Here’s today’s public service announcement from me to you: if you have bad news or risk information to communicate to people affected by crisis, don’t ever (ever, ever, EVER) choose to hold a town hall meeting to do so. Some people look at me like I’m crazy when I say this – even veteran communicators – so […]
Category Archives: Lessons Learned
Being a public information officer for an organization with a diverse array of nearly a dozen distinct missions made every day exciting. On any given day, I might be talking to the media and stakeholders about maritime search and rescue and law enforcement, chemical and petroleum environmental pollution response or how icebergs in the North […]
This is the third entry in a three-part series on what it’s like being deployed as a crisis incident public information officer. The first entry covered the preparatory phase of incident response operations, and the second covered what it’s like once on-scene at an incident. This entry focuses on lessons learned from the incident. What […]
This is the second entry in a three-part series on what it’s like being deployed as a crisis incident public information officer. The first entry covered the preparatory phase of incident response operations, and this one covers what it’s like once on-scene at a particular incident. Public information officer Thomas McKenzie and crew immediately reported […]
This is the first entry in a three-part series on what it’s like being deployed as a crisis incident public information officer. This entry covers the preparatory phase of incident response operations. When I met up for coffee with my friend and colleague Thomas McKenzie a few weeks ago, his black backpack had a wavy, […]
The Crisis Communicator 