Tag: crisis-management

Who Had the Worst Week?

~ Jeremy Story ~ Leave a comment
  • Tylenol is facing a crisis the likes of which it has not seen since the 1982 deaths of seven people who consumed Tylenol capsules that had been laced with cyanide. This week, President Donald Trump defied decades of scientific research to declare a clear link between acetaminophen – the active ingredient in Tylenol – and autism.
  • Xcel Energy has agreed to pay $640 million to settle claims that its transmission lines were partly responsible for the devastating Marshall Fire in Boulder County that caused an estimated $1.7 billion in damages.
  • President Donald Trump urged DOJ prosecutors to target former FBI Director James Comey, and this week he got what he wanted. Experts say the prosecution won’t be easy. Previous career DOJ prosecutors had declined to bring the charges because they considered the case too weak and even Attorney General Pam Bondi expressed concerns about pursuing charges before she capitulated to President Trump.
  • Amazon has agreed to pay $2.5 billion “to settle claims that it tricked tens of millions of people into signing up for its Prime membership program, and then made it hard for customers to cancel when they wanted out.”
  • Real life events have caused Apple to delay the premiere of its miniseries, “The Savant,” starring Jessica Chastain. The story arc focused on Chastain’s character trying to prevent extremist attacks that include a sniper and the bombing of a government building.
  • NJ PBS, New Jersey’s only dedicated public television station, will cease operations next summer. The station blamed federal and state funding cuts for the decision.
  • It’s been a schizophrenic week for DoBetterDNVR, the controversial organization that either (depending on your political persuasion) held Denver accountable for its public safety failures or that posted sensational images of people experiencing homelessness and using drugs. The group’s Twitter/X and Instagram accounts were deactivated Monday, with the anonymous leader of the organization saying they “no longer want to be involved in the public, political arena.” Then, Thursday, the accounts were restored, with a message that DoBetterDNVR would “re-engage,” but with a stronger focus on being “accurate and constructive.”
  • Do you have an elementary school student whom you’d like attend an Ivy League college? Good news! Over the next 16 years, the number of high school seniors in the U.S. will decline by 13%, a trend caused by lower birth rates. Experts say that will result in even elite universities becoming slightly less selective, but could also put hundreds of small liberal arts schools at risk of closing.
  • Cleveland Guardians pinch hitter David Fry was hospitalized after being struck in the face by a 99 mph fastball.
  • Virginia Culver, a reporter who spent 44 years at The Denver Post mostly covering religion, passed away died. She was 84.

Who won the week?

  • Vail Resorts promoted Sara Olson to VP of Resort Marketing & Global Communications.
  • Hogan Lovells promoted Cari Bayens to Senior Marketing & Business Development Manager of Energy & Environment.
  • The City of Colorado Springs named Jason Strickland as its Chief Communications Officer. Strickland, a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army, formerly was the Chief Communications Officer for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Rocky Mountain Network.
  • Zero Motorcycles, the maker of electric bikes, selected Carbondale-based Backbone as its PR agency of record.
  • The Colorado Rockies eked out enough wins this season to barely avoid setting the MLB record for most losses in a season.
  • In what had to have been one of the most difficult moments of her life, Erika Kirk, the widow of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, reminded the country what grace and compassion look like when she delivered his eulogy.
  • Jimmy Kimmel‘s return to ABC following his suspension attracted 6.26 million viewers, more than four times his usual audience. Another 21 million viewers watched his monologue on his show’s YouTube channel.
  • The five-year stock return of such market stars as Nvidia, Palantir, Microsoft and Oracle trail a decidedly less-flashy company – Build-a-Bear Workshop. The stuffed animal company’s stock is up 2,000 percent over the past five years, in part due to adult collectors.

Who Had the Worst Week?

~ Jeremy Story ~ Leave a comment
  • God may forgive, but the IRS doesn’t. Which is bad news for Pope Leo because U.S. tax law says he may owe annual $135,000 payments to the U.S. Treasury.
  • The jockey of Kentucky Derby-winning horse Sovereignty was fined $62,000 for whipping his horse too many times down the stretch during the iconic race. If you are curious about the allowable number of times you can whip a horse during a Derby, it is six.
  • Two years after taking lighter fluid and a match to billions of dollars in brand equity by dropping the name HBO from its streaming service, executives at Warner Bros. Discovery have announced that Max will now be rebranded back to HBO Max. HBO is synonymous with prestigious programming (“The Sopranos,” “The Wire,” “Succession,” “Veep,” “Euphoria,” etc.), and I can only assume the same people who dropped HBO in the first place are the same marketing geniuses who named the parent company Warner Bros. Discovery.
  • A Consumer Reports investigation found that King Soopers is overcharging Colorado customers nearly 20% compared to the prices that are listed on the shelves.
  • The nonprofit National Trust for Local News is selling 14 of its 21 community papers in Colorado — including the Arvada Press, the Englewood Herald and the Littleton Independent — to Arizona-based media company Times Media Group. The Nieman Foundation calls The Times Media Group an “out-of-state, for-profit media company with a history of reducing local newsrooms.” Corey Hutchins has a deep dive into the news at his “Inside the News in Colorado” Substack.
  • Nissan announced plans to lay off 11,000 workers globally, and Microsoft is laying off 6,000 people, or about 3% of its workforce.
  • DIA joined the ranks of airports nationally that have experienced brief communications outages that prevented air traffic controllers from communicating with pilots. Enjoy your summer vacations!
  • I suspected that Gérard Depardieu was a skeevy perv ever since the first time I saw him in “Cyrano De Bergerac.” It took 35 years to be proven right, but a French court this week found him guilty of sexually assaulting two women.
  • Following encampment protests of the war in Gaza last year, the Colorado Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights plans to spend the next year investigating Denver’s Auraria campus to determine whether antisemitism exists on the downtown campus.
  • The University of North Carolina has hired a former NFL PR expert to help head football coach Bill Belichick. Here’s hoping the guy’s first piece of advice to Belichick is to stop talking about his girlfriend who is 50 years younger than he is. The second piece: he better win a lot of football games quickly to help change the subject.
  • DIA CEO Phil Washington is playing defense explaining how he and eight of his colleagues spent $165,000 on a trip to a a three-day conference in Madrid.
  • The NWSL acknowledged it should have postponed the remaining part of a recent game between Angel City and Utah after an Angel City player collapsed on the field and was taken to the hospital via ambulance.
  • Colorado Republicans are plotting a comeback in our state, and part of that path now includes a gala event hosted by Heidi Ganahl (who lost her 2022 gubernatorial race to Gov. Jared Polis by 19 points) and featuring … Eric Trump. There’s a “definition of insanity” thing that makes me think Heidi Ganahl and Eric Trump are hardly the best advocates for Republicans to “take back Colorado.”
  • Morris, the alligator from the movie “Happy Gilmore,” passed away in Colorado. He was approximately 80 years old.
  • You missed your chance to buy the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park. It sold for $400 million.

Who won the week?

  • Longtime 9News journalist Tom Green announced he is stepping down from the station after 43 years in Denver. Green is arguably the funniest journalist in town, albeit in an under-the-radar way.
  • The Denver Nuggets forced a game 7 in its series against the Oklahoma City Thunder. Not bad for a team that fired its head coach and GM three games before the end of the regular season.
  • Pete Rose, “Shoeless” Joe Jackson and host of other baseball outcasts have been made re-eligible for the baseball Hall of Fame. They still have to be voted in, though, which is unlikely.