• The Denver Broncos. 🤷‍♂️. 0-3 so far, and if they go winless against the hapless Chicago Bears this weekend and the New York Jets next weekend, they may not win a game all season.
• Meanwhile, the Colorado Rockies have now set a franchise record for losses. They currently sit at 101 losses with three games left this season.
• The Denver Public Schools board president has called out her fellow members for their “exorbitant” travel expenses. Leading the pack is Auon’tai Anderson, whose $13,680 in expenses is 265% higher than what is allocated to him.
• Speaking of DPS, the district was called out for its glitzy annual report that “goes to great lengths to convince us that DPS is a combination of Lake Wobegon and Barbie Land.“
• Meta‘s Twitter competitor Threads has fallen off a cliff, and now ranks near the bottom of the most popular social media apps, ahead of only Tumblr.
• Some American, United and Southwest flights have been grounded after the airlines unknowingly used fake engine replacement parts. A British aerospace parts supplier forged certification documents.
• Empower Field at Mile High has the second-highest number of NFL player injuries on average, behind only Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas.
• An Ohio high school football coach resigned after his team used racist and antisemitic language to call out plays during a game against a team from a primarily Jewish suburb.
• An employee at the Deutsches Museum in Munich allegedly stole paintings from the museum’s collection, replaced them with crude forgeries, and then sold the originals at auction. Prosecutors say he made about $63,000 in the scam.
• Network TV ratings have been plummeting as viewers switch to streaming services like Netflix and Hulu. There is one demographic that is sticking with network TV, however: Baby Boomers. And that explains why you can expect to see more new shows like “The Golden Bachelor” and more returning old shows like “FBI,” “FBI: Most Wanted,” “FBI: International,” “Law & Order: SVU,” “Chicago Med,” “Chicago Fire,” and “Chicago P.D.” Boomers love them.
• The NFL is not happy that its ads on Twitter (now “X“) appeared on accounts of white nationalists.
• A Philadelphia Phillies fan who tried to enter the stadium with his “emotional support alligator” was turned away.
• Humans had a good run, but it looks like we only have 250 million years left. That’s when scientists say the world’s continents will merge to form one supercontinent that will intensify climate extremes and make the world uninhabitable.

So, who won the week?

• Well-known local journalist Mark Harden has taken a content writer position with the University of Colorado School of Medicine.
• Stacey Sepp received the inaugural Survivor Advocate award from the Melanoma Research Foundation.
• Denver Post employees negotiated a 6% raise over the next two years from their hedge fund owners, Alden Global Capital.
• Coors is celebrating its 150th anniversary with a party in Golden this weekend.
• Native Roots is now offering a pumpkin spice cannabis vape pen.
• The Downtown Denver Partnership (DDP) calculates that there are 1,500 start-ups based downtown, about 20% more than last year.
• Sales of Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce‘s jersey spiked 400% after Taylor Swift watched last weekend’s game in his luxury suite.

• An unlicensed acupuncturist in New York City has been arrested after a patient’s lungs collapsed. Ouch.
• Alabama police tased and arrested a high school band leader when he refused to stop his band from playing after the game had ended.
• A Danish artist who gave a museum two blank canvases to place on display was ordered to repay $70,000 of his fee.
• Russell Brand has postponed his comedy tour after several women accused him of sexual assault.
• Jann Wenner, the founder of Rolling Stone magazine, was forced off the board of directors of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation after he made “comments that diminished the contributions, genius and impact of Black and women artists.”
• Anheuser-Busch InBev said it will no longer cut the tails off its famous Clydesdale horses after pressure from animal-rights activists.
• European regulators have fined TikTok $368 million for not sufficiently protecting the privacy of children’s accounts.
• The shooting outside Dierks Bentley‘s bar in LoDo that injured five was the nation’s 500th mass shooting this year.
• Did India send assassins to Canada to kill a prominent Sikh leader? Canada says it did, and the countries are expelling each other’s diplomats as a result.
• Rupert Murdoch, 92, is retiring from the boards of Fox and News Corporation.
• Is Denver‘s food hall craze waning? Axios Denver thinks it might be.
• Weld County‘s High Plains Library District has agreed to pay $250,000 to a librarian it fired after she objected to the cancellation of programs for youth of color and LGBTQ teens.
• Colorado State Sen. Faith Winters has been hospitalized with a head injury after a bicycle accident. She reportedly was forced to swerve to avoid being struck by a truck and ended up hitting a curb.
• Tennis star Simona Halep has hired PR firm Berk Communications to help fight her doping ban. Berk works with other high-profile athletes such as Aaron Judge and Alex Rodriguez.
• Oh, Spain. The country won the FIFA Women’s World Cup last month and the president of the country’s soccer federation managed to completely overshadow it by forcibly kissing one of the players. Now, Spain has announced that the the player he kissed, Jennifer Hermoso, has been left off of the national team’s roster for the upcoming EUFA Nations League tournament “to protect her.”

So, who won the week?

• 104 West Partners has joined the Next Practices Group (NPG) network after a strategic investment by the Austin-based holding company. The agency will retain its name and leadership structure.
• Communications strategist and former Denver Post reporter Karen Crummy has joined the 76 Group.
• Some things go together like peanut butter and chocolate. In that spirit, Illegal Pete’s restaurant has co-developed a queso-flavored cannabis vape pen.
• DIA rose from 14th to seventh place in J.D. Power’s 2023 North America Airport Satisfaction Study. Better customer ratings for security was the biggest piece of DIA’s higher score this year.
• Former CU Buffs and Denver Broncos running back Phillip Lindsay is joining 104.3 The Fan as an afternoon sports talk radio host.
• Two Denver restaurants – La Diabla Pozole y Mezcal and Molotov Kitschen + Cocktails – made the New York Times’ list of the nation’s 50 most exciting restaurants.
• The Colorado–Colorado State football game drew 9.3 million viewers to make it the most-watched late-night college football game ever on ESPN. It was also ESPN’s fifth-most-watched regular-season game ever on the network for any time slot.
• A PBS volunteer who paid about $100 for Bob Ross’ first painting from his instructional TV show, “The Joy of Painting” sold it at auction for $9.85 million. That’s a lot of happy, little dollar bills.

• USA Today is hiring a reporter dedicated exclusively to covering singer Taylor Swift.
• Five Colorado restaurants received Michelin stars, and shockingly three of them are in Denver. I had assumed most of our stars would be in Aspen, Vail or Telluride.
• Online sports betting company DraftKings has apologized for its 9/11-themed parlay bet that packaged the New York Mets, New York Yankees and New York Jets to win. “Bet on these New York teams to win tonight on 9/11,” the offering read.
• A Nevada rapper has been charged with murder after police say he confessed to the crime in a song he recorded. The lyrics contained information about the crime that had not been released to the public.
• Nearly half of Grindr’s employees are swiping left and looking for a new employer after the company instituted a return-to-office mandate.
• Spanish soccer federation President Luis Rubiales finally resigned, a month after he kissed a female Spanish player without her consent following the team’s FIFA World Cup championship.
• Denver Public Schools board members know you don’t like them and don’t need you going on endlessly about it at their meetings. They have voted to put stricter time limits on public comment.
• Former Colorado Buffaloes and current Michigan State head football coach Mel Tucker has been suspended without pay while the university investigates claims he sexually harassed a woman who is a prominent sexual assault awareness speaker.
• If you, like me, are constantly confusing your vodka with your roofing contractor, well, not much is going to change. Skyy Vodka lost its trademark lawsuit against the Denver-based Skyyguard roofing company. I’m guessing Skyyguard’s lawyers celebrated with a Stoli on the rocks.
• Denver restaurateur Troy Guard’s Bubu is the latest business to close in Larimer Square. Since Larimer Associates sold the block to North Carolina-based Asana Partners in late 2020, the block has been in a death spiral.
• Actors Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis have apologized for writing letters of support on behalf of fellow “That 70’s Show” star Danny Masterson. The letters were written to the judge responsible for his sentencing after Masterson was convicted of raping two women.
• MGM is continuing to experience “chaos” six days after a cyberattack crippled its operations
• Actress/talk-show host Drew Barrymore’s plans to restart her talk show amid a writer’s strike has drawn the ire of the Writers Guild of America.
• The New York Jets signed future Hall of Fame QB Aaron Rodgers in the offseason, which pushed the Super Bowl dreams of Jets fans to levels not seen since Joe Namath was their quarterback. But the Jets are the Jets, and Rodgers lasted an entire four snaps before he suffered a season-ending Achilles’ tendon injury.
• Speaking of football, Colorado State head coach Jay Norvell – who has a 3-10 record as a Ram – offered some of the weakest trash talk in the history of college football that was aimed at new CU coach Deion Sanders. And Sanders, who seemingly has never found an issue that he can’t take personally, was more than happy to use Norvell’s comments as motivation with his team. If I was betting on this game, I’d take CU and the over.

So, who won the week?

• Barefoot PR’s Cori Streetman has been elected board chair at Girls Inc. of Metro Denver.
• Corey Masisak, the former San Jose Sharks beat reporter for The Athletic, is joining The Denver Post as the Colorado Avalanche beat writer. He replaces Bennett Durando, who has taken over the Denver Nuggets beat writer role. It is not clear what Mike Singer, who previously covered the Nuggets, is doing now.
• Former CBS4 anchor/reporter Britt Moreno has returned to work at KXAN in Austin after taking a longer-than-expected maternity leave to address postpartum issues. Here’s wishing Britt and her family the best.
• A 6-year-old Chihuahua that disappeared at the Atlanta airport three weeks ago has been found in good health and reunited with its owner.

• Has Jimmy Fallon been “drunk” and “erratic” while at work on the “Tonight Show?” Some staffers claim so, and Fallon has now apologized.
• “That 70s Show” actor Danny Masterson was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison after being found guilty of raping two women.
• Qantas Airlines allegedly sold thousands of tickets for flights it knew had been canceled. As bad as that is, you’d still take it over what happened on a recent Delta Airlines flight.
• A lawsuit claims that a Peloton bike “instantly” killed a New York man when it tipped over and severed his carotid artery.
• A surgical tool the size of a dinner plate was left inside a New Zealand woman’s abdomen for 18 months after her baby was delivered by cesarean section.
• Two people cut a hole in the Great Wall of China with an excavator to create a shortcut for their construction work nearby.
• Colorado State Sen. Lisa Cutter and some of her colleagues traveled to the Western Slope to learn more about wildfire threats. Their return to Denver was delayed when I-70 was closed due to … a wildfire.
• Bruce Springsteen has cancelled all of his September concerts because he being treated for symptoms of peptic ulcer disease.
• Approximately 11,000 runners at this year’s Mexico City Marathon – 37% of the field – were disqualified after cheating by cutting the course during the race.
• Denver restaurateur Frank Bonanno has sold the Milk Market at Dairy Block food hall to Sage Hospitality amid slower post-pandemic sales.
• Burning Man went full Fyre Festival.
• Coloradans saw an average car insurance premium hike of 53% last year.
• Duke University’s share of low-income students is just 12%, nearly half of that of Harvard and Yale. This comes as legacy admissions are under more scrutiny than ever following the U.S. Supreme Court‘s ruling against affirmative action in admission decisions.
• Warner Bros. Discovery expects the ongoing writers’ and actors’ strikes to have as much as a $500 million negative impact on the company’s 2023 earnings.
• Team USA lost to Germany in the FIBA basketball World Cup, ending our hopes for a gold medal.
• Former Denver Broncos defensive end Von Miller may be tough on opposing quarterbacks, but he is even tougher on deadbeat tenants. Miller is foreclosing on the person who purchased his Denver-area home when he was traded a couple of years ago.
• Canadian rapper/singer Drake may have confused kilometers with miles. He has postponed his September show in Denver after only now realizing that “the distance the road crew has to travel” means it is “logistically impossible” to hold the show on its scheduled date.

So, who won the week?

• SE2 is celebrating its 25th anniversary as a communications agency focused on driving positive change.
• Longtime Denver Post reporter Kieran Nicholson has retired.
• CBS4‘s Dago Cordova has been promoted to executive director of the station’s digital news.
• Former Fox31 reporter Alex Rose is now the PIO at the Wheat Ridge Police Department.
• The Colorado Sun celebrates its fifth anniversary on Sunday.
• Broncos fans are cheering today after the Kansas City Chiefs lost their home opener last night to the Detroit Lions.

Last week, Colorado Public Radio announced that a donor gave it $8.34 million to buy a “six-story building at 777 Grant Street (that) will become home to CPR News, Denverite, CPR Classical, Indie 102.3, Audio Innovations and the organization’s production and business offices.”

Who is the donor? We don’t know. CPR President and CEO Stewart Vanderwilt said, “We’re not announcing the donors at this time.” That raises an interesting journalism ethics question – should CPR, as a news organization, withhold that donor’s name?

I’m sure CPR would say there is an inviolable firewall between its fundraising and news gathering organizations, much as there is a firewall between the journalists and ad sales teams at, say, 9News or The Denver Post. But we know who the advertisers are at 9News and the Post because we see the ads. It is a different situation when an $8.34 million gift is made without any disclosure.

Over the past few months, CPR and Denverite have covered numerous companies and wealthy individuals capable of providing that $8.34 million gift. While I trust the leadership at CPR to maintain ethical standards, those standards are supposed to ensure that it doesn’t get to the point that “trust” is required.

• Hurricane Idalia took two lives and is expected to cost insurance companies nearly $10 billion.
• Denver appears to be on the hook for another $4.72 million in payouts to Black Lives Matter protestors whose rights were violated. Desperate for a silver lining? Last year, the city paid $14 million to protestors, so … they’re trending in the right direction?
• Former Denver Post reporter Joseph Sebastian Sinisi passed away at the age of 80. Known for his thick Brooklyn accent, he covered everything from Pope John Paul II‘s visit to Denver to the Columbine High School shooting.
• Newspaper chain Gannett is rethinking its efforts to use AI to write high school sports stories after the technology botched several stories in Ohio. Or as the Gannett AI bot would report it, “The outlet of news media Gannett made the verdict to come to an end of its assessment of AI technology due to bigly wrong effects.”
• “Almost 42 million Americans – over one-eighth of the U.S. population – are estimated to have lived within one mile of a mass shooting since 2014,” according to CNN.
• The number of euthanizations performed by the Denver Animal Shelter has doubled since 2020. Experts blame several factors, including inflation that had made pet expenses soar, including costs associated with spaying or neutering animals.
• The Texas Tribune, “one of nonprofit news’ brightest stars,” is under fire for a lack of transparency around its recent layoffs, and for utilizing the services of a high-priced, high-profile, New York City-based crisis communications firm while simultaneously claiming financial hardship.
• Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank and journalist Stephanie Ruhle are scrambling to explain the nature of their relationship after he gave her a secret burner phone to share nonpublic financial details and she provided him PR counsel on how to address negative publicity.
• A Nebraska man was pulled over by police for driving with a massive bull sitting in the passenger seat of his compact car. He had removed half of the car’s roof and windshield to make room for the animal. Nebraska, amiright?
• Pet dementia is real. Experts estimate that as many as 35% of the pet dog population age 8 and older and nearly one-third of cats ages 11 to 14 are affected.
• Ruby Franke, famous for her “8 Passengers” YouTube channel, was arrested on charges of child abuse.
• Burger King is being sued for allegedly making its Whopper burgers look 35% larger in ads than they really are.
• Rapper 50 Cent allegedly threw a malfunctioning microphone into the crowd at a concert, hitting and injuring a fan. While I don’t condone that, it is nice to see performers getting to hit fans with stuff for a change.
• American Airlines has been fined $4.1 million for holding passengers hostage on tarmacs.

So, who won the week?

• Denver Post reporter Jon Murray has been promoted to senior editor for public affairs at the paper.
• Lauren Scafidi is joining 9News as a reporter. She joins the station from 9 & 10 News in Northern Michigan.
• Colorado Public Radio has purchased a 72,000 square-foot building at 7th and Grant to serve as home for CPR News, Denverite, CPR Classical, Indie 102.3, Audio Innovations and the organization’s production and business offices. A donor footed the $8.34 million cost.
• Michelin Guide Colorado named nine local spots to its list of “budget-friendly” restaurants. Casa Bonita is not on it, but Hop Alley in Five Points and Basta in Boulder are.
• CNN named former New York Times Company CEO Mark Thompson as its chairman and CEO. His job: to stop “a nearly endless string of crises for the last 18 months.”
• Who says cheating doesn’t pay? Disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong and his wife have sold their Aspen home for $17.5 million.
• Ethics Month for PR professionals begins today. I don’t think asking PR people to be ethical one month per year is too much to ask.
• The University of Nebraska women’s volleyball team set the world’s record for attendance at a women’s sports event this week, drawing 92,003 fans to its match against Omaha.