Tag: crisis-pr

Who Had the Worst Week?

~ Jeremy Story ~ Leave a comment
  • Denver may be left of the political center, but its TV news stations soon may not reflect that. Sinclair‘s interest in acquiring Scripps – owner of Denver7 – means that three of our city’s four main TV news stations could be owned by the right-wing media companies Nexstar (Fox31, 9News) and Sinclair (Denver7).
  • CBS4 reporter Kelly Werthmann and photojournalist Kevin Hartfield were forced to take refuge in their news vehicle when “a clearly unstable man” interrupted their live shot at the state capitol. No one was injured.
  • A warm, dry fall has forced the ski resorts Purgatory and Powderhorn to delay their openings.
  • The U.S. Coast Guard has downgraded swastikas and nooses from prohibited “hate symbols” to items that are merely “potentially divisive.”
  • The former British Prince Andrew, now just Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor after his brother stripped him of his royal title, just can’t catch a break. The Daily Mail reported this week that Osborne Partners, the PR firm that convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein hired in 2008 to help him rehabilitate his image, recommended to Epstein that he avoid associating with Andrew because Andrew’s reputation was too toxic.
  • The U.S. may be headed for a brutal flu season. Scientists have found that this year’s virus causes more severe symptoms than last year’s and seems to be spreading more rapidly and earlier than usual. Enjoy those Thanksgiving visitors!
  • Republicans in Texas have ousted Kate Rogers, a fellow Republican who was tasked with overseeing the renovation of the Alamo, because her 2023 Ph.D. dissertation included a “woke” statement – “Personally, I would love to see the Alamo become a beacon for historical reconciliation and a place that brings people together versus tearing them apart, but politically that may not be possible at this time.”
  • Colorado fined BetMGM $50,000 for illegally accepting “prop” bets on individual college athletes’ performances during games.
  • If you are addicted to buying lottery tickets but are broke, good news! The Colorado Lottery Commission will now allow you to use credit cards to buy tickets. What could go wrong?
  • A Missouri judge whose Elvis fixation caused him to wear an Elvis wig during proceedings and play his songs and recite his lyrics in court has agreed to resign.
  • A Russian K9 police dog selected to perform the ceremonial pre-game puck drop at a KHL league hockey game successfully dropped the puck from its mouth and then promptly bit two players.

Who won the week?

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
  • Evergreen High School is the latest Colorado school to experience gun violence. There have been 13 school shootings in our state since Columbine in 1999.
  • Conservative political activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed at a college event in Utah. The assassination follows the politically motivated murder of Minnesota State House Speaker Melissa Hortman (D) three months ago, and has sparked fears on both sides of the aisle that political violence will continue to escalate.
  • Variety, CNBC, the Associated Press and other news outlets fell victim to Howard Stern when they reported that radio personality and TV host Andy Cohen was replacing Stern at SiriusXM. Stern had been in lengthy and contentious negotiations with SiriusXM, and Cohen opened what would normally be the Stern show by announcing that he was replacing Stern with his new show, “Andy 100.”
  • Fall temperatures in Denver have risen 3.7 degrees over the past 50 years, impacting everything from demands on the electrical grid to.seasonal allergies.
  • CBS, pathologically afraid of the Trump administration, has named Kenneth R. Weinstein as ombudsman to review complaints about CBS News. Weinstein formerly was head of a right-leaning think tank and has no experience overseeing news coverage.
  • Britain removed its ambassador to the United States, Peter Mandelson, after the release of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein‘s “birthday book” showed the depth of the relationship between the two.
  • Nepal has lifted a social-media ban after at least 19 people were killed in clashes between protesters and police.
  • Two Cornell University students killed a 120-pound black bear and brought the carcass back to their dorm where they skinned and butchered the remains. The two students had valid hunting licenses and did not break any laws, but still … worst dorm neighbors ever.
  • Texas A&M fired an English literature professor over course content related to gender identity. A student protested that the lecture was “illegal” due to an executive order issued by the Trump administration. The university also removed the head of the university’s English department and a dean from their posts due to the incident.
  • The parent company of KUNC, the NPR affiliate for Northern Colorado, cut more than one-quarter of its employees – 10 total – following Congress‘ decision to defund public media.

Who won the week?

  • Former Cory Gardner staffer and GBSM alumnus Sam Stookesberry has launched his own agency, Highline Strategic Communications.
  • The Denver Voice is co-hosting a panel discussion on the state of nonprofit journalism tomorrow. It will feature Laura Frank, executive director of the Colorado News Collaborative; Tim Regan-Porter, CEO of the Colorado Press Association; Dana Coffield, co-founder and editor of the The Colorado Sun; and Mark Horvath, the founder of Invisible People.
  • The Denver Broncos selected the Burnham Yard area of Denver – about a mile southeast of Empower Field – as the home of a new stadium for the team.
  • Oracle announced stunningly positive financial results that sent it stock up 36% in a single day. That increase propelled founder Larry Ellison‘s net worth past Elon Musk to make him the richest person in the world.

Who Had theWorst Week?

~ Jeremy Story ~ 1 Comment
  • ESPN has officially cut ties with media analyst and former Denver Bronco Shannon Sharpe two weeks after he settled a lawsuit accusing him of rape. ESPN had previously suspended Sharpe when the lawsuit was filed.
  • If your favorite DUI defense or class-action attorney seemed a little giddy this week, its because a packaging mix-up caused highly alcoholic High Noon vodka seltzers to be distributed in decidedly non-alcoholic Celsius Astro Vibe energy drink cans.
  • An undetermined number of Denver city employees will begin receiving layoff notices on Aug. 18 as the city tries to close a $250 million budget gap.
  • The City and County of Denver, which has thrown some pretty sharp elbows in the past to retain the annual National Western Stock Show, has green-lighted a $3 million campaign encouraging city residents to eat less meat. That sound you just heard was the marketing team at the Aurora-based Gaylord Hotel sketching out details for an on-site arena.
  • Some bad news for local home-sellers. Denver led the nation in price cuts on for-sale listings in June, indicating that sellers are getting nervous and that buyers may hold the upper hand.
  • U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum officials may be approaching the facility’s fifth anniversary, but lower-than-expected attendance figures and declining year-over-year revenue are putting a damper on the celebration.
  • Fox31 had a weird non-story about the executive chef at Guard and Grace leaving on amicable terms.
  • The state of Colorado sued PetSmart, accusing the national pet store chain of tricking employees into enrolling in a “free” dog grooming school that locked them into a form of indentured servitude.
  • The annual Dragon Boat Festival may need to leave Denver due to “dead fish, increasingly warm and shallow water, blue algae blooms, and a lack of filtration from untreated runoff” pouring into Sloan’s Lake.
  • A 50% drop in ratings, the rising cost of materials needed for home renovations and DIY TikTokers have forced HGTV to cut costs and dump at least seven of its shows.
  • After days of rumors swirling online, The Denver Post outed three of the contributors to the DoBetterDENVR social media account, and they couldn’t back-pedal fast enough from its content that many have described as cruel to people experiencing drug addiction and homelessness. Two of the three don’t even live in Colorado.
    • (Speaking of rumors, when will the highly anticipated Colorado Public Radio story on the staff turnover and work culture at the Denver Metro Chamber finally appear?)

Who won the week?

Who Had the Worst Week?

~ Jeremy Story ~ Leave a comment

Who won the week?

Who Had the Worst Week?

~ Jeremy Story ~ Leave a comment

Who won the week?

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.

Who Had the Worst Week?

~ Jeremy Story ~ Leave a comment
  • Actor Rob Lowe was not amused when a Beverly Hills sightseeing tour bus driver pointed him out to passengers as “John Stamos.” Lowe, who was on a sidewalk near Rodeo Drive, confronted the driver of the open-air bus and told him he needed to “Get better at your job.”
  • Tesla is facing legal allegations that it speeds up the odometers on its electric vehicles so they fall out of warranty faster.
  • Actor Kelsey Grammer‘s plans to raze a 200-year-old cottage in Bristol, England has outraged locals. He wants to build a four-bedroom modern home.
  • The drummer for the band New Pornographers was arrested on child pornography charges.
  • Former members of the University of Colorado football team aren’t impressed by coach Deion Sanders‘ plans to retire the number of QB Shedeur Sanders. The alumni agree with Coach Prime‘s decision to retire Heisman trophy winner Travis Hunter‘s number, but are annoyed that he has used that as an opportunity to retire his son’s number as well.
  • If you had Wendy’s vs. Katy Perry in the celebrity feud pool, you are smarter than I am. The burger chain is playing defense after its social media team poked fun at the singer for joining the all-female crew that went to space. The backlash came from celebrities Emily Ratajkowski, Olivia Wilde and Olivia Munn, and forced the brand to backtrack slightly by claiming it has a “ton of respect” for Perry.
  • The production of craft beer fell to 23.1 million barrels in 2024, which represents a 4% decline compared to the previous year and is the largest non-pandemic drop in industry history. That is not a good statistic for Colorado, which has the fourth most craft breweries in the country.
  • United Airlines took the unusual step of issuing two different profit outlooks for 2025 – one that assumes a recession and a second that doesn’t.
  • It is starting to feel little like Groundhog Day in Colorado politics. Former U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo (D) announced she will run to try to reclaim CD-8, while former U.S. Rep. Greg Lopez (R) announced he will run for governor for a third time. He didn’t win the primary race in either of his first two attempts.
  • President Donald Trump was no fan of the latest episode of “60 Minutes” that featured stories on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the territory of Greenland. He called on the FCC to revoke CBS’s broadcast license “for their unlawful and illegal behavior” airing stories he did not like.
  • Speaking of President Trump, he is also at war with Harvard University after it refused to acquiesce to his demands on a variety of issues. President Trump froze $2.2 billion in grant funding and then asked the IRS to revoke its tax-exempt status as punishment for defying him.
  • You don’t really think about competitive fishing as a particularly dangerous sport, but three people died when two boats collided during a fishing tournament in Alabama.
  • Actor Haley Joel Osment was arrested and charged with public intoxication and possession of cocaine.
  • All 1.4 million residents of Puerto Rico are again without power as the island suffered its second catastrophic blackout in four months.
  • A judge in Florida said she was powerless to release an American citizen born in Georgia who was detained as a suspected undocumented immigrant. ICE had moved the prisoner to a detention center and the judge said while she had the power to dismiss the charge, she did not have jurisdiction to force his release.

Who won the week?

  • DIA ranked as the third busiest airport in the U.S. and sixth busiest in the world in 2024.
  • Fourteen Coloradans landed on Forbes‘ list of the world’s richest billionaires. Phil Anschutz was first among Coloradans with $16.9 billion, while Cargill MacMillan III ($1.4 billion) had the most billionaire-ish name.
  • ESPN‘s Lee Corso announced he would retire from “College Gameday,” where he built a cult following by predicting winners by donning the team mascot’s head. Corso is 89 and has been part of the show for 38 years.

Who Had the Worst Week?

~ Jeremy Story ~ 1 Comment
  • A United Airlines flight from Los Angeles to Shanghai was forced to return to the U.S. two hours into the flight when one of the pilots realized he had forgotten to bring his passport. A new crew was brought in and the flight took off again six hours after its initial departure.
  • What do you get when you put librarians in charge of doing math? A $25.4 million estimate for an open-records request. The Pikes Peak Library District in El Paso County gave a journalist the $25.4 million estimate that calculated it would take 613,440 hours to complete, the equivalent of a team of five people working full-time for 59 years.
  • The genetic testing company 23andMe has filed for bankruptcy, meaning that its DNA registry containing sensitive information on millions of people could be bought for pennies on the dollar by bad actors. California‘s attorney general issued a rare consumer privacy alert reminding residents that they have the option to direct the company to delete their data and destroy any samples of genetic material it holds prior to any sale.
  • Don’t delay that vacation: Hawaii is sinking 40 times faster than scientists initially thought.
  • It was quite a week for the White House:
  • The live-action remake of “Snow White” is on pace to be one of the biggest flops of the decade, even bigger than “Joker: Folie à Deux.” At the heart of the debacle: a series of self-inflicted wounds.
  • A jury ordered the makers of the Roundup weed killer to pay $2.1 billion in damages to a plaintiff who argued the product caused his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma cancer. Appeals courts have reduced previous large jury awards against Roundup by about 95%, which could also happen here.
  • The Colorado Rockies will play the first game of the 2025 season today, and they are already 1.5 games back from the division-leading L.A. Dodgers.
  • It is not easy being a mid-major program like the Colorado State University Rams. You want the program to do well, but when they do, you start to worry about losing players or coaches to schools in bigger conferences. That is what happened this week. Men’s basketball coach Niko Medved methodically built CSU into a team that made the NCAA “March Madness” tournament regularly, and his team gave one of the all-time great performances in a last-second loss to the University of Maryland. And then, less than 24 hours later, the University of Minnesota hired Medved away.
  • It has been a tough couple of weeks for the Denver arts and business communities. First, we lost former Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation CEO Tom Clark, who was a behind-the-scenes driving force for many of Denver’s biggest accomplishments over the past few decades. And, this week, the family and friends of Denver Botanic Gardens CEO Brian Vogt are mourning his passing. He was 66.

Who won the week?

  • GFM|CenterTable added Shelbey Royal as a senior director of search.
  • Connect For Health Colorado named Nina Schwartz as its new chief policy and external affairs officer.
    • Turner PR has been named agency of record for Xanterra Travel Collection. Turner will handle earned media and social media strategy for the company’s National Parks collection, including accommodations, experiences and outposts in the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Death Valley, Glacier, Rocky Mountain and Mount Rushmore.
  • The Sundance Film Festival is relocating from Park City, Utah, to Boulder. Fun fact: The New York Times article covering the news first described Boulder as a “ski town,” which it is not, and then issued a correction calling it a “mountain town,” which it also is not. We’ll see if a second correction appears.