Making hay of corporate communications gaffes is one of the media’s stocks in trade.   And when those faux pas upset a company’s employees, it always makes for a particularly good story.  It’s that David and Goliath thing — the common man, or woman, done wrong again by the unfeeling bigwigs.

So it was especially ironic to see southeastern Virginia-based media conglomerate Landmark Communications Inc. (owner of the Weather Channel) commit one of the biggest basic blunders in the PR book this week.   The company, known best in its home market of Norfolk, Virginia, for publishing the Virginian-Pilot newspaper, allowed its employees to find out about the organization’s possible sale by … reading about it in the newspaper.  Its own newspaper, in fact.  One employee says he "about choked on my Cheerios" when he got the news that way.

It’s clear that Landmark brass are trying to be "transparent" about what’s going on by allowing their own newspaper to cover this story.  The paper itself reported on the employees’ shock regarding how they found out and on a memo an executive sent out afterwards that apologized for the "shabby way" this was handled.  He explained that Landmark’s hand was forced when the New York Times broke the story on its web site this past Wednesday night.

You know what?  That’s just not good enough.  When a communications company can’t communicate this kind of news to its workforce appropriately, it’s not only ironic — it’s distressing and absurd.  In the weeks and possibly months leading up to this development, the top people had time to come up with a plan for getting the word to their staff the right way.   Part of that plan should have included a system for quickly informing the rank and file if an event, such as the New York Times story, were to force them to go public sooner than they wished.  How about a simple e-mail that could have been sent companywide on the night of the Times story, to let everyone know the basics, that news coverage was starting to appear, and that staff meetings would be held right away?  Even for those who happened to see the news stories before reading that e-mail would have had the comfort of knowing that management had tried to inform them of the situation.   Making a good try is far better, and far more palatable, than doing nothing.

Norfolk, Virginia is the home market of our firm, Goldman & Associates Public Relations.  We have the greatest respect for the Virginian-Pilot, and if its ownership moves out of local hands, it will be a true loss to the community.  We know many of the newspaper’s staff professionally and some personally.  We wish them the best.  And we hope that this painful process is handled more smoothly for them from here out.