There are scores of reasons why your district can be thrust into the news. Lawsuit…sports controversy…social media threats…active shooter… board-superintendent clash…criminal accusation…discrimination complaints…diversity issues…FERPA or HIPAA violation…fiscal mismanagement…protest… sexual misconduct…student newspaper story…challenging conversations… testing controversy…union grievance/strike… Suddenly, there’s a TV crew in the parking lot, your local newspaper is on Line One and the situation […]
From Mitch Mitchell, writing for Security Magazine… History has taught security teams that crisis situations can happen at any time and more frequently than anyone can anticipate. However, when a crisis does occur, organizations find themselves in a situation where survival is the main focus — the unprecedented disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic being […]
A Crisis Can Occur Anytime & Anywhere In the immediate aftermath of a major incident, such as a mass shooting at a mall, restaurant, school, or faith-based location, the police chief and other first responder agencies will likely be lead spokespersons. But “major incidents” could turn into multi-day or multi-week events. Some of those include […]
From Nora Aufreiter, Celia Huber and Ophelia Usher writing for McKinsey & Co…. The pandemic has been a stark reminder for many organizations that they are insufficiently prepared for crises that could not merely destabilize them but put them out of business. In this episode of the Inside the Strategy Room podcast, our board perspective series looks at […]
By Michael Hickey, writing for Associations Now… At meetings in large spaces or with a designated stage, event speakers might have the luxury of taking off their face coverings when they’re presenting. But depending on the space, the speaker, and the public health situation, presenters might need to pull off an engaging talk with only […]
By Gina Rubel, writing for Attorney at Work… I’ve been thinking about what it means to lead a company through crises and how each crisis affects law firm leaders. A few years ago, I believed I had handled just about every type of crisis conceivable. How wrong I was. In recent years, we have dealt […]
Thom Fladung, Hennes Communications Spotify, the streaming service that provides music and podcasts to hundreds of millions of users, has lately been providing a different service: A guide to mishandling a reputational crisis. For almost a month now, Spotify has lurched from one thorny situation to another centered on the popular “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast, […]
By Seth Arenstein, PR News… PR pros hope there are few evenings like last night (Jan. 24). Relying on anonymous sources, CNN’s Oliver Darcy reported that CBS approached erstwhile MSNBC and NBC star Brian Williams with a job offer. Twice Williams was pitched on anchoring “The CBS Evening News.” Rehabilitated on MSNBC’s “11th Hour,” Williams left that post last month. Officially […]
By Bruce Hennes, Hennes Communications If you’ve ever attended one of our seminars on crisis communications, we often talk about the power of apology. Real apologies; apologies that are authentic and true; apologies without qualification or the use of “weasel words” (e.g. “mistakes were made”). Perhaps no industry does apology better AND worse than the […]
Do you remember the 2009 swine flu pandemic, also referred to by the media as the H1N1 flu? I remember two things quite distinctly: As this flu crossed borders, infecting 700 million to 1.4 billion people — or 11 to 21 percent of the global population of 6.8 billion at the time — thankfully, the […]
