News

Westword writers and editors took home prizes in a string of national, regional and local writing contests this spring. The International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors announced last week that Westword editor Patricia Calhoun has received the Golden Quill Award, presented annually to the country’s best opinion writer. Calhoun won…

Court and Spark Karen Bowers’s article on Peter Schmitz, “I Know Nothing,” in the May 30 edition, gave fascinating insight into a world almost too bizarre to be true. Apparently, truth is really stranger than fiction. So Schmitz’s grandfather, Otto KranzbYhler, who defended war criminals at Nuremberg, thought the trial…

You think the Avalanche won big Monday night? The real game begins when the triumphant hockey team’s owner, Ascent Entertainment Group, tries to have its cake and ice it, too, by freezing out any objections to its revamped plans for the Pepsi Center. But if this city’s track record is…

On the practice fields at Westminster City Park, as Denver’s newest pro sports team–the Colorado Rapids–runs through a few hours of drills quietly and with great discipline, one is struck by something amazing. These guys seem like ordinary people. There’s no doubt the players on the field are superb athletes,…

The spate of sexual-harassment controversies on the Boulder campus may have tarnished the University of Colorado’s reputation, but there’s still one area of endeavor in which CU leads the pack. When it comes to bureaucratic flimflam in response to requests for public information, nobody does it better. By state law,…

Jennifer Miller had put up with all she was going to take. An employee of the University of Colorado for almost thirty years, she’d risen from the ranks of the typing pool to a high-profile, $42,000-a-year job on the administrative support staff. But they couldn’t pay her enough to turn…

The Denver Metropolitan Major League Baseball Stadium District is a few bricks shy of a load–and of a promise. After the stadium district took apart a historic gas station brick by brick, it was supposed to painstakingly rebuild the structure outside Coors Field as part of a salute to the…

Billy Mullins has found faith. “The justice system of this great city has finally realized,” he begins, “that it was a bunch of fuckin’ lies conjured up about us.” Actually, he’s still a little bitter. Recently, after some deliberation, the city’s justice system concluded that Mullins did not commit several…

When Denver Public Schools began forced busing to desegregate the city’s schools just over two decades ago, the reaction of many white parents was swift: They left. In 1974 nearly 54 percent of the Denver student body was white. By late last year, when the district was released from federal…

What the puck? In honor of the Stanley Cup, the Rocky Mountain News has dubbed its sports section the Hockey Mountain News–but Hokey might be more appropriate. It certainly describes Saturday’s column by Rockies first baseman Andres Galarraga, who used his weekly space not to discuss batting averages, or baseball,…

The sexual-harassment suit against US West that arose out of former US West employee Robert Harlan’s murder trial has taken a bizarre turn in U.S. District Court. In the past three months, many of the case’s numerous plaintiffs have struggled to find new legal representation because of the revelation that…

Mark Her Words I salute Patricia Calhoun for her May 16 “Razin’ in the Sun,” about losing Zeckendorf. At least someone is watching–and writing about–what’s literally going down here. Jody Ross Denver In his May 30 letter, Tyler Gibbs chides Patricia Calhoun for “perpetuating the suspicion that DURA and the…

I’m doing a good job of being disappearing,” LoDo artist Jorg “Peter” Schmitz says in lilting, German-accented English. He sounds proud of the accomplishment, and perhaps he should be. Schmitz is the man of the hour, the person whom everyone–including members of a Denver grand jury–wants to talk to. And…

On the blue-dark evening of May 13, 1995, Craig Williams stood on the porch of the single-story ranch house he’d built twenty years ago. To the south, east and north, his wheatfields promised a bountiful year; the stalks were thigh-high already, their tips clustered tightly with beads of grain. As…

Senator Hank Brown’s selection of Greeley attorney Walker Miller to fill a federal judgeship in Denver won’t surprise those who know that the men’s personal relationship extends back to their college days in 1957. But the senator may well owe Miller more than just a debt of friendship. Miller was…

Last week Jet Aspen, the start-up airline that was to ferry powder-hungry passengers from Los Angeles and other cities to Aspen, Telluride and Montrose, filed for protection from its creditors under Chapter 11 federal bankruptcy laws. Despite publicity and millions of dollars it raised, the Virginia-based company never got off…

A few weeks ago, about three hundred Denverites lined up to attend the world premiere of a new movie at the refurbished Oriental Theatre in northwest Denver. It was a gala event for the 650-seat theater: Limousines pulled up and unloaded gents in tuxedos and ladies in gowns. “I’ve been…

A wing and a prayer: Guess we can forgive Denver airport officials if they felt a chill run down their spines after the May 11 crash of a ValuJet DC-9 in the Florida Everglades. It wasn’t so long ago, after all, that DIA honchos were falling all over themselves trying…

The most bitter newspaper war in Denver right now is between two papers most people have never heard of. The dispute pits the publisher against the former editor of the Women’s Business News, a biweekly paper that has offered profiles of local businesswomen and articles on workplace issues for the…