As for Perfect Murder, a planned Friday, January 7, shoot in Boulder was canceled largely because staffers and supporters of the Boulder Weekly threatened to disrupt filming by blowing horns, whistles and kazoos while the cameras rolled (filler footage of DIA was captured instead). But the Associated Press reported that a Saturday shoot was completed sans protest, suggesting that the alleged indignation of Boulderites melted at the starry sight of the man who would be John Ramsey, Deliverance banjo picker Ronny Cox. This response was appropriate considering that the Weekly's approach to preventing the supposed exploitation of a dead child pretty much boiled down to anti-free-speech boosterism that played right into the hands of chamber of commerce sorts worried that Boulder's image would be further besmirched. How alternative.
Besides, kazoo-toodlers, if there's tragedy, they will come. Right now there are more national news outfits with a regular presence in the Denver area than at any time in recent memory, including Time, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, NPR and many more -- and CNN's recent announcement that it will start up a bureau here in the near future means more are on the way. In addition, USA Today is expanding the bureau it inaugurated in 1997: Tom Kenworthy, formerly of the Washington Post, is set to arrive in late February or early March, with an as-yet-unnamed sports specialist to follow around mid-year. Patrick O'Driscoll, a onetime Denver Post employee who's been holding down the USA Today fort by himself until now, says his publication's expansion is part of a nationwide strategy fueled by circulation gains (with over 2.2 million readers, it has passed the Wall Street Journal to became America's most popular newspaper). He concedes, though, that the volume of headlines coming out of Colorado has probably influenced many media bosses. "Even if you don't include Columbine and JonBenét and the Oklahoma City bombing trial and Matt Shepard, this is a newsmaking area around here, and most news organizations recognize that," he points out. "As an editor on the East Coast, you can't help but say, 'Denver? Oh, yeah, there seems to be lots of stuff going on in that region.'"
Brett Amole
Sly fox: Bill Dallman will head the news operations at Channel 31, Denver's Fox affiliate.
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You're at the center of the universe, my friends. Whether you like it or not.
The art of headlining took some shots on Sunday, January 9. Several anecdotes in the Scene section of the Denver Post appeared under the gripping banner "A Fairly Interesting Factoid About Your Bathtub," which was basically a way of saying, "We were sort of bored by this article. Our advice is to move on to the next one." Meanwhile, inside the sports section of the Rocky Mountain News, a Reggie Rivers column headlined "Upon Further Review, Indy Deserves a Title" ran right next to a Bob Kravitz compendium labeled "Upon Further Review, Instant Replay Can't Get It Right." Upon further review, maybe someone at the News should make sure that variations on the same damn headline idea aren't juxtaposed in a single edition.
Then again, the headline of this column has a definite millennial feel even though the new millennium doesn't start until next year. So who are we to talk?
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