Crisis Communication

Today, I got to learn a little something about crisis communication firsthand- coming in to learn that three major local papers wrote online stories about a supposed incident at Lasell on Marathon Monday.

The truth is, a police report was written that made assumptions stating a Lasell student did something that was highly disrespectful to a National Gaurd member during the marathon. Once local newspapers got their hands on it, it was a frenzy. Truth is: not even police have identified who was actually responsible for this disrespectful act, as there was a massive crowd packed with Lasell students, yes-but also locals and out of town visitors.

This morning, it's been up to Michelle to get her hands on the police report itself, see how reporters could have gained that conclusion, get permission to contact the local news sources to get them to fix their stories, and attempt to cease the story from spreading-without making a bigger deal of it by responding too intensely the reporter's about the story's existence, or damaging relationships with these reporters we may wish to send positive stories to in the future.

As for me? I've been lucky to be able to be in on everything-googling the story to find out where it's turned up, I got to look at the police report to understand how reporters may have put this story together, and reading every article I can find to see how it's covered-as well as monitoring student responses on Facebook (which are flooding quickly). Important lessons learned today, that's for sure!