The City Club of Cleveland is one of the nation’s great free speech forums. A product of the Progressive Era, it was founded in 1912 and is one of the nation’s oldest continuous independent free speech forums, renowned for their tradition of debate and discussion. For more than a hundred years, all of their speakers—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. […]
From Stephen Denny, managing director, Denny Leinberger Strategy, writing in Inc. Magazine: There’s a lot of advice out there about public speaking, and not all of it is great. Having done keynotes and other high stakes presentations for the past two decades in venues from hotel ballrooms to conference centers, boardrooms, the occasional brewery, movie theater, and college lecture […]
By Hennes Communications Q: A reporter wants to interview me, and I don’t want to be identified as the source of the information. What do I do? A: The reporter’s goal is to interview you with no strings attached – everything you say and do can be reported. This is called “on the record” and […]
[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 […]
[by Howard Fencl] When you’re faced with a media interview on a breaking crisis or a tough issue your organization’s working through, media training experts will tell you to anticipate the toughest questions you can imagine. But taking a step further and anticipating the reporter’s approach to covering your issue is a critically important exercise. […]
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, […]
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 […]
Q. What do I do if the media wants to talk to me? A. Start by asking yourself what you think when you read or hear that the subject of a story – particularly a story in which others are critical of the person or the person’s organization – says “no comment” or that the […]