for unpaid fines associated with basic covenant violations such as paint color, basketball hoops and trash cans left in the street. The foreclosure notices represent 57% of those filed in all of Denver over the past year. City officials are so concerned about the issue that they have scheduled a community meeting to offering resources to homeowners.
• Two prosecutors in the Denver City Attorneys Office resigned and a third was suspended after emails and chat messages showed them “disparaging their bosses, boasting about how little they were working during their stay-at-home phase of the pandemic, confessing to misusing a criminal records database and reveling in causing a co-worker to suffer a ‘nervous breakdown.’”
• Denver drivers spend an extra 41 hours in traffic annually due to congestion. The bright side? That’s a little more than half of what drivers in New York City and Los Angeles spend.
• The Colorado Classic bike race has showcased Colorado to an international audience, but unless it finds a $3 million title sponsor it will have to shut down.
• Speaking of bicycles, Denver’s oldest bike shop – Turin Bicycles – is closing after 51 years due to increased rents and continued disruptions to the global supply chain.
• Atlanta Falcons receiver Calvin Ridley has been suspended for the 2022 season after gambling on NFL games last season. The $1,500 in bets he placed will cost him $11.1 million in lost salary.
• Ryan Coogler, the Hollywood director of movies such as “Black Panther,” “Creed” and “Fruitvale Station,” was handcuffed by police when employees at a Bank of America branch mistook his request to withdraw cash from his checking account as an attempted robbery.
• Women’s basketball star Brittney Griner may be a political prisoner in Russia. She was arrested in Moscow on alleged drug violations and her fate is now dependent on a Russian justice system that is unlikely to do an American any favors.
• Texas has successfully positioned itself as a business-friendly state, and companies such as Toyota, Oracle, Tesla and Apple have relocated or expanded their operations there in recent years. But Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s move to classify care for trans teens as “child abuse” is getting push-back from businesses such as Johnson & Johnson, Macy’s, Apple, Meta, Google, Ikea and REI.

So, who won the week?

• The Broncos traded for star QB Russell Wilson, and the winners of that trade are numerous. Broncos GM George Paton made a career-defining move and Broncos head coach Nathaniel Hackett now has a quarterback capable of competing in the division. Meanwhile, the Bowlen kids likely saw the value of the franchise increase in the months before its sale now that it has a true “franchise quarterback,” and Broncos fans can start dreaming of playoff wins rather than just hoping it finds its way to a 8-9 record.
• 9News is one of the big winners from Denver DA Beth McCann’s decision to drop second-degree murder charges against security guard Matthew Dolloff. He was the unlicensed security guard working for the news station during the 2020 protests when he shot and killed a man who confronted and threatened a 9News reporter and then attacked Dolloff. A trial would have dragged 9News back into the story and created another wave of anti-media and anti-9News threats.

When International Women’s Day rolls around, social media is flooded with posts from companies touting their commitment to women.

In the U.K., though, large companies are required to disclose their gender pay gaps using actual payroll data. So, of course, there is now the Gender Pay Gap Bot that shares that pay gap in response to any company that posts about their support for IWD (h/t to my colleague Kathleen Deal).

Brian Maass at CBS4: “Three veteran prosecutors with Denver’s City Attorneys Office used an internal city email and messaging system to repeatedly disparage their bosses, boast about how little they were working during their stay-at-home phase of the pandemic, confessed to misusing a criminal records database and reveled in causing a co-worker to suffer a ‘nervous breakdown’ according to disciplinary documents obtained by CBS4. Two of the three lawyers resigned during a disciplinary investigation and the third was suspended but returned to her job.” …

“Attorneys Eric Reece and Kristina Bush resigned during the investigation into their conduct. Emily Reisdorph was suspended without pay for 15 days and has resumed working for the City Attorneys Office.  All three worked in the Prosecution and Code Enforcement Section of the office. Reece was a Senior Assistant City Attorney as was Reisdorph. Bush was an Assistant City Attorney.” …

“When a Black female attorney named Kimberly resigned from her job with the City Attorney’s Office, the group named their online chat group “Kimberly Killers” and reveled in the woman’s apparent ‘nervous breakdown.’ Learning of what happened, Bush wrote to the others, “That’s the best news I’ve heard since quarantine. I feel so satisfied by this. I’ve been humming all morning. She then sent a message with a gif patting herself on the back. Reisdorph responded, ‘You can’t take credit for that all on your own. We pushed her too far… we sent her into a nervous breakdown.’ Bush boasted, ‘Because really, this is our doing.’ Administrators in the City Attorneys Office termed the conversations ‘racially insensitive.'”

So what happened to attorneys Eric Reece and Kristina Bush following their resignations? Reece is now an associate attorney at the Denver law firm Sutton Booker, and Bush is an associate attorney at Robinson & Henry in Highlands Ranch.

Randy Blauvelt, who held a number of senior communications positions in Denver with organizations such as Rocky Mountain PBS, the American Humane Association and First Nations Development Institute, has passed away. He was 67 years old.

• Former Loveland police officer Austin Hopp faces up to eight years in prison after pleading guilty to second-degree assault during the arrest of a 73-year-old woman with dementia.
• Two months after the devastating Marshall Fire, debris clean-up for Boulder County homeowners has not yet started due to a lawsuit over the selection of a controversial company.
• Westword continues to publish mug shots of individuals arrested for – but not convicted of – crimes, despite widespread acknowledgement of the damage it can do to people’s lives and the disproportionate impact on people of color. Even worse, Westword is using the mugshots as clickbait on social media.
• A disagreement over subpoena power between Denver Auditor Tim O’Brien and the Denver City Council has gone nuclear.
• United Airlines must pay $2.3 million to two flight attendants whom the airline fired for watching an iPad during a break. The pair’s attorney successfully argued that United’s disciplinary system was nonsensical and applied inconsistently.
• She may be the greatest women’s tennis player of all time, but Serena Williams is still fighting the same indignities that affect other people of color.
• Major League Baseball cancelled the first two series of the season – or “MLB has canceled the Rockies first 5 losses of the season,” as CPR’s Vic Vela put it – when owners and players were unable to reach a new collective bargaining agreement.
• A JetBlue pilot was removed from the cockpit and registered 0.17% on a breathalyzer, more than four times the limit allowed by the FAA. I’m not sure what’s scarier – a drunk pilot or the fact that the FAA allows pilots fly when they register 0.04% on a breathalyzer.

So, who won the week?

• Ten Coloradans will participate in the 2022 Winter Paralympics that start today.
• A Colorado judge has affirmed that DIA owes Adams County more than $30 million for noise violations.
• Jackson Hole lift supervisor Peter Landsman just completed his quest to ride all 2,381 chairlifts in the country. It took him 22 years, and a ski resort in remote Alaska was the toughest one to check off.
• PR agency senior account executives saw their salaries rise 25% on average, according to PRWeek’s latest salary survey.
• Prolific sci-fi and fantasy author Brandon Sanderson set a goal to raise $1 million over 30 days on Kickstarter to self-publish novels he wrote during the pandemic. He blew past his goal in 35 minutes on his way to $15.4 million in just 24 hours.

Casey Anne Nikoloric, the managing principal of the marketing and communications company TEN10 Group, has passed away. She was 68.

 

PRWeek released the results of its annual salary survey and the results show that it was a good year financially for the PR industry.

The median annual salary for public relations professionals increased from $100,000 to $110,000, a 10% increase that is the largest percentage increase since 2017:

Agency public relations professionals saw salaries grow double digits on average regardless of title, with senior account executives seeing the largest percentage increase (25%):

The Denver Nuggets and the Colorado Avalanche have not been seen on TV locally in any meaningful way for two-and-a-half years due to an ongoing dispute between rights-owner Altitude Sports and cable/satellite companies Comcast and Dish. The result is that fans are not able to see what has been two historically great years for the sports teams.

• 9News’ parent company TEGNA reached a deal to be acquired by a hedge fund, in a move that cannot portend good things for the station or its staff members.
• Following two settlements totaling $825,000 this week, the City and County of Denver has now paid more than $3 million to individuals who were injured by police during the George Floyd protests in 2020.
• The metro Denver area has not seen temperatures rise above freezing since Monday, and the forecast calls for those sub-freezing temperatures to remain until tomorrow.
• Investors in an Idaho Springs resort project that would connect the historic Argo Mill (EPA Superfund sites can be historic, right?) to a city park via a 1.2-mile gondola sued when they realized their money had disappeared from an escrow account. Put more succinctly: their money is gon-dola.
• Five weeks after relocating from California to accept the position as president of the Northern Colorado Owlz minor league baseball team and the Northern Colorado Hailstorm FC soccer team, Rosalind Aguilera is out. Aguilera and owner Jeff Katofsky apparently butted heads over a lack of resources, which Aguilera said was “a mess.” If you are an employment lawyer in Fort Collins, you’ll want to jump on this one right away.
• Golfer Phil Mickelson lost sponsors KPMG and Amstel Light after he said he was willing to work with Saudis on a golf super league even though “they killed [Washington Post columnist Jamal] Khashoggi and … they execute people over there for being gay.”
• For a moment, it appeared Applebee’s was the official sponsor of Russia’s attack on Ukraine.
• Crain’s NY reported that 5WPR’s Ronn Torossian is using a news site he covertly owns to praise his clients and attack his enemies. If true, it would be an enormous ethical violation, not to mention run afoul of FTC rules.
• Bald eagles have made an amazing comeback in the U.S., but a new study found that 46% of them suffer from chronic lead poisoning. Researchers blame lead bullets used by hunters that fragment and remain in animal carcasses that are scavenged by the eagles.

So, who won the week?

• DIA unveiled a list of new restaurants that would rival any food hall in Denver. Maria Empanada, El Chingon, Rosenberg’s Bagels, Mercantile Dining & Provision and Cholon are among the restaurants that will open over the next year.
• The union representing RTD workers says it is close to finalizing an agreement that would give 25% raises over three years to its members.
• A week after learning that the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade would return to downtown for the first time in two years, the organizers of Denver’s annual Cinco de Mayo Festival announced that it too would return this year.
• The Little Nell (Aspen), Hotel Jerome (Aspen) and the Broadmoor (Colorado Springs) topped U.S. News & World Report’s 2022 list of top hotels in Colorado. And the Four Seasons, the Ritz-Carlton, the Art Hotel Denver and the Oxford Hotel topped the list of Denver-area hotels.

Boulder’s MAPRagency has unveiled an extensive rebrand that includes a new name — Comprise. The firm made the change to better communicate the firm’s full range of service offerings that include public relations, digital marketing and creative services.

“When people thought about our old brand, PR was often the only service that came to mind and our other areas of expertise got lost entirely. Plus, the ideals tied to our old name no longer matched our company’s personality,” said Jennifer Stevens, Comprise’s vice president of digital and creative services. “From a new name to alignment with our brand’s identity and evolved product and service offerings, there are many reasons to undergo the challenging but rewarding process of rebranding an organization. In our case, the new name and look describe our evolution within the shifting media landscape for the last three-plus decades.”

What would 9News be without Kyle Clark, Kathy Sabine, Marshall Zelinger, Nicole Vap, Chris Vanderveen, Kim Christiansen and Jeremy Jojola? Sadly, we may find out now that news has broken that the hedge fund Standard General LP, pending regulatory approvals, will acquire 9News parent company TEGNA for $8.6 billion. Twelve years ago, The Denver Post was acquired by another investment firm, Alden Global Capital, and it cut the Post’s newsroom by approximately two-thirds – from 250 journalists in 2010 to fewer than 70 by 2018. Is 9News facing a similar future?

Some of the most visible and respected (and compensated) television journalists in Denver may become free agents in the coming months and years, which has the potential to completely reshape television news in our city. If I am the GM at CBS4, Fox31 or Denver7, I am preparing to open my wallet to poach as many of the 9News journalists as I can in an effort to end 9News’ ratings dominance.

• The International Olympic Committee, the Court of Arbitration for Sport and the Russian Olympic Committee put 15-year-old Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva in a no-win situation, and the result was a meltdown on an international stage. The gold medal favorite tested positive for a banned drug, but was allowed to compete in the women’s singles competition while a full review is conducted. Valieva placed fourth after a shocking performance that saw her fall twice, and the tears and agony that followed were almost unwatchable. This tragedy is now what will define the 2022 Beijing Olympics.
• The woes at DIA continue. Denver auditor Tim O’Brien released a report that found that the airport’s “process for selecting operators for its restaurant, bar, retail and passenger service locations isn’t fair and the incentive program the airport offers concessionaires should be ended.”
• Denver is officially the worst city in the country for car theft.
• NBA legend and broadcaster Charles Barkley accused Denver Nuggets fans of being “whiney” when they complain that Nikola Jokic doesn’t get the respect he deserves as the reigning league MVP.
• If you are waiting for your new luxury vehicle, it may be longer than expected. A massive cargo ship carrying 1,100 Porsches and 189 Bentleys is on fire off the coast of the Azores. The ship was due into a Rhode Island port on Wednesday.
• Kanye West is a walking train wreck in the best of circumstances, but even he recognized his stalky behavior toward his ex, Kim Kardashian, this week signaled he was spiraling. He offered a rare apology.
• Russian Olympic speed skater Daniil Aldoshkin flipped the bird to the sparse crowd following his team’s gold-medal win in Beijing. He later apologized.
• The Dallas Cowboys reached a $2.4 million settlement with four members of its cheerleading team to settle allegations that the team’s former head of PR, Richard Dalrymple, spied on them.

So, who won the week?

• There is one more Coloradan at the Winter Olympics than we realized. Northglenn Police Detective Jackie Spresser is a hockey referee in Beijing.
• Bellco and parade organizers announced that the Denver St. Patrick’s Day Parade will take place for the first time since 2019. The parade will begin at 9:30 am at 19th and Wynkoop on Saturday, March 12.
• It may be hard to imagine given the snow we’ve had in February, but Red Rocks concert season is just a few months away. This week, we learned Gary Clark Jr. and Bonnie Raitt are among those on the schedule.
• The Super Bowl on NBC averaged 112.3 million viewers, a 16% increase over last year. Also good news for NBC was that its Olympics coverage immediately following the Super Bowl averaged 24 million viewers, the single biggest ratings night for the Beijing games so far.

“(Saudis are) scary motherf—ers to get involved with. They killed (Washington Post reporter Jamal) Khashoggi and have a horrible record on human rights. They execute people over there for being gay. Knowing all of this, why would I even consider it? Because this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape how the PGA Tour operates.”

U.S. golfer Phil Mickelson, acknowledging he has no principles beyond making money and rationalizing why he would join a Saudi-backed breakaway golf league to rival the PGA Tour.

Proof PR has picked up two new clients – plant-based restaurant Native Foods and fast-casual taco restaurant Velvet Taco – and added Jacob Kingrey as communications specialist. Kingrey worked in the food and beverage industry in Ohio prior to joining Proof PR.

There’s no question that litigators use media coverage to squeeze their targets – they hope that negative media coverage of an organization they are suing puts them in a position that they will settle a case faster and more favorably. That is why litigators have the same set of investigative reporters on speed dial, often initiating a story before the lawsuit has even been filed and served.

But usually that relationship is implicit, which is why it was surprising to see Denver7 acknowledge the game openly:

• Colorado funeral homes have so badly bungled their jobs – illegally operating a body-brokering business out of a funeral home, for example – that state legislators have had to introduce a bill to expand oversight and inspections. I’d do my best not to pass away before the end of the legislative session in May.
• Colorado’s own Mikaela Shiffrin has experienced the thrill of victory while winning gold medals at the 2014 and 2018 Olympics, but the 2022 Olympics have been about the agony of defeat. She suffered DNFs in her first two events – going off the course in the first 11 seconds of the first race and the first 5 seconds in her second.
• Starbucks, the darling among progressive coffee drinkers, finds itself in an awkward battle with union organizers.
• Up to 40 of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites are expected to fall out of orbit after they were launched last week in the midst of a geomagnetic storm. The storm prevented the satellites from maneuvering into their proper orbital positions.
• The Washington Football Team Commanders are the NFL’s biggest dumpster fire. This week’s development is that the team hired outside lawyers to investigate yet another group of allegations of sexual harassment against owner Dan Snyder. The NFL then had to quickly step in and announce that it, not the Washington franchise, would investigate the claims.
• Adidas had quite a week. First, it was forced to cut sponsorship ties with soccer star Kurt Zouma after a video appeared on Snapchat of him drop-kicking and slapping his cat. Then, several days later, Adidas released a curious Instagram ad touting its new line of sports bra that featured a series of bare breasts presented Brady Bunch-style.
• The IRS has given up plans to use controversial face-recognition technology after an intense public backlash.
• Tesla seems intent on joining Uber and Facebook in the PR Disasters Hall of Fame. After numerous issues with build quality, long service waits and questionable “self-driving” capabilities, the state of California filed a complaint against the electric automaker alleging racial discrimination and harassment.
• Russia finds itself in the midst of yet another doping scandal now that Kamila Valieva, a 15-year-old figure skater prodigy, has tested positive for a banned substance. The award ceremony scheduled for Tuesday night still has not taken place while an appeal is considered.
• Speaking of the Beijing Winter Olympics, NBC is dealing with TV ratings that “aren’t just bad – they’re historically terrible.“

So, who won the week?

• King Soopers re-opened its Table Mesa store in Boulder nearly a year after a mass shooting killed 10 people.
• Lindsey Jacobellis, Chloe Kim, Nathan Chen and the members of the U.S. freestyle skiing and mixed aerials team have all won gold medals at the Beijing Olympics.
• Boulder native and Fairview High alumnus Tony Boselli was selected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
• New data gives hope that people are beginning to embrace – and pay for – online newspaper subscriptions at a level that is sustainable for the media outlets.
• The Broncos traded Von Miller to the L.A. Rams mid-season, and Miller now finds himself in his first Super Bowl since Peyton Manning quarterbacked the Broncos.

Last fall, I questioned whether 9News could get “Aldened” after reports surfaced that entertainment mogul Byron Allen was working with investment firm Apollo Global Management to finance an acquisition of TEGNA, 9News’ parent company. As I wrote at the time, “If you are a 9News employee, or someone who just values journalism, you can’t be comfortable with the idea that Apollo might do to TEGNA what (investment firm) Alden has done to the Denver Post – bleed it to near death to maximize the return on investment.”

This week, we learned that Allen may have a new trophy in sight – the Denver Broncos. But there are some problems, including that Allen’s net worth is just 11% of the roughly $4 billion it would take to buy the Broncos. Additionally, NFL rules require the controlling owner to purchase outright a minimum 30% stake in the team (no leveraging the acquisition). That means Allen is still short $750 million of accomplishing that.

These facts may be why 9News assigned Broncos public affairs staffer “Broncos Insider” Mike Klis to cover the story with kid gloves rather than Jeremy Jojola, Marshall Zelinger, Kevin Vaughan or any of its other hard-hitting investigative journalists. I don’t want Allen and a equity fund anywhere near 9News either.

Following a boycott by musical artists due to podcaster Joe Rogan’s repeated misinformation about COVID-19, music streaming service Spotify has now quietly removed 70 episodes of his podcast due to his repeated use of the N-word. Rogan apologized today, saying that using the word is the “most regretful and shameful thing” he has done.

What happens when you stage the Winter Olympics in the same city you hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics? Lots and lots of artificial snow.

Actual Photo of the Yanqing Alpine Skiing Center

• RIP Streetsblog Denver. The news site focusing on transportation and mobility issues in our city has been on life support for more than a year, and the plug was finally pulled this week. Founder David Sachs, who now calls Barcelona home, penned a farewell column calling on media to better cover issues between cars and pedestrians/bicyclists.
• From the “any publicity is good publicity” file: The Boulder International Film Festival, apparently desperate for attention, has invited Alec Baldwin to be its first-ever “guest programmer” for its event in March. Baldwin remains under investigation related to the death of a production assistant on the set of his movie, “Rust.”
• Denver Broncos executive John Elway was named in a lawsuit filed by Black head coach Brian Flores alleging a pattern of discrimination against coaches of color in the NFL. In the suit, Flores says that Elway and Broncos President & CEO Joe Ellis arrived for Flores’ head coaching interview in 2019 “completely disheveled, and it was obvious that they had been drinking heavily the night before.” Elway has strongly denied the allegations, but this is not a good look for him, especially as he is trying to join one of the bid groups attempting to buy the Broncos.
• Just when it seemed things couldn’t get any tougher for prospective home-buyers, the Denver Metro Association of Realtors announced that the number of homes on the market right now is at an all-time low.
• If you are a well-paid administrator in Denver Public Schools, you should be updating your resume right now. Superintendent Alex Marrero told Chalkbeat that he is reducing the number of administrative positions and that some executives will need to re-apply for their positions.
• CNN President Jeff Zucker resigned after acknowledging an inappropriate relationship with a co-worker.
• Whoopi Goldberg has been suspended as co-host of “The View” despite apologizing for comments she made that the Holocaust wasn’t about race because it involved “two White groups of people.” In her apology, she acknowledged, “… it is indeed about race because Hitler and the Nazis considered Jews to be an inferior race.”
• Oakland University in Michigan mistakenly notified 5,500 applicants that they had received full scholarships to attend the school.
• The pandemic continues to hit Americans hard, and now it has come for …. our chocolate milk?

So, who won the week?

• Denver Broncos fans who have watched the team slide into mediocrity since the death of owner Pat Bowlen learned officially this week that the team will be sold. The sale price is expected to set a global record for a sports team at somewhere near $4 billion.
• Apple, Amazon and Microsoft led the 2022 list of Fortune magazine’s Most Admired Companies. Arrow Electronics, Ball and DaVita topped the Colorado list.

“…in 2019 Mr. Flores was scheduled to interview with the Denver Broncos. However, the Broncos’ then-General Manager, John Elway, President and Chief Executive Officer Joe Ellis and others, showed up an hour late to the interview. They looked completely disheveled, and it was obvious that they had been drinking heavily the night before. It was clear from the substance of the interview that Mr. Flores was interviewed only because of the Rooney Rule, and that the Broncos never had any intention to consider him as a legitimate candidate for the job. Shortly thereafter, Vic Fangio, a white man, was hired to be the Head Coach of the Broncos.”

– Brian Flores’ federal lawsuit alleging racial discrimination against the Denver Broncos, Miami Dolphins and New York Giants specifically, and the NFL generally. The Broncos have denied the allegations.

• Organizers announced that attendance at the 2022 National Western Stock Show was down 18% as the Omicron variant weighed on people’s decision whether to attend the 16-day event.
• The Children’s Museum of Denver has closed temporarily after visitors opposed to its mask requirement were abusive to staff members.
• The transition away from burning coal as a power source is inevitable, and Patty Nieberg of the Associated Press reported on how that transition is impacting places like Craig, Colo.
• Legendary musician Neil Young took a principled stand against Spotify and podcaster Joe Rogan, demanding that the streaming service remove his music if it continues to allow Rogan to share misinformation about COVID-19. As for other musicians following his lead … it has been crickets. Despite that, Spotify’s stock is down 10% since Young’s announcement.
• Facing challenges with human rights issues, timezone challenges and COVID-19, Olympics broadcaster NBC is frantically lowering TV ratings estimates with advertisers to avoid having to offer make-good ads.
• Neither Roger Clemens nor Barry Bonds, two of the most famous and successful players in MLB history whose careers were clouded by steroid controversies, were selected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in their final year of regular eligibility.

So, who won the week?

• The Denver Broncos selected Green Bay Packers Offensive Coordinator Nathaniel Hackett as its new head coach, leading to optimistic speculation that the team might also land MVP Aaron Rodgers as its new quarterback.
• Twenty-three Coloradans will compete in the 2022 Winter Olympics that start next week, including Golden’s Stacy Gaskill whom I coached on my daughter’s soccer teams when they were ages six to eight. Go Rainbows!
• Denver restaurant group Bonanno Concepts has hired a full-time wellness director to support employees at its 10 restaurants.
• Denver law/lobbying firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck set a national record for federal lobbying dollars in a single quarter when it posted $15.96 million in Q4 2021. That was a 29% increase over Q4 2020.
• While the Colorado Rockies’ Todd Helton was not selected to the Baseball Hall of Fame this week, his candidacy continues to make progress. He will remain on the ballot for the next seven years, and experts say his trend line means he eventually will make it.
• The new, reasonably sized Ford Maverick pick-up truck has been such an unexpected hit that Ford has had to cut off orders until summer to meet demand.

COHN will lead the neurorehabilitation and research hospital’s branding, advertising, digital, social media and public relations efforts.

Claire Atkinson at BusinessInsider: “NBCUniversal is slashing its TV ratings expectations for the Winter Olympics by as much as half, according to three senior marketing sources familiar with the numbers. The media giant, which paid $7.75 billion for TV and digital rights to the Olympic Games through 2032, retooled its estimates after pushback from marketing partners disappointed with the ratings of the Tokyo summer Olympics. “

“Ad agencies are being told to expect a six rating at Beijing — half what the audience guarantees were for the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, according to one media agency executive. … One ad executive said NBCUniversal was under pressure to reduce its ratings expectations rather than face the possibility of having to give advertisers make-good ads, as NBCU reportedly had to do after Tokyo, when it had its lowest Summer Olympics ratings ever.”

If social media posts about long lift lines are giving you a public relations headache, you have a couple of options. You can try to improve how long it takes to get people up the mountain, or you can try to limit photos and videos of the long lift lines. Vail’s strategy appears to focus on both.

• The 2021-2022 ski season could be a tough one for Colorado resorts, according to data released by Vail Resorts that show an 18.3% drop in skier visits to its resorts this year compared to the same period in 2019-2020.
• The Colorado State Patrol says at least 672 people died in traffic crashes on Colorado roads in 2021, the most in nearly two decades. Officials blamed impaired driving, excessive speeds and distractions behind the wheel as the leading causes of accidents, and noted that approximately one-third of those who died were not wearing seatbelts.
• Denver attorney Frank “the Strong Arm” Azar found himself in need of his own lawyer when he sued both a CPA who he says screwed up his tax return and the CPA he then hired to fix the first CPA’s work.
• King Soopers and organizers of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Marade awkwardly faced off over the grocery store’s sponsorship of the event during a union strike that would no doubt have been supported by the civil rights leader.
• Speaking of Dr. King, the FBI saw him as a communist threat and surveilled him with phone taps and bugged hotel rooms, among other activities, which is why its tweet commemorating MLK Day this week felt pretty self-serving and hollow.
• After trying and failing to participate in the Australian Open, Novak Djokovic learned that the upcoming French Open also has banned non-vaccinated tennis players. He currently is tied with Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer with 20 major tournament wins, and desperately wants to own the record alone.
• Historians have decided that notary Arnold van den Bergh is the likely culprit who ratted out Anne Frank.
• It’s been a rough week for the University of Michigan. Its president, Mark Schlissel, was fired for having a relationship with a subordinate and the university agreed to pay $490 million to settle allegations that a doctor who worked with football players and other students sexually abused them.
• The NBA’s Golden State Warriors distanced itself from minority owner Chamath Palihapitiya’s statement that “nobody cares about what’s happening to the Uyghurs,” the largely Muslim minority community that has faced widespread human rights violations in China’s western Xinjiang region. He added, “You bring it up because you really care, and I think it’s nice that you care — the rest of us don’t care.” That will not play well in the Warrior’s hometown of San Francisco.

So, who won the week?

• Denver-area animal shelters raised tens of thousands of unexpected dollars on Jan. 17 thanks to the “Betty White Challenge,” a campaign to support humane societies in honor of what would have been the beloved actress’ 100th birthday.
• The Denver Post’s Mike Singer was named Colorado Sportswriter of the Year and AT&T SportsNet’s Jenny Cavnar was named Colorado Sportscaster of the Year by the National Sports Media Association.
• The Boston Bruins retired Willie O’Rees’ hockey jersey 64 years after he broke the color barrier in the NHL.

Candy manufacturer Mars announced that the iconic M&M’s characters are getting personality makeovers – and the results demonstrate the lengths that agency marketing teams will go to spend every dime of the client’s budget. The efforts are described as “a modern makeover for a more dynamic, progressive world,” which is code for making them more millennial-friendly. Among the changes:

• The green M&M has ditched her go-go boots in favor of “cool, laid-back sneakers to reflect her effortless confidence.” Also, the green and brown M&Ms may be lesbians now.
• The brown M&M’s heels have been “lowered to a professional heel height.”
• The orange M&M will now lean into his anxiety and the red M&M will no longer bully his peers.

If you are looking for some consistency among all these changes, fear not – the yellow M&M is still an idiot.

Kyle Harris at Denverite: “Few businesses have grown with Denver like Tattered Cover. The independent book chain has dominated the city’s literary scene for more than half a century. Over the past 20 years, it has kept its doors open — barely — as online retail has battered brick-and-mortar shops. Three new owners, who took over Tattered Cover in December 2020 under the name Bended Page LLC, have been betting on their ability to not just save the iconic independent book chain from bankruptcy, but to turn it into a lucrative, 21st century business.” …

“Yet some staff members — new and old alike — are raising concerns about the new direction and how they’re being managed. They say the store is growing too fast and becoming too corporate, old-timers are being pushed out, staff are overworked, wages are too low and they criticize new CEO Kwame Spearman’s management style.”

It was bad enough to lose a playoff game to the San Francisco 49ers, but Dallas Cowboys QB Dak Prescott compounded the disaster by praising Cowboys fans who threw bottles and other trash at the officials as they left the field. Prescott has built a reputation for being a classy player, which made his comments even more surprising.

We all knew an apology was coming, but given the state of the world I expected it to be the “I apologize if anyone was offended” variety. Instead, Prescott owned it and even used the all-too-rare phrase “I’m sorry:”

“I deeply regret the comments I made regarding the officials after the game on Sunday” Prescott said. “I was caught up in the emotion of a disappointing loss and my words were uncalled for and unfair. I hold the NFL Officials in the highest regard and have always respected their professionalism and the difficulty of their jobs. The safety of everyone who attends a game or participates on the field of a sporting event is a very serious matter. That was a mistake on my behalf, and I am sorry.”

King Soopers and Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Marade organizers found themselves in a bit of an awkward standoff yesterday. The grocery store chain, which is in the midst of an ongoing union strike, was the corporate sponsor of the parade honoring a man who was solidly pro-union. Something had to give, and the result was a race to claim the moral high ground.

Marade organizers struck first by formally removing King Soopers as a sponsor, although it was done at the last minute which meant it was largely symbolic. Organizers also tried to return the sponsorship money to King Soopers, but grocery store representatives were having none of it. They refused to accept the money, saying that Marade organizers should keep it despite cancelling the sponsorship “because love should always be bigger than hate.”

How far will this very public spat go? Unfortunately, we’ll never know because the Marade has already come and gone.

Rebecca Elliott, Justin Scheck and Drew FitzGerald at The Wall Street Journal: “A partner at law firm Cooley LLP got an unexpected call late last year from a lawyer for one of the firm’s most famous clients, Elon Musk’s Tesla Inc., with an ultimatum. The world’s richest man wanted Cooley, which was representing Tesla in numerous lawsuits, to fire one of its attorneys or it would lose the electric-vehicle company’s business, people familiar with the matter said.”

“The target of Mr. Musk’s ire was a former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission lawyer whom Cooley had hired for its securities litigation and enforcement practice and who had no involvement in the firm’s work for Tesla. At the SEC, the attorney had interviewed Mr. Musk during the agency’s investigation of the Tesla chief executive’s 2018 tweet claiming, wrongly, to have secured funding to potentially take the electric-vehicle maker private.”

“The probe resulted in a settlement in which Mr. Musk agreed to resign as chairman and pay a $20 million fine. He also agreed to have a Tesla lawyer review in advance tweets about certain topics, including the company’s financial results, sales numbers and proposed business combinations.”

“Cooley has declined to fire the attorney, who remains an associate at the firm, the people said. Since early December, Tesla has begun taking steps in several cases to replace Cooley or add additional counsel, legal documents show. Mr. Musk’s rocket company Space Exploration Technologies Corp., also known as SpaceX, has stopped using Cooley for regulatory work, according to people familiar with the matter.”

• If you are a Colorado Rockies fan, more Monforts involved with the team probably isn’t what you are looking for. Regardless, Sterling Monfort, the son of the Rockies’ owner Dick Monfort, has been named the head of the team’s pro scouting department. An anonymous MLB scout is not impressed.
• The Sierra Club has threatened to suspend its 20,000-member Colorado chapter, citing “years of unresolved conflicts between the Colorado leadership and executive committee and volunteers.”
• Pauletta Tonilas is the best communications leader RTD has had in decades. That is why the agency’s new policy requiring media to seek advance permission and obtain liability insurance in the amount of $10 million prior to shooting in RTD-controlled spaces (including Union Station) was so surprising. Media immediately went nuts, and RTD and Tonilas quickly walked back the policy, describing it as a misunderstanding.
• Approximately 17,000 union employees at King Soopers in Colorado and Wyoming are on strike, and there is no obvious resolution in sight.
• Five days after accepting the position of news editor at Westword, Helen Thorpe resigned, saying that the job “was not the right fit in terms of tempo.”
• Living through a pandemic the past two years has been hard enough. Now imagine your name is “Kovid.”
• He’s out … he’s in … he’s out again. Tennis star Novak Djokovic‘s eligibility to play in next week’s Australian Open remains in question after the latest decision to cancel his visa. No doubt lawyers on both sides will be working overtime this weekend as Djokovic hopes to take the all-time men’s major wins record with a tournament win. If he is ultimately allowed to play, it may require him to tune out boos and derogatory comments that aren’t usually associated with tennis.
• The Golden Globes took place last weekend, and if you didn’t notice, you aren’t alone. The quiet awards season has Hollywood worried about the bigger ramifications.
• The U.S. government has accused 16 nationally respected universities, including Duke, Georgetown, MIT, Notre Dame, CalTech and Yale, of antitrust violations for allegedly working together to determine financial aid awards for students.

So, who won the week?

• Pat Bowlen’s children won a legal victory that paves the way for them to sell the Denver Broncos in a deal that is expected to net them approximately $400 million each.
• Estes Park is included on The New York Times’ list of 52 places to go in 2022.
• Colorado’s own Mikaela Shiffrin won her 47th women’s World Cup slalom this week, the most of any skier ever in a single World Cup event.
• Poet and activist Maya Angelou became the first Black woman to have her image on the U.S. quarter. Civil rights activists note that the flip side still has a slave-owner on it.

“Sterling (Monfort) has earned a reputation as a diligent, hard worker, but I think he’s out over his skis. I mean, Dick Monfort owns the club so he can promote his son if he wants to. But Sterling’s only been doing this for eight years and if his dad wasn’t the owner, I don’t know if he would be hired in the industry. For me, this is another example of the Rockies only looking inside their own organization.”

A veteran MLB scout on the Colorado Rockies’ decision to name owner Dick Monfort’s son as the leader of the team’s pro scouting department.

When I was 23, I got my first public relations job in Denver at a firm named Darcy Communications. One of the big bosses was Rendall “Rendy” Ayers, and I liked him immediately. He was funny, good-natured and thoughtful, and he always had time to answer questions from someone who was still learning the nuances of the job. His world was big, and he would regale everyone with tales about his beloved kids Sydney and Reed, “old” Denver, tennis, his Porsche and CU Buffs sports, among many, many other things. I struggle to remember a time when he wasn’t smiling and laughing – at one of his own jokes or stories or at someone else’s. Rendy was one of the good ones. He passed away this weekend at the age of 84.

Arby’s claims that its new spicy sandwich (the “Diablo Dare” that comes in chicken or brisket) is so hot that it will only sell it served with a fire retardant – a free vanilla milkshake. The sandwich gets its heat from ghost pepper jack cheese, hot seasoning, fire-roasted jalapenos, a hot BBQ sauce and a chipotle bun.

• Officials have not said it explicitly, but it appears that members of Twelve Tribes, a curious Christian sect with a compound in Boulder, are suspected of starting the most destructive wildfire in Colorado history.
• The Denver Broncos‘ loss last weekend means that they are officially eliminated from the playoffs and will have their fifth straight losing season.
• The annual stock show parade through the streets of downtown Denver was cancelled this week due to the threat of snow, high winds and dangerously low temperatures. Meanwhile, the Denver public health director had to have a conversation with organizers after they said the city’s mask mandate would be “lightly’ enforced at stock show venues.
• Fourteen months after Denver voters overturned a pit bull ban, data from the Denver Animal Protection department shows the breed leads all others for number of moderate and severe bites on people. Pit bulls were responsible for 117 bites, outpacing runners-up German shepherds (61 bites) and Labrador retrievers (54 bites).
• Tennis star Novak Djokovic became the least popular person down under when the Australian Open granted him a vaccine exemption to participate in the tournament. Aussies ranging from politicians to sports stars to average citizens expressed outrage at the decision. Djokovic, however, filed the wrong type of visa, and the government appears to be using that as a pretext for preventing him from actually entering the country. A hearing is scheduled for Monday. It may be a no-win situation for Djokovic, though. He’ll either miss the tournament, or try to set the all-time men’s wins record for majors in an arena of people booing him.
• David Bateman, the founder and chairman of tech firm Entrata, resigned after sending a blast email claiming the COVID-19 vaccine is part of a plot by “the Jews” to exterminate people. Confronted with the email, Bateman denied being anti-Semitic, noting that,  “Some of my closest friends are Jews.”
• Tesla is being condemned by human rights activists around the world for opening a showroom in China’s Xinjiang region, home to Uyghurs, a mostly Muslim ethnic minority group that has been subject to genocidal tactics by the Chinese government.
• Washington Wizards broadcaster Glenn Consor is either a world-class a**hole or one of the unluckiest people alive.
• “Who is Amy Schneider?” is the answer to the clue, “This reigning ‘Jeopardy’ champion was robbed at gunpoint in her hometown of Oakland, California.”

So, who won the week?

• Murdoch the basset hound was elected honorary mayor of Littleton. He won by shaking hands and licking babies.
• Motor Trend named the electric Rivian R1T pick-up truck as its 2022 “Truck of the Year.” Nine years ago, the magazine named the Tesla Model S as its 2013 “Car of the Year,” an honor that helped launch the then-emerging car company. We’ll see if Rivian enjoys the same success.

The Australian Open’s decision to grant superstar Novak Djokovic a COVID-19 vaccine exemption to play in this month’s tournament has divided Australians and resulted in calls for a boycott from local officials and fans.

CNN reports, “One of Melbourne’s most famous former Australian Football League (AFL) stars, Kevin Bartlett, tweeted that Australians had been ‘taken for fools.’ While one of the city’s prominent emergency physicians and former president of the Australian Medical Association (AMA) Stephen Parnis, said the decision sent ‘an appalling message’ to the public.”

Djokovic is tied with Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal for most all-time grand slam wins with 20, but getting number 21 in Australia may be incredibly difficult if Aussies in the stands turn on him. It would not be surprising to see him withdraw rather than face relentless boos from the crowd.

An attempt to thank Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger in what is expected to be his last home game goes awry.

It’s tradition that a winning football coach gets doused in Gatorade after a big win, but Duke’s Mayo took it a step further when University of South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer was doused in mayonnaise after winning the Duke’s Mayo Bowl.

• CBS4 reported that the top attorney representing Denver International Airport, Scott McCoy, resigned after being accused of “slapping one of his subordinates multiple times during a holiday party Dec. 16. The incident was apparently witnessed by DIA’s CEO Phil Washington and numerous other of DIA’s top level executives, according to sources familiar with the incident.”
• Denver only made it a couple of hours into 2022 before it experienced its first homicides of the year.
• The BBC is under fire for interviewing lawyer Alan M. Dershowitz about the guilty verdict in the case against Ghislaine Maxwell without disclosing – or seemingly even knowing – that Dershowitz represented the man at the heart of the Maxwell trial – Jeffrey Epstein.
• English soccer start Daniel Sturridge was ordered to honor a $30,000 reward he publicly offered for the safe return of his missing Pomeranian, Lucci. When a local security guard found and returned the dog, Sturridge thanked him but claimed there was no reward. A court ruled otherwise.
• Green Bay Packers QB Aaron Rodgers hasn’t exactly been a role model for responsible COVID-19 behavior, and the theatrics continued this week when he and FOX sideline reporter Erin Andrews conducted a socially distant post-game interview and subsequently shared a maskless hug as soon as the camera turned off.
• A Florida man, River Rosenquist, thought it might be fun to pet one of the tigers at the Naples, Fla., zoo. It went exactly like you thought it would.

So, who won the week?

• First responders and local journalists demonstrated excellence under the pressure of the Superior and Louisville fires.
• Public safety won when Lakewood Police officer Ashley Ferris shot and killed the assailant in the Denver-Lakewood shooting spree this week. Ferris herself was shot by the assailant, but managed to return fire, killing the man and ending his deadly rampage.
• Audi stepped in and gifted a new Q3 to a “Wheel of Fortune” contestant who was denied the prize due to a technicality that infuriated fans of the show.
• If you thought what LoDo was missing was a little more “bro” culture, you are in luck – Dierks Bentley’s new restaurant and music venue opened on New Year’s Eve.

“Advertisers are treading carefully when it comes to peddling their products and services during February’s Beijing Winter Olympics, which have been shrouded by criticism over China’s human-rights record,” Suzanne Vranica at The Wall Street Journal reports. “Some brands are considering not including any references to the host city in their Olympic marketing efforts, according to advertising and marketing executives. Others plan to run non-Olympic-themed ads during the Games. Some are turning to public relations outfits for help to navigate the politics that have surrounded the event.” …

“Mark DiMassimo, founder of ad firm DiMassimo Goldstein, said some of his clients are considering running evergreen ads rather than create specific Olympic-themed commercials for the 17-day event, which is set to start on Feb. 4 and be broadcast in the U.S. by NBCUniversal. … Optimum Sports, a sports-marketing firm, said it has been advising brands to make sure their Olympic ads focus squarely on promoting the athletes. ‘The safest area for any brand supporting the Games,’ said Jeremy Carey, Optimum’s managing director, ‘is to say this is about the athletes.’”

• Denver travelers can expect DIA construction headaches for another six or seven years under a plan to complete the Great Hall Project proposed by DIA CEO Phil Washington. The new plan will add a little more than $1 billion to the project, giving it a total price tag of $2.1 billion.
• Deputy District Attorney Kayla Wildeman of the Colorado First Judicial District (Jeffco and Gilpin counties) managed to redirect some of the outrage directed at her boss, District Attorney Alexis King, when she shared a Facebook post of a trophy she received for obtaining a 110-year sentence for runaway trucker Rogel Aguilera-Mederos.
• Despite Colorado’s historically dry fall, Douglas County commissioners approved a holiday fireworks display that quickly devolved into a series of brush fires. Firefighters were able to get the fires under control before they caused damage, while Douglas County Sheriff Tony Spurlock noted, “Personally, in my opinion, the firework displays were not a great idea.”
• Less than a week on the job as interim president of the University of Louisville, Lori Stewart Gonzalez presided over the school’s winter graduation ceremony. Unfortunately, during her speech she accidentally referred to the school as its arch-rival University of Kentucky. After realizing her mistake, she joked, “If anyone has a job application I could fill in after tonight, bring it up here.”
• Facebook was named the “Worst Company of 2021” in a survey conducted by Yahoo Finance. “Those surveyed have a ‘litany of grievances’ toward Facebook, including but not limited to concerns over censorship, reports about Instagram’s impact on mental health, and privacy.”
• Colorado’s highway system “ranks 37th in the nation for its overall condition and cost-effectiveness, according to the latest annual report from the Reason Foundation, a libertarian organization.” In fairness, we face climate challenges many other states do not.
• The NFL’s New York Giants appear to be inadvertently trolling their own fans. The team, which currently is 4-10 and in last place in their division, wanted to do something to thank fans for their continued support during the team’s historically bad five-year run (they are a combined 22-56 since 2017). The result: season ticket holders will receive a free medium Pepsi at this Sunday’s game. For the record, it’s the “medium” that makes this art.

So who won the week?

• Conifer, Colorado, doesn’t get a lot of attention, but just like Steve Martin’s character in “The Jerk” when his name appears in the phone book, that is about to change. The U.S. Census Bureau has identified the town as the center of Colorado from a population standpoint.
• Gov. Jared Polis has stopped what appeared to be a story from The Onion – an effort to formally rebrand “sex offenders” as “adults who commit sexual offenses.” Colorado’s Sex Offender Management Board walked back its previous recommendation following pressure from the governor.
• Colorado’s ski resorts are expecting a series of snow storms just in time for Christmas.