This is off-topic for crisisblogger readers but wanted to share with you a very special day yesterday. As some of you know, I am a history buff, particularly WWII history and I was privileged to write the biography of a P-38 fighter pilot. What makes his story unique is that after he was shot down he, along with 167 other Allied flyers caught with the French Underground, were sent to Buchenwald ..

I blogged recently at emergencymgmt.com about the new Pew Research Center study of media coverage of the gulf spill. This should be mandatory reading for all crisis communicators.(the study, not my blog post)  No time left today so I won’t repeat my remarks from Crisis Comm–but would love to hear some reaction and your take on lessons learned from this report and the media coverage for the ..

I’m guessing most in America have finally diverted their attention away from the spill. For those who are still watching you might have noticed the back and forth in the media about the “Manhattan-size” underwater plume. NOAA and the Unified Command science team provided an oil spill “budget” that a couple of weeks ago showed all but 26% of the oil gone, and the 26% being rapidly degra..

I’ve seen a lot of debate in the last while about HP’s decision to fire their impressively performing CEO Mark Hurd. The two lines of argument are thus: Anti-firing: the guy’s a superstar, he delivered the goods, you’re going to toss a guy that can do that much for your company and shareholders under the bus for some minor expense reporting errors? Pro-firing: Well there’s this thing a..

First it was the Washington Post who declared that the high-priced crisis PR folks were out of their league when it came to crises like BP, Toyota and Goldman Sachs. I gave my opinion about that bit of silly reporting earlier. But the article this weekend in New York Times really takes the cake.The overall message seems to be that the reputation problems that BP, Toyota and Goldman all now presu..

The latest Gallup results continue the trend in declining confidence in our primary sources of news–newspapers and TV. Actually, I say primary and that is not so much the case any more as the switch to Internet as the primary source continues apace. Now, you would think wouldn’t you that with the growing presence of the Internet as a source of information, that trust in newspapers and TV wou..

Here at least is a scientist with some integrity and honesty. Dr. Crozier, an expert on Gulf of Mexico ecology, admits that he played a role in creating a doomsday scenario around the Gulf spill, a scenario that is proving to be wrong. Before I go further and get attacked for “defending BP” full disclosure–I’ve worked with BP for years and have supported them in this spill, so I will say..

At first when I read this study out of Northwestern University, I wanted to say, “duh!” But then I realized that with all the PR and marketing newsletters I read, there is very little discussion about the role of relationships in PR and marketing. Even all this stuff about social media and its role in both PR and marketing tends to forget that at best what social media is is a way to further..

Having just returned from another weeklong business trip, I can sympathize with anyone who has to fly a lot. I have to work hard to hold back my anger at the stupidity of much of the so-called security measures which seem much more clearly aimed at hiring as many new people as possible without doing much to increase security. However, it isn’t all roses for the poor folks who have to work on t..

Gosh darn I hope this is a trend. DailyDog reports that Goldman Sachs is banning bad language from internal emails. I’ve been talking about “toxic talk” for some time now and believe that the cursing, swearing, foul language combined with the vitriol and hyper-partisanship that characterizes so much of social media and blogs is damaging. Damaging to the people who participate, damaging to ..

Bill Boyd, Fire Chief for Bellingham, WA, is becoming a well-known friend to crisisblogger readers. I’ve included several guest posts from him, particularly appreciating his perspective on crisis and emergency communications from an Incident Commander’s perspective. But Bill is eager to jump in and learn about the emerging communication technologies, if anyone who is a friend of his tweets w..

This is a very intriguing analysis by Matthew DeBord in the Washington Post, titled: How crisis PR hasn’t kept up with the turbulent times. His overall point is that the Internet has made it impossible for the $700 an hour (are you kidding me??) crisis PR people to avoid destruction in a crisis. What used to work, a call to Burson Marsteller or Sitrick and Company, just doesn’t work anymore...

If it seems crisisblogger has been quiet lately it is because I was enjoying an absolutely wonderful family vacation in the San Juan Islands. When you combine the delights of spending time with your beautiful wife, three grown children, their wonderful spouses, and seven angelic (usually) grandchildren all under the age of seven, along with the majestic beauty of the San Juans, what can be bette..

When you are as old as I am and look back on the changes in how communication is done it is completely unreal. OK, I can remember black rotary dial phones (touch tone was a big deal back then) and my first job was at a newspaper company that still occasionally used a hot lead linotype–setting up a newspaper with photo typesetters was really cool technology. Without doubt the movement of interp..