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Crisis Comms 101: How the British Civil Aviation Authority Guided Stakeholders Through Thomas Cook Turbulence

  Thomas Cook was a British travel group company.  On September 23, 2019, Thomas Cook went into compulsory liquidation.  Around 21,000 worldwide employees were left without jobs and 600,000 customers were left abroad, triggering the United Kingdom’s largest peacetime repatriation. Thomas Cook’s corporate collapse last month left authorities with an enormous problem. More than 150,000 holidaymakers […]


A Brief History of Television Interviews – and Why Live TV Helps Those Who Lie and Want to Hide

From Michael J. Socolow, Associate Professor, Communication and Journalism, University of Maine, writing for The Conversation: First, it happened on Fox News. Chris Wallace asked White House adviser Stephen Miller about the president’s decision to use private lawyers “to get information from the Ukrainian government rather than go through … agencies of his government.” Miller’s response began, […]


Practicing Law In The Public Spotlight

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 […]


Crisis Management: Communicating a Sudden Leadership Change

[by Howard Fencl, Hennes Communications] Sexual misconduct allegations cause a company to fire its president. The board of a major nonprofit decides its well-entrenched executive director has been “phoning it in” for the past year and shows her the door. A CEO is dismissed after sowing a pervasive culture of fear that touched off an […]


Three Tips for Revamping Your Crisis Management Strategy

By Todd Aberman, writing for PublicRelay A company can build up a great brand reputation one day, only to have an unforeseen PR crisis tarnish its brand the next day. Effective crisis management can not only mitigate the negative impact that such an event causes, but also has the potential to build up a company’s brand reputation […]


The Consequences of ‘Horse Race’ Reporting

By Denise-Marie Ordway, writing for the Harvard Kennedy School Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy When journalists covering elections focus primarily on who’s winning or losing — instead of on policy issues — voters, candidates and the news industry itself suffer, a growing body of research has found. Media scholars have studied so-called […]


Crisis Management FAIL: Michigan State Paying the Price for Their Systemic Failure to Address the Nassar Sex Abuse Accusations

By Nora Jacobs, Hennes Communications On September 5, the U.S. Department of Education announced it was fining Michigan State University $4.5 million for “a systemic failure to protect students from sexual abuse.” The fine is the latest fallout from the Larry Nassar scandal, which has embroiled MSU in lawsuits, a succession of high-profile firings, resignations […]


What’s the Difference Between a Public Relations Firm and a Crisis Communications Firm?

From Stephanie York, JD and VP of Hennes Communications: From Wikipedia: Public relations (PR) is the practice of deliberately managing the spread of information between an individual or an organization (such as a business, government agency, or a nonprofit organization) and the public.  Public relations may include an organization or individual gaining exposure to their […]


Take a Breath: Legal Considerations for Your Communications

From Madelaine C. Lane, writing for the Grand Rapids Business Journal: It’s a story we see play out all too often on the evening news: An organization or one of its employees is hit with a search warrant, subpoena or a civil lawsuit. Before the receptionist, communications director or CEO can turn around, a microphone […]


Dark Side of Communications Turns Darker: Epstein, Twitter and Takeaways for Crisis Response

By Thom Fladung/Hennes Communications Even in this era, when the news barrage can be numbing, the report that Jeffrey Epstein had apparently hanged himself in jail and the immediate flurry of conspiracy theories took a run at qualifying as “shocking.” The least surprising element: Much of it started and played out on Twitter. In an […]


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