Award-winning, veteran journalist William J. Holstein has written a little gem of a book filled with wise advice for CEOs about how to manage today’s media. Manage the Media is one of Harvard Business Press’s new “Memo to the CEO” series. It’s a quick read and to the point which should be perfect for time-starved executives. I highly recommend it for CEOs, board members, members of senior management and anyone interested in media coverage of organizations. In Manage the Media, Holstein clearly educates the reader about the threats and opportunites related to today’s media environment. He illustrates them with compelling examples. (If you thought you knew the whole story of Bob Nardelli’s downfall at Home Depot, just wait until you read what was really going on behind the scenes.) Thanks to the internet, search engines and social media, with a couple mouse clicks anyone can assess the reputation of most organizations. This presents a risk to every organization. According to Holstein, wise organizations anticipate media risk, and plan and implement organizational structures and processes to monitor and respond to threats as they arise. The best organizations will go even further. They proactively take their stories to the media and systematically develop relationships with media representatives who cover their organizations. By doing so, these media savvy organizations build a rapport with the media. The goodwill they accumulate over time represents value to the organization because it makes it easier to get their point of view represented in future media coverage of events that are important to the organization’s interests. I know this is true from personal experience. When I was Chief Marketing Officer of Charles Schwab’s U.S. Trust business and had the public relations function reporting to me, U.S. Trust was fined by the federal and state banking autourities for failing to comply with money laundering laws. This could have been extremely damaging to U.S. Trust’s business. Because we had established relationships with the meda, we were able to tell the real story that in fact no money laundering had occurred but the fine was instead related to the organization’s failure to establish computer systems that would identify transactions that were required to be reported to federal and state bank examiners. What could have escalated into a media disaster ending up being a story with a short life. Recalling this event, Holstein’s book especially resonated with me.In summary, readers will benefit from Holstein’s insights and pragmatic recommendations on how to manage the media and they will appreciate the user-friendly length of the book. I highly recommend it.
