The Crisis Communications Award goes to Kent Brown, Associate Athletics Director/Media Relations.
For most communications professionals on campus, it’s a big challenge to get the media to pay attention to your unit. For the Division of Intercollegiate Athletics, however, the challenge often is how to get the media to stop writing about you.
Working in college athletics communications today means having every decision, every action and every word you release parsed and analyzed like tarot cards or tea leaves...often by some “journalist” wearing his pajamas and writing a blog from his parents’ basement.
To succeed, you have to know your stakeholders intimately and weigh the costs and benefits – both short and long-term. In short, you don’t get to choose between a great outcome and a bad outcome. Your job is to find the path to the least bad outcome.
Kent is thoughtful, professional and able to navigate the dicey waters of the Chicago media. Thank you, Kent, for all you do to help protect the Illinois brand in times of crisis.