{"id":41361,"date":"2008-06-05T10:58:04","date_gmt":"2008-06-05T10:58:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/publicityhound.com\/blog\/?p=1495"},"modified":"2025-06-07T19:03:49","modified_gmt":"2025-06-07T19:03:49","slug":"crisis-at-your-company-consider-embedding-reporters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/marketing\/public-relations\/crisis-at-your-company-consider-embedding-reporters\/","title":{"rendered":"Crisis at your company? Consider embedding reporters"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Reporter<\/a>When seven people in the Chicago area died in 1982 after ingesting Tylenol capsules which had been laced with potassium cyanide poison, Johnson & Johnson<\/a>\u00a0moved quickly to manage the crisis.<\/a><\/p>\n

The company\u00a0embedded\u00a0journalists in meetings with top management so they could hear first-hand all the issues and problems the company faced.\u00a0That move, and others, were brilliant.\u00a0Johnson & Johnson\u00a0remains as perhaps\u00a0the greatest example of how a company should manage a crisis.<\/p>\n

The tactic of embedding reporters can be just as effective if\u00a0your company is experiencing a crisis on a smaller scale, too.\u00a0An article in the June issue of PR Tactics,<\/a> written by Ron McGee, a professor journalism at the University of Alaska-Anchorage, recommends that PR professionals include embedding reporters\u00a0in their crisis communications plans.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“An electric company PR practitioner who asks a reporter to follow the daily activities of a techician, for example, is likely ot be met with a yawn…That electrical company technician who was so boring suddenly becomes much more interesting to a reporter when the lights don’t work for several days.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ron’s tips include:<\/p>\n