The Penn State scandal not only marks the end of Coach Joe Paterno's brilliant career, it is the death knell for the old crisis management canard that a good reputation is a bulwark against future bad news.

Not anymore. Not in the face of the two-headed monster...

The public relations craft proved again a few days ago why its practitioners may be the most overestimated tradesmen at work in the business and political culture.

Long criticized for its fabled feats of brainwashing alchemy and mass manipulation, a Florida unemployment agency came under fire for spending more...

A popular rant among book critics is that autobiographies are acts of vengeance in which the writer gets to publicly strike back at his enemies for eternity.

There's something to that, but in recent years, autobiographies by public figures have increasingly become exercises in damage control. The...

If you ever want to really tick off organized-crime junkies at a book signing, tell them that their favorite mobster died nearly broke.

I have made this point more than once while on book tours talking about my crime novels. The reaction I get is the New Jersey equivalent...

In the last few days, new lawsuits have been launched against Toyota associated with reports that its cars involuntarily rocket out of control. Against this backdrop, I asked an audience of corporate executives during a speech how many of them were aware that Toyota had been vindicated, at least in...

Ever since Tareq and Michaele Salahi inflicted themselves on the American immune system when they crashed the White House state dinner last November, I have become transfixed by the hold that these spectacularly unspectacular people have on the rest of us. More than a month later, barely a day goes...

As the golf ball in the Tiger Woods morass bounces on, let us pause to dispense with the community college PR course clichés about how the answer to Tiger's woes would have been an immediate Tell-it-to-Oprah-Two-Step. The cold truth of crisis management is that "telling your side of the story"...

The Washington Post today reported that a handful of musicians including R.E.M., Pearl Jam and Roseanne Cash have filed a Freedom of Information Act request that the military release the names of the songs that were played in the torture of terror suspects in Guantanamo. Coming on the heels...

In what may mark the official demise of investigative journalism, a story "broke" online late last week revealing that the Pentagon was "profiling" reporters covering the war in Afghanistan. The piece had the whiff of a targeted assassination program or white vans tailing reporters' kids to kindergarten just in case...

In an age when confidential information is as confidential as the click of a mouse, barely a day goes by when a sports fan's trust isn't betrayed by a freshly-leaked report about a record-breaking Major League Baseball player's steroid use. The Boston Red Sox's David Ortiz is the latest slugger...

When last week's sweeping FBI roundup netted a handful of venal New Jersey politicians and kidney-pilfering, Prada handbag-counterfeiting rabbis, Governor John Corzine let loose with an equally sweeping condemnation:

"Any corruption is unacceptable - anywhere, anytime, by anybody. The scale of corruption we're seeing as this unfolds is simply outrageous...

Michael Vick just got sprung from jail and is looking for a job quarterbacking an NFL team. Commissioner Roger Goodell is on the verge of deciding whether to let Vick back into the League and under what conditions given the fallout from sickening dog-fighting charges two years ago. Vick met...

Steve Jobs has quietly returned to his desk after a six-month absence and a liver transplant. Despite episodic rants about Jobs' penchant for secrecy in our age of evangelical cries for "transparency," the Apple CEO's turbo-charged sense of discretion has served him brilliantly, to the apoplectic horror of governance pundits...

This week, self-immolation gold medalist, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, edged out former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer by thirteen months on the Olympic stopwatch.

Now quivering at the flameout victory dais is Alaska Governor Sarah Palin whose oddly-reasoned resignation will likely suck up some of Sanford's oxygen. How...

Yesterday, Microsoft announced a new search engine called "Bing." Fortune magazine columnist Stanley Bing followed with a press release expressing his "moderate outrage" over his name and "brand" being appropriated by the software giant, and offering his services as a corporate spokesperson in lieu of a lawsuit.

Bing is...

As the swindle of the ages inches closer to its denouement, reporters covering financial scandals -- and a few friends -- have asked me, "What could somebody like you have done for Bernie Madoff?"

My business is crisis communications, which has often meant handling the public...

Remember "Money talks, bullshit walks?"

I do. It was 1980, the time of ABSCAM, the sting operation that brought down a U.S. senator, six congressmen and other gentry in and around my ancestral home, South Jersey. It was the time of Michael "Ozzie" Myers, the former longshoreman and barkeep, who,...

Since John Edwards admitted to an extramarital affair, the aftermarket media buzz has been rife with the requisite exclamations of "what was he thinking" and "men are idiots when it comes to sex." This logic assumes that because the affair was sexual, the primary catalyst for Edwards' relationship with Rielle...

I recently found in my mailbox the most stunning magazine I had ever seen outside of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. It is called Portfolio, and it chronicles the new Gilded Age of business in the same spirit that Vanity Fair covers celebrity culture and current affairs.

After paging...

As fans of The Sopranos agonize over how the mob drama will end, Tony himself is wrestling with management challenges that are not exclusive to the criminal life.

Put in B-school terms, Tony is running a diversified services enterprise involving high-interest loans, illicit pharmaceuticals, labor dispute resolution, neighborhood insurance,...