Experiencing a Media Smear

We often counsel clients who have been wrongly accused to tell their side and do everything possible to get ahead of the story.  But sometimes, there aren’t any good choices, especially if the client’s most prized possession is his or her integrity.  While we can’t vouch for this man’s integrity, we thought this story was […]

Free Webinar – Getting to the Truth: How to Detect Fake News

Speaker:  Thom Fladung, Managing Partner, Hennes Communications Thursday, October 13th, 2022 | 12:00 – 1:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time (GMT-4) Fake news is not new news. Masters of the art include Benjamin Franklin. But in the digital media era, when information – true and false – travels in seconds, fake news has become a prevalent […]

K-12 New Technologies = New Risks

From our esteemed colleague and friend, attorney David Wolowitz… Just as technology has transformed classroom learning and independent school operations, so too has it opened up areas of risk. Given that schools’ reliance on technology will continue to grow, it’s important that school leaders review their processes to ensure they mitigate risk in these key […]

Inside Fox Sports’ Controversial Hire of Urban Meyer

By Tom Jones for Poynter For the uninitiated, there’s something in the media world known as the Friday news dump. If you have news that you might feel sheepish about announcing, you wait until late on Friday — when everyone is headed out for the weekend — to make your announcement. You put it out […]

Lawyers Should Not Rewrite Crisis Communications

Introduction by Bruce Hennes, Hennes Communications   Hennes Communications was founded in 1989 as a full-service public relations firm.  In 2001, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, we became one of the few firms in North America focused exclusively on crisis management and crisis communications. Since then, we frequently work with attorneys, who tend to be the […]

Crafting the First Statement in Crisis Situations: What To Say and When to Say It

By Nora Jacobs, Hennes Communications   For organizations responding to sudden, catastrophic crisis events, one of the most challenging decisions to make involves determining what to say and when to say it. Wait until all the facts have been gathered and you risk not being part of the critical first news cycle, which often sets […]

Crisis-Response Statements Are Never Like Garanimals

By Hinda Mitchell for PR News Founded in 1972, Garanimals is a clothing line for children. At its outset, Garanimals offered a mix-and-match way of combining kids’ shirts and pants just by matching the tags. Garanimals came to mind after spotting a recent essay that contained recommendations for crafting a PR crisis response statement. It […]

Crisis Communications Strategies for an Always-On Media Environment

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 […]

July 4 Gun Violence Yields Bumbling Responses

By Nicole Schuman for PR News In what continues to be one of the most deadly years for gun violence in America, a usually celebratory day, July 4, turned tragic across multiple cities. A shooter in Highland Park, Ill., a Chicago suburb, opened fire with a high-powered firearm on a crowd watching a parade. The […]