Holtz Communications + Technology

In the days before email, someone at a company where I worked inadvertently pushed the wrong speed-dial number on a fax machine. Instead of faxing a draft press release to outside counsel, he sent the release to a newspaper reporter who covered the company as part of his beat.

It was fear of this kind of all-too-human mistake that led attorneys…

Mark Ragan interviewed me last week while I was at the Ragan/eBay social media conference about the Glenn Tilton website. Tilton is the CEO of United Airlines, but the blog—and the domain—belong to the pilot’s union, which is calling for the CEO’s resigation or firing.

The video is featured on Ragan’s home page, but I’ll save you the trip (although Ragan.com pretty much always has content worth…

I was embarrassed today during my presentation at New Media Expo in Las Vegas. John C. Havens, the co-author of my new book , and I were delivering a talk on the the theme of the book, “Tactical Transparency.” When discussing the notion of being transparent about business processes and problems, I used Apple’s Mobile Me as an example, showing a screen shot of…

UPDATE: The Airline Biz blog from the Dallas Morning News includes an item about AAConversation, including quotes from Billy Sanez, the American Airlines spokesperson who evidently is the “Billy S.” who has penned the two posts that so far populate the blog. Sanez also answers questions about the use of Blogger.com.

In the past, I’ve argued against the creation of a blog in a crisis.…

Scads of books are available on crisis management and crisis communication (one of my favorites is “Now is Too Late,” by Gerald Baron, whose CrisisBlogger blog is a terrific resource on the topic). The conversation on crisis communication on yesterday’s FIR, though sparked enough interest for me to cover some of my fundamental beliefs about crises and crisis communication.

What is a crisis?

You…

One of the bigger PR news stories of 2007 involved a press conference staged by the Federal Emergency Management Agency in October to address the California wildfires. FEMA’s External Affairs Director John “Pat” Philbin was slated to take a new position as Public Affairs Director for the Director of National Intelligence, but in the wake of the press conference controversy, that offer was…