I Hope Jeremy has big bandwidth and a big server because his account of the Alaska incident is scarry – and it’s going to attract zillions of eyeballs. Via Jeff Jarvis. Compare his account with news reports– some of which are featuring Jeff’s photos.
“Citizen Journalism” in action. Jeremy P makes a really interesting point that one lesson for any PR practioner facing a crisis is that you are going to need to manage transparency. It seems that Alaska employees are going nasty-comment-happy on Jeremy’s (the Jeremy on the plane) blog. Assuming he would never know I guess, they commented away. Jeremy simply looked at the originating IP addresses, which were from Alaska. And he was gracious enough to suggest that they might have been hackers using Alaska’s IP addresses. Not likely mate!
So, if your communications policy doesn’t cover commenting on blogs as an employee – then you might want to make sure it does.. and then make sure employees know it. And, if your crisis communications plan doesn’t feature monitoring of and communications with the blogosphere – better get on that as well.
Very valid point, Andy.
This guy is receiving tons of comments to his post…one in particular summed it up:
“The situation made him a victim; technology made him a reporter.”