Monday Morning Media Minute

By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

You don’t like that story about you in today’s newspaper?  And you’re tempted to complain about it?  Be careful what you ask for.

Consider this item by Denver Post columnist Susan Greene:

“Snow means spin for the ski industry.  Mountain folk long have chided ski companies for overestimating accumulations and hyping snowfall.  Take, for example, the October storm on the (Colorado) Front Range when Vail Resorts eagerly announced that it shut down its headquarters because the heavy snow was so terrific.  What the company didn’t mention is that its offices are in low country in Broomfield, 75 miles from its closest slopes, where it was warm and sunny that day.”

Veteran reporter Bob Berwyn of the Summit Daily News had the temerity to point this out and observed:  “I sometimes wonder whether the ski industry wouldn’t benefit more from being completely transparent about weather and snowfall with its customers.  But when snow = money, perhaps that’s expecting too much.”

The Grand Poobahs at Vail complained to Berwyn’s editor and he was told he needed to do a “lot of groveling.”  Berwyn declined to grovel.  And he was fired with a couple weeks.

Score one for the ski resort?  Not so fast.  As the headline on Green’s column puts it, the controversy snowballed from there with the result that reputation and credibility both Vail Resorts and the Summit Daily News have suffered.  Part of the snowball was Green’s column.  I’m adding a small flake or two now.

If a story about you contains a significant mistake, by all means consider asking for a correction.  If it unfairly paints you in a negative light, consider your options for telling the story differently – and for pointing out to the reporter involved why you think you were treated unfairly.  But complaining about a story just because you don’t like it.  That can be dangerous territory.

That’s my two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?