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The infrastructure renewal plan for New York’s Penn Station could’ve been a PR nightmare for Amtrak, which owns the station. But after the work was completed and service resumed as usual in early September, commuters seemed to come through the other side unscathed. Amtrak’s communications team can claim some of the credit for that success.

Let’s start with this morning’s initial apology from a powerful man accused of sexual assault: “I certainly don’t remember the rehearsal for the skit in the same way, but I send my sincerest apologies to Leeann. As to the photo, it was clearly intended to be funny but wasn’t. I shouldn’t have done it.”

All politics is local. Our author argues all digital storytelling is, too, with local translating to familiarity. He also urges communicators to spend more time shaping story ideas instead of expending a lot of effort on deciding what digital medium will best convey their stories.

What should brands do when an employee says something controversial and headlines result? Is the consequence immediate suspension? Should there be a warning first? What about issuing a public warning that not only puts the employee on notice but serves to inform all other staff? The examples of Shepard Smith and Bob Costas bring these questions to light.

Launching a thought leadership program at your company is relatively easy. Getting an organization’s thought leaders to participate in the program and give you what you want? That can be painful on many levels. Here are some tips that have worked well and will for you, too.

Audio can be a thankless craft. When it’s done well, people don’t notice it. But placing emphasis on sound is a crucial part of telling engaging stories. Here are an Emmy-award-winning video producer’s five tips for stepping up your audio game and bringing your videos to life.

In what surely is a sign of the times, the number of American adults getting at least some of their news from social media has grown to 67%, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in August. More than that, some of the platforms where people are gathering news will surprise you.

Twitter is inviting users in the U.S., the U.K. and Japan to participate in its new program, Promote Mode. The program automatically promotes all tweets for $99 a month. What the social platform isn’t saying is that with this new program, Twitter, like Facebook, sees itself primarily as an ad platform. Allowing users to automate the promotion process—making every paid tweet count more than one without dollars behind it—means Twitter is further distancing itself from its organic roots.

Over the weekend, four brands announced they would not advertise on Sean Hannity’s Fox News program, but none felt the backlash quite like Keurig, as videos of people smashing its machines lit up Twitter. The violent response underscores the tricky situation brands are in when caught in the crossfire of a politically charged controversy. Keurig first faced backlash for its inaction. When it took a stand, it faced another angry wave of protests.

The role of a communications pro has drastically changed. Now, all communications strategies need to be integrated with a mix of paid, earned, social/shared and owned media. We recently talked to Anna Ruth Williams, founder and CEO of ARPR—who will be speaking about PESO at the upcoming PR News Media Relations Conference— about how smaller brands with a communications “team” of just one person can optimize every letter of PESO to effectively spread their message.