By Jonathan Bernstein/Bernstein Crisis Management
There are no good days to release bad news. Period. And one of the worst times and dates is the one about which the media has the most suspicion - late on a Friday afternoon.
At some point in the distant past this technique worked and resulted in coverage mostly or only appearing in lesser-read Saturday newspapers and being ignored by small-weekend-
crew broadcast stations. However, the following factors have rendered the tactic not merely obsolete, but dangerous to your organization.
- It's been overused and most reporters will intentionally give more scrutiny to negative news released late on a Friday than on other days. They may not catch up with that
news until Monday if they're already off duty when it's released, but they will catch up with it. - The Internet's popularity as a source of news has made every day an important news day, because there is intense, non-stop competition for public attention and every media
outlet is online (in fact, some are only online). They are generally desperate for more stories and guess what type of story is always more popular with readers/viewers/Web site
visitors? Bad news, of course. - Web-based news search programs, many of them free, make it possible for people who are following news of your company, your industry, or anything related to either to
automatically have relevant stories sent directly to their email in-box - no matter where and when they appear. I receive stories from all over the world on a real-time
basis.
The Internet has also made it impossible for any story to appear just one time - be it a Saturday paper or any other form of media. Print and broadcast stories - the latter
increasingly including streaming video or audio - are archived online for years and will show up when someone does a relevant Internet search. Even your press release - if you
use any of the many services that distribute them - will be archived (and, with many of the press release services, the news will also automatically appear on multiple Web
sites).
So, if you want to elicit immediate suspicion, release the news late on a Friday. Otherwise, consider the tactics discussed in the article accompanying this sidebar.