David Meerman Scott: Penn State University: Poor Crisis Management and Social Media Skills

The jury reached a verdict in the high-profile Jerry Sandusky child sexual abuse trial. Sandusky, a former Pennsylvania State University assistant football coach was found guilty on 45 of 48 charges. Sandusky faces potentially hundreds of years in prison for molesting 10 boys over 15 years.

The story has been at the forefront of the news cycle many days since it broke in November 2011. There are many parts of this difficult story that have been analyzed for months in the media.

I wanted to take a look at a part of the story that has not gotten much attention -- the social media and crisis communications aspects.

Imagine you are responsible for social media within an organization faced with a major crisis like this one. How would you handle it? How would the senior executives handle it?

I spoke with Kelly Burns, a recent Penn State MBA graduate. While a student, Burns interned with Penn State Football Marketing & Promotions from May 2009 through April 2012, and for the past three summers (2009-2011) she ran the Penn State Football Facebook and Twitter accounts.

"I was very lucky to have the opportunity to assist in developing the Penn State Football Facebook page back when it first launched in summer 2009," Burns says. She posted content (information, photos, videos, and the like) that fans enjoyed. "Having the opportunity to interact with Penn State Football fans was incredible because Penn State Football has a history rich in tradition and 'Success with Honor,' and its fans literally wear their pride on their sleeves." The Penn State Football Facebook page, currently with nearly 350,000 likes, targeted students, recruits to the football program, alumni, and Penn State football fans in the community.

Then the story broke

The grand jury investigation was initiated in the spring of 2008 but had been kept quiet. In the summer of 2011 Burns was told to remove photos of Sandusky from the Facebook page. And then the social media team was told to stop posting onto Facebook on October 16, 2011.

On November 4, 2011 Sandusky was indicted and the next day he was arrested and charged and the story went worldwide instantly. "Our Facebook and @PennStateFball Twitter lit up but that was difficult because initially we were not allowed to post," Burns says. "We were not permitted to post anything about the scandal, nor were any other people working for the University. We were told to wait until Old Main [Penn State's administrative center on campus which includes the university president's office] made a statement before we could say anything. So we went completely dark."

On November 11, the social media team was permitted to post about The Blue Ribbon Campaign against child abuse and then on November 16 they were allowed to post some simple messages about football but still nothing about the crisis itself was allowed. Even today, nothing about the scandal has ever been talked about on Penn State social media.

What should have happened

The right approach is to be honest and forthright. Communicate the facts quickly and don't hide. Assign a visible spokesperson. Silence and "no comment" are the enemy.

These steps were not taken at Penn State Football. Burns says it took weeks before the Board of Trustees issued responses and put a face to leadership.

"We should have done a better job providing a way to communicate with the fans," Burns says. "That's not something critical about Penn State Football because it goes up to Old Main, who decided what was allowed to be said. I think in our day and age of social media, that silence was not the right response. Keeping information private is not the way to go when people are talking 24x7 on social media and need reassurance."

Interestingly, Burns says that Penn State Football social media, even today, is not back to "business as usual" like it was before the scandal broke. Currently the football accounts are being updated infrequently by Penn State athletics staff only with innocuous press release type content and the fan engagement is minimal as a result.

"At Penn State, there was no crisis management plan in place whatsoever," Burns says. "I think it's crucial for organizations to have crisis management plans with a social media component. Set up timetables to issue responses and statements. You need a plan so that people know how to communicate."

Crisis communications plans need to be open ended so they are appropriate for any situation that might arise. Too many crisis plans only look at a few scenarios and people freeze up when the actual crisis is something they hadn't thought of.

Burns' internship ended several months ago. She says that the crisis experience was terrible in many ways and was certainly *not* fun in the time since the scandal broke. But it was a tremendous learning experience. "I just wish things had turned out differently. Even today they are not communicating openly. It remains to be seen if Penn State Football will address the verdict and engage with fans again now."

Here is the official statement released by Penn State University immediately following the verdict.

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Follow David Meerman Scott on Twitter: www.twitter.com/dmscott

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Rats Laugh, But Not Like Humans

Image: Jonathan Bartlett

In this groundbreaking adventure into the worlds of psychopaths, the renowned psychologist Kevin Dutton argues that there is a fine line between a brilliant...

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Adapted from Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That? ? And Other Reflections on Being Human, by Jesse Bering, by arrangement with Scientific American/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC (North America), Transworld Ltd (UK), Jorge Zahara Editora Ltda (Brazil). Copyright ? 2012 by Jesse Bering.

Once, while in a drowsy, altitude-induced delirium 35,000?feet somewhere over iceland, I groped mindlessly for the cozy blue blanket poking out beneath my seat, only to realize?to my unutterable horror?that I was in fact tugging soundly on a wriggling, sock-covered big toe. Now, with a temperament such as mine, life tends to be one awkward conversation after the next, so when I turned around, smiling, to apologize to the owner of this toe, my gaze was met by a very large man whose grunt suggested that he was having some difficulty in finding the humor in this incident.

Unpleasant, sure, but I now call this event serendipitous. As I rested my head back against that sanitation-paper-covered airline pillow, my midflight mind lit away to a much happier memory, one involving another big toe, yet this one belonging to a noticeably more good-humored animal than the one sitting behind me. This other toe?which felt every bit as much as its overstuffed human equivalent did, I should add?was attached to a 450-pound western lowland gorilla, with calcified gums, named King. When I was 20 and he was 27, I spent much of the summer of 1996 with my toothless friend King, listening to Frank Sinatra and the Three Tenors, playing chase from one side of his exhibit to the other, and tickling his toes. He'd lean back in his night house, stick out one huge ashen-gray foot through the bars of his cage and leave it dangling there in anticipation, erupting in shoulder-heaving guttural laughter as I'd grab hold of one of his toes and gently give it a palpable squeeze. He almost couldn't control himself when, one day, I leaned down to act as though I were going to bite on that plump digit. If you've never seen a gorilla in a fit of laughter, I'd recommend searching out such a sight before you pass from this world. It's something that would stir up cognitive dissonance in even the heartiest of creationists.

Do animals other than humans have a sense of humor? Perhaps in some ways, yes. But in other ways there are likely uniquely human properties to such emotions. Aside from anecdotes, we know very little about nonhuman primate laughter and humor, but some of the most significant findings to emerge in comparative science over the past decade have involved the unexpected discovery that rats?particularly juvenile rats?laugh. That's right: rats laugh. At least, that's the unflinching argument being made by researcher Jaak Panksepp, who published a remarkable, and rather heated, position paper on the subject in Behavioural Brain Research.

In particular, Panksepp's work has focused on ?the possibility that our most commonly used animal subjects, laboratory rodents, may have social-joy type experiences during their playful activities and that an important communicative-affective component of that process, which invigorates social engagement, is a primordial form of laughter.? Now, before you go imagining some chortling along the lines of one rakish Stuart Little (or was he a mouse?), real rat laughter doesn't tend to sound very much like the human variety, which normally involves pulsating sound bursts starting with a vocalized inhalation and consisting of a series of short distinct saccades separated by almost equal time intervals. The stereotypical sound of human laughter is an aspirated h, followed by a vowel, usually a, and largely because of our larynx is rich in harmonics. In contrast, rat laughter comes in the form of high-frequency 50-kilohertz ultrasonic calls, or ?chirps,? that are distinct from other vocal emissions in rats. Here's how Panksepp describes his discovery of the phenomenon:

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Boots to return to London stock market

A FTSE100 constituent until it was taken private in a ?11.1bn leveraged buy-out led by Alliance Boots? founder Stefano Pessina and private equity house KKR, the retailer is poised to return to the London Stock Exchange as part of an attempt to increase Walgreens? European shareholder base.

Asked if he foresaw a London listing for Walgreens? shares, chief executive Greg Wasson told The Sunday Telegraph: ?Certainly. We?ve had a pretty good investment base in the UK and Europe and we hope that that will grow as a result of the deal.?

While such a move is not expected immediately, it reflects the global ambition of the company, which has an option to buy the remaining 55pc of Alliance Boots within three years. The move would most likely be enacted via a secondary listing in London.

Mr Wasson and Mr Pessina want the business to be a global healthcare giant, and greater access to capital markets would help.

European investors in Walgreens include Bailie Gifford, with a 0.8pc holding, and Norges, which manages Norway?s government pension fund, with a 0.99pc stake.

Mr Pessina, who created Alliance Boots through more than 1,500 acquisitions, said he would be happy for Mr Wasson to run the combined business.

?I am 71, I will work to add some more pieces to these companies,? he said. ?But I believe that Greg has understood completely my philosophy.?

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US ambassador taps Facebook to drive wedge between Syrian military and Assad

Using social media, US Ambassador Robert Ford warns Syrian military officers they could be prosecuted for crimes against humanity by following?President Bashar al-Assad?s orders.

By Howard LaFranchi,?Staff writer / June 21, 2012

Robert Ford, US Ambassador to Syria, speaks after receiving the 2012 John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award at the JFK library in Boston last month.

Elise Amendola/AP

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Robert Ford, the US ambassador to Syria, spent much of his time taking America?s support for Syria?s pro-democracy opposition directly to the streets before he was pulled out of the country in February out of concern for his safety.

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Now Ambassador Ford, holed up in Washington and relying on social media to continue getting his message out, is using Facebook to relay a stark warning to Syria?s armed forces: Stop carrying out President Bashar al-Assad?s dirty work for him, or risk finding yourself prosecuted for crimes against humanity.

?The officers and soldiers of the Syrian military have a choice to make,? Ford says in an entry on his Facebook page that he posted Wednesday. ?Do they want to expose themselves to criminal prosecution by supporting the barbaric actions of the Assad regime against the Syrian people??

Ford then cites the case of the former Yugoslavia, noting that 161 people, including prominent and not-so-prominent members of the military, were indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia ?for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity against non-combatants and combatants.?

The alternative for members of the Syrian armed forces, Ford says, is to ?help secure the role of the professional military in a democratic Syria by supporting the Syrian people and their transition to an inclusive, tolerant and representative democracy that respects human rights and equal, fair treatment for all components of the Syrian nation.??

The ambassadorial effort to drive a wedge between Mr. Assad and his military henchmen comes as Western powers contemplate another try in the United Nations Security Council for a resolution on Syria. The Security Council is empowered to refer cases to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.

Ford?s post was also followed, less than 24 hours later, by the defection of a Syrian fighter pilot, who flew his Russian-made MiG-21 to neighboring Jordan and was immediately granted asylum. While it?s unlikely the pilot was acting on Ford?s admonition, he nonetheless illustrated the kind of action the activist ambassador is trying to encourage.

For months, Western leaders have suggested that Assad could suffer the fate of leaders like Serbia?s Slobodan Milosevic and Sudan?s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. In February, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in Senate testimony that Assad should be considered a war criminal, and that same month the UN?s top human rights official, Navi Pillay, told the UN?s Human Rights Council that Syria should be referred to the ICC for ?the unspeakable violations that take place every moment.?

Mr. Milosevic died in custody in The Hague as he fought war-crimes charges in a long court battle. Mr. Bashir, under ICC indictment for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, remains president of Sudan but is unable to travel widely for fear of arrest.

But other world leaders have also spoken of offering Assad asylum as a way of ending Syria?s violence and paving the way to a political transition. Indeed, the contradictions in the various proposals for handling Syria ? asylum for Assad on the one hand, but now the specter of international prosecution for lower-level military as raised by Ford?s warning, on the other ? has some human rights advocates worried that a let-off-the-rat-but-go-after-the-mice approach could be in the offing.

"The US is hoping to pull a rabbit out of a hat: trying for a managed transition in Syria which includes an implicit Get-out-of-Jail-Free card for Assad and his associates,? says Richard Dicker, director of the international justice program at Human Rights Watch.

The ICC can get involved only if the Security Council refers the Syria case to the court?s prosecutor for investigation, similar to what happened with Libya and Sudan, Mr. Dicker notes. But Russia, a veto-wielding member of the Security Council and Syria?s main defender, is highly unlikely to agree to a referral.

But publicly, administration officials are showing no signs of letting Assad off the hook. At the White House, the spokesman for the National Security Council, Tommy Vietor, hailed the defecting Syrian pilot even as he echoed Ford?s call to the Syrian military to jump their commander?s ship and distance themselves from the regime?s ?horrific actions.?

?We welcome this pilot?s decision to do the right thing,? Mr. Vietor said. ?We have long called on the military and members of the Syrian regime to defect and abandon their positions rather than be complicit in the regime?s atrocities.?

? Staff writer Mike Eckel contributed to this report.

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Only June? Northeast hits upper 90s for 2nd day

BOSTON (AP) ? Temperatures in the Northeast soared into the upper 90s Thursday for a second day as residents fled to pools and beaches, tourists reorganized their sightseeing itineraries and street vendors and store owners made a small fortune selling bottled water and other cold drinks.

New York's Central Park was forecast to reach a record 98 degrees. Boston, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., will see similar heat with temperatures inching into the upper 90s and low 100s. The official first day of summer Wednesday set records from New York City to Burlington, Vt.

In the nation's capital on Thursday, a bit of resourcefulness has helped at least some tourists hit all the hotspots despite the scorching heat.

Nolan Shoffner, 36, who was vacationing with his parents and 10-year-old son, Parker, said the family had rearranged some of their plans, like visiting the Lincoln and World War II memorials on Monday when it was cooler.

Since then, they've been doing outdoor activities like the White House and Capitol in the morning and saving cool, indoor museums for the afternoon.

"There's not a lot of places you can hide," Shoffner said of the heat as he stood outside the U.S. Capitol after taking a picture with his family.

In Boston, even as temperatures soared into the 90s, many people took the heat in stride.

Dave Remillard, 50, went to Wollaston Beach in Quincy, just south of Boston but instead of going in the water, he sat on a beach chair near his car and sunbathed.

"It's still a little cold to go swimming. The surf's still a little cold," he said, sipping a large cup of iced coffee. "I hope we have a hot summer. We haven't had one in a while."

In New Jersey, forecasters say temperatures could combine with humidity to make it feel like 110 degrees in parts of the state. Thermometers might not drop below 80 until the wee hours of Friday morning.

"American Idol" hopefuls in Newark got a bit of a break from the heat Thursday morning when they were ushered inside the Prudential Center to register to audition.

Providence, R.I., which is expected to have a heat index as high as 102, is operating cooling shelters and offer free public transit to discourage driving.

In preparation for the sweltering weather, golf course officials at the Travelers Championship in Connecticut have IVs ready to go at a medical tent where dozens were treated for heat exhaustion Wednesday.

Emergency medical services director John Quinlavin said people need to drink more water at the stations set up around the course. Forecasts for the area call for temperatures just short of 100 degrees.

"People are coming in dizzy, a little nausea, vomiting, generally poor feeling overall," he said. "We generally have a more mature audience here, and we do see a lot of the elderly having some problems with the heat."

With high heat and humidity forecast across the region, public health officials warned residents to not leave pets or children in vehicles as temperatures can quickly escalate and lead to heat stroke and death.

Two dogs left in a hot pickup truck in western Massachusetts died as a result of the heat Wednesday afternoon.

Erika Mueller, a co-owner of South Deerfield Emergency Veterinary Hospital, said the well-meaning dog owner left the animals in the truck with a window open and a supply of water, but the temperatures soared into the 90s, which can surpass 100 in a vehicle.

Bashir Saleh, a Times Square food vendor, glanced at a tiny thermometer Thursday morning and looked up with a wry grin: The temperature in his cart was pushing 100.

"I'm exhausted," said Saleh, a native of Afghanistan who'd been working already eight hours as the heat rose near his propane-gas fueled coffee maker.

But it's worth it to him, he said. He makes more money on the hottest days selling iced coffee and other drinks.

Sporting a visor with an American flag, Saleh, who'd fled war in his native land, said that even when he's sweating to earn a living, "I think, God bless America. For a few days, I can sacrifice."

___

Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Pat Eaton-Robb in Cromwell, Conn., Jessica Gresko in Washington, Karen Matthews and Verena Dobnik in New York City, Mark Pratt in Boston, Denise Lavoie in Quincy, Mass., Erika Niedowski in Providence, R.I., Kathy Matheson in Philadelphia and David Porter in Newark.

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Did Sprint just spoil a white HTC EVO 4G LTE?

Sprint has a tradition of carrying white EVO models, and based on its own inadvertent pre-advertising, this isn't about to stop. Assuming it's not just a hasty palette swap, a banner tempting customers over to the network is spoiling a white-and-silver EVO 4G LTE -- very different than the black model we know and (mostly) love. The carrier hasn't officially confirmed that the new hue exists, but we're reaching out to find out whether it's real or just wishful thinking on a marketer's part. We'll let you know the full details if HTC's Ice Cream Sandwich flagship really does come in an ice cream color.

[Thanks, Klaus]

Did Sprint just spoil a white HTC EVO 4G LTE? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Jun 2012 16:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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