By James G. Robinson, writing for the Columbia Journalism Review: A central irony of the newsroom is that while many journalists’ decisions are made with readers in mind, the audiences for their work often remain unfocused, imagined abstractions, built on long-held assumptions, newsroom folklore, and imperfect inference. This is not particular to journalism. Writing, like […]
By Nora Jacobs, Hennes Communications The recent employee protest at home-goods retailer Wayfair involving furniture sales to a company that will outfit a new migrant detention center in Texas has generated national media attention. It also prompted a discussion with one of our clients who is about to embark on a vulnerability audit with us […]
By Bruce Hennes, CEO, Hennes Communications The scribbled threat on the bathroom mirror. The cryptic email. The whispered voicemail. The strange guy with the backpack. The employee who’s going to be fired next week…will he or she do something harmful to themselves or others? More often than not, we get calls from potential clients seeking […]
From Trish Hall, writing for the New York Times: We’re all writers now. We fling words out into the universe through text, email, Facebook and more. Even people who hate writing have to do it, because you need to text your husband back, write your boss a condolence note and do better on Tinder than […]
By Dan Hill, from Sensory Logic: From U.S. presidents to NFL quarterbacks, I’ve studied their signature facial expressions—looking for the patterns that indicate success. Maybe you weren’t the first choice for the C-suite corner office you now have, but surely you weren’t the 199th overall pick for the job (like the New England Patriot’s Tom Brady). […]
The majority of work referred to Hennes Communications comes from attorneys, who are often “first responders” when bad things happen to good companies and organizations. Subsequently, we’re often retained by the attorney or law firm in order to help assist them in preparation for trial. It’s called “litigation communications” and here’s a great piece on […]
From Thom Fladung, managing partner of Hennes Communications, writing for Smart Business: Watch what happens when a business, organization or news outlet removes a user’s post from a Facebook page, website or comment string. “Censorship!” “You’re violating my free speech rights!” “You’re trashing the First Amendment!” Well, no. None of that has happened. The laws […]
From our friend and colleague, Richard Levick: It took half a year and dozens of interviews with former prosecutors, defense lawyers, the falsely accused, and those who served time and resulted in two series in Forbes and the Corporate Counsel Business Journal. It is soon to be the source of multiple broadcasts and another comprehensive piece in a board […]
By Arthur Solomon, writing for CommPro: We soon will be approaching June 1, the birthday of the death of TV journalism. And Americans who care about truthful, factual, accurate news should still be in mourning. People who grew up during the age of cable news might not know that once upon a time, TV journalism […]
By Charlie Warzel, writing for the New York Times: You can’t see much in the haunting video of Tuesday’s shooting at the STEM School in Highlands Ranch, Colo. — just darkness and an eerie voice repeating a prerecorded warning over a loudspeaker. “Attention please. Lockdown. Lock, lights, out of sight.” Two videos with a combined runtime of 82 seconds […]