Survey says: Stories that rank cities are rank

From party dresses to green burials, underlying motive is to sell you things

My email ranks No. 1 in dumb. And the dumbest of the dumb emails come from marketers who rank cities and states from best to worst in various dumb categories – then pitch them to journalists in the guise of real news.

It’s a cynical marketing tactic to gin up artificial media coverage over some completely meaningless topic – and it’s getting more shameless by the day.

Serious journalists would never dignify these specious pitches by publishing them. … Which means I am really going to hate myself in the morning. Because here’s one now, just in time for Valentine’s Day (and that timing is no accident):

Did you know that Colorado ranks as the ninth-loneliest state? It’s true, because someone said so, and that must make it true. Actually, this remarkable bit of dumb data was scientifically determined by a device-location analysis of all you lonely hearts who have used Google specifically to search for the words “Tinder,” “Bumble” or “Hinge” (all dating apps) on the past three actual Valentine’s Days.

Who knew? Who cares? Well, I do. Because now that I see this list, I have to know how in any multiverse Colorado ranks as a lonelier place to be than,

say … Nebraska. I feel this sudden urge to kiss a stranger just to mess with the algorithm. And you should care, too, because it means someone is monitoring your device activity to track this nonsense (and your every other keystroke).

Now, you might be wondering: What’s in it for a marketing company to pitch a news story on loneliness? If you’re naturally cynical like me, you might think maybe the survey was commissioned by a dating service with a clear underlying motive: To get you to sign up for paid companionship.

But here’s the super fun part: Turns out, this loneliness survey was actually conducted by the gambling website betcolorado.com – which could not care less how lonely you are. Check that: To a gambling site, the lonelier you are, the better. Turns out, the end game here is really to get you to wager a bet. On anything. Believe me, this is big business: Legal sports betting has brought in more than $8 billion since May 2020, according to Colorado’s Division of Gaming. So if an innocuous mass email from a marketing company entices one gullible reporter to post a stupid story about “measurable loneliness,” and that story includes a link citing betcolorado.com as the source, that reporter has: 1. just handed that marketer a big win, 2. made a few bucks for the betting site, and 3. filled readers’ heads with utter nonsense. But, it works. Which may explain why we here at The Denver Gazette receive these pitches every day.

Making this topic even stupider: A competing loneliness survey issued on Jan. 6 by something called “Chamber of Commerce” declared Denver to be just the 27th loneliest city in the U.S., and Fort Collins to be “the city with the fastest increase in male loneliness over the past year.” That story got picked by media outlets around the world from CNBC to the London Daily Mail to ... this one. Turns out, that report was a legit U.S. Census analysis of people living alone, by the numbers. Which its marketers turned into a sexier pitch on the nation’s loneliest cities. (For the record: Living alone and loneliness are not the same thing.)

So how else are we measuring up in the world of dubious rankings? Let’s have a look at the email bag:

• Colorado’s most popular color is red, followed by blue, purple, brown and pink, according to an analysis of Google searches for 22 different colors (excluding black and white!) as well as 25 color-related terms. I have to say, this one had me seeing red. Bronco Orange? Hello? Nowhere to be found. And who’s behind this brain surgery? A website called Pixlr.com, which wants to sell you a photo-editing and animation app.

• Denver ranks 13th among U.S. cities “for online pet-friendly vacation accommodation listings.” Yes, someone checked. Turns out, “pet-friendly vacations are booming,” we are told in the pitch. How do they know? Because the phrase “pet-friendly vacation” is being Googled an average of 4,800 times a month. And who’s selling this narrative? Surprise (not): The American Pet Products Association.

• Here’s a fun one: Colorado ranks only behind Utah as “The Greenest State to Die In.” (Say it with me:

“We’re No. 2 in Greenest States to Die In! We’re No. 2 …” OK, I’ll stop.) The marketers behind this serious enterprise reporting considered two factors: “Emissions” (ewww!) and “Access to Sustainable Burials.” Essentially, we score high in Colorado for our comparatively low preference for fiery cremations, which pump out lots of CO2 emissions. (Oh, that kind of emissions. I get it now.) And who broke this scoop? The Washington Post? 60 Minutes? No, this gem is brought to you by the Pulitzer-winning newsgathering

team at Choice Mutual Insurance Agency – which clearly has a dog in the fight. Or at least a bone.

• Now, about your recent holiday party dress: If you live in Colorado, it was most likely green, according to “research” (their word!) conducted by, go figure, dress-seller karenmillen.com. Thankfully, Colorado was among the majority of states who wisely chose green. Because … blue? Can you even?

I should stipulate here that rankings stories are popular in just about every media outlet, including this one. It’s just that most of those that make it to publication are credibly researched news stories that impart useful information to readers. Like the recent report from Mental Health America that found Colorado has risen from dead last to 45th among states in the prevalence of mental illness and access to treatment. That’s not only news, that’s important news.

Sometimes a legit rankings story can be subjective but informed by expertise. For example, you could rank Colorado’s 14ers strictly by, say, elevation, but when the people at 14ers.com rank our 58 high-altitude hikes by difficulty, that’s far more practical information for readers. Similarly, when the Transportation Security Administration reports that Denver ranked No. 7 among all U.S. airports for firearms discovered in travelers’ carry-on luggage last year, that’s news I want to know about.

Ranking stories have been popular for decades. “Best Party Colleges” … “Worst Drivers” … “Best Cities to Dump a Dead Body.” They’re mostly meaningless fluff but, if you are an editor, they are almost impossible to resist when your home city shows up on the list. Since the first college football poll in 1936, we Americans have had an insatiable urge to fling our index fingers into the air. When you’re No. 1, it’s automatic click-bait to your hometown readers, and that benefits everyone from the media outlet to its advertisers to, yes, the marketer who sent you the email in the first place. Because when a travel website like Expedia randomly declares Manitou Springs as the “third-friendliest city in the nation,” how can you not pass that on to your readers? Even if just typing that sentence implying there is a credible way to determine the relative friendliness of entire metro areas just made my IQ fall 10 points. (No offense to you, Manitou Springs. But everyone knows Old Colorado City is like, 4.73 times friendlier than you are.)

When I returned to the newsroom life last year after a decade-long detour into entrepreneurial journalism, I learned that these days, just about all the news comes directly to your inbox. The daily roundup of discovered dead bodies from the Denver Police Department. Verdicts from courthouses around the state. Emergency road closures. Weather advisories. Alongside hundreds of everyday press releases, story pitches and spam for days.

And, with numbing regularity, a rankings pitch from a marketer. (Stop the presses: Denver is the 14th-geekiest U.S. city!) Can’t blame them for taking advantage of the technology. In the old days, a marketer would have to send that kind of pitch as a letter in the mail that would have little chance of ever of landing in front of an editor.

Today a marketing company with a thorough database can send that pitch to thousands of journalists’ inboxes in one click. Which is why, at my paper, if you don’t clear out your email at least once an hour, it will swallow you whole.

It can wear on you. Last week, when I got a pitch from a company called Lawn Love asking me to write a story that claims Denver is the 46th-best U.S. city for bagel lovers, I kind of wanted to rip my lawn out. The Lawn Love website devotes an entire page to a complete archive of these ridiculous stories, each anchored by the real reason for their digital existence: A colorful box with a handy link to finding lawn care near you. And there it is.

Talk about rank!