From Newsroom to Newsletter: How Local Journalists are DIYing Important Coverage via Email
From Christine Schmidt, writing for the Nieman Foundation at Harvard: Cari Wade Gervin had a story that needed to be reported, and nobody else was going to do it. After two decades working in journalism, she had lost her job at a Tennessee alt-weekly in 2018 and turned to freelancing. She had found a story that […]
Why Auto-Marketing is Another Threat to Effective Crisis Management
By Nora Jacobs, Hennes Communications Those who know me know that I’m a travel junkie. Time and budget prevent me from taking all the trips I’d like to take, so I do a fair amount of armchair travel. That includes skimming the daily email feed I get from Conde Nast Traveler – a publication I’ve […]
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, […]
A Philosopher’s Definitive (And Slightly Maddening) Case Against Replay Review
From James Darcy, writing in Deadspin: The motivation for using video review in sports is obvious: to get more calls right. This seems like an easy enough mission to fulfill, but anyone who has spent even a little time watching sports on TV can attest to the fact that the application of video review is […]
Pagers, Pay Phones, and Dialup: How We Communicated on 9/11
By Garrett Graff, writing for Wired The voice message that Lauren Grandcolas left for her husband, Jack, on September 11, 2001, would puzzle a generation raised with smartphones. Two months pregnant with their first child, the 38-year-old Grandcolas was returning home to California when her flight from Newark Airport—United 93—was hijacked, and she, along with […]
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 […]
The Political Apology
By Peter Donolo, writing for the Globe and Mail: As Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau has been uncommonly apologetic. His apologies for a litany of Canada’s historical wrongs even prompted the venerable BBC to ask “does Justin Trudeau apologize too much?” That’s one reason his almost defiant decision – to which he’s holding firm – not to […]
Has the Crisis Communications ‘Golden Hour’ Disappeared?
From Victoria Cross, writing for ContinuityCentral.com: Fight, flight, freeze… or film? Evolutionary science tells us that when faced with a potentially dangerous situation, our sympathetic nervous system is activated and a primitive ‘fight, flight or freeze’ response kicks in. Our body is subsequently flooded with adrenaline and we are poised to make an unconscious decision […]
Take the Opportunity to Tell Your Story – After You Prepare and Practice
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 […]