Linhart PR announced it has promoted four team members:

• Kelly Brown was promoted to Management Supervisor. She has been with the firm for seven years, and she will continue to lead communications strategy, community engagement and media relations programs for clients in the energy, utilities, infrastructure and healthcare industries, as well as support firm new business efforts.
• Emily Rado was promoted to Account Supervisor. She will celebrate her five-year anniversary this month and she delivers strategic counsel and leads media relations, digital and influencer strategies for consumer brands including Chipotle Mexican Grill, Nature’s Heart, and the NCBA’s “Beef. It’s What’s for Dinner.” campaign.
• Shannon Hughes was promoted to Account Supervisor. She joined the team in 2016 and she provides communications counsel, plans community engagement activations, and leads media relations strategies for clients in the energy and utilities, professional services, and multi-unit restaurant industries.
• Jenny Nailling has been promoted to Account Executive, after joining Linhart PR in early 2020. She executes local, national and trade media relations programs, develops content, and helps to manage social media and influencer activations for several of Linhart PR’s clients across a range of industries.

If you have been following The Denver Post‘s exhaustive coverage of the issues at the Colorado Supreme Court (conveniently tagged “Colorado Judiciary Scandal” on its website for easy reference), you know that it has been a tough few months. It could have been much tougher, though.

Word on the street is that the Colorado Supreme Court hired Steve Silvers and Paul Jacobson from SilversJacobson shortly after David Migoya at The Denver Post broke the story about allegations of widespread sexual harassment, discrimination and unethical behavior throughout the Colorado Judiciary Branch. The result has been some positive developments – Chief Justice Boatright took full ownership of the situation, asked the other branches of government to oversee an independent investigation, and has hammered the idea of wholesale culture change.

Silvers’ crisis and controversy consulting goes back to the 1993 Aurora Chuck E. Cheese murders and the building of Denver International Airport, and Jacobson spent years on Capitol Hill and in corporate communications director jobs, including the largest corporate bankruptcy reorganization in U.S. history.

Colorado Sun Editor Larry Ryckman: “The Colorado Sun is now part owner and operator of 24 suburban newspapers in the Denver metro area. The Sun has partnered with a new nonprofit called the National Trust for Local News, which is using this endeavor with us as a pilot project to show that national funders and local journalists can collaborate to keep newspapers in local hands.”

“Together, The Sun and the National Trust have purchased Colorado Community Media, which has 24 weekly and monthly newspapers serving eight counties including and surrounding Denver. Some of these newspapers are more than 100 years old (the Golden Transcript alone is 153 years old), and they range from Castle Rock to Brighton, Evergreen to Arvada, Parker to Denver’s Washington Park and beyond.”

“This is a bit of a departure for The Colorado Sun, which has been an all-digital news site since our founding in 2018. But our entire staff has extensive experience in the print newspaper world, so we’re confident we still remember how it’s done. And the preservation of these newspapers is absolutely part of our mission of public service.”

The Colorado Rockies have been on a tear lately – winning five of their last seven games – and yet they still find themselves with the worst record in the entire National League. That is especially surprising given that the architect of the current Rockies is none other than self-described super genius Jeff Bridich.

Bridich didn’t win a lot of friends when he argued that beat reporters and the general public were too stupid to be considered fair criticism. And what little support he had teetered when he signed Daniel Murphy rather than re-signing D.J. LeMehieu (who went to the Yankees and immediately became an All-Star). But it was the Nolan Arenado “trade“ that ultimately collapsed Bridich’s house of cards – only the Rockies would trade away their best player of all time and pay another team $50 million for the pleasure of doing it.

Rockies owner Tricky Dick Monfort faced the obvious, finally, and Bridich has “mutually agreed” to not be allowed to be the GM any longer. So, if you are a Rockies fan, or even just a fan of Karma, enjoy a beer tonight to celebrate the end of the Bridich era.

Natasha Bach at PRWeek: “Journalists are overwhelmed by the number of press releases they receive, but underwhelmed by the content. That’s one finding from Cision’s annual State of the Media report, released on Thursday morning, which surveyed more than 2,500 journalists. However, journalists do like to receive press releases, according to the report. Seventy-eight percent listed them as the type of content they want to get from PR pros and brands, followed by original research (68%).”

“The report makes the case for more targeted media lists to ensure that reporters and editors are receiving relevant releases, noting that journalists are overstretched and under a lot of pressure, with many covering several beats and under pressure to generate traffic. To help them do their jobs, and get coverage for announcements, PR pros should anticipate, monitor and quickly act on trending stories, according to the report.”

National government relations and communications firm Banner Public Affairs has expanded to Denver and named Vice President of Digital Strategy Cory Capps to lead the new office. Capps formerly was an account director at 90octane. She has supported numerous high-profile clients and brands throughout her career, including the U.S. Army, United Airlines and Kraft.

Denver’s Proof PR has added chef Troy Guard’s TAG Restaurant Group as a client. TAG restaurants include Los Chingones, TAG, Guard & Grace, TAG Burger Bar, FNG and Big Wave, among others. Proof PR founder/president Sara Schiffer’s experience in restaurant and hospitality includes clients such as Giordano’s Pizza, Gibsons Restaurant Group, Table fifty-two, Whole Foods Market and Texas de Brazil.

Joey Bunch at ColoradoPolitics.com: “Gov. Jared Polis has appointed well-known Denver politico Alvina Maria Vasquez to the Western Colorado University Board of Trustees, the school said Tuesday.

“Vasquez was the political director on the governor’s 2018 core campaign team, building his network of key leaders and supporters. Vasquez is the founder and president of strategy and public relations firm Power Map Ltd. She is the former senior vice president in the Colorado office of Strategies 360, where she lengthened her resume on a variety of local and national campaigns. She was listed among the Denver Business Journal’s ’40 Under 40‘ in 2016.”

Aleda Stam at PRWeek: “Havas Formula is set to expand its U.S. footprint with a new office in Denver. The Mile High City location will be led by SVP Alexis Anderson, who manages work for some of the firm’s high-profile clients such as RE/Max and JPMorgan Chase, and Amy MacFarlane, account director for Havas Street, the firm’s activation division. MacFarlane leads its Beam Suntory business.”

“Denver is the sixth location for Havas Formula, which is headquartered in New York City and has offices in Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami and San Diego. Havas Formula is working virtually amid the pandemic, but will choose a physical office in Denver once the agency returns to in-person work.”

It has been a terrible past 30 days for Denver Public Schools board member Tay Anderson, and it keeps getting worse. Following allegations of sexual assault and confirmed retaliatory behavior while an employee of DPS, Anderson has now shared an apology with Westword related to his behavior while leading Never Again Colorado (NAC), a gun reform organization.

The apology follows a new complaint by six female NAC members that Anderson “created a work environment that made them feel unsafe by, among other things, ‘talking in code about female board members in front of them (with romantic/sexual subtexts), daring female board members to perform sexualized actions, having conversations comparing the attractiveness of female board members, and making lewd comments in private to female board members,'” according to Michael Roberts at Westword.

Anderson has always been a self-interested narcissist who clung to a veneer of legitimacy obtained by basking in the reflected light of real leaders like state Rep. Leslie Herod and community activists Elisabeth Epps and Brother Jeff Fard. Interestingly and tellingly, none have had a word to say about Anderson since the allegations surfaced.

This column – “LatinXed: 9News Got Rid of Three Latina Reporters This Past Year, Including Me” – by former 9News journalist Lori Lizarraga is all over social media today, and it is primarily journalists, including many of color, who are sharing it. It seems to have struck a chord.

You may remember Lizarraga for her comments in February 2020 calling out her colleagues at 9News for doctoring her headshot to make her “look whiter.”

Egypt’s Suez Canal Authority wanted to show the world that it jumped into action to free a cargo tanker that became stuck while traversing the canal earlier this week. After all, every second that the ship blocks traffic, the global supply chain becomes that much more impacted.

However, I don’t think the official photo the authority released conveys exactly what they wanted to:

General Mills is a 154-year-old company that has $17.6 billion in annual revenue, a $35 billion market cap and 40,000 employees. That’s all to say, it should know what it is doing. But even big brands make stupid decisions when they are caught off guard.

Yesterday’s reaction to a consumer complaint – shrimp tails allegedly found in a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch – only served to infuriate the customer, escalate the issue, and draw media and social media attention. And it has cost the company about $1.7 billion in market cap today.

What can we learn from General Mills’ response? First, you have to understand what you are dealing with. If a customer – especially a high-profile customer married to a Hollywood actress – claims they found shrimp tails in their breakfast cereal, use some of your $17.6 billion in annual revenue to hire an investigator to grab the box and interview the individual to understand what is going on.

Second, don’t rely on a superficial understanding of the situation to try to gaslight the customer. Claiming shrimp tails were “accumulation(s) of the cinnamon sugar” is the type of colorful detail that only escalates media and public interest. The only thing worse would have been to try to claim the shrimp tails were the special toy included in every box.

And third, try to end the situation as quietly and quickly as possible. This story is now a mystery the country is watching to see how it turns out. The customer has sent the box to a lab be tested to confirm what was found in it. It will be an entire new chapter in this saga when he announces the findings. Which will then lead to the “whodunnit” phase of the story. All of this could have been handled in the background by General Mills if they had taken the appropriate steps from the start.

It’s not yet done, and most of our brackets are in tatters, but the unlikely winner of the NCAA basketball tournament may be a team that didn’t even make it – the Colorado State Rams. Thanks to an unexpected plug from one of its most-famous alumni, the Rams have had almost as much air time as teams that are competing.

Congratulations to Michelle Lyng and the entire team at Novitas Communications on being named a finalist for the Denver Business Journal’s 2021 Small Business Awards in the Extra Small category. The DBJ awards recognize small businesses with fewer than 100 employees.

One of the cardinal tenets of journalism is not to accept items of value from sources or individuals whom you are covering, That’s what makes a Denver Post article today interesting.

Reporter Shelly Bradbury, along with photographer Kathryn Scott, reported on a COVID-19 vaccination event at the Colorado Muslim Society. The news hook was solid – the event was “part of the state’s larger effort to remedy racial inequities in vaccine distribution. There have been more than 100 such ‘equity clinics’ across the state aimed at all sorts of communities,” Bradbury reported.

But the disclosure that was added to the article was interesting:

Editor’s note: The reporter and photographer on this story received extra vaccine doses, after reporting this story, that clinic representatives offered because they needed to be used before going to waste.

There’s no question Bradbury is eligible for the vaccine according to 1B.4 guidelines, and the value of the shot is technically $0 since it is free to everyone. But as Coloradans scramble to try to gain access to the vaccine, is it ethical for a reporter to leverage a source relationship – presumably just hours after reporting on a story – to get access to a vaccine?

It appears the Denver Post is comfortable with the situation since it simply added a disclosure rather than pulling the story. I am curious where the line is, though. If, say, Centura Health offered reporters covering it access to hard-to-find COVID-19 vaccines, would that violate the paper’s guidelines?

Update: The always thoughtful Drew Kramer raised a few points in his comment to this post, and I wanted to acknowledge in the body of the post that “leverage” is probably too strong a term. Shelly is a respected reporter – a member of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team and an individual finalist for another Pulitzer Prize – and I did not intend to imply that she shook down a source. Fundamentally, my point is that I don’t know where that ethical line is. I’m genuinely interested in understanding what journalists think. I traded emails with Corey Hutchins, who teaches journalism at Colorado College and writes for the Columbia Journalism Review, and he is thinking about addressing the issue in his weekly column. I hope he does, because I’m very interested to learn what he thinks. If you want to subscribe to Corey’s weekly Colorado media newsletter – and it is great – you can do so here.

Heiko Vogel, a coach of the German professional soccer team Borussia Monchengladbach “was ordered to train the women’s team as punishment for ‘unsporting behaviour’ toward a referee during a match,” Stephan Uersfeld of ESPN reported.

Nicole Selmer of the Frauen im Fussball (Women in Football) network criticized the decision, saying it sent “a fatal message.”

“This punishment for the Gladbach coach puts coaching a women’s team on a level with social work,” Selmer said. “Women’s football is a sport and those who participate in it are as professional as their male counterparts. If you strip away everything and give it to them they have good intentions, it is still sending a fatal message as coaching a women’s or girls’ team is part of a punishment for a misconduct.”

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has retitled himself “Technoking” in a move that shockingly wasn’t made during the middle of Burning Man. In a filing made with the SEC, Tesla also disclosed that CFO Zack Kirkhorn has assumed the new title of “Master of Coin.” No comment was provided by Tesla, in part because it has disbanded its PR department.

“Media attorney and consultant Adonis Hoffman has withdrawn a bid to be a board member for broadcast company Tegna, citing a conflict of interest and that CEO Dave Lougee assumed he was a hotel valet at an industry event,” Thomas Moore at The Hill reports.

“That incident Hoffman had recalled (and which Lougee acknowledged in an SEC filing) happened in 2014 when he was seated at an industry dinner with Lougee. Though they had a significant discussion at the table, Hoffman said, after the event ended Lougee handed him his valet ticket thinking he was a hotel employee.”

“’The incident was a matter of principle as I thought about it if I was elected to a board and had to be in meetings with a man who I had interesting encounters with over the years,’ said Hoffman, who is Black.”

Congratulations to the 2021 Denver Business Journal 40 Under 40 award winners who come from the communications industry:

Kayla Garcia – Kayla is the community affairs director at Molson Coors. A Colorado State graduate, she previously worked at Mile High United Way and Denver Inner City Parish.

Maria De Camba Gonzalez – Maria is the director of communications and community engagement at the Colorado Governor’s Office. She previously was a senior associate at Hilltop Public Solutions, and she is a former mayor pro-tem of the Westminster city council.

Leanna Clark – Leanna is a former 40 Under 40 award winner who is being recognized as this year’s Hall of Fame award winner. She is the CEO of Girl Scouts of Colorado, but most of us know her as the former vice chancellor of University Communications and Marketing at the University of Colorado Denver and a principal at Schenkein.

You get the feeling that corporate public relations departments are working overtime this week cleaning up the International Women’s Day messes created by their advertising departments. While Burger King is the runaway winner for most tone deaf ad, CVS nabs an honorable mention for using the day as an opportunity to promote deals on cosmetics.

The dust is still settling on Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Royal free agents Meghan and Harry, but Brian Stelter and Oliver Darcy at CNN have assembled a list of media and PR lessons:

 – Don’t give it all away ahead of time. “If anything, all of the hype underestimated just how revealing this interview would be,” Brianna Keilar said to me on CNN. She’s right. The teasers generated a week’s worth of attention ahead of time but didn’t spill any of the tea. Oprah’s team ensured that nothing leaked. As a result, the palace couldn’t prebut the interview and the special contained maximum shock value.

 – Let it breathe. The interview “really showed the power of the long-format interview, which is almost totally gone from TV nowadays,” THR’s Alex Weprin commented. “Everything is crunched into tight, fast-paced segments now, to the detriment of all involved.” 

 – Follow-up questions make all the difference. “Oprah best displayed her interviewing chops by relentlessly circling back to emotional or newsmaking comments like a heat-seeking missile,” WaPo’s Margaret Sullivan wrote. But Winfrey didn’t rush or interrupt. She sometimes waited half an hour before circling back “to clarify, to get the specifics, to nail down the news.” And that, of course, is the luxury of a taped interview.

 – Leave something on the cutting room floor. Winfrey’s announcement at the end of the broadcast that additional clips would air on Monday’s “CBS This Morning” was a nice bit of synergy…

 – Broadcast TV still has juice, but it’s getting harder to squeeze. Legacy networks still have the ability to convene large numbers of people, but it takes something huge – something like Oprah, Meghan and Harry.

 – History has an echo. “It was hard to escape the eerie parallels between Princess Diana’s 1995 Martin Bashir interview and this one,” Brian Lowry wrote. “And give Netflix an assist, since ‘The Crown’ has brought that back to life for millions…”

 — Don’t forget about the streamers. On Sunday I encountered lots of complaintsfrom cable-free households who wanted to watch the special but seemed lost. Networks that are constantly promoting their streaming services need a plan and proactive outreach for moments like this. (The special is now streaming for free on CBS.com.)

Burger King’s UK arm went for cheeky irony on its International Women’s Day social media post, and … it didn’t work. The fast food chain was trying to call attention to the fact that women are underrepresented in restaurant leadership roles (only 20% of chefs are women), but trying to subvert an old trope didn’t exactly work out as planned.

PRWeek is out with its annual salary survey, and the results showed a mixed bag during the COVID-19 pandemic. Among the survey’s findings:

• Denver saw the median PR salary increase 11% to $85,000.
• Denver’s median annual salary significantly trails markets such as San Francisco ($153,000), Chicago ($110,000), Boston ($122,000) and Washington, D.C. ($127,000), but is ahead of markets such as Atlanta ($76,000) and Seattle ($80,000).
• PR agencies saw salaries rise 6.8% on average nationally, while corporate positions saw a 4.2% increase. Non-profit salaries languished, with an average increase of 0.6%.
• 23% of respondents said their salaries were reduced at some point during the year due to COVID-19.

As drunken, riotous students took over part of a residential street on The Hill last night, residents frantically contacted Boulder Police asking for officers to help put an end to it.

It has been a tough month for Jeep. The auto manufacturer had one of the most talked-about Super Bowl commercials with its spot featuring music legend Bruce Springsteen, only to have to pull the spot from the post-Super Bowl rotation less than a week later when reports of The Boss’ arrest on DUI charges surfaced (a blood test showed he was at about one-fourth the legal limit and the DUI charges were later dropped).

More recently, the principal chief of the Cherokee Nation demanded that Jeep stop using the term “Cherokee” in the names of its SUVs – a demand that affects Jeep’s best selling (Grand Cherokee) and third-best selling (Cherokee) vehicles. Jeep parent company CEO Carlos Tavares announced yesterday he is open to dropping the Cherokee name.

Congratulations to Jordan Blakesley and the entire team at B Public Relations on the agency’s 10-year anniversary. B Public Relations specializes in hospitality, tourism and lifestyle brands, and it has won a number of honors, including ColoradoBiz’s most recent Top Companies award in the PR and Communications category.

Elise Schmelzer at The Denver Post: “Aurora police officers did not have a legal basis to force Elijah McClain to stop walking, to frisk him or to use a chokehold on him, an independent investigation commissioned by the city found. The initial investigation into the incident led by the department’s detectives in the Major Crimes Unit was also deeply flawed, the investigators found. The detectives failed to ask basic, critical questions of the officers involved in McClain’s death and instead ‘the questions frequently appeared designed to elicit specific exonerating ‘magic language’ found in court rulings,’ the report states.”

“The investigators also found that Aurora paramedics failed to properly examine McClain before injecting him with 500 milligrams of the sedative ketamine — a dose based on a ‘grossly inaccurate’ estimation of McClain’s weight. Paramedics estimated he weighed 190 pounds but he actually weighed closer to 140 pounds.”

“’Aurora Fire appears to have accepted the officers’ impression that Mr. McClain had excited delirium without corroborating that impression through meaningful observation or diagnostic examination of Mr. McClain,’ the investigators wrote.”

Seattle Mariners CEO Kevin Mather resigned this afternoon. Why? From ESPN:

“Over the course of a 45-minute chat to a local Rotary Club in early February, Seattle Mariners CEO Kevin Mather disparaged a Japanese player for not learning English, belittled a star prospect from the Dominican Republic for his language skills and derided another top prospect while admitting to manipulating his service time. He called his team’s best pitcher ‘very boring’ and embellished the pitcher’s actions in a clubhouse incident, told another falsehood about a well-respected veteran and complained that the franchise’s best player over the past decade was ‘overpaid.'”

“Any one of these blunders is incalculably foolish. Together, they expose pathological levels of arrogance, hubris and myopia. This was one of the 30 people entrusted to run a Major League Baseball franchise before Mather resigned from his position Monday afternoon.”

“Rarely a day seems to go by in recent weeks without a celebrity seeing their career threatened by the social-media uproar attending either their own poorly chosen words or allegations about appalling behavior,” Andrew Wallenstein at Variety reports.

“From Morgan Wallen to Gina Carano to Armie Hammer, Hollywood executives are getting frequent reminders lately about the considerable risk that comes with associating their investments with unpredictable talent. … No one feels the weight of that burden more than the crisis-PR practitioners fighting on the frontlines on behalf of their clients. If there’s any silver lining to this rash of incidents, it’s that they offer a wealth of best and worst practices from which to learn how to most effectively handle these sticky situations.”

Two weeks after Dick Monfort traded Colorado Rockies superstar Nolan Arenado to the St. Louis Cardinals (and paid them $50 million for the privilege of doing it), the Denver Business Journal features arguably the most-hated businessperson in Denver on its cover. For the record, the Rockies are 0-28 in trying to win the NL West, a division that includes five teams. But, party deck!

Former Fox31/KWGN anchor Natalie Tysdal’s recent departure from the affiliated stations has been presented as just another case of a journalist getting out of a tough business. But as Westword’s Michael Roberts reports, her husband’s impending court date to answer for “70 counts connected to alleged financial malfeasance” may have also had something to do with the timing.

Among the charges Tyler Tysdal is facing are violations of the Colorado Organized Crime Control Act, multiple counts of securities fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, and one count of theft. All are felonies. Among the alleged victims are former NFL quarterbacks Carson Palmer and Matt Cassel.

Natalie Tysdal is just the latest media figure to get tripped up by her husband. Last fall, the husband of former 9News sports anchor and current KOA NewsRadio Broncos sideline reporter Susie Wargin was accused of sexual assault by a Colorado State University student. Pro tip to female journalists: you may want to consider staying single.

Denver PR firm GBSM has added a senior associate and two associates:

Abby Abel, formerly Chief Marketing Officer for GE’s global renewable-energy business and a consultant with policy and civic innovation firm Cityfi, has joined the firm as a senior associate.

Sam Haas has joined GBSM as an associate. She specializes in the planning and execution of authentic and impactful communications, public and stakeholder engagement, and organizational strategies. She brings a tailored focus on meaningful collaborative–process design, consensus-driven decision making, and facilitation.

Kaylie Showers, also joining GBSM as an associate, has worked in both the public and private sectors to strategically engage diverse communities, navigate complex government processes and leverage legislative policy. Most recently she worked for the City and County of Denver’s Agency for Human Rights and Community Partnerships where she managed multiple citywide efforts.

Michael Roberts at Westword reports: “Vic Lombardi is frustrated. Everywhere he goes, the Altitude TV host and multiple winner of Westword‘s Best TV Sportscaster award runs into fans upset about not being to see most Denver Nuggets and Colorado Avalanche games on Comcast because of a fight over broadcasting rights that began in the summer of 2019 and shows no sign of being resolved. Moreover, the overwhelming majority of those fans blame Altitude TV for the deadlock. After all, the network (as well as the Nuggets, Avs, Colorado Mammoth and Colorado Rapids) are owned by billionaire Stan Kroenke, who, by their way of thinking, could simply write a check and make the problem go away but is obstinately refusing to do so.”

“According to Lombardi, the situation isn’t nearly so simple. He feels that both parties (plus DISH, which isn’t airing the channel, either) are to blame, with Altitude shouldering some responsibility for failing to clearly communicate the issues that have led to the standoff. As for Comcast, he thinks the cable giant is essentially getting a free ride despite what he sees as it overcharging customers for regional sports network coverage they haven’t gotten for nearly a year and a half.”

“The Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ lopsided win over the Kansas City Chiefs combined with a pandemic that prevented many from attending big viewing parties in homes and bars led to the smallest audience for a Super Bowl since 2007,” Joe Flint at The Wall Street Journal reports.

“About 96.4 million people watched ageless wonder Tom Brady lead the Buccaneers to a 31-9 Super Bowl victory over the defending champion Chiefs on CBS, a 5.5% decrease from the 102 million that saw last year’s much closer and coronavirus-free match between the Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers on Fox.”

Michael Roberts at Westword talks to former 9News reporter/anchor Ryan Haarer on his decision to leave the business to pursue a career in real estate:

“Viewers may assume that reporters and anchors on TV are making a king’s ransom, but that’s not the case for most local talent. Back in 2019, when he announced his own exit plan (one that was followed by a return to the airwaves and then a controversial dismissal over a pointed tweet), former 9News weathercaster Marty Coniglio told us, ‘There are a lot of schoolteachers who are making more money than some on-air people here. That’s the reality of the business.'”

“For his part, Haarer confirms, ‘If you’re asking if I want to increase my pay, I think every journalist would say they do. There are few people who work in the newsroom who are paid sky-high salaries. That’s no secret. I was well-paid at 9News; I had no issues with my pay. But these are lean and tough times for a lot of journalism outlets, and TV is no exception as the industry looks to redefine itself and determine what the future will be.'”

Due to a “test malfunction” (translation: human error), the Texas Department of Public Safety broadcast an Amber Alert for the horror-film doll Chucky.

Bryan Pietsch of The New York Times reported, “The alert said that Chucky and (the doll’s owner) Glen were last seen at a residential address in Henderson, Texas, a city about 130 miles southeast of Dallas. A woman who answered a call to a phone number associated with that address on Wednesday said, ‘Yes, I’m aware’ when asked about the alert before hanging up.”

“Don Mancini, the director and screenwriter who created the Chucky character, shared a news article about the alert on Twitter, saying, ‘PLEASE FIND THEM.’”

SSPR, a national agency with an office in Denver, is rebranding as Next PR. The change, the agency says, highlights its ability to “push the boundaries of traditional PR that enables brands to meet new challenges and opportunities head on.”

“As difficult as it was, 2020 was also a powerful learning and growth experience for us as an agency,” said Heather Kelly, Next PR CEO. “We proved that we’re not a one-size-fits-all firm operating out of a traditional PR playbook. Any agency can tell you what to say; we make sure your brand is also living up to that promise. We’re not afraid to push our clients to think outside traditional PR boundaries. 

SSPR was founded by namesake Steve Simon in Chicago in 1978.

SoulCycle is playing defense today after one of its instructors in New York reportedly jumped the line for a COVID-19 vaccine, arguing that she is an “educator” who was eligible.

Ben Smith at The New York Times reports, “David Carr, the legendary Timesman who made this column a destination, told me back in 2012 that he kept a ‘helicopter on the roof’ of The New York Times Building in case he needed to escape. After all, he had been taking shots at media moguls, including, occasionally, his own bosses. That helicopter, he said, was his Twitter account, and it gave him the power, if needed, to flee The Times and take his followers — more than 300,000 when he died in 2015.”

“Twitter has occupied an uncomfortable place between journalists and their bosses for more than a decade. It offers journalists both a newswire and a direct line back into the news cycle. But it has also set off a tug of war between the voice of the brand and of the individual.” …

“The other, and perhaps more ominous, tension for the big newsrooms is the one that Mr. Carr spotted in 2012. Social media has shifted the balance of power in the same direction it has long been moving in everything from entertainment to sports: away from management and big brands, and toward the people who used to be called reporters, but now sometimes get referred to as ‘talent.’ Reporters have every incentive to build big social media followings. It’s a path to television contracts, book deals, job offers and raises. And that can be in tension with what their employers want.”

Congratulations to the team at Subway, which managed to break its own record for earliest PR crisis. A lawsuit filed against the ubiquitous sandwich chain in mid-January alleges that the tuna it advertises is “not tuna and not even fish.”

Tim Carman at The Washington Post reports, “The star ingredient, according to the lawsuit, is ‘made from anything but tuna.’ Based on independent lab tests of ‘multiple samples’ taken from Subway locations in California, the ‘tuna is ‘a mixture of various concoctions that do not constitute tuna, yet have been blended together by defendants to imitate the appearance of tuna,’ according to the complaint.”

Subway has a long and distinguished history of PR crises, including:

• Its spokesman Jared Fogle was sentenced to 15 years in prison for child pornography and sex with minors
• A study found that the sandwich chain’s oven-roasted chicken is actually only 50 percent chicken.
• An Irish court ruled that the company’s sandwich rolls contained too much sugar to legally qualify as “bread”
• And, most dastardly, it was accused of serving “foot-long” sandwiches that were actually only 11.5″ long

I joined Michelle Ellis, PRSA Colorado president, today for a Facebook Live conversation about some of the year’s PR winners and losers.

“The dog had a lot of work to do. He was co-starring in a political ad that had to showcase the candidate’s good-natured warmth. But the ad also needed to deflect an onslaught of racialized attacks without engaging them directly, and to convey to white voters in Georgia that the Black pastor who led Ebenezer Baptist Church could represent them, too,” Shane Goldmacher from The New York Times reports.

“’The entire ad screams that I am a Black candidate whom white people ought not be afraid of,’ said Hakeem Jefferson, a professor of political science at Stanford, who studies race, stigma and politics in America.”

“While there is no singular factor responsible for victories this narrow — Mr. Warnock won by less than 100,000 votes out of roughly 4.5 million and the other new Democratic senator, Jon Ossoff, won by even less — there is bipartisan agreement that the beagle played an outsized role in cutting through the clutter in two contests that broke every Senate spending record.”

Ed Sealover at the Denver Business Journal reports: “Visit Denver President & CEO Richard Scharf said he believes the organization can salvage most of the large conventions and meetings planned for Denver in the second half of 2021 following the state’s release of the Colorado Convention Center from serving as an alternate hospital site.”

“Event planners and hotel officials have greeted that news warmly, even if its effects aren’t expected to play out immediately. Scharf estimated that the events canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 — both those to be held in the convention center and in nearby hotels — cost the city 450,000 visitors and $800 million in economic impact.”

“But the biggest impact of the state’s decision is that Visit Denver can work with convention planners who have yet to cancel events scheduled for the facility in the summer and fall to assure them they can move forward, Scharf said in an interview Thursday. That likely means that the Outdoor Retailer Summer Market — a show that previously was estimated to generate a $57 million annual economic impact — could stay on the calendar in June and that other gatherings of large professional associations and consumer shows may move forward.”

Despite some amazing performances, it may be frumpy Bernie Sanders that will become the iconic memory from President Joe Biden’s inauguration.

Most people are familiar with Apple’s “1984” Super Bowl ad that helped launch the company. Today, however, is the anniversary of a much more ignominious event. It was 36 years ago today that the sequel to “1984” – titled “Lemmings” – premiered during the 1985 Super Bowl.

Never heard of the sequel? You are not alone. While the “1984” ad is widely considered one of the best and most effective in television history, the “Lemmimgs” ad went down in flames. A senior Macintosh executive quit on the spot after seeing the ad, and Apple was accused of exploiting the Holocaust to sell computers. The ad ended a short-lived era – it was the last time Apple aired a commercial during a Super Bowl.

Two weeks after being named communications director for Rep. Lauren Boebert, Ben Goldey has resigned. Lachlan Markay at Axios reports:

“Ben Goldey’s resignation cited last week’s insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, which followed efforts by Boebert and lawmakers to block certification of Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory. The Hill veteran’s departure highlights the deep divide among Republicans over President Trump’s conduct.”

“Goldey said in a statement to Axios: ‘Following the events of January 6th, I’ve decided to part ways with the office. I wish her and the people of Colorado’s Third District the best.’ … Boebert is a strident Trump supporter firmly on the right flank of the House GOP caucus. She was clear about her views during her campaign, but they have suddenly become politically toxic following last week’s attack.” …

“Goldey, by contrast, has a more establishment pedigree. He was the press secretary at the Department of Interior until this year, and previously worked for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.”

“Saying that I have ‘contributed nothing of value to support the ideals of either the Benson Center or CU Boulder’ is preposterous …,” said John Eastman, CU Boulder’s visiting conservative scholar, to the Boulder Daily Camera.

Professor Eastman caused controversy for his remarks at the Washington, D.C., rally for President Trump prior to the attack on the U.S. Capitol. His spring classes at CU Boulder have since been cancelled due to low enrollment.

Denver-based Novitas Communications has promoted Krista Crouch to vice president. Crouch has more than 15 years of experience in communications, public relations and digital media, and she manages clients in a number of industries, including finance, healthcare, tourism, government, oil and gas, and associations.  

Crouch has worked with media internationally including top-tier media outlets in the U.S. such as the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, USA Today, CNN, ABC News, Bloomberg, Reuters, Cheddar, and many other national and local media outlets.

Edelman has released its 2021 Trust Barometer report and the bottom line appears to be that the COVID-19 pandemic, among other 2020 challenges, has sent trust in government, business and media on the fun part of a rollercoaster ride.

“Trust declined across all institutions… . Only 59% of respondents said they trust businesses to do the right thing; 57% felt that way about the government and 56% about NGOs. Only half of those queried said they trust the media to do the right thing,” reports Thomas Moore at PRWeek.

Edelman CEO Richard Edelman cited three takeaways:

“The first is that business has become the most trusted institution. That is a significant change from May when we did the spring trust update and when we saw the government leading the pack for the first time. Now government has fallen off significantly.”

Second, “the data shows people distrust the information they’re being given from most sources. … You saw the result of [this] last week in the Capitol being stormed with false hopes. You also see it in vaccine hesitancy.”

“The third story here is the real fall from grace of the U.S. and China. The Chinese because of being the place where COVID-19 started but also because they kept the story under wraps and people were irritated by that. And then the United States, because we’re the worst country in the world in terms of managing the pandemic, and we’ve lost a lot of ground that way.”

The University of Colorado Denver named Marie Williams its new vice chancellor for communications. From the announcement:

“Williams has served in senior leadership roles at public relations agencies and within higher education, most recently as vice president of marketing and communications at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. At CU Denver, Williams will lead the 18-person University Communications team responsible for external and internal communications, media relations, marketing, brand strategy, social media, and web development.”

“Williams began her public relations career in editor roles at the University of Pennsylvania (her alma mater) and Temple University. For the next six years, she worked in the private sector, in communication and marketing positions for Pennsylvania companies, including PECO Energy and The Pep Boys. From 2007-18, Williams held leadership roles for the education practices at two New York-based public relations agencies, serving as senior managing director at RF|Binder Partners and senior vice president at Edelman. Most recently, at Saint Joseph’s, she transformed the Office of Marketing and Communications into an in-house creative and strategic consultancy that has enhanced the visibility and reputation of the university.”

Emily Kaplan at ESPN: “NHL analyst Mike Milbury is out at NBC after 14 years with the network. The news came on Monday as NBC unveiled its game and studio commentary lineup for the 2021 NHL season, and Milbury was conspicuously absent.” […]

“Milbury, the former Boston Bruins and New York Islanders coach and GM, was pulled from NBC’s Stanley Cup playoff coverage in August after his on-air comments about players not being as distracted in the league’s bubble because no women were there in the league’s bubble.” […]

“Milbury had been flagged for insensitive comments several times during his tenure at NBC, including other instances last season. In a qualifying-round game between Pittsburgh and Montreal, Milbury said playing in an empty arena was like being at a college women’s hockey game.”

Dan Kika at the Boulder Daily Camera: “Crispin Porter + Bogusky is in the process of moving from Gunbarrel to a 20,000-square-foot office in McGregor Square in Denver’s LoDo District, according to a statement from the company. The move is expected to end in July.” […]

“Doyle Albee, the president and CEO of Boulder-based public relations agency MAPR, said CP+B’s move isn’t a large immediate loss for Boulder because the majority of the agency’s accounts are national. … He pointed out that Denver and other cities in Boulder County can offer far lower costs of living while providing the Front Range lifestyle that companies in the region leverage for recruiting employees.”

“’I’m not worried about Boulder becoming a ghost town by any stretch … but it underscores the fact that we are facing some very serious economic and lifestyle issues here that we need to proactively address on a daily basis, or we’re going to see more of this in the long run,’ Albee said.”

Congratulations to Sharon Linhart, Paul Raab and the entire team at Linhart PR as the firm celebrates its 25th anniversary this month.

The James Bond movie franchise reached iconic status with the release of its third movie, “Goldfinger.” What was the secret to becoming one of the most beloved movie characters in history? Why, public relations, of course. Oscar Holland at CNN reports:

“In a then-unprecedented publicity move, journalists and photographers were invited to the Swiss Alps for the seven-day shoot, where they mingled with cast and crew members. The strategy appeared to work — ‘Goldfinger’ became, at the time, one of the box office’s highest-ever grossing movies.” 

“‘Almost every day was a press conference’ said Peter Waelty, co-author of the new book ‘The Goldfinger Files,’ over a video call. ‘The idea was to get into the newspapers before the film was even made.’ Reporters were also given detailed plot information, even though the movie was months away from release, he added. ‘They knew exactly who was going to die, who was going to win, what was going to happen. It’s unimaginable that this could happen nowadays.'”

The Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts are in a “ground war” for the hearts and minds of America’s youth, and, as is the case in most of these situations, it is the lawyers who are winning.

Amid declining enrollment in 2017, the Boy Scouts changed its program to just “Scouts” and opened its ranks to both boys and girls. The Girl Scouts sued, alleging that the Boy Scouts are marketing its program in a way that infringes on the Girl Scouts’ trademark.

The Hill: “Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo told viewers Wednesday that her show had been ‘punk’d’ after she interviewed an animal rights activist who claimed he was the CEO of the pork producer and food-processing company Smithfield Foods.”

“The segment earlier on in the show was presented as an interview with CEO Dennis Organ on the process of coronavirus vaccines being distributed to food workers at the company, which had an outbreak of coronavirus cases at one of its plants.”

“However, as it was later revealed, Bartiromo was actually speaking to Direct Action Everywhere activist Matt Johnson, who remained in character as Organ for the nearly six minute interview.”

One of the early predictions of the pandemic was that Corona was in real trouble because beer drinkers would associate the brand with Coronavirus. Stuck in a position that didn’t really have a playbook, Corona even tried to lean into the association last spring, only to quickly realize that it was a bad idea.

Good news for the brand, however. A Wall Street Journal article headlined, “Echo of Coronavirus Didn’t Keep Beer Drinkers From Corona” reports that its sales are doing just fine:

“In-store spending on Corona-branded beer and hard seltzer in the U.S. comprised 6.78% of the category this year through Dec. 6, essentially unchanged from the equivalent period a year prior, according to IRI, a Chicago-based market research firm.”

“Excluding fast-growing spiked seltzers—such as Corona Hard Seltzer, which was introduced during the pandemic—the story was the same: Corona’s share of in-store beer sales through Dec. 6 held steady with a year earlier, IRI said.”

“’There wasn’t really any kind of negative impact on Corona sales,’ said Vivien Azer, managing director and senior research analyst at investment bank Cowen Inc. ‘That’s clear in the data.'”

Boulder’s MAPRagency is partnering with South Carolina-based Stryker-Munley Group (SMG) in an arrangement that gives MAPRagency additional resources and capabilities, and SMG additional geographic reach.

SMG is a national integrated public relations and marketing communication agency, and now has nine independently owned offices in Boston, Boulder, Charleston, Charlotte, Chicago, Denver, Knoxville, Portland and San Antonio.

Army had a great football season – it went 9-2 while winning the Commander-in-Chief’s trophy for head-to-head wins over both Navy and Air Force. So which bowl game will it be attending? None. Army has been left out of any bowl game due to a number of them being cancelled and byzantine contracts between bowls and conferences.

Adding insult to injury, the Armed Forces Bowl selected 6-2 Tulsa and 3-7 Mississippi State.

UPDATE: Army will now face West Virginia in the Liberty Bowl after the University of Tennessee had to withdraw due to positive COVID-19 tests among players and coaches.

Daily Beast: “A voting machine company baselessly accused by President Trump and pro-Trump conspiracy theorists of illegally tipping the 2020 presidential contest is working with one of Washington, D.C.’s most prominent public relations firms to beat back the allegations.”

“Shortly after the election, (Denver- and Toronto-based) Dominion Voting Systems hired the firm Hamilton Place Strategies to coordinate a public relations campaign responding to the outlandish claims by the president, his legal team, and their supporters, according to Michael Steel, a HPS partner and former spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner.”

“The local and national investors who bought Denver’s Tattered Cover book stores have watched as reactions roll in to their purchase, ranging from joy at the local chain’s apparent salvation to fury that its owners would dare claim it as the nation’s largest Black-owned book store,” John Wenzel from The Denver Post reports. …

“However, skeptics of the deal say the Tattered Cover invited this scrutiny for claiming to be the largest Black-owned book store in the United States despite Pearson being the only Black person in the mostly white, 13-member investment group.”

“Shortly after the sale was made public, Black booksellers across the U.S. denounced the Black-owned claim as an insulting marketing ploy that ignores their work, at best, and at worst, cynically hijacks this year’s Black Lives Matter progress for commercial purposes.”

PRWeek is out with its annual ranking of its Best Places to Work, and it identified 23 winners in five categories: Small Agency, Midsize Agency, Large Agency, Extra Large Agency and In-house Teams.

As has become common for PRWeek’s various lists, non-coastal firms are largely excluded. Here’s how the “Best Places” list broke down geographically:

• 0% – Denver
• 0% – Colorado
• 0% – Rocky Mountain Region
• 4% – Midwest
• 22% – San Francisco Bay Area
• 26% – West Coast (Calif. & Wash.)
• 39% – New York City area
• 61% – New York City area & California
• 70% – East Coast (NY, NJ, DC, Va., Fla., Ga.)

The only winner not located in a coastal state was Belle Communication in Columbus, Ohio.

UNLV senior quarterback Max Gilliam has apologized for being drunk and eating sushi off a nude model’s body while appearing on the Bravo reality television show “Below Deck.”

Fox31’s parent company, Nexstar, is in a carriage dispute with DISH, and it has put the editorial staff at the station in an awkward position as to how to cover a story the station is involved in.

It appears, however, Nexstar has solved that conflict of interest by letting its public relations staff cover the issue rather than its reporters. This morning, Fox31 posted a press release from Nexstar as a news article in the “News” section of the Fox31 website.

Arguably Denver’s best-known priest – the late Father C.B. Woodrich, better known as “Father Woody” – is the latest Catholic Church figure to be caught up in Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser’s investigation into sexual abuse, according to Kevin Vaughan at 9News.

“For years, he was in essence the church’s public face in the metro area, serving as the archdiocese’s director of public relations from 1969 to 1986 and as editor of the Denver Catholic Register from 1972 to 1986.”

Kevin McCauley at O’Dwyer’s reports: “PR firms have been put on notice that their ‘multimillion-dollar greenwashing and misinformation campaigns’ for fossil fuel clients that delay action on global warming are going to be outed, according to the Clean Creatives organization, a group of communications professionals supported by Fossil Free Media.”

“Launched Nov. 19, CC aims to reveal the relationships between PR firms and fossil fuel clients, organize staffers who ‘feel conflicted about making propaganda for oil and gas companies’ and contact sustainability-minded clients who might feel unhappy that their firm is actively undermining progress on climate change, according to a statement from Jamie Henn of Fossil Free Media.”

“What’s interesting is you have to always be on, which is tough. You would like to just have general conversations, but at the same time you have to understand this new-age media is a different age. It’s not just print as it might have been before. There’s a lot more people who want to get their name out there and build their base of followers. You have journalists who are brands now.”

– Former Denver Nugget and current Miami Heat player Andre Iguodala describing the evolving nature of his interactions with media to The Athletic.

Congratulations to the 2021 members of the PRSA Colorado board:

Executive Committee
• President: Michelle Ellis, Ellis Communications Marketing
• President-elect: Jose Salas, Denver Water
• Immediate past-president: Geoff Renstrom, Attune Public Relations
• Secretary: Emily Rado, Linhart Public Relations
• Treasurer: Jennifer Tilliss, Purpose Communications

Assembly Delegates
• Sam Aspnes, APR, CIG Public Relations
• Michelle Balch Lyng, Novitas Communications
• Marissa Pooley, APR, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association
• Whei Wong, Metropolitan State University of Denver

Directors
• Brook Gabbert, PennStreet Communications and Study.com
• Liz Kamper, CBRE
• Stacee Martin, APR, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City
• Liz Viscardi, APR, LV Events and PR
• Kelly Wagoner, The Piton Foundation

This Thanksgiving ad for East Coast grocery store chain Giant Food feels like it was created by a passive aggressive art director who has had it with people ignoring stay-at-home orders. For those doubting its authenticity, Giant Food apologized for the ad, saying that it had gotten caught up in the “pre-holiday excitement.“

This week, In-N-Out Burger leveraged scarcity marketing to heights of success not seen since Coors convinced Burt Reynolds to make a movie about smuggling 400 cases of its signature beer from Texarkana to Atlanta.

In-N-Out opened its first two locations in Colorado – Aurora and Colorado Springs – and media outlets around the world reported on the 12 to 14 hours Coloradans were apparently willing to wait in line for a shot at a fast food cheeseburger. (Bonus points to Britain’s Daily Mail for capturing a fist fight that erupted in the line.)

Locally, reporters and media outlets were quick to roll their eyes at the wait times, but they still contributed to the avalanche of media coverage. Mitchell Byars at the Boulder Daily Camera noted that you could drive all the way to In-N-Out’s Las Vegas location in less time, and Westword used the opportunity to showcase its list of 10 Best locally-owned burger joints.

“A wrongful death lawsuit tied to COVID-19 infections in a Waterloo pork processing plant alleges that during the initial stages of the pandemic, Tyson Foods ordered employees to report for work while supervisors privately wagered money on the number of workers who would be sickened by the deadly virus,” Clark Kauffman at the Iowa Capital Dispatch reports.

“The lawsuit was recently amended and includes a number of new allegations against the company and plant officials. Among them: … plant manager Tom Hart organized a cash-buy-in, winner-take-all, betting pool for supervisors and managers to wager how many plant employees would test positive for COVID-19.”

Shaun Boyd at CBS4: “The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) is apologizing after sending an inappropriate email ridiculing the very companies it regulates. CBS4 has learned that staff members at COGCC were testing a new e-filing system when they inadvertently sent an email to hundreds of oil and gas workers across the state.”

“The email called the companies they work for names that you don’t expect from people who are supposed to be fair and unbiased.”

“The email arrived early Sunday morning with a list of oil and gas companies that had upcoming hearings. The names of the companies included ‘Snake Oil Inc.,’ it’s law firm ‘Blah Blah Blah’ and its cause or case number ‘666’ – a designation for the devil.” …

“A spokesperson for COGCC released a statement late Wednesday afternoon saying: ‘We apologize that some of the names used during this testing were not professionally chosen. The employees involved in this situation have had this addressed by their supervisors. This unfortunate incident does not reflect upon the quality of work that has been and will be conducted by COGCC for all its customers. COGCC has more than 70 years of experience working with our industry partners in oil and gas operations. We are committed to continue to uphold the oil and gas regulations in a transparent, fair and legal manner.’”

Congratulations to this year’s PRSA Colorado Gold Pick Special Award winners:

Nobody understands how to sell a comeback better than a PR executive. On a related note, The Washington Post profiled the woman who went viral for destroying a COVID-19 mask display at a Target – she’s the CEO of a Phoenix PR firm and she grew up in Denver.

As you might expect, she’s actually a super-terrific-yet-tragically-misunderstood person who was reacting to the stress of COVID-19 that caused her to miss her annual summer vacation in Greece. You try missing a year in Greece without destroying display racks – I dare you.

If you would like to know more, she currently is authoring a memoir titled You Can’t Cancel Me — The Story of My Life. I’m not making that up.

PRSA announced the winners of its annual Silver Anvil awards for outstanding campaigns, and there were a few with Colorado connections:

• Silver Anvil Award: Turner PR
  “Space City: The Moon Landing 50th Anniversary” campaign for Houston First Corporation
• Silver Anvil Award: M&C Communications
  “Hate Speech, Guns and Potential Lawsuits at a Small-Town High School” campaign for City of Manitou Springs
• Award of Excellence: Ayers PR and Sukle Advertising & Design
  “Generation Wild” campaign for Great Outdoors Colorado
• Award of Excellence: Fyn PR
  “Love Locks Lead to Valentine’s Day Tourism” campaign for Visit Loveland

Scott Jones at FTVLive reports Fox31 is getting called out by its own employees for claiming pool footage of the East Troublesome Fire was “exclusive.”

Congratulations to my colleagues at GroundFloor Media and to the teams at 104 West, COHN and SideCar PR for being named to Forbes‘ inaugural list of “America’s Best PR Agencies.”

To create the list, Forbes partnered with Statista to survey “more than 12,700 experts and 20,500 customers who nominated more than 5,000 firms. Participants were asked to indicate how likely they were to nominate a particular agency on a scale of zero (very unlikely) to 10 (very likely).” 

The City of Aspen has hired Denise White as its director of communications. White previously was a communications specialist with the City of Boulder.

“Just an astoundingly irresponsible decision to publish this, by someone so naive and out of touch with reality that they don’t realize that they’re actively helping endanger a fellow journalist. For the past two weeks people associated with the rally have been actively threatening journalists in general and (Kyle Clark) specifically, something that the state’s largest newspaper in effect just co-signed. Just when you think the bar for that opinion section can’t get any lower.”

– Chase Woodruff of Colorado Newsline, commenting on The Denver Post’s contributed opinion column criticizing 9News’ Kyle Clark.

Daniel Cole writing in The Denver Post: “9News would have problems in the wake of Lee Keltner’s killing regardless, but the station’s problems are worse because its most prominent anchor frequently targets for ridicule the same kind of person Matthew Dolloff targeted with his gun.”

“Two weeks ago, Kyle Clark’s tweets were cute enough, if you didn’t mind seeing your neighbors bullied by the local newscaster. Now, a growing number of Coloradans are reading Clark’s commentary differently: as inexcusably hostile toward the Lee Keltners of our state, who deserve better than the treatment they receive from 9News’ anchors and security guards alike.’

“Certain other journalists have long recognized that Clark damages the brand — both his station’s and their profession’s. The Colorado Springs Gazette in an editorial identified Clark as ‘a liberal political activist.’ Veteran Colorado reporter Joey Bunch said, ‘Kyle is kind of a quasi-newsman.'”

“But while others have critiqued, Clark’s superiors have been content to watch him transform the 6:00 news into half-an-hour of preening sanctimony, and his social media channels into bloody political bludgeons. As Clark abuses his position under their watch, they richly deserve the problems he has created for them now.”

Boulder-based Catapult PR-IR has added inbound lead automation app Chili Piper as a client. Catapult previously worked with Chili Piper as the start-up announced its Series A funding.

I’ve worked with a lot of engineers over the years, and they are almost always challenging from a marketing perspective. They tend to believe that marketing and public relations are superfluous. If you build the best product, they reason, the market will recognize that and your product will become the market leader. Marketing is a bastardization of the natural process.

I was reminded of that this week when I saw that Elon Musk has eliminated Tesla’s PR department. Sadly, Musk is confusing Tesla’s market cap for reputation and his Twitter account for marketing. That could spell in trouble as Tesla begins to be known more for failed customer service than being the only high-performing electric vehicle manufacturer.

Longtime Denver meteorologist Marty Coniglio was fired by 9News for a social media post that compared federal troops policing cities to Nazis. He explains his reasoning in a bylined article in Westword today:

“Better to be a good American than a good employee. Distilled to its most elemental expression, that is the reason why I blew up a 35-year career in broadcast media to add my voice to the alarms sounding about the current state of our Republic.”

“My former employer did the right thing in firing me. They set the rules, standards of conduct and guidelines for content. Break them and you pay. I did and I did.”

“To anyone gleefully saying that I got what I deserved, I agree, so let’s move on…back to our imperiled democracy.”

I don’t know who woke up the Kraft Macaroni & Cheese marketing team, but they are on fire lately. The company unveiled a cheeky #SendNoods campaign today and it has quickly blown through its allotment of free Mac & Cheese.

This stunt marketing campaign follows several recent other ones – two months ago, Kraft relabeled some of its Mac & Cheese boxes as “breakfast food” for parents running short on patience during the pandemic, and last month it released a limited edition Pumpkin Spice Mac & Cheese because, you know, fall.

From Edward Ongweso Jr. at Vice: “For over six years, one Wikipedia user—AmaryllisGardener—has written well over 23,000 articles on the Scots Wikipedia and done well over 200,000 edits. The only problem is that AmaryllisGardener isn’t Scottish, they don’t speak Scots, and none of their articles are written in Scots.”

“Since 2013, this user—a self–professed Christian INTP furry living somewhere in North Carolina—has simply written articles that are written in English, riddled with misspellings that mimic a spoken Scottish accent. … On a page about the movie Million Dollar Baby, AmaryllisGardener wrote ‘This film is aboot an unnerappreciatit boxin trainer.’ This sort of language is repeated across all 23,000 articles they wrote, as well as in the articles they edited; because they are an admin of the site, they have the ability to control much of what ultimately stays on it.”

Congratulations to founders Cori Streetman and Sarah Hogan – they are celebrating Barefoot PR’s 10th anniversary this month.

CBS News reports:

“Ireland’s Supreme Court has ruled that bread sold by the fast food chain Subway contains so much sugar that it cannot be legally defined as bread. The ruling came in a tax dispute brought by Bookfinders Ltd., an Irish Subway franchisee, which argued that some of its takeaway products – including teas, coffees and heated sandwiches – were not liable for value-added tax.”

In a sign of how COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement are creating fundamental, long-term changes at public relations agencies, Weber Shandwick has hired a Chief Workforce Innovation and Operations Officer. From Aleda Stam at PR Week:

Weber Shandwick has hired Brian Offutt as chief workforce innovation and operations officer. Offutt starts in the newly created position on Thursday, reporting to Weber Shandwick president and CEO Gail Heimann. He will be responsible for evolving the firm’s workplace and workforce, focusing on preparing the agency for a hybrid work environment and ensuring inclusivity and equity. 

“‘It became clear to us during the coronavirus pandemic that we needed to approach innovation with the same rigor and vigor that we approach our client work,” said Heimann. ‘We recognize that talent is the soul of the firm, and building our workforce in a hybrid situation with inclusion is critical to our continued leadership in the industry and beyond.'” 

“Edelman is restoring staff salaries cut due to COVID-19 and is making hires and investment again, as the agency begins to bounce back after being forced to make mass redundancies in June,” Maja Pawinska Sims at Provoke Media reports.

“Edelman also said that the world’s largest PR firm was ‘making hires again in fast-growing areas like financial PR and healthcare.’ … Edelman described the firm’s performance over the past six months as ‘like a coffee cup’ with a steep decline, a flat base and now starting to rise again.”

A Colorado State University student has filed suit against the school after she claims she was sexually assaulted by Michael Best, the husband of former 9News sports anchor and current KOA NewsRadio Broncos sideline reporter Susie Wargin, CBS4 reports.

“(The student) said she loved her job working as a waitress at the CSU football stadium. She had worked there for a year, and said it was a great experience. That all changed in fall of 2019 when she claims prominent donor, Michael Best, husband of local radio personality and realtor Susie Wargin, touched her inappropriately and called her vulgar names while she was serving him in his private loge box.”

In its article about the death threats the lineswoman injured by tennis pro Novak Djokovic has been receiving, the New York Post identified her by name and listed her hometown.

You would think a hospital system would be the least likely organization to support anti-maskers during the COVID-19 pandemic, but Centura Health’s St. Anthony Hospital remains a sponsor of one of the state’s largest organizer’s of anti-mask protests – Bandimere Speedway.

Bandimere and Jeffco Public Health are locked in a legal battle over the county’s health orders requiring masks and social distancing. Earlier this week, Bandimere hosted a “COVID Chaos” protest event in which more than a thousand non-masked participants violated the county’s health orders and stood on the track shoulder-to-shoulder for a group photo as an expression of defiance.

And, despite this month’s long public health battle, St. Anthony Hospital remains listed on Bandimere’s website as one of its sponsors.

Politico: “As the presidential election fast approaches, the Department of Health and Human Services is bidding out a more than $250 million contract to a communications firm as it seeks to “defeat despair and inspire hope” about the coronavirus pandemic, according to an internal HHS document obtained by POLITICO.”

“Several weeks ago, the department sent out to a number of communications firms a ‘performance work statement,’ which lays out what work will be expected of the winning firm. The document says that the vast majority of the money will be spent from now until January.”

“The document also lists the goals of the contract: ‘defeat despair and inspire hope, sharing best practices for businesses to operate in the new normal and instill confidence to return to work and restart the economy,’ build a ‘coalition of spokespeople’ around the country, provide important public health, therapeutic and vaccine information as the country reopens, and give Americans information on the phases of reopening.”

Local sports radio host Darren “D-Mac” McKee appears to have avoided termination following his posting of the N word on Twitter last week. Several current and former colleagues of color, including Alfred Williams and Chad Brown, gave McKee air cover by coming to his defense and offering character references.

However, national sports site Deadspin examined whether it is possible for a iPhone to autocorrect to the N Word (spoiler alert: nope). It also dug into McKee’s Twitter history to look for any previous examples, and suffice it to say the results aren’t helpful to McKee’s cause:

It should be an interesting week at McKee’s employer 104.3 The Fan as it determines how to handle this situation.

If you have felt that the Denver media market was missing a bit of the Colorado Springs Gazette, you are in luck. From media critic extraordinaire Corey Hutchins:

Six years after floating an idea that Clarity Media might relaunch The Rocky Mountain News and challenge The Denver Post, conservative Denver billionaire Phil Anschutz’s media company is going for it. Kind of. The company will launch what it’s calling an “interactive newspaper” in Denver but it won’t be in print. And Clarity didn’t revive the Rocky, though it owns its name and intellectual property. Instead, beginning next month with staff from the Gazette in Colorado Springs and ColoradoPolitics, along with some new hires, the company will launch The Denver Gazette, a daily digital news outlet. …

The Denver Gazette will be led by Publisher Chris Reen, Editor Vince Bzdek, News Editor Jim Bates and Digital Editor Chuck Hickey. Among the newspaper’s staff and contributors are familiar names to Denver including Lynn Bartels, Woody Paige, Joey Bunch and Paul Klee.

Perhaps the smartest take on the news came from Chalkbeat’s Susan Gonzalez via Twitter:

“Why do we keep opening news outlets based in cities that already have a robust media presence tho? All I can think of is the large swaths of Colorado that hardly get covered (or are complete news deserts) and how much good 50 reporters could do in those parts.”