May 1, 2021
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Landmark Case May Dictate How Far School Districts Can Go in Disciplining Student Speech Online
By Nora Jacobs, Hennes Communications
A Pennsylvania student’s decision to express her frustration about being passed over for promotion on the cheerleading squad will mark the U.S. Supreme Court’s first review of the limits of free speech for students in the age of social media. In a nutshell, the case raises the critical question of how much control school districts have over student speech in an age when more and more of what students say originates on their smart phones – away from campus and outside the normal school day.
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Hey! Wait a Minute Debuts at CMBA
By Bruce Hennes, Hennes Communications
Recently, the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association kicked-off a new series of one-minute videos titled Hey! Wait a Minute. Bruce Hennes, a longtime member of the bar association's board, was asked to provide a timely video, which you can check out here. And speaking about this bar association, we are sometimes asked by smaller companies, small law firms and solo entrepreneurs for assistance with their social media marketing, graphic design, video shoots and live-streamed events. Today we bring to your attention Studio at the Bar. The CMBA created this in-house agency to handle a variety of these services, at a competitive price, available to non-attorneys and non-members of the bar association.
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Guest Column - Peter Sandman
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Lawyers & Outrage Management – Part #1
Once again, we highlight the work of Dr. Peter Sandman, one of the country’s preeminent experts on the subject of risk communications. We'll be serializing his piece over the next three issues. Today, Dr. Sandman asks why do attorneys usually dislike outrage management?
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The Slander Industry
At first glance, the websites appear amateurish. They have names like BadGirlReports.date, BustedCheaters.com and WorstHomeWrecker.com. Photos are badly cropped. Grammar and spelling are afterthoughts. They are clunky and text-heavy, as if they’re intended to be read by machines, not humans. But do not underestimate their power. When someone attacks you on these so-called gripe sites, the results can be devastating.
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As Disney is Criticized for ‘Wokeness,’ Some PR Pros Like New Direction
In an opinion column for the Orlando Sentinel titled “I love Disney World, but wokeness is ruining the experience,” Jonathan VanBoskerck expresses his frustration with the theme park. Newly relaxed policies around employee dress and changes to rides like Splash Mountain, VanBoskerck claims, show Disney has taken a politically motivated “woke scalpel” to the park. These moves, he writes, ruin the immersive atmosphere VanBoskerck has long treasured.
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Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community – Office of the Director of National Intelligence
Next to Warren Buffett’s annual letter to stockholders, one of the most eagerly anticipated document every year is the Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community. If you work for a smaller organization, you may not find this report to be extremely relevant. However, for larger organizations, one thought: The perils included in this report have the potential to greatly impact the delivery of your services and/or the fulfillment of your mission.
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Misinformation, Disinformation and Hoaxes: What’s the Difference?
Sorting through the vast amount of information created and shared online is challenging, even for the experts. Just talking about this ever-shifting landscape is confusing, with terms like “misinformation,” “disinformation” and “hoax” getting mixed up with buzzwords like “fake news.”
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Our New Seminars
Social Media and the Courts: A New Frontier
There have been more “trials of the century” than we have had centuries. This seminar explores why trials have been big news for decades, but also how profoundly coverage of those trials has changed with the digital revolution in communications - and what lawyers need to know about it. Topics include: a brief history of high-profile media coverage of trials – and the sudden, recent change in how the coverage works; how and why social media are now crucial for journalists and why you must understand “iterative reporting”; social media’s impact on jurors and court rulings; the scarcity of research on how social media and digital journalism impact witnesses and trials overall; pros and cons of social media and digital journalism in trial coverage.
Getting to the Truth: How to Detect Fake News
Fake news is not new news. But in the digital media era, when information – true and false – travels in seconds, fake news has become a prevalent challenge in society. This seminar delves into the history of fake news, explores how we are living through a second coming of Yellow Journalism and provides practical tips for how to recognize fake news – and avoid spreading it.
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Blunt Talk
Social media has dramatically changed the playing field in terms of crisis communications - and any company that does not effectively use social media to take the pulse of its constituents on a constant basis, and know how to communicate with them in a crisis, is breaching its fiduciary responsibilities to its stakeholders.
Steven Fink
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Our New Seminars
Crisis Communications For Educators Amid a Pandemic of Crises
The echo chamber of social media. A tense, politically charged national landscape. And the Covid- 19
pandemic. Learn how to help protect your school’s reputation in one of the most challenging communications atmospheres imaginable.
Crisis Communications and Your School in the Social Media Era
Social media is now where your school’s reputation, earned over hard years of accomplishment, can be shattered in minutes. Learn best practices for effective crisis management on social media, including applying the fundamentals of effective crisis communications; using social media before the crisis; threat assessment and response; leveraging social media to your advantage; and specific action steps to help protect your reputation.
Crisis Communications and Social Media for Public Officials
For elected and public officials, social media represents special challenges – and special opportunities. Accessibility, information-sharing and gauging public interest are easier and more convenient than ever before. As are the opportunities to criticize, organize opposition and spread misinformation. And when a crisis hits, it will play out on social media. This seminar will help participants understand the influence of social media – and how it’s only going to grow. How public officials can use social media to the benefit of their organizations and constituents. And you’ll explore how to apply the best practices of effective crisis management on social media in a public setting.
For information about these new seminars, contact Thom Fladung, managing partner, Hennes Communications at 216-321-7774
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Attention School Board Members,
Superintendents & Attorneys
The Ohio School Boards Association (OSBA) has entered into a strategic partnership with Hennes Communications to provide crisis management and communications services to public school systems throughout the state of Ohio facing sudden challenges to their organizations’ reputations and operations. With this partnership, OSBA member school leaders have access
365 days a year to expert crisis communications professionals.
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Lots of PR Firms Sell Their Crisis Work –
Let The Buyer Beware
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 form where more often than not we’re helping clients figure out not just what to say, but what to do, which isn’t something learned from a book.
Business advisers increasingly understand that the Court of Public Opinion is often as important, if not more so, than the Court of Law, especially with more than 95% of civil cases never going to trial, according to most estimates. And that approach increases among business advisers who understand their clients’ business models and want to offer holistic advice, rather than serving in a narrower or even transactional capacity.
If you have a crisis on your hands or an issue looming and you need communications help, the best questions can get you to the best answer:
- Can the communications or PR firm share a list of named clients involving crisis communications or issues management?
- Can you get a list of case studies that describe, in some detail, what the firm did for clients facing a similar situation to yours?
- Ask for the firm’s experience with crisis situations involving social media. Today, reputations built over years can be shattered in minutes on Facebook or Twitter.
- Ask for specifically who you’ll be working with on a day-to-day basis, their experience and examples of similar situations they’ve worked on.
- Ask if the firm writes crisis communication plans and what goes into those plans. Even if you don’t need a plan right now – or don’t have time to build one – you’ll learn how deeply the firm is immersed in crisis communications.
- Ask what kind of training the firm provides.
- And, perhaps, the most important question: What percentage of the firm’s overall work would be considered “crisis” work? If the answer is 10%, 20% – even 50% – think about whether you want communications about your crisis in the hands of a firm doing something else half the time or more.
Finally, remember: you can’t use communications to “spin” your way out of a crisis. That’s Hollywood. In the real world, you’ll get called on it and your crisis will get worse.
Our best advice: don’t hire a firm that tries to spin its own story.
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No one trains clients for high-stakes situations better than Hennes Communications. We can teach you how to communicate with power, mastering even the toughest interview, speech or presentation.
Call or email us today and ask us about crisis, media, spokesperson and presentation training/coaching for you, your top executives and managers.
Remember, it's usually not what you say, but how you say it. Never again go into a media interview unprepared or go before a hostile audience uncoached.
As the coronavirus situation begins to abate, we now offer this training in-person on a select basis or via Zoom and other video platforms. Please call for details
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5/5 Youngstown Safety Council
5/10 Fairlawn Area Chamber of Comm.
5/11 Ohio State Bar Association
5/12 Erie County Safety Council
5/12 LeadingAge - Oregon
5/19 LeadingAge Colorado
5/20 CPA Firm Management Association
6/1 Beaches Energy
6/10 Lancaster Bar Association
6/16 Knox County Safety Council
6/16 Lorain County Safety Council
6/18 Cleveland State University
6/29 Ohio Assisted Living Association
7/20 Southern Ohio Safety Council
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8/6 LeadingAge Ohio
9/22 Fire & Emergency Manufacturers
& Services Association (Tampa)
10/19 Winding Riv. Mg. Partner Bootcamp
10/24 American Public Power Association
11/2 Winding Riv. Mg. Partner Bootcamp
12/7 Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Assoc.
12/15 Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Assoc.
12/15 Society of Financial Services Prof's
If you'd like to bring us in to speak at a conference or to your organization, either virtually or in-person, perhaps for your practice group, as a value-add for your existing clients or as a new business development event, please give Bruce Hennes a call at 216-321-7774.
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Hennes Communications
You have a situation.
We have a strategy.
Because the Court of Public Opinion is always in session.
www.crisiscommunications.com
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The Hennes Communications Team
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