The Auckland, New Zealand police and Auckland Pride, an LGBTQ support organization, were unable to come to an agreement about police marching in the Pride parade. They did, however, produce one of the most oblique, passive, and ultimately pointless media releases ever posted. This is what happens when you’re not sure what to say, but…
Columbia Gas workers made a mistake that led to dozens of injuries, one death, and more than 60 house fires and explosions in communities north of Boston. Then the utility shut off service to over 7,000 homes. Now, while many of those homes are still taking cold showers and freezing, it has issued a press…
The New York Times described several instances of sexual harassment by senior executives at Google. Now Google staff are protesting. Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, sent an internal email about the company’s policy, and it stands out for its directness. In the wake of so many harassment allegations in the #MeToo era, it’s clear that there’s…
According to CONCURED, an artificial intelligence platform, the perfect length for promotional video is 3 minutes and 54 seconds. This may be the silliest “fact” I’ve read this month. CONCURED, which calls itself “The world’s first AI-powered Content Strategy Platform,” issued a press release about its new insights. Here’s the whole thing: Artificial Intelligence Names…
Google announced it would shut down its social network Google+ yesterday after revealing that it had given outside developers access to private data. At least that’s how the media is describing it. Google’s own statement just buries the news amid a whole bunch of other announcements, like a radioactive pellet in a big bag of…
The Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council (Mass TLC), a Boston-area trade group, annually presents awards to local leaders for Best CEO, Best CMO, and the like. All of this year’s nominees were men. After some local tech luminaries called them out on it, they re-opened the process and asks for women nominees. Now they have to…
Twitter screwed up and wrote everybody’s passwords to a file in plaintext. Then (of course) they apologized. Can we do better with these apologies? And what’s the fallout from this incident? Here’s an analysis and a conversation with Crisis Communication expert Melissa Agnes, author of Crisis Ready. This is getting routine. And that’s the problem. At…
After police removed two black men from a Starbucks in Philadelphia in handcuffs, the Starbucks CEO has apologized. A lot of you wanted me to analyze this: half thought the apology was excellent, the other half terrible. So let’s take the thing apart and see why it’s so controversial. First, what happened in Philadelphia? The…
The chief law enforcement officer at Syracuse University sent an email to everyone to tell them not to be afraid. This obscured the real purpose of the email, which was to cover his ass while not saying anything at all. Here’s the email that my friend got. I’ll highlight the weasel words and passive voice…