By Lindsey Bradshaw writing for PR News… Did you know social media actually dates back to the 1970s? Long before the web, the PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations) computer system pioneered online communities with message boards, email, chat rooms and games, laying the foundation for today’s social platforms. It was followed by Bulletin Board Systems, […]
By Nick Hansen, writing for The American Bar Association “If you can see it coming, it’s not a crisis,” said Bruce Hennes, CEO of Hennes Communications, to audience members at his 2024 Bar Leadership Institute workshop “Speaking Out or Strategic Silence? Organizational Approaches to Issuing Public Statements.”Hennes, along with (now former) Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association […]
By Bruce Hennes, Hennes Communications It’s a simple fact: Controversies today are tried in the Court of Public Opinion more often than the Court of Law. News now breaks first on social media, with traditional media sweeping Twitter/X, Facebook and YouTube for leads. Whether your organization is immersed in crisis or dealing with a hot-button […]
By Seth Chalmers, writing for The Stanford Social Innovation Review… “Should we put out a statement?” If you’re a nonprofit communications professional, you’ve heard that question many times, often the day after some major news event. Since the October 7 massacres in Israel and subsequent war in Gaza, many nonprofits have struggled to decide whether […]
By Thom Fladung, Hennes Communications • Understand what the orders mean – and don’t mean • Review policies and procedures now, with your legal counsel involved • Keep communicating – including when you’re not sure what’s next • Take a deep breath The news coming at school administrators and school boards has been fast and […]
By Alison Wood Brooks for HBD Working Knowledge When my fellow researchers and I analyzed 15-minute get-to-know-you conversations among 398 strangers, we found that four dominant question types emerged: introductory, mirror, topic-switching, and follow-up. So how do we distinguish these question types? Introductory questions are what they sound like—“What’s your name?” “How are you?” or […]
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass declined to respond to criticism on Wednesday of the city’s handling of a series of wildfires that have left at least five people dead and thousands of structures burned. Bass was on a diplomatic trip to Ghana as flames tore through the Pacific Palisades and left on Saturday. Here, in […]
By Gabriel De La Rosa for PRNews Public relations is a messy business. Even when you don’t screw up, somehow you do. That is even more true now in the emerging AI era of deepfakes, when an image of your likeness can be used against you, even if it wasn’t really you. Take the example of […]
By Tony Jaques for Crisis Response Journal When the label ‘troubled’ is inserted every time your company name appears, you know you are on a hiding to nothing. That is the reality for a once much-admired and envied giant of the aviation and aerospace industry. And it’s a stark example of how a succession of […]
By Carol Kinsey Goman A recent graduate had just been hired by one of the world’s most prestigious high-tech companies. When I asked her why she was chosen out of the hundreds of candidates vying for that position, she said that it was due to the “sit next to on a bus” test. She went […]