Grappling with Social Media
From Thom Fladung, managing partner of Hennes Communications, writing for Smart Business: Watch what happens when a business, organization or news outlet removes a user’s post from a Facebook page, website or comment string. “Censorship!” “You’re violating my free speech rights!” “You’re trashing the First Amendment!” Well, no. None of that has happened. The laws […]
Criminalizing the Boardroom: A Communications Guidebook for Prosecutorial Targets
From our friend and colleague, Richard Levick: It took half a year and dozens of interviews with former prosecutors, defense lawyers, the falsely accused, and those who served time and resulted in two series in Forbes and the Corporate Counsel Business Journal. It is soon to be the source of multiple broadcasts and another comprehensive piece in a board […]
The Day TV Journalism Died
By Arthur Solomon, writing for CommPro: We soon will be approaching June 1, the birthday of the death of TV journalism. And Americans who care about truthful, factual, accurate news should still be in mourning. People who grew up during the age of cable news might not know that once upon a time, TV journalism […]
Save the Recordings of School Shootings
By Charlie Warzel, writing for the New York Times: You can’t see much in the haunting video of Tuesday’s shooting at the STEM School in Highlands Ranch, Colo. — just darkness and an eerie voice repeating a prerecorded warning over a loudspeaker. “Attention please. Lockdown. Lock, lights, out of sight.” Two videos with a combined runtime of 82 seconds […]
What To Do if There’s a Harvey Weinstein in Your Ranks
From Insurance Business Magazine, with quotes from Thom Fladung, (now) managing partner of Hennes Communications: First there was Harvey Weinstein. We were horrified, but we’d seen things play out like this occasionally before, like with Bill Cosby or Clarence Thomas. But then there was Kevin Spacey. And Jeffrey Tambor, Louis CK, US Senator Al Franken, […]
Want A Good Answer Amid A Crisis? Know The Question Before It’s Asked
By Thom Fladung/Hennes Communications The Q&A session is a staple of leadership, whether those questions come at you in employee meetings, community forums or in an interview with a journalist. It can be challenging in any setting. But doing a Q&A amid a crisis or serious issue your company or organization is facing ratchets up […]
President Trump, the Russian Connection & Crisis Communications
By Bruce Hennes, Hennes Communications Some believe President Trump and his closest advisers committed illegal acts by conspiring with Russian officials on a wide variety of political and financial activities. Some believe President Trump and his closest advisers indeed had contacts with Russian officials, but that those contacts were benign or perhaps even stupid, but […]
If Your Company Is Going Through a Public Scandal, Should You Leave?
Thanks to our friend and colleague, Linda Bluso, Founder & CEO of the Adaptive Knowledge Institute®, for the lead to this article from the Harvard Business Review: Having your employer get caught in a public scandal is an agonizing professional experience. Even if your company comes out okay financially, it’s likely to have a tarnished reputation. How do […]
City Managers and Elected Officials Play a Key Role in Disaster Response
NOTE: We are very much aware of the fact that many mayors, city managers and city safety directors are not prepared to handle disasters, more often than not depending on their police and fire chiefs to “handle things.” As you’ll see in the article below, mayors, city managers and safety directors have distinct duties that […]
Journalism & Storytelling
If you’ve ever attended any of our training seminars, you know we often talk about how reporters are often storytellers, often using familiar tropes and archetypes, accompanied by all their embedded values. On that subject, here’s writer Jeff Jarvis, writing for BuzzMachine on this topic: In journalism, we think our job is to “get the […]