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As so often happens when a violent tragedy strikes and claims human lives, brands were taken along for the sad and sobering ride this week. As the usual questions about gun control and immigration arise for America, questions arise as well for Walmart, The Home Depot and Uber about what and how they should communicate to their stakeholders to reassure and to help.

By now, nearly everyone in Washington, D.C., has heard about the seemingly damaging article in this morning’s Politico. Former DNC chair Donna Brazile writes that she has solid proof that the Hillary Clinton campaign rigged the party’s nomination. The question for PR pros, of course, is what advice would you offer to Hillary Clinton now? Should she contest the article, hold a press conference, release a statement or remain silent?

It’s been a bad stretch for journalism as several top-flight writers and editors have been brought down due to sexual harassment charges. As journalists and PR professionals are part of the same milieu, it’s an unhappy moment for communicators, too. Still, PR pros have jobs to do. There are several lessons they should take from the incidents of the past few weeks.

Therese Van Ryne, head of global PR and the global customer reference program at Zebra Technologies, shares five key questions that a PR or marketing pro needs to ask before setting up a dashboard that effectively evaluates your campaign performance or share of voice.

While Halloween is always a boon for candy and costume makers—and, tangentially, dentists—many brands have done a scary good job of capitalizing on the holiday this year. Here are three hair-raising examples, including Burger King’s “It”-inspired clip and a spine-tingling and inspired Snapchat filter from Netflix.

With 2017 virtually in the rearview mirror I thought it would be good time to sit down over a couple of Cobb salads with Katie Creaser, SVP at agency Affect and a longtime friend of PR News, and talk about the trends that’ll have the greatest impact on PR practitioners next year. Here’s just one: Expect an acceleration of brand crises in news cycles, and for all brands to continue to lose control over the narrative in a crisis.

Our weekly roundup of news, trends and personnel moves in communications and marketing. This week’s edition features stories about Kevin Spacey’s poorly crafted apology and Mark Halperin’s fairly good one. We also look at offensive art on a cereal box and a big personnel move on the agency side in Washington, D.C.

Spacey was accused of a forceful sexual advance by actor Anthony Rapp, who was 14 at the time. Halperin was accused by 12 women of sexual assault and harassment during his tenure as political director at ABC News. Their statements differ in some very important ways.

That idea you have, which everyone is calling crazy and couldn’t possibly work: well, it probably won’t work. But you should try it anyway. Such was the advice of Guy Kawasaki, one of a dozen powerhouse speakers at the Synergy Global Forum, a blockbuster event that inspired entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs to go big.

PR measurement may seem like a huge undertaking and many PR pros might not consider themselves data scientists. But that doesn’t mean you can’t find meaningful correlations in your PR data. Take it from Katie Delahaye Paine, also known as The Measurement Queen, who has been a pioneer in the field for more than two decades.