By Thom Fladung/ Hennes Communications How fast is social media at reporting on events – including events that your organization might consider a crisis? Faster than you. Consider a situation involving a school in Westfield, N.Y., that we stumbled upon. Here’s the first paragraph of a story from the Westfield Republican: “Parents need to realize […]
By Bruce Hennes/Hennes Communications With no barriers to entry, every public relations firm in the U.S. now appears to offer “crisis communications.” They don’t. At least, all of those who claim to don’t. Crisis work requires a different – and often counterintuitive – skill set from the traditional practice of public relations. It’s also an art […]
By Howard Fencl/Hennes Communications In a crisis, wading through my Outlook inbox looking for important new information a client must communicate is a monumental challenge when that new nugget is buried in an impossibly long email chain, and the subject line is something like: “RE:RE:RE:RE:RE: Your email.” We evangelize the use of messages in media […]
Attorney Jack Bacevice joined the Cleveland firm Mansour Gavin after years as an Assistant Director of Law for the city of Cleveland. He’s handled numerous high-profile cases and is very familiar with practicing in the court of law while the court of public opinion intently watches. We’ll periodically feature a Q&A with Jack and Hennes […]
By Stephanie York/Hennes Communications Q. We have an emerging issue. When should we contact our attorney? A: When an organization is facing a crisis or an emerging issue that may evolve into a crisis, employees typically start talking about it – especially via email and texts. It’s easy to fire off messages to colleagues, managers […]
From Gail Baker, writing in Higher Education Today, a quick primer in crisis management, suitable for any organization, company or government agency. The day starts like any other. Need to handle a complicated personnel issue, post an enrollment update, and answer budget questions. As you prepare to leave for a meeting, there’s a call from […]
By Bruce Hennes, Hennes Communications If you’re a regular reader of this newsletter, you know we’re constantly encouraging you to have a crisis management/crisis communications plan in-place before something happens. We are also constantly reminding you understand that you only have minutes to respond to a crisis situation; to train and test your team; to […]
[By Bruce Hennes, Hennes Communications] David Wolowitz is an attorney with McLane Middleton, a law firm in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He is also one of the country’s most in-demand experts on sexual misconduct, with a focus on independent schools. We first met David a number of years ago when we served on a panel together. […]
[By Nora Jacobs, Hennes Communications] We are often asked how we interact with a client’s legal team when a crisis strikes an organization. While the traditional view assumes that communications and legal work in constant conflict in the crisis war room, in our experience, these two disciplines can actually complement each other and build […]
[by Howard Fencl, Hennes Communications] There are always raised eyebrows in our media training sessions when we tell participants they are always on the record – that in today’s social media world you’re not only on the record with reporters, you’re on the record whenever you talk about your company at the grocery store, on […]