Adam Jones, center fielder for the Baltimore Orioles, said fans at Fenway Park threw peanuts at him and shouted the n-word. The Red Sox — and many other prominent Boston figures — have not only apologized, but taken action. Take note: if your organization gets in trouble, this is a case study in how to respond properly. To…
More than 300,000 people follow the Twitter account Motivational Tweets. You can really appreciate the vacuity of motivational platitudes when you get them multiple times an hour, interrupted only by ads for horoscopes and diet plans. Reviewing this feed has shown me why our country is a mess. Sayings like this are a pernicious assault on reality….
President Trump recently bused all 100 U.S. senators to the White House for a briefing on North Korea. His position on Korea now matches the Obama administration’s, in a shift similar to his reversals on NATO, NAFTA, and chemical weapons in Syria. Has he gone sane? Let’s look at the statement. North Korea’s Kim Jong-un has nukes, missiles (although…
Two-and-a-half weeks after dragging a passenger off a flight like a rag doll, United Airlines has released a statement about changes to its procedures and emailed all its frequent flyers. Everything they did wrong in the original statements, they’ve now done right. And the two sets of statements give me a unique opportunity to contrast effective…
Sports network ESPN dumped 100 of its 1,000 on-air staff yesterday. Why? Based on the company’s statement it has something to do with strategy, but if you can figure out what that strategy is, you’re smarter than me. The statement seems like something from the Russian government published in Pravda — you need to be a Kremlinologist…
Huffington Post is changing its name to HuffPost and will now focus on telling stories of the powerless. What does that mean? I’ve read the piece from Editor-in-Chief Lydia Polgreen and I’m still trying to figure it out. I think she is confused, and writing about things when you are confused results in a muddled…
It’s been a tough week for Juicero, a startup company that makes an internet-connected juicing machine. Some Bloomberg reporters figured out you could make juice from the juice packs without using the Juicero machine at all. The CEO’s response on Medium is completely ineffective, because he can only see the world from within his limited, Silicon-Valley…
Facebook user Steve Stephens used Facebook on Sunday to build an audience for murder, posting videos of his plan to shoot somebody, the shooting itself, and his confession. Facebook explained the changes it will make in reviewing videos like this, but avoiding taking responsibility or apologizing. In the end, how much fault lies with Facebook? While…
When Marvel Comics artist Ardian Syaf secretly inserted Indonesian political images into his X-Men comics, Marvel fired him. Its passive statement about the incident isn’t fooling anyone. Ardian Syaf inserted secret messages into comic art In the Muslim-dominated nation of Indonesia, some Islamist groups are now in conflict with the Christian and ethnically Chinese governor of Jakarta, Basuki…