• While we were all focused on how Artificial Intelligence may cause a human extinction event, Russia decided to remind us that old-school threats haven’t gone away. The country quarantined 200 workers at a Siberian lab when a worker died after reportedly being exposed to the plague. While Russia claims her death was unrelated to her work in a pneumonic plague lab, the World Health Organization is demanding more answers.
• Cornell University, sadly, is positioning itself to be one of the year’s biggest PR disasters. Sensational and shocking details continue to dribble out – exactly the opposite of the goal for how to handle a crisis – and the latest development is that one of the students accused of rape was one of the fraternity’s official “trained event monitor” who are required to “stay sober and wear distinctive clothing so that police officers, paramedics or other partygoers could quickly identify them in an emergency.”
• Meanwhile, sexual assaults on campus are an issue hitting closer to home as well. The University of Utah and the University of Colorado top the latest federal list of most reported campus rapes, followed by Ohio State, Penn State, UCLA, UC-Santa Cruz, UC-Santa Barbara, Indiana University, the University of Kansas and the University of Kentucky.
• A screw-up by the Front Range Passenger Rail District means that 800,000 Colorado voters will have a question about a tax increase for passenger rail on their ballots that shouldn’t be there. Election officials are working on a process to exclude the votes that aren’t eligible. Even if it is ultimately handled correctly, the error is a gift to election-rigging conspiracy theorists.
• There is a class war erupting in Britain, and the catalyst is access to tickets to an exclusive show. In the U.S., we fight over Taylor Swift tickets. In Britain, they fight over tickets to see a 230-foot-long embroidered tapestry from France. The commoners are not happy that wealthy patrons are being allowed to skip the line.
• President Donald Trump doxxed U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, posting his cell phone number to social media and asking the public to contact Cotton to demand he stop holding up President Trump’s pet permanent Daylight Saving Time bill. With friends like that …
• It was a tough week for college football teams in our state. Colorado State trended on social media when it appeared its head coach fired the team’s defensive coordinator in the middle of the first quarter of its game against Oregon State (the head coach later clarified he just relieved the coordinator of his duties in the first quarter and then fired him after the game). Meanwhile, a University of Colorado playbook was apparently left at a hotel bar and discovered by Texas Tech fans the night before their game. Neither Colorado team won.
• Tom Cruise has been one of Hollywood‘s most reliable box office stars, but his latest movie, “Digger,” isn’t connecting with audiences. It is on pace to lose $250 million.
• CBS Sports officially parted ways with NFL announcer Tony Romo, using his DUI arrest as an opportunity to negotiate a settlement lower than the $72 million they still owed him. It probably wasn’t a lot less, though – CBS has a long history of not significantly punishing sports announcers and analysts who have been arrested for DUI.
• Denver International Airport is playing defense after CBS4 investigative reporter Brian Maass reported that executives “spent more than $21,000 on a retirement party attended by just 45 people – more than $466 for every person who actually showed up.” DIA officials explained ongoing construction has shuttered some spaces and forced the airport to move events to the nearby Westin.
• A Chinese fitness influencer with more than half a million social media followers was disqualified from the Berlin Marathon after she hopped on the back of a bike to finish the final 3 miles of the race. Not surprisingly, data showed her fastest split was, in fact, the final 3 miles.
• Almost no one was surprised that a former Army officer who was convicted of killing 13 people at Fort Hood in Texas was given the death penalty, and only some people were surprised when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered it to be conducted via a firing squad. But Secretary Hegseth’s order this week that the execution be livestreamed is quite a step.
• It turns out that Colorado has no mechanism to issue tickets to driverless vehicles for traffic violations. What could go wrong? If I had a white minivan, I’d slap a Waymo sticker on the side and see what I could get away with.
• New England Patriots QB Drake Maye outed himself as a moon-landing skeptic. NASA, wisely, jumped right on it.
• Police arrested a fugitive who was on the run for 14 years after he participated in a job-related puff-piece profile in a local newspaper. The article included his photo and named the restaurant where he was working as a chef.
• KWGN/Channel 2 anchor Chris Parente is leaving the station as he deals with early-stage bladder cancer. Side effects of his treatment and an expiring contract are forcing his departure.
• Amazon keeps weirdly detailed information (and apparently judgments) about customers, and some users are not thrilled to learn what the company thinks. One found that Amazon has determined she “has no friends,” while another was labeled to have “flat buttocks.” The flat-buttocked user posted a screenshot and responded, “I mean it ain’t wrong but damn did you have to call me out like that?”

Who won the week?

• Longtime Denver business and communications executive Leanna Clark has launched LC Strategies, an executive advisory practice.
• Jack Holleran has joined Agency PR as an Account Director. He previously was with Dovetail Solutions.
• Ashley Campbell has rejoined Linhart PR as a Vice President and Partner. Campbell was at Linhart for 13 years and then spent time with Preferred Travel Group and Black Hills Energy during her hiatus.
• The City and County of Denver Department of Transportation and Infrastructure named Elizabeth Morales Strategic Communications Liaison.
• Ripley Coope has joined Brand Revolution as a Production Coordinator.
• Zayo named Mariana Agathoklis Schlock as its first Executive Vice President, Chief Communications & Marketing Officer (CCMO).
• Beverly Razon, the Vice President of Public Affairs at Copic, has been named Board Chair of the Colorado Chamber of Commerce.
• SideCar PR is hiring a Senior PR Associate and a Senior Digital Marketing Associate.
• KUNC has named Linda Shapley News Director.
• More than 70 years after his death, California has renamed a portion of Highway 46 after the most famous person to lose his life on it – actor James Dean.

• Ivy League school Cornell University has found itself in the midst of a Duke lacrosse-sized rape scandal. Prosecutors have reopened the case of a student who said she was sexually assaulted by seven fraternity members on campus in 2024, a move spurred by a civil lawsuit the woman recently filed. Both prosecutors and Cornell are scrambling to explain their previous handling of the allegations, and contemporaneous texts from the seven alleged assailants are so graphic and inhumane that they ensure massive media coverage for months to come. Cornell has a $12 billion endowment, and I would expect it to try to reach a civil settlement with the woman as quickly as possible, although that won’t stop additional media coverage resulting from the ongoing criminal investigation.
• A pilot on a FlyDubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv stabbed his co-pilot in the cockpit mid-flight during an apparent attempt to crash the plane. Authorities say the co-pilot heroically prevented the mass murder-suicide attempt.
• A Washington Post correspondent parachuted into Palisade to cover how drought conditions are threatening the livelihoods of local peach farmers, which in turn is threatening the existence of the town itself.
• DIA hasn’t been performing too well on recent rankings of national airports. Last month, I reported that Denver‘s airport placed 18th out of 20 North American airports in a J.D. Power satisfaction ranking. This month, DIA ranked last in a Travel Bulletin list of the worst airports for connections. Denver was criticized for having low “walkability” scores that measure distances between two points. And, sadly, the Washington Post called DIA’s last-place score “a surprise to no one.”
• Tennessee likes capital punishment, but it isn’t very good at it. The state’s governor has halted executions through the end of the year as the state grapples with its second straight botched execution. The latest attempt this week left the prisoner alive and hospitalized after the drug meant to kill her failed.
• A 100-pound tortoise ran away from its Littleton home in what authorities described as the “world’s slowest escape.” The tortoise was eventually captured and returned home.
• An Illinois woman went to her local emergency room because of a debilitating migraine, waited four hours to be seen and eventually gave up and went to another facility. Imagine her surprise when she received a $410 bill from the ER. Must be a waiting-room-chair-rental fee.
• Have some Denver police officers been routinely failing to investigate traffic incidents because they confused what a police commander called an “urban legend” with actual Colorado law? Yes, they have.
• Most professional sports leagues split revenues with players according to a formula that is roughly 50-50. NFL players receive 49% of league revenues, NBA players receive 50%, MLB players receive 47% and NHL players receive 50%. Professional tennis players receive about 16% of revenues. That’s why tennis legend and ESPN announcer John McEnroe is encouraging tennis players to boycott Grand Slam tournaments until they get more.
• I was convinced that Gov. Jared Polis‘ commutation of election denier Tina Peters‘ jail sentence would be his legacy, but it looks like the wolf-reintroduction fiasco could be a close second. The reintroduction program hasn’t been able to reach self-sustaining numbers, and wolves are dying – naturally and otherwise – at an alarming rate. It is so bad that Colorado Parks and Wildlife this week suspended its policy of killing wolves that repeatedly attack ranchers’ livestock (or, in anodyne Polis-speak, “lethally removing wolves for chronic depredation”).
• Washington, D.C., police officers arrested the wrong identical twin in an assault case. The case was based solely on the victim identifying a photo of the suspect, and police failed to check a registry that would have alerted them to the fact that she had a twin. It took two months for the charges to be dropped, by which time she had been arrested, held in jail and then subjected to random drug tests and in-person reporting requirements.
• Sales of Vail Resorts‘ Epic Pass are down 12% from the same time last year, presumably due to last season’s stunningly low amount of snow.
• MLB has withdrawn its proposal to the Trump administration to build a stadium in Wyoming‘s Grand Teton National Park to host baseball games. MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said that following media coverage of the proposal, “it has become clear the local community does not want us” to pursue the project.
• Speaking of baseball, the Colorado Rockies lost 100 games for the fourth straight year, a milestone only a few teams in the history of MLB have reached. So of course the team announced that ticket prices will increase 12% next year.

Who won the week?

• Gil Rudawsky has launched GilCom Media. He formerly was with Rockford Gray.
• The Fletcher Group is soliciting candidates for a Senior Account Associate position.
• B Public Relations added the Park County (Wyoming) Travel Council as a client.
• The Denver Museum of Nature & Science named Kirk Johnson as CEO, replacing the retiring George Sparks. Johnson will join the museum from the Smithsonian‘s National Museum of Natural History.

• Somehow, typically innocuous singer Ed Sheeran ended up in the middle of the culture wars this week when one of his opening acts, the rapper Macklemore, uttered the phrase “Free Palestine” while on stage. When the dust settled, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft had barred the rapper from performing at Gillette Stadium and worked with other venue owners to do the same, Macklemore was dropped from the tour, the other opening acts quit in solidarity with Macklemore, Sheeran challenged Kraft to match a $2 million donation to aid humanitarian efforts in Gaza, and Kraft agreed.
• The 2026 edition of Forbes‘ list of the 400 richest Americans has been released, and Colorado‘s Patricia Stryker fell off the list. Before you feel too badly for her, she sits at a net worth of $4.1 billion and her net worth actually increased in the past year, just not as much as other billionaires.
• Could the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., be torn down? President Donald Trump is threatening to do just that unless Congress agrees to add his name to it.
• Meanwhile, critics of President Donald Trump are mocking a White House social media post that credited the president for an unusually slow hurricane season in the Atlantic.
• DIA placed 18th out of 20 North American airports in a new JD Power satisfaction ranking. Its overall score did increase about 1%, from 596 to 602, and at this rate, it will only be 14 years before DIA takes first.
• NBC Los Angeles‘ news helicopter crashed while covering a story, killing the pilot, a reporter and a person on the ground.
• The consensus among local sports media seemed to be that the Denver Broncos would go 11-6 this season and make the playoffs for the second consecutive year, but a brutal 31-10 loss in their opening game to the rival Kansas City Chiefs has raised a lot of questions. A 6-11 record looks more likely. While many, many things went wrong this week, new Broncos offensive coordinator Davis Webb‘s playcalling was called an “epic failure,” and he may secretly wish he had remained the team’s QB coach. If the Broncos lose to the Jacksonville Jaguars this weekend, expect the panic to grow exponentially.
• Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but the Denver Public Schools board has launched an investigation into one of its members. This time, the investigation centers on alleged antisemitic comments made by Director Monica Hunter.
• University of Texas QB and Manning legacy heir Arch Manning may draw as much media attention as his uncles Peyton and Eli, but he still has a lot to learn about handling himself like a Manning. This week, Arch apologized to ESPN sideline reporter Holly Rowe for laughing at an AI-generated video that showed Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian slapping her. In a press conference, Arch said, “Have you all seen that one? That’s a good one. Of him slapping (her)?”
• A public backlash is a feature of a Sydney Sweeney marketing campaign, not a bug. Sweeney previously caused controversy with her American Eagle jeans ad that played on the homophone “jeans” and “genes” in a campaign that critics called a dog whistle for eugenics. Now, Sweeney has alienated female athletes with a new campaign for a sports trading app that features her unclothed and strategically covered by sports equipment.
• Optiv became the latest high-profile company to leave Denver when it walked away from its downtown headquarters and relocated to Kansas.

Who won the week?

• Dovetail Solutions added Maddie Schaaf as a Client Services Partner.
• SideCar Public Relations promoted Katrina Salon to Account Director and Jessica Slattery to Digital Marketing Director.
• SE2’s Elizabet Garcia Hernandez received the 2026 Distinguished Capitol Fellow award from Colorado Latino Leadership, Advocacy & Research Organization (CLLARO).
• Turner PR added Travel Oregon as a client. The firm will lead an integrated program spanning strategic communications, proactive media relations, media and influencer familiarization visits, events and activations, deskside tours, content creator recommendations and earned media generative engine optimization.

• United Airlines thought, “Let’s commemorate the 25th anniversary of 9/11 in Denver with a low-altitude flyover featuring a Boeing 777.” Everyone else thought … no. It has now been canceled.
• What do Flock cameras and data centers have in common? Both thrived largely with support from conservatives, and now both have quickly lost that support as politicians re-read the electoral tea leaves. Flock surveillance cameras went from having absolute support from law-and-order conservatives to having the Republican governors of Texas and Florida both issue orders essentially banning the cameras on state property. Meanwhile, conservative politicians who have previously supported data centers are rushing to denounce them after seeing polling data that voters on both the left and right oppose them.
• Engineers at Anthropic think that there is a greater than 10% chance that AI will kill all humans within the next decade. But, hey, think of all the fun you can have from the stock-option proceeds in those 10 years.
• Meanwhile, the unintended consequences of AI are everywhere. The New York Times reports that thousands of Kenyans who made a living writing essays for U.S. college students have been displaced as students find even more affordable ways to cheat.
• College football has become the latest victim of unusually hot temperatures. The Colorado School of Mines and Washburn canceled overtime of their game and ended it in a 16-16 tie because of the 107-degree heat index, and the University of South Carolina and Kent State agreed to shave 10 minutes off their game because the heat index hit 106. Most distressing, a University of Iowa student and Hawkeye Marching Band member died after suffering cardiac arrest while performing in 94-degree heat.
• Barry Morphew, the man who has now been charged twice with killing his wife Suzanne, was on a $3 million surety bond that only allowed him to travel away from home for very specific circumstances. Unfortunately for Morphew, he apparently was violating the terms of that bond when he was involved in a minor traffic accident. The other party started recording Morphew when he refused to give his name and tried to offer $300 in cash to settle the issue. He drove away when that failed, and he has since been charged with a slew of things ranging from careless driving to leaving the scene of an accident to failure to report an accident. And the judge in his murder case ordered him jailed until he can come up with a $10 million bond.
• The Colorado Rockies were the first team to be eliminated from the MLB playoffs. Now the fight to avoid 100 losses for the fourth season in a row begins.
• It’s official – LIV Golf, the Saudi-backed golf league that sought to compete with the PGA, filed bankruptcy, and some of the golfers who abandoned the PGA for LIV are owed millions of dollars that they may never see.
• Colorado has reintroduced 25 wolves since 2023, and 19 wolves have now died. Colorado Parks and Wildlife killed three in the past month alone when they kept attacking livestock. There are probably a couple dozen left that have resulted from breeding, but experts are concerned that it is so few that inbreeding will now become a problem.
• Will you get your “Trump dividend?” Sure, right after you get your “tariff refund” and your “DOGE dividend” that President Donald Trump previously promised.

Who won the week?

• Linhart PR has promoted intern Kierra Vanevenhoven to Account Associate.
• Malen Yantis Public Relations added Park Hyatt Beaver Creek Resort & Spa as a client.
• Fortune profiled Bret Clement, co-founder of Denver‘s Clement | Peterson PR, as he transitions from public relations to teaching at DSST: College View High School.
• Western Michigan University got utterly screwed this weekend by officials who added one final play to the game after time clearly had expired. Sure enough, that allowed the University of Michigan to complete a Hail Mary pass to defeat WMU. WMU head coach Lance Taylor had every reason to scream and shout, but he embraced the idea that you are never sorry later for having taken the high road, and now everyone outside of Ann Arbor is rooting for WMU.
• Max Scheinblum at BusinessDen researched the top CEO compensation in Colorado, and you can set any concerns aside – they are doing well. In fact, you have to go 16 deep before you hit the first sub-$10 million CEO. Derek Chang at Liberty Media tops the list at $39.3 million, followed by Robert Painter of Trimble and Bracken Darrell of VF Corp, who both netted approximately $19 million.
• Inspired by President Donald Trump‘s actions to rename Lake Ontario and the Gulf of Mexico, “South Park” producers Trey Parker and Matt Stone announced they will follow suit and rename their show to “South America.“
• As Route 66 turns 100 years old, the scenic, slow path across the U.S. is enjoying a resurgence in travelers, led in part by European motorcyclists looking for the Americana they first learned about from movies.

• Federal officials think they have pinpointed the primary cause of the Cyclosporiasis outbreak that has sickened more than 1,500 people across the country – shredded iceberg lettuce served at Taco Bell restaurants. Sadly, this is not the first time “Taco Bell” and the terms “explosive diarrhea” and “vomiting” have been used together.
• Denver PR professional Abby Hagstrom‘s cat, Bones, briefly shut down the Eisenhower Tunnel when it escaped from her vehicle while returning from Steamboat Springs. Hagstrom realized the cat was missing when she stopped for gas, and the Apple AirTag tracker showed he was in the tunnel on, appropriately enough, one of the tunnel’s catwalks. Bones was safely recovered.
• Spain and Argentina will face off Sunday at Metlife Stadium, rebranded as New York/New Jersey Stadium for FIFA, to determine the winner of the 2026 World Cup, but they may be doing it in the worst air quality in the history of the tournament. Wildfires in Canada are pushing smoke into the Northeast, and New York is among the top-five cities globally for worst air quality today.
• RTD is considering how to make $62 million in cuts to balance its budget, and one of the areas it said it is considering is the 16th Street Shuttle, the single most used bus line in its network with more than 2.3 million riders. Two days later, after an outcry from business leaders and city officials, RTD backed away from that, saying the potential cuts it shared were hypothetical and “just for illustrative purposes.”
• The Western Kentucky football team revoked a player’s scholarship because he took too long to grieve his mother’s death. Adding insult injury to injury, they are also refusing to allow him to transfer to another school to complete his final year of eligibility.
• If you have ever been on the receiving end of Kyle Clark‘s “press release reading music” – mercifully, I have not – you had a bad day. This week, it was the new Front Range passenger rail line “Colorado Connector” (“CoCo” for short) that got the honor. Clark took aim at the flowery language the CoCo team used to describe the newly unveiled brand design for the new rail line.
• Has one of the signs of the apocalypse ever been a job posting before? AI purveyor Anthropic posted multiple jobs this week that seemingly indicate it thinks its technology could hasten the end of the world. The jobs included an “Enforcement Analyst” that “will play a critical role in protecting against the misuse of AI systems for radiological and nuclear harms.” Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has previously downplayed the risk of AI in the past, saying that just because AI could help bad actors create biological weapons, he doesn’t “think biological attacks will necessarily be carried out the instant it becomes widely possible to do so.” He did acknowledge, however, that “added up across millions of people and a few years of time, I think there is a serious risk of a major attack … with casualties potentially in the millions or more.”
• America took a step closer to moving to year-round Daylight Saving Time. But when we tried it before in the 1970s, we didn’t even make it a year before it was repealed.
• Is LinkedIn deleting posts critical of large, financially attractive businesses? Eric Anderson has questions.
• Two Custer County GOP officials railed against the recent cancellation of their local Fourth of July fireworks show, saying the deaths of three firefighters in the days leading up to Independence Day didn’t justify the decision to cancel. Said one of the officials, “Noooo, people are dying! Yeah, that is what a firefighter does: he fights fire. You libtard son-of-bitches don’t even understand what a firefighter does. That’s why he gets paid to put his life on the line to defend you. … We understand some people lost their lives. But you don’t shut life down because of some death. That’s not how this works here in this country. We are not afraid of death. We embrace it.” Neither of the two officials are volunteer firefighters.
• Denver hospitals have seen e-scooter injuries more than double so far this year.
• Hilton Grand Vacations has fired an employee who sent a racist message via social media to Las Vegas Aces basketball player Chelsea Gray. Hilton Grand Vacations announced the firing, saying “The person responsible for posting this information is no longer with the company. His behavior was in violation of multiple company policies and does not reflect our company’s values in any way.”
• It may seem like all the TV stations in Denver have their own news helicopter, but in fact they all split the costs of a single helicopter. That’s right – SkyFox, Copter4, Sky9 and AirTracker7 are just station-specific branding for the same helicopter. That collaboration is at risk, though, as Denver 7 announced it is withdrawing from the partnership and will forego helicopter coverage moving forward.
• NBC fired a security guard after an intruder confronted and screamed racist insults at “Today Third Hour” co-host Craig Melvin on the show’s set.

Who won the week?

• Outdoor gear company Travoca has named Denver-based Big Fish Collective as its agency of record.
• Telemundo‘s KDEN named Xitlaly Ruiz as anchor and multimedia journalist for “Noticias Telemundo Colorado.”
• Boulder Daily Camera sportswriter Brian Howell is leaving the paper. He has not announced where he is headed yet.
• Denver ranks as the fifth-most-fit city in the country. Arlington, Va., Washington, D.C., Minneapolis and Seattle rank ahead of us.
• The Philadelphia Mint beat out the Denver Mint and two others to produce the new $1 coin featuring the image of President Donald Trump.

Yesterday, a panel of journalists and communications experts – 9News’ Kyle Clark, Westword‘s Patty Calhoun, Children’s Hospital Colorado‘s Patrick O’Rourke and Liberty Global‘s Bill Myers – broke down 16 of the past year’s most talked-about crises that were pitted head-to-head in a March Madness-style bracket, and more than 100 members of the audience voted – round by round – to determine a single PR disaster champion. The “winner” – United Healthcare.

Thanks to the panelists and everyone who attended the event.