PR Students Learn How to Handle Crisis for Clients

COURT HOUSE – When the worst happens, how will good public relations smooth the road to the future?
That’s what a panel of publicists discussed Wed., Nov. 23 with communications and public relations students from Atlantic Cape Community College and Rowan University at the Third Annual Public Relations Panel Discussion.
Assistant Professor Joy Jones introduced her students and visitors to the Court House campus to some local PR pros: Barbara Murphy, owner-partner, Fish with Feet LLC; Lenora Boninfante, Cape May County communications director; Larry Litwin, Rowan University professor; Corinthea Harris, Atlantic Cape student, 2011 Communication Major of the Year and intern at Suasion Communications; and Kathleen Corbalis, APR, Atlantic Cape’s executive director of College Relations.
Youthful publicists of the future heard about some recent tragedies: deaths of four Mainland Regional High School football players, a girl’s death on Morey’s Pier Ferris wheel, a carjacking at an Atlantic City casino, and Hurricane Irene.
All those, and the ongoing Penn State University sex scandal as well as the shooting tragedy at Virginia Tech, served as examples of what can happen in business, education and in government, and how they were handled, or mishandled, by public relations officials.
Boninfante cited the importance of keeping the public informed by use of every available means, as in Hurricane Irene, when an evacuation order largely cleared the county a week prior to Labor Day Weekend.
“My job is to make sure you are informed,” she said. Prior to Sept. 11, 2001, she said there was not as much focus on preparedness as now.
“You have to have a plan, that’s the most important thing you can do when faced with a crisis, so you are not scrambling,” Boninfante said.
She noted the importance of social media, but added that, if someone posts inaccurate information, instead of engaging that person, it is best to simply post the truth from an official standpoint.
Litwin, a former KYW and ABC reporter, covered the MOVE tragedy, long before any of the students in the room could recall, in Philadelphia when 11 were killed and 65 homes destroyed in a massive fire.
Litwin, in his 42nd year of communications, said he had been discussing in his Rowan class the Penn State crisis.
“Penn State did everything wrong,” he said. The university knew this was going to break,” he said. Officials knew of at least part of the “horror” since 1998, Litwin said.
Still, there was silence and no plan on the part of the university to contain or control the flow of information from the executive office.
He cited the “golden hours” when the “media wants it immediately. They want to get the message out. Within those two to four hours, you have to address the media because they are getting the story, say ‘This is all we know at this stage, but we are gathering the facts,’” Litwin said.
He urged, “Tell it first, tell it fast, tell all, and tell it yourself.”
“Penn State told nothing. It wasn’t the chairman of the board who spoke, it was their vice chairman who spoke,” he added.
Virginia Tech, on the other hand, was ready with a staging area for the media, and maintained a constant flow of information to the media. They had someone monitoring incoming news, and made sure they were communicating with their key public, he said.
Relationships are vital with editors and reporters, said Litwin. Those are invaluable when a public relations professional must be available to handle the situation when bad news breaks, he said.
Corbalis recalled a time when she was new with the college in the 1980s, and the college president called her in to inform her with the news that controller was believed to be embezzling funds.
“I give him a lot of credit for that, and how he handled a crisis,” she said.
She noted the president kept her informed through every stage of the matter. He learned through an internal investigation, contact law enforcement agencies, and hid nothing from her.
“I was in my 20s at the time. I was made aware, on a confidential basis of everything that was happening,” she said.
Subsequently, the controller was arrested and charged.
“Atlantic Community College, as it was known at the time, had a statement. We were first with it. We told our story, and took responsibility. We expressed concern, and reassured everyone no student money was involved,” Corbalis said.
“It was a well constructed story. That’s not what happened at Penn State. We were giving information. We were open, transparent and above board,” Corbalis added.
Technology has changed how public relations officials meet crisis, Corbalis noted.
She cited an “act of God” thunderstorm in 2003 when lightning struck and a power surge wiped out all power to the Mays Landing campus.
There was no website, no power for four days, and no social media to communicate to students.
Corbalis took it upon herself to produce paper fliers that were handed to each student as they arrived on campus.
News media today, with immediate means of dispensing information, as well as text messaging to each student would negate the need for all that work, she said.
Part of a public relations person, said Corbalis, is to monitor the client’s on-line presence, and to garner bad as well as good data that may be stated about the client.
She cited an example of social media, Facebook in particular, at the college when students were complaining of course books not being available for purchase at the bookstore.
She gathered that information, and informed the person in charge of that department of the problem, so it could be corrected as quickly as possible.
All agreed that, whenever possible, it is best that a company chief executive should be the source of information in a crisis.
Boninfante said every New Jersey county, municipality, school and nursing home and hospital is mandated to have an emergency response plan.
Included in those plans, she said, is a communications plan. “It has to be a piece of your plan,” she said.
She cited the idea of a “dark website” one that is ready at a moment’s notice to be used to disseminate information should a crisis occur.