Speaker 1: You know, if you've listened to the show this week
Speaker 1: and before I went out for my little adventure and surgery,
Speaker 1: you heard me talking about a ridiculous and I mean
Speaker 1: ridiculous kerfuffle that was created by the Denver Post. The
Speaker 1: Denver Post, for reasons which no one is actually clear about,
Speaker 1: decided that they were going to get to the bottom
Speaker 1: of a social media account called at Do Better Denver.
Speaker 1: And what they do is they post videos of the
Speaker 1: reality of Denver, and obviously that has made them very
Speaker 1: unpopular to the politicians running around city hall screaming everything
Speaker 1: is awesome. So the Denver Posts set about finding out
Speaker 1: who was behind at Do Better Denver and through a
Speaker 1: CORE request about core request, settled on three people as
Speaker 1: being the masterminds behind this social media account. The problem
Speaker 1: is they are not the masterminds. They were merely contributors
Speaker 1: who either sent video or did a cor request and
Speaker 1: then forwarded that on to the master mind behind that
Speaker 1: do Better Denver, who still shall remain nameless because the
Speaker 1: Denver Post was unable to figure out who it was,
Speaker 1: which I think is hilarious. By the way, nothing says
Speaker 1: crack investigative skills more than that.
Speaker 2: But that's neither here nor there.
Speaker 1: Joining me today is one of the women that was
Speaker 1: outed in this article as being behind or a contributor
Speaker 1: to at Do Better Denver.
Speaker 2: Jill Osa, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Heymany Thanks so much for having me on today.
Speaker 1: So you and I have spoken pretty extensively about this,
Speaker 1: and as a non media person, what happened to you
Speaker 1: had to feel very shocking, but as a media person,
Speaker 1: I was surprised by none of it. So I want
Speaker 1: to kind of start at the beginning and let's go
Speaker 1: to the reasons behind your participation in any way, shape
Speaker 1: or form with that Do Better Denver. How did that
Speaker 1: all transpire? How did that come about?
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks so much for letting me get my story
Speaker 4: out there and my why behind it. In August twenty
Speaker 4: twenty three, I received a text message from my tenant
Speaker 4: at the time letting me know that Mike Johnston, who
Speaker 4: I didn't even know who that was at that point,
Speaker 4: didn't know that he was the mayor of Denver, was
Speaker 4: starting a new initiative called the House one thousand Initiative,
Speaker 4: and his goal was to help house one thousand people
Speaker 4: who were experiencing homelessness by the end of twenty twenty three,
Speaker 4: and the message went on to say one of those
Speaker 4: sites where they are going to be housed would be
Speaker 4: the property that shared a single that shared a fence
Speaker 4: line with my single family rental.
Speaker 3: Home in Denver. And you can.
Speaker 4: Imagine how shocked I was to find this out. So
Speaker 4: I started digging, doing a little research.
Speaker 3: Is this legal?
Speaker 4: What is zoning entail for this? And it was still
Speaker 4: unclear to me. So my husband and I and our
Speaker 4: kids flew to Denver and we were there for a
Speaker 4: number of weeks, going to the town halls about the
Speaker 4: micro communities and the shelters and trying to meet with
Speaker 4: Mayor Johnston and his administration. But we were met with
Speaker 4: gaslighting and deceit, and we were not getting the answers
Speaker 4: that we were getting, And so I turned to Colora,
Speaker 4: Colorado Open Records Requests to try to understand how these
Speaker 4: sites were chosen, why the ones that went out ended
Speaker 4: up being the final list, and just the zoning details
Speaker 4: behind it.
Speaker 3: And through that I believe.
Speaker 4: Over the last two years, I've submitted about fifty core
Speaker 4: requests in total, and twelve of those requests I forwarded
Speaker 4: on to do better Denver and other news outlets because
Speaker 4: they contained information that I thought was important and that
Speaker 4: the community deserve to know about.
Speaker 2: So let me ask you one question.
Speaker 1: Because you've got a rental property in Denver, but everybody's like,
Speaker 1: you don't even live.
Speaker 2: Here, why do you care?
Speaker 1: But you were, actually you that house used to be
Speaker 1: your house, right, I mean that you lived in.
Speaker 3: Correct, and I was.
Speaker 4: My husband and I were both born and raised in
Speaker 4: Colorado in the suburbs, and after college, purchased a home
Speaker 4: in Denver lived there until I married my husband, at
Speaker 4: which point we moved away. But Colorado is still home
Speaker 4: to me. If you ask me where home is, that's
Speaker 4: my answer. And we hope to get back there someday.
Speaker 3: And so it was, it's been.
Speaker 4: Heartbreaking to see what has happened to Denver and to
Speaker 4: the place that we do call home.
Speaker 1: So what happened to the information that you forwarded? You
Speaker 1: forded to do Better Denver and you forwarded to other
Speaker 1: news outlets.
Speaker 2: What happened?
Speaker 4: Some of those requests were posted on to Better Denver's
Speaker 4: Instagram page and possibly your Twitter page.
Speaker 3: Quite honestly, I don't do Twitter.
Speaker 4: I only logged into my Twitter to post my public statement.
Speaker 3: But other than that Twitter's not my thing.
Speaker 4: And to my knowledge, many of the premise reports, which
Speaker 4: are nine to one to one call logs that I
Speaker 4: pulled of the very shelters and permanent supportive housing locations
Speaker 4: in micro commun unities in Denver were shared pretty publicly,
Speaker 4: which I can't claim full credit for this, but Brian
Speaker 4: Moss actually ended up doing a story on the call
Speaker 4: logues to the shelters and the micro communities, and so yeah,
Speaker 4: they were posted on Do Better Denver. It's unclear if
Speaker 4: they one hundred percent contributed to news stories or if
Speaker 4: they pulled their own premise reports to have.
Speaker 3: More to date information.
Speaker 4: Right, this story was about a month and a half
Speaker 4: after I pulled all the premise reports and they went
Speaker 4: out to a bunch of people.
Speaker 2: It's it's hard.
Speaker 1: It's hard to deny the impact that Do Better Denver
Speaker 1: has had. I mean, I know I have shared stories
Speaker 1: that I saw there first, So I do think it
Speaker 1: is within the possibility of reason that you're doing that
Speaker 1: and it being published on do Better Denver, and I
Speaker 1: actually shared some of those callogues on my blog at
Speaker 1: one point. I do think that that kind of stuff
Speaker 1: does inspire investigative journalism. By some of the better journalists
Speaker 1: in the area. So that's why I think Do Better
Speaker 1: Denver is important. So you got caught up in this
Speaker 1: and you are, you know, minding your own beeswax, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden you get a phone call. Tell
Speaker 1: me about that phone call with a reporter from the
Speaker 1: Denver Post.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so last can you hold Jill? I got to
Speaker 2: take a break.
Speaker 1: I just realized what time it is that we're in
Speaker 1: the third hour, So hold on, Can you hold on
Speaker 1: through a break for me? Okay, hang on, We'll be
Speaker 1: right back with Jill Osa for the other side of
Speaker 1: the Denver Post expose story. We're doing that next. Jill
Speaker 1: Osa one of the women that was quote outed by
Speaker 1: the Denver Post in They're incredibly whitey but they're a
Speaker 1: journalist article about the origins of a social media account
Speaker 1: called at do Better Denver. Jill, I want to know
Speaker 1: what that conversation went like when the reporter calls you
Speaker 1: and says, hey, we.
Speaker 2: Know it's you or whatever. How did that all pan out?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So about two weeks ago, Shelly Bradbury called me
Speaker 4: on my cell phone and once she called, the doorbell
Speaker 4: actually rang, and I had a contractor showing up at
Speaker 4: my house, and so I said.
Speaker 3: Can I call you back?
Speaker 4: And she said, I'm I'm this is in reference to
Speaker 4: do Better Denver in the account and just.
Speaker 3: So you know, I'm running this story regardless.
Speaker 4: And I said, okay, I'll call you back because I
Speaker 4: wanted to know why I'm not do Better Denver and
Speaker 4: didn't know why my name would be associated with her
Speaker 4: story about do Better Denver And so fast forward an hour.
Speaker 4: I call her back and asked her what her article
Speaker 4: was about. She said, I'm writing about who do Better
Speaker 4: Denver Is? And I started questioning, what do you mean
Speaker 4: You're writing about who do Better?
Speaker 3: Denver Is? Like, I'm not do Better.
Speaker 4: Denver, So I don't really understand what you're going to
Speaker 4: be writing. So what is your piece about? And she said,
Speaker 4: I told you it's about who do Better Denver is?
Speaker 1: You so tell you like you were in a circular conversation,
Speaker 1: like you kept saying I'm not doing Better And she's like,
Speaker 1: I'm writing about who do Vetter Denver Is and you're
Speaker 1: in the article. I mean, did it just stop stop
Speaker 1: making sense right away?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: It didn't make sense from the get go.
Speaker 4: I think when she called me there was a narrative
Speaker 4: that she wanted to have in her piece and write about,
Speaker 4: and it didn't really matter what I said.
Speaker 3: To try and tell her otherwise.
Speaker 4: So she began asking me questions about the core requests
Speaker 4: that I conducted, and why in the do Better Denver
Speaker 4: posts it said we or we obtained core request records?
Speaker 4: And I said, because do Better Denver always talks in
Speaker 4: a collective weed because the account is crowdsourced information. And
Speaker 4: so I said, there's one administrator. I don't know who
Speaker 4: she is. I couldn't pick her out of a lineup.
Speaker 4: She's never given me her name, and I'm thankful for
Speaker 4: that because of situations like that. And if that person
Speaker 4: chooses to remain.
Speaker 3: Anonymous, that is their right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And so she just kept coming back to well,
Speaker 4: why does it say we, why.
Speaker 3: Does it say administrators?
Speaker 4: And I said, you're going to have to ask the
Speaker 4: actual person that those are questions I can't answer for
Speaker 4: you because I don't write any of the content. I
Speaker 4: merely forwarded on some core requests that I thought were interesting,
Speaker 4: and she chose to publish them. I never thought I
Speaker 4: would hide behind a CORP request. I never thought my.
Speaker 3: Name was secret. They're open records, and so.
Speaker 4: You know, with that comes my name being potentially public
Speaker 4: from it.
Speaker 3: But I never ever worried.
Speaker 4: About that because I'm not the account holder and I
Speaker 4: don't write the content for the account, and I have
Speaker 4: never had any privileges on the account.
Speaker 1: You you have some core requests in an ex post
Speaker 1: that I shared on my blog today. Why did you
Speaker 1: feel it was important to share the stuff that you
Speaker 1: shared on that post?
Speaker 3: Was that the one relating to Denver and your dining room?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: Okay, so that was actually the first poor.
Speaker 4: Request that I shared with do better Denver. I did
Speaker 4: that on my own because my community was fighting against
Speaker 4: the yo micro community, and so when the Yale micro
Speaker 4: community was taken off the table, and even before it
Speaker 4: was taken off the table, I felt that it was
Speaker 4: important to work with the other individuals across the city
Speaker 4: who were faced with the vaccame thing that I was
Speaker 4: and share the information that I had and also helped
Speaker 4: them fight against what was happening in their neighborhood. And
Speaker 4: so one particular neighborhood, it was the Birch neighborhood, which
Speaker 4: is in Virginia Village.
Speaker 3: They were also set.
Speaker 4: To have a micro community in their neighborhood backing up
Speaker 4: to single family homes, which I felt was entirely inappropriate,
Speaker 4: because essentially, we're moving the problems that we see in
Speaker 4: encampments into these tiny home communities or into shelters. And
Speaker 4: I absolutely believe that something needed to be done in Denver.
Speaker 4: I just didn't think that this was the appropriate answer
Speaker 4: to that, right. And I don't know that I have
Speaker 4: the answer, but I just knew that this wasn't what
Speaker 4: I thought was appropriate. And so the core requests that
Speaker 4: you shared and saw Mandy, and which had also been
Speaker 4: shared by do Better Denver, was about an initiative that
Speaker 4: the mayor's office decided to call Denver in your dining room.
Speaker 4: And that was a group of people, many of which
Speaker 4: you didn't live near each of the sites, that they
Speaker 4: were going to bring together in somebody's dining room. And
Speaker 4: I don't know if their objective was to try to
Speaker 4: convince the people near the.
Speaker 3: Site that it was a good idea or what their
Speaker 3: plan was there, but they tried to frame it in a.
Speaker 4: Way of, oh, you get a meet with other people
Speaker 4: in the mayor's office in this exclusive event, right, And
Speaker 4: to me, that's not appropriate if you're a mayre of
Speaker 4: transparency and honesty.
Speaker 3: All of these conversations should be out in the open.
Speaker 4: They shouldn't be happening in somebody's dining room with people
Speaker 4: who don't live that close to the site, with people
Speaker 4: like the director of Saint Francis being invited and a
Speaker 4: professor from CU Boulder who doesn't even live in Denver.
Speaker 4: It just wasn't appropriate, and so I shared it and
Speaker 4: they didn't bec see the invite list.
Speaker 3: The Mayor's office didn't. That's fair game to in most
Speaker 3: people's email.
Speaker 2: So Jim, let me let me. We're almost out of time.
Speaker 2: I want to ask you two questions.
Speaker 1: The first is how much of your conversation with Shelley
Speaker 1: Bradbury was actually accurately represented in that news story?
Speaker 3: Great question.
Speaker 4: I would say the majority of the conversation was not
Speaker 4: represented in that news story. I gave her my why,
Speaker 4: which was related to the micro community site by our
Speaker 4: rental house. She did not share a single word of
Speaker 4: that in there. I also asked Shelley not to share
Speaker 4: our business information, which she made very clear to me,
Speaker 4: and the phone call that she knew how much we
Speaker 4: bought our house score and all those details that she did.
Speaker 4: In her article, she misconstrued my words and said I
Speaker 4: do research and made it sound like I do research
Speaker 4: for the count Really, I said I do.
Speaker 3: I do research because I like doing research. It's fun.
Speaker 4: It's really important that we learn this stuff ourselves and
Speaker 4: not just rely on what we hear in the media,
Speaker 4: and so she made it sound like I'm the researcher
Speaker 4: for y I'm.
Speaker 2: Not shocked by any of this, Jill.
Speaker 1: I you know, I do think that the Mayor's office
Speaker 1: has its fingerprints all over this story, and I hope
Speaker 1: that us continuing to talk about it and have these
Speaker 1: conversations makes them more reluctant to try and do it again,
Speaker 1: because it's just becoming really patently obvious that do Better
Speaker 1: Denvers over the target and doing a great job in
Speaker 1: really exposing the things that the Mayor's office would rather
Speaker 1: us not know about and not talk about and not see.
Speaker 1: So I, for one, I have your back, Chill, I
Speaker 1: have do Better Denvers back. We are all do Better Denver,
Speaker 1: and I hope that the website can do or I
Speaker 1: hope this social media account continues to do exactly what
Speaker 1: it's doing, because we cannot fix what we do not name,
Speaker 1: and that's all we're doing here.
Speaker 2: Jill, I appreciate your time today, Thanks so much.
Speaker 3: Mandy