Who Had the Worst Week?

• Volkswagen refused to provide GPS coordinates for a vehicle that had been carjacked with a toddler inside unless the frantic family paid $150 for a subscription to its Car-Net service.
• An Iowa teen who killed his high school Spanish teacher over a bad grade was sentenced to life in prison.
• Apparently Mattel used some of the hundreds of millions of dollars it made on the recent “Barbie” movie on lawyers. The toy company is in court trying to get out of a $49 million pledge it made to the UCLA children’s hospital.
• Las Vegas promised to make this weekend’s F1 race the glitziest in the world. Nine minutes into the first practice session, a loose drain cover on the track damaged a Ferrari, forced the cancellation of the session, and had the world chuckling. Take that, Monaco!
• Speaking of Ferrari … colorful details are the enemy of crisis communications, a fact that actor Adam Driver hasn’t learned. At a press event, he was asked what he thought about the “harsh, drastic and, I must say, cheesy” crash scenes in the new movie he made about legendary car maker Enzo Ferrari. If he ignores the question or responds vaguely, no one outside of that room knows about it. Instead, he answered colorfully: “I don’t know. Fuck you? Next question.” And it became an international story.
• At least a half dozen analyses and reports that advocates and elected officials had planned to use to guide legislative policy are delayed due to the ongoing impact of a data breach at the Colorado Department of Higher Education.
• Texas A&M fired its head football coach Jimbo Fisher and will now pay him the balance of his guaranteed contract – $76 million … let me repeat that, $76 MILLION – to not coach at the school. His firing means that Power 5 conference schools now owe a collective $146 million to coaches who no longer work for them.
• IBM is the latest advertiser to flee Twitter (“X”) after Elon Musk promoted an antisemitic post this week.
• You think you hate the end of Daylight Savings Time and the shorter days that coincide with it? Starting this week, the town of Utqiagvik, Alaska won’t see the sun again for two months.
• Fox Sports and Amazon NFL broadcast reporter Charissa Thompson admitted she used to make up fake sideline reports when she was a sideline reporter.

So, who won the week?

• I’m proud to say that my firm GFM|CenterTable was named #3 on the annual Outside magazine list of the Top 50 Best Places to Work. Joining us on the list were Turner (#5), TDA_Boulder (#7), Fortnight Collective (#8), Cactus (#45), Karsh Hagan (#46) and Backbone (#50).
• Anne Trujillo signed off as an anchor at Denver7 this week after a 40-year career with the station.
• Denver Gazette reporter Jessica Gibbs has joined the  Denver Business Journal as its transportation and government reporter.
• The Colorado Department of Natural Resources has named Colorado Public Radio journalist Michael Elizabeth Sakas as Colorado River communications specialist.
• After ongoing employee strife and walkouts, Walgreens said it will close on Thanksgiving to give all of its employees the day off.
• Thousands of fans at the CU Buffaloes’ men’s basketball game sang “Happy Birthday” to superfan Peggy Coppom, who is turning 99.
• Finally, a plug for a great site that covers the media industry in Colorado: Corey Hutchins’ “Inside the News in Colorado.” You can sign up to receive his weekly emails for free, which makes its value-to-cost ratio literally infinity.