• Meta reached a $17.1 billion – that’s billion with a “b” – settlement with 47 states, Washington D.C. and several U.S. territories that alleged that it endangered the mental health of children through its addictive Facebook and Instagram social media platforms. Meta still faces a number of other lawsuits from school districts and individuals.
• Jed York, the owner of the San Francisco 49ers, was arrested in a prostitution sting over the weekend. York moved quickly to prevent this situation from dragging out in the media, and by Monday morning he had already pleaded no contest to lesser charges of disorderly conduct.
• It was a bad week for a few big advertisers:
  • Neutrogena is struggling to defend its decision to drop spokesperson Hayden Panettiere several years ago. The actress alleged at the time that the skincare giant dropped her because of her struggles with mental health. When Panettiere took her own life earlier this month, Neutrogena said it was “deeply saddened” and “proud to have partnered with her and understand that we made her feel unsupported during a very difficult time.” But that hasn’t stopped calls for a boycott.
  • Retailing giant Target issued a formal apology for ads promoting a now-pulled Halloween costume that was straight out of the 19th century American Minstrel era. The costume was so bad that Target didn’t even try to equivocate on its apology, saying, “…we are deeply sorry. We know this is especially hurtful for our Black guests, team members and partners. Removing the costume is an important first step, and the company is looking closely at how this happened and what needs to change to ensure this won’t happen again.”
  • Meanwhile, golf equipment manufacturer Callaway has apologized for an ad it approved that featured a man shoving a woman to the ground when she attempted to touch one of his golf clubs. Unlike Target, Callaway did equivocate in its apology, saying, “We are disappointed by the content that was posted, and are appreciative of (our business partner) Good Good for addressing this. We look forward to working together to ensure a more inclusive space in golf.” And then, when the backlash continued, Callaway canceled its partnership with Good Good Golf entirely.
• An arbitrator has ordered The Washington Post to rehire opinion columnist Karen Attiah with back pay after she was fired last September for her social media posts in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk‘s murder. The arbitrator ruled that the dismissal violated the paper’s labor agreement with the union representing Attiah.
• The Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) has finally found its missing championship trophy that went missing while being shipped to the hometown of one of the players for the Montreal Victoire, which won this year’s championship. Each player gets the trophy for 24 hours to celebrate with their community.
• From The New York Times: “The listing seemed too good to be true. A prime Park Slope location in a prewar building, close to public transportation and great restaurants, for just $250,000, plus common charges of $400 a month. But in New York City real estate, there’s always a catch. ‘This is a parking spot for sale, not a studio apartment,’ the listing read.”
• President Donald Trump seems to be misdirecting his anger at Iran for not rolling over onto Canada. He announced yet another round of tariffs on our friendly neighbors to the north, and now has renamed Lake Ontario as “Lake America.” After the “Gulf of America” and now “Lake America,” I would joke about the Pacific and Atlantic oceans watching their backs, but they apparently are already on President Trump’s radar.
• U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy apparently didn’t want to be the one chump who didn’t exploit his role in the Trump administration, so he solicited millions of dollars from companies he regulates – Boeing, Toyota, Shell, United Airlines, Royal Caribbean, Waymo, Lyft … the list goes on and on – to sponsor a reality YouTube show “road trip” of him traversing the country with his family. Eric Anderson notes that at about 7,500 views per video, those millions of dollars weren’t invested to strengthen brand awareness.
• Closer to home, current Secretary of State and Attorney General candidate Jena Griswold wouldn’t stand a chance of being elected if most of the Colorado electorate didn’t reflexively vote Democratic. She’s a train wreck and her campaign has endured one problem after another. Most recently, The Denver Post reported that her office accidentally made information for more than 130,000 confidential voters publicly accessible because of an error in updating a voter registration tool. Before that, CBS4 reported that Griswold refused to take receipt of a $25,000 report she commissioned because it was critical of her. Had she accepted it, it would have been CORA-able by media. According to the consultant who drafted the report, she has now “shredded all hard-copy documents and attempted to delete and erase all electronic files,” making it impossible for anyone to access it.
• LSU continues to show that it is willing to hurdle any ethical line in pursuit of winning. Football coach Lane Kiffin sparked an SEC crisis this week by trying to use a court ruling to sign a player who a week earlier was on the Cleveland Browns‘ roster, and women’s basketball coach Kim Mulkey drove a member of her team who is from Ukraine to quit by signing a player from Russia. The Ukrainian player’s father currently serves in the Ukrainian military.
• In court filings, social media influencers and alleged sex offenders Andrew and Tristan Tate have admitted that the lavish lifestyle they present online is a fraud, fueled by rented luxury automobiles and boats they can’t actually afford.
• The Cleveland Browns QB Deshaun Watson was under investigation for numerous sexual assault and misconduct allegations when the Browns chose to sign him to a 5-year, $230 million contract, the first fully guaranteed contract for a quarterback in league history. Then karma stepped in. First, the NFL suspended Watson for 11 games during his first season for his behavior, and then a series of injuries meant that Watson only played 19 of the team’s 68 games over the past four years. You would think the Browns would take a page out of the Denver Broncos playbook and dump Watson the way the Broncos dumped QB Russell Wilson and commit to starting over, but these are the Browns. They just named Watson their starting quarterback.
• Universal Studios went to great lengths to sound-proof its newest roller-coaster to address concerns from nearby neighbors, including filling the 4,100-foot track with pea gravel to “mute the vibrations that give coasters their roar.” What they didn’t factor in was the sound of thousands of daily “bloodcurdling screams” from riders.

Who won the week?

• PRSA Colorado has announced its complete list of its 2026 awards:
  • CIG Public Relations is the PR Team of the Year.
  • Tim Carroll, the Senior Director of Media and Public Relations at Metropolitan State University of Denver, is the Sharon Linhart PR Person of the Year.
  • Quinn Kelsey, a Senior Vice President at FleishmanHillard, is the Ayers Chapter Service Award winner.
  • Denver7‘s Jaclyn Allen is the Media Professional of the Year.
  • Dani Sturges is the Joe Fuentes Rookie of the Year.
  • Danielle Moore, the Director of Communications at Noodles & Company, is the Jane Dvorak Mentor of the Year.
  • Wendy Manitta Holmes, has been named the 2026 Swede Johnson Lifetime Achievement Award winner.
• Philosophy Communication added Amanda Muller as a project manager.
• Colorado Public Radio profiled Patty Calhoun, who is the editor emeritus of Westword and, in my opinion, one of the 10 most consequential Denverites of the past 50 years.
• Boulder‘s Casa Juani was named one of Bon Appetit‘s “Best New Restaurants for 2026.” Chef Eduardo Valle Lobo opened the restaurant with his wife after spending eight years at Boulder’s most-acclaimed restaurant, Frasca Food & Wine.
• The Colorado Rockies unveiled a 15-foot statue of Larry Walker outside of Coors Field. Walker is the first player to receive a statue, but he will be joined in September by fellow baseball Hall of Famer Todd Helton.
• While family, friends and fans of singer Dolly Parton are mourning her death at the age of 80, it is astounding to see the amount of love she is receiving from nearly every corner of America. Not many people cultivate that kind of widespread respect in our very polarized country.

• Owners of sports teams often create complicated trusts with one goal in mind: to let their kids keep control of the franchise. What they don’t often foresee is how it fractures their families. The Denver Broncos saw that play out when Pat Bowlen left the team to his seven children and they quickly became enemies as they fought for control. And now the family of the late Los Angeles Lakers owner Jerry Buss is experiencing the same fate. Buss’ estate passed ownership to his six children, but disputes over whether and how to cash out have caused the siblings to become estranged. If you own a multi-billion-dollar sports team, and the demographics of Denver PR Blog readers suggest several of you do, just direct your estate to sell the team and split the cash among the kids. At least they’ll still spend Thanksgiving together.
• What would you get if you crossed Bill Gates‘ brainpower with an utter lack of ethics? Well, you’d get Bill Gates. But you might also get his daughter, Phoebe Gates. A Bloomberg report found that the younger Gates and her business partners at their $30 million start-up Phia knowingly engaged in “cookie stuffing,” which allowed them to reap commissions for online sales they did not generate. One attorney noted that the practice could result in a “max penalty of up to 20 years in prison.”
• Penn State is known for its “White Out” tradition at football games, but I don’t think this is what they had in mind. Thirteen current and former Penn State students have been charged with cocaine trafficking after members of the Sigma Chi and Delta Upsilon fraternity houses allegedly helped package the cocaine, and in some cases required pledges to help as part of the process to become new members. The leader of the alleged operation went by the nickname “Pablo Pledgescobar,” and authorities quickly uncovered the scheme when they realized one of the dealers was accepting Venmo payments using his actual name.
• Speaking of cocaine, professional tennis player Nick Kyrgios has been suspended after allegedly testing positive for the drug at an ATP Tour event. Kyrgios issued a statement saying, in part, he “made a huge mistake and I take full responsibility for it. I’m sorry to my fans, my family, my sponsors and everyone close to me.”
• Federal and state Medicaid cuts, combined with growing uncompensated care from uninsured patients, make it difficult enough to operate a hospital in Colorado, but UCHealth is facing another unexpected challenge – ICE isn’t paying its bills. Immigrants detained by the Department of Homeland Security division have rung up more than $4 million in bills, but UCHealth hasn’t been paid in more than 10 months.
• Former University of Colorado football player Shilo Sanders is fighting an $11 million legal judgment against him stemming from an assault when he was in high school, and his father – CU Coach Deion Sanders – is getting dragged into it. A Boulder County Sheriff’s Office deputy tried to serve a subpoena to Coach Prime during a recent open practice, but was, ahem, rebuffed. Arrangements were made for his lawyer to accept the subpoena, but the trial is scheduled for the same week that CU plays its opening game against Georgia Tech.
• Democrats at the state legislature continue to keep ethics committees busy. This week, the lawmaker facing scrutiny is Rep. Sheila Lieder, who has been accused by a legislative aide of retaliation after she declined to volunteer for Lieder’s campaign efforts.
• The National Association of Black Journalists gave ESPN host Stephen A. Smith its “Thumbs Down” award for what it says is Smith’s “recurring pattern of disparaging commentary directed at prominent Black women across politics, sports, and media.”
• Streamers such as Netflix, Amazon, Apple and Paramount+ have thrown a lot of cash at sports leagues to carry their games, but leagues are realizing that the influx of cash comes at a cost: visibility. Being siloed behind streaming apps means that fewer people watch. Netflix won the rights to stream last week’s MLB “Field of Dreams” baseball game played in a cornfield in Iowa, and it drew 1.66 million viewers. The previous game was broadcast on Fox and had 3.10 million viewers – nearly double what Netflix attracted.
• Gmail users should expect even more solicitations for political donations now that Google has quietly loosened its spam filter to allow more requests through. The change follows years of complaints from Republicans that Gmail’s spam algorithm unfairly blocked their emails.
• Columnist Matt Calkins resigned from The Seattle Times after the paper refused to publish his piece on transgender athletes in women’s competitions.
• The New York Times lost its first defamation court case in 50 years when a jury ordered it to pay a former University of Alabama basketball player $9.25 million after it incorrectly reported he was at the scene of a deadly shooting. The Times called the reporting error an “honest mistake” and noted it quickly corrected the reporting.
• State Republicans claim that Colorado is turning into California, and that progressive cities like Denver are leading the way. But there is one difference between Denver and California – California knows how to spell Califorina California.
• How can editors avoid the “deluge” of low-quality, AI-generated pitches? The trade publication The Food Section has switched to a pitch-by-phone model that requires people to actually call the publication. I assume you have to leave a message because no reporter has answered their phone in at least a decade.

Who won the week?

• It’s not always easy to tell truth to power, so credit to City of Golden Community Engagement and Communications Director Meredith Ritchie. During the fallout of a racist incident within the city’s Fire Department, she sent a blistering email to city leaders calling their response “unacceptable” and that their actions were “damage control” rather than “leadership.”
• Rachell Buell has joined Dovetail Solutions as Director of Client Services.
• RTD appointed Candace Smith as its Chief Communications and Engagement Officer (CCEO). Godspeed, Ms. Smith.
• It’s your last chance to buy tickets to the 2026 PRSA Colorado Gold Pick Awards. The event is next Thursday, Aug. 27.
• The City of Bow Mar has taken one black eye after another over its plan to block non-residents from using its public streets, most notably from Kyle Clark at 9News. With that horse well out of the barn, the city has retained the PR firm Greenlight Strategy to help with “media relations, communications, public affairs, and proactive community outreach.” For benchmarking purposes, the contract pays Greenlight Strategy $300 per hour.
• Denver7 recently added Peter Choi as a multimedia journalist.
• Altitude Sports named Noah Reed and Katy Winge to the Denver Nuggets broadcast team. They replace Scott Hastings and Chris Marlowe, who were let go earlier this summer.
• Denver is one of three finalists to host the Democratic National Convention in 2028. Philadelphia and Boston are the other two.

• If you want to see three-time NBA MVP and current Denver Nugget Nikola Jokić play basketball in the 2027-2028 season, you may need a plane ticket to Greece. ESPN is reporting that the owner of the Panathinaikos Basketball Club in Athens has made a proposal to encourage Jokić to opt out of his final year with the Nuggets and then sign the star to a long-term contract.
• Meta billionaire Mark Zuckerberg is defending the crew of his $300 million yacht for “repeatedly” declining to assist a nearby boat in distress. Zuckerberg, who was not on the ship at the time, says the crew did not hear the radio calls requesting help.
• Emails show that an aide to President Donald Trump convened officials from the departments of energy, transportation, interior and agriculture, as well as the Office of Management and Budget, in an effort to identify ways to punish Colorado for the imprisonment of election denier Tina Peters. The Denver Post reports that, “In the days that followed (the aide’s) note, several agencies included in the email announced adverse actions against Colorado, canceling hundreds of millions of dollars in funding and moving to close a renowned climate lab in Boulder.”
• U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is denying reports that conditions aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln have deteriorated to the point that sailors have thrown themselves overboard and taken other steps to try to kill themselves. The ship has been at sea without a port call for about 250 days, the second-longest period in modern history. Despite denying any issues, the U.S. Navy is now rushing the U.S.S. George Washington to the area to allow the Abraham Lincoln to return home.
• Do you remember, 20 years ago, when Newsweek was a reputable publication, and then the dot-com bust hit and it was acquired by sketchy click-bait farms? Forbes is slowly headed down that same swirling drain. Its pay-to-play guest columnist program is totes sus (trying to increase my millennial/gen Z readership), and now a Forbes editor has been fired after secretly taking a $6 million payment from the founder of a research firm that Forbes partners with.
• U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert‘s troubled teenaged son was arrested again, this time for sexual exploitation of a child. He is alleged to have filmed a 43-second video of himself having sex with a 17-year-old girl when he was 18.
• If you learned that 72 people fell ill and seven were hospitalized while attending the Tacos and Tequila Festival in Colorado Springs, you might first suspect tainted lettuce or jalapenos, and then perhaps too much tequila. But, in fact, it was heat-related illness that took them down.
• Speaking of the heat, climatologists say that July was the hottest month in the U.S. in the 132 years they have been tracking it.
• The Washington Post is reporting that President Donald Trump had to secretly switch planes to depart a NATO summit in Turkey by hiding in a catering container because of Iranian threats on his life. Remember that move next time he posts an AI-generated image of himself as Rambo on Truth Social.
• FIFA President Gianni Infantino seems to be weathering an effort to oust him after his failed bid to sell a piece of the World Cup to private equity, but the question now is whether the damage has wounded him enough that he won’t survive for the long term.
• As brands have increasingly discovered the power of Reddit to influence both AI and consumers, Redditors have taken notice and are preparing to fight back in the name of keeping the social platform authentic.
• USA Swimming CFO Cory Hilliard has been placed on leave after being arrested for allegedly embezzling $9,500 from the University of Colorado while he was an administrator in the athletic department. No one has stolen that much money from CU since QB Kaidon Salter‘s NIL deal.
• The Buffalo Bills spent $2.2 billion on a new stadium and it has made headlines for all the wrong reasons. Fox reports, “Some (seats) have a pane of glass blurring views … and in the lower level about 30-40 rows up at the 12-13-yard line have their view of the other side of the field blocked by a standing platform.”
• It is hard to determine who is being dumber: LSU or its former Heisman Trophy winner Jayden Daniels. Daniels is mad that LSU didn’t retire his jersey number and has given it to a new player on the team. So Daniels had his lawyers send a pouty cease-and-desist letter saying revoking the university’s right to use his name or image in promotional materials. As for LSU, given that only three players in its 122 years of playing football have won a Heisman, maybe automatically retiring the numbers of winners wouldn’t be out of line.
• You know the Little League World Series is just around the corner when the first lawsuit about eligibility is filed.
• And, finally, a Gizmodo reporter who uses the McDonald’s app took advantage of a California law that requires companies to give consumers access to the data it has collected on them. What McDonald’s shared was “a 515-page report that included predictions on how often he’d frequent the restaurant, when and where he was most likely to visit, and what he was most likely to order.”

Who won the week?

• GroundFloor Media‘s Lauren Noser has joined the board of Early Milestones Colorado.
• Vail Daily/Summit Daily/Aspen Times politics reporter Rob Tann is joining The Denver Post as its politics reporter.
• 9News added Mackenzie Stafford as a reporter. She joins 9News from KRDO in Colorado Springs.
• Sports reporter Justin Adams has left CBS4 after an eight-year run at the station.
• Ron Zappolo, Bob Martin, Alan Berg, Peter Boyles, Bob Gourley, Stu Haskell, Steve Kelly, Reynelda Muse and Roger Ogden are the honorees for the Colorado Broadcasters Hall of Fame Class of 2026.
• Joseph Martinez claimed a skateboard that Tony Hawk autographed and hid in Denver‘s La Raza park. Hawk then posted an Instagram video letting his followers know the skateboard was up for grabs.

• Celebrity blogger Perez Hilton attempted suicide on a TikTok livestream this week, and viewers were the ones who alerted authorities. Hilton was hospitalized and survived. Meanwhile, TikTok officials acknowledged that a “moderator error” prevented the livestream from being removed promptly after users reported it for violating the platform’s rules.
• After a couple of weeks of fading headlines, Taco Bell is facing a new round of accusations relating to the Cyclospora outbreak. The Los Angeles Times is reporting that Michigan health officials alerted the Mexican food chain about their concerns weeks before Taco Bell first warned its customers.
• Meanwhile, FDA officials say that more than 345 cases of salmonella across 27 states have resulted from tainted jalapeños served at Chipotle and Qdoba. Hopefully Chipotle still has Chris Arnold on speed dial.
• Former 9News and Altitude TV sportscaster Todd Romero has been arrested and charged with indecent exposure to a child.
• BMW touted a “special surprise” partnership with Sony-Marvel‘s latest movie, “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” and many of its car owners were excited. Would it be free tickets? Invitations to advance screenings? As it turned out, it was neither. Instead, BMW started pushing unsolicited and spammy ads for the movie to their dashboard screens. And BMW owners had thoughts that were captured by The Hollywood Reporter: “That’s some absolute bullsh**”; “Insanely dystopian”; “$130K to get a Spider-Man commercial” and simply: “F*** everything about this.”
• It is no secret that Colorado marijuana sales have been trending downward for years following the state’s legalization of the recreational stuff in 2012. So it is not particularly surprising that Native Roots is closing its plant in Denver and plans to lay off more than 140 employees.
• Broadway actor Geno Segers‘ offer to join the cast of “Hadestown” was rescinded after videos the producers deemed anti-trans surfaced. In one of the clips, Segers stated, “I’m not against anyone living out their lives the way they want, but I am against their rights superseding the rights of other people. … I don’t see transgender people becoming oppressed or being oppressed.”
• It’s never good when you become the face of a controversial issue. Crocs is no doubt realizing that thanks to a Wall Street Journal article focusing on companies that use Malta as a haven to avoid taxes. As the WSJ reported, Crocs has just two of its more than 8,000 employees located in a small office in Malta, but it claims for tax purposes that all of its global revenue is generated in that country.
• A postal worker was arrested for allegedly stealing a winning lottery ticket worth $2,600 while it was being mailed to the Florida Lottery for redemption.
• Most scooter rides only cost a few bucks, but San Francisco Giants outfielder Harrison Bader’s recent one could cost him millions. Bader was involved in a collision that put him in the hospital, and now the Giants are refusing to continue paying his two-year, $20.5 million salary.
• Remember the Ink Coffee “gentrification” ad that outraged Denver‘s Five Points community? It merely resulted in a boycott and a few rocks thrown at one of its locations. In South Korea, a Starbucks ad that offended much of the public resulted in police raiding the company’s headquarters.
• In the U.S., we like to vandalize Flock cameras. In Scotland, it’s parking meters. Authorities in North Berwick are searching for a vandal who is defacing meters with superglue and expanding foam, but they aren’t getting much help from locals who are widely fed up with parking enforcers.
• A new class-action lawsuit filed by two Coloradans against a host of ski-resort and ski-industry companies, including Colorado-based Vail Resorts and Alterra Mountain Co., alleges that the companies engaged in anti-competitive behavior alleges that the companies engaged in anti-competitive behavior by “conspiring to raise and stabilize ski pass and ski product prices across the industry by exchanging confidential information.”
• If you are still using a first-generation iPhone from 2007, I have some bad news: you no longer have a cell network to connect to. T-Mobile officially ended its 2G cellular service, eliminating the last type of U.S. cellular network the original iPhone could use. RIP 2G.

Who won the week?

• PRSA Colorado announced two of its 2026 special award winners:
  • Wendy Manitta Holmes from Elbert County Government is the Swede Johnson Lifetime Achievement Award winner.
  • Danielle Moore from Noodles & Co. is the Jane Dvorak Mentor of the Year.
• Novitas‘ Michelle Balch Lyng is a 2026 PR News “People of the Year” honoree.
• Dovetail Solutions promoted Jen Hayes to Senior Director of Client & Editorial Services.
• Saint Tattoos in Fort Collins is one of 10 women-owned Etsy shops selected by singer Olivia Rodrigo “for an exclusive handmade collection tied to Daisy Chain Fields, the singer’s inaugural all-women music festival next month in California.”
• To celebrate Colorado‘s 150th birthday, the Denver Business Journal compiled a list of businesses that are older than our state. Among them are Denver Health, The Brown Palace, Mile High United Way, Duffy Crane & Heating and My Brother’s Bar.
• Colorado Christian University has added former Vice President Mike Pence as a visiting faculty member.
• “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” defied a string of disappointing superhero box-office numbers when it brought in $957 million globally in its first weekend. Domestically, its $355 million exceeded analysts’ projections of $195 million. I guess those BMW ads worked.