Last night I spent almost three hours guest lecturing some tremendous graduate Comms students at Coastal Carolina University and it couldn't have been more fulfilling and fun.
The topic was crisis communications. Not theory. Not "here are the five steps from the textbook" or "Coombs' SCCT theory" (which are great, don't get me wrong). But last night we walked through real crises that are happening right now, including the Anthropic/Pentagon/OpenAI mess and the backlash swirling around U.S. Men's Hockey heading home from the Olympic celebration.
Then we did the part I love most: one-on-one mock press conferences. Each student had to stand across from me and take hostile questions as a real person in a real crisis. One student was Sam Altman. Another was Jack Hughes. They had the actual timelines, the actual quotes that had been used against these people, and zero places to hide.
Here's what I told them going in: the questions are hard but fair. I'm going to use your subject's own words against you. That's not me being cruel. That's any day that ends in "Y" for anyone who ends up behind a microphone when things go sideways.
These students impressed me. You could see the wheels turning in real time as they worked through tough moments, adjusted, and found their footing — shout out to "DoD Sec. Pete Hegseth" who came up with Operation Noble Anvil on the fly (look it up). That's exactly what this exercise is designed to do, and they rose to it.
Crisis communications isn't just a chapter in a textbook. It's a skill you build by doing it in a room where the stakes are low, so you do it well when the stakes are everything.
Great night. Grateful to Dr. Yani Zhao for the invitation and to the Coastal students for bringing their A-game. Look forward to another opportunity in the future.
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