Doug Carlson was spokesman and communications manager for Hawaiian Electric Company during a decade of turmoil, including hurricanes and other island-wide power disruptions.  That experience now enables him to advise his corporate clients in surviving and communicating about their own unanticipated events.

Organizations caught up in a crisis must gather facts quickly and present them and their implications accurately to their key audiences, often via the media. That's when things can get tricky; business literature is replete with examples of what can happen when poor media relations actually makes a crisis worse.

In his crisis training, Doug recalls a remark by his father long ago.  As he dismissively set aside the newspaper one day, Paul J. Carlson said: "I think there's been something factually wrong with every newspaper story ever written!" Journalism student Doug asked him how he could make such an outlandish statement. "Because there's been something factually wrong with every newspaper story I've known anything about," Paul answered.

Decades later, Doug still quotes his dad's insightful remark -- not to criticize reporters, but to help clients understand how difficult it is for reporters to get all the facts right and why newsmakers therefore must extend themselves in helping journalists report accurately.

That's true for all media encounters, but especially during a crisis.  Visit yourchore.blogspot.com for Doug's most recent web log on emergency communications, as well as tsunamilessons.blogspot.com for his ongoing campaign to improve the dissemination of tsunami warnings.  The blog was started one week after the December 2004 Sumatra earthquake and resulting tsunami.