Stories by Sophie Maerowitz

PR professionals representing the country’s largest public figures are likely having a rough week after a wave of cyberattacks on Twitter. Around 4:00 p.m. Eastern on July 16, tweets from celebrities including Kim Kardashian West, Joe Biden, Bill Gates and others started rolling in, asking Twitter users for Bitcoin donations in service of “giving back to the community.” These celebs would double donations to the unnamed “community” cause, the tweets read. All told, hackers made off with nearly $120,000, The Verge reported.

While no one is perfect, journalists’ inboxes are a competitive space. Grammatical errors and extraneous language are bound to sink your pitch or press release before the reporter has made it through the first sentence. And that journalist is unlikely to open your next email if the first pitch misses the mark. Here is a walkthrough of edits we would make to some recent pitches before hitting the send button.

The investment management and stock trading app Robinhood has come under fire in recent months for its allure to young and inexperienced investors. On July 8, a New York Times report took a look at those who have played the stocks and lost big on the app, delving into common complaints from Robinhood users including gamification and technical glitches. How should its communication team respond?

In a $2.65 billion deal, ride-hailing app Uber purchased food delivery app Postmates. The acquisition will extend Uber’s reach in the meal-delivery market. Uber and Postmates aimed a joint press release at investors, saying the acquisition will benefit Postmates’ “strong relationships with small- and medium-sized restaurants.” It also said food-delivering couriers will benefit, but failed to say how.

On June 30, Karen Parkin, the global head of human resources for Adidas, stepped down after allegations surfaced from employees—not for the first time—that she failed to promote diversity within the company. In a moment when the nation is hyper-sensitive to racial inequality in any form, the move is a high-profile example of a company publicly attempting to start transformation from the top.

Deepfakes, or Artificial Intelligence-generated synthetic videos, have been on the crisis communications periphery since 2017. Here’s what you and those you represent need to know about them.

It may seem like conversations on social media couldn’t possibly get more polarized. But in the face of a pandemic and plummeting economy, during an election year no less, brands continue to find themselves caught in the middle of hot-button issues, forced to choose sides on topics previously thought to be outside their wheelhouse. As they address the possibility of employees going rogue on social, communicators should find recourse in the law, internal policy and strategy.

a new study from University of Haifa in Israel found that TikTok is fast becoming a cache of extremist sentiment and hate speech. The study, conducted from February through May 2020, revealed far-right extremist content promoting fascism, racism, anti-Semitism, chauvinism and xenophobia, researchers said. From encouraging violence to promoting conspiracy theories and glorifying terrorist organizations, the 200 posts studied mirror the harmful content that Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others have been grappling with for years.

After a Black employee quit over its dress code, supermarket chain Publix stated it will not allow workers to wear clothing featuring Black Lives Matter messaging. In response to what could be an emerging communications crisis for the brand, Publix spokesperson Maria Brous pointed to company policy. TheoryComms’ CEO Andrea Hamiton argues PR cannot stay on the sidelines in a moment of national turmoil and transformation.

Earlier this week, IBM and Amazon said they will pull back from facial recognition technology contracts with law enforcement. The use of machine learning technology that detects faces has come under renewed scrutiny for racial bias. In addition, the technology is known to be flawed, particularly when applied to non-white faces. Until today, Microsoft was notably quiet on the issue, given it too has provided facial recognition software to police.