Global public relations firm Edelman has released a COVID-19 edition of its annual Trust Barometer, and among the findings:

• Ongoing trust issues with government and media has left employers as the most credible source of information for workers
• Unsurprisingly, scientists and doctors remain the most trusted spokespeople
• Employees want regular updates from their employers, with 63 percent asking for daily updates
• Employees expect businesses to act to protect employees and the local community, including by adapting its operations, including remote working, canceling non-essential events and business travel bans

You can read the executive summary and full report here.

Voice Media Group, the parent company of Westword and other alternative weeklies nationwide that rely heavily on restaurant and other advertising, has take draconian steps to survive during the COVID-19 pandemic. From Travis Waldron and Tara Golshan at HuffPost:

“Every employee of Voice Media Group, which includes Denver Westword, … had their pay cut: 25% for employees making less than $80,000, 30% for those making more than that, and 35% for executives.”

In December 2019, Westword followed the Colorado Sun, which itself followed the model of NPR/CPR, in positioning itself as membership-driven public-interest journalism enterprise. If you want to support Westword to help it and its staff survive this pandemic, click here.

And just a quick PSA: Subscribe to every publication you read. Most of us will never notice the $5-10 per month each of them cost, and it makes a huge difference in the ability of those publications to do great work. Imagine what a bleak information landscape we’d have if other news outlets went the way of the Rocky Mountain News.

“… I’m not looking to be in a situation where I make the front page of the news for being that guy who hoarded 20,000 bottles of sanitizer that I’m selling for 20 times what they cost me.”

– Matt Colvin, a professional profiteer who participated in an in-depth New York Times interview that included a photo shoot.

Former KMGH/Channel 7 VP & GM Byron Grandy will return to Denver as the new GM of the KDVR/KWGN joint news operation. Grandy left KMGH in 2014, and most recently was GM at WNCN in Raleigh, N.C.

Earned media beats paid media. Taegan Goddard at Political Wire:

What Joe Biden has executed over the last 72 hours is one of the most extraordinary comebacks ever. … Biden is crushing his rivals in states that he never visited, where he had no field offices, and where he spent next to nothing on television ads. … In contrast, Mike Bloomberg spent more than half a billion dollars and it looks like he won’t meet the 15% delegate threshold in at least a half dozen states tonight. He only won American Samoa. … The key takeaway is that — at least in a presidential campaign — earned media matters much more than television and other ads.

9News’ Jeremy Jojola is a rock-solid journalist who sometimes investigates people and organizations that would rather remain in the shadows. What kind of personal toll can that professional role take on a journalist? Michael Roberts at Westword reports:

Last December, 9News reporter Jeremy Jojola told Westword about ugly threats he’d received over stories about local neo-Nazis. Now, Jojola has filed temporary protection orders against three individuals affiliated with such groups after they showed up at his home in the wake of him reporting about one of them: Samuel Cordova, who pleaded guilty last week to a misdemeanor bias-motivated crime related to June 2019 vandalism at BookBar over an event called “Drag Queen Story Time.”