You don't have to be a journalism professor to see that national media coverage of hurricanes and wildfires are different in both style and duration. You see it most dramatically when there are a small number of active fires with large impacts happening at about the same time as a hurricane hitting the US coastline. It's even more acute when an incident like the Camp Fire is responsible for more lives lost and perhaps just as much property damage as a typical hurricane. ​Or the Woolsey Fire where there are deaths and 200,000 residents evacuated. People wonder why the national media is not sending their top anchors to report continuously from the fire lines like they do from the beaches during a hurricane. 

The Wallow Fire started fast and got big faster. On the third day, it went from about 6,700 acres to 40,000 and over the next seven days, it consumed the following acreage:

• 60,093
• 43,112
• 40,320
• 48,341
• 76,912
• 26,910
• 50,378

Any Type 1+ mega-fire is going to stress the system, and Wallow was no different. One of the first orders the Southwest IMT put in was for 90 PIOs. After trying to push through a name request for me that was axed by a too taxed ROSS, I eventually ended up in Arizona on a PIO3 order, but it got me there. 

Upon arriving, I was assigned to lead the Media Group and it was not soon after that it became evident we were not functioning well. Information was too detailed, too fluid, too much, and too frequent for consistency between individual PIOs (and some of those PIOs were, by necessity, forced into roles beyond their capacity). After hearing complaints from both PIOs and media, we held an impromptu press briefing. We then committed to twice-daily briefings and things seemed to settle down a bit for the media, but not for us. What follows are some thoughts on media briefings and large incident issues in general.  Much of this post is based off of a piece I wrote soon after leaving the incident, so some of you may have seen that earlier version.

​Media briefings are not something we do every day. Sure, crisis communicators and PIOs often do interviews, but a full-blown live media briefing for a high-visibility incident seldom comes around. I've had the luck--or misfortune--of doing  media briefings on four incidents during my career. Some were bigger than others and one was more emotional than the rest, but the common elements are multiple and varied media outlets, live broadcasts, long-term and complex incidents, and regional or national (and international) coverage. 

​Media briefings are perhaps the most intense thing we can do as PIOs/crisis communicators. Not only are we representing all the responders and speaking to all of the public affected, but because of the high visibility, many others are watching and our reputation--perhaps our career--might be influenced by a single exchange. Because of that dynamic, you can look at media briefings as the most personally stressful communications chore. If you are speaking about  fatalities, it amps things up even more.
​
Since the idea of this blog popped into my head, I've been thinking about a post on media briefings. I started writing a few times, but those attempts were ultimately frustrating. As I worked through the process, I came to realize I couldn't build a post around an academic bent or just jot down a basic How-To. No, in order to honestly convey the lessons I learned, it had to be more personal. So please bear with me. As of now, I plan to break the topic up into three posts (maybe four) that will mirror the chronology of my career through the Rodeo-Chedeski, Wallow, and Yarnell Hill fires. (The Eagle Creek Fire will make an occasional guest appearance.) This first one will be the most personal and deal with learning and persevering through failure, the second will cover mostly positive lessons learned, and the third will be about the unique stresses fatalities bring. 

​The PIO community has made great strides over the last 10-15 years by expanding how we think of our audience to include Spanish speakers. It is now routine to have updates and social media posts translated into Spanish and you can usually find a Spanish-speaking PIO on most large incidents. There is support for this from both the greater organizations and the response community. (And kudos to those who have pioneered sign language at public meetings and other Info events.)

Welcome to the Anchor Point Blog, by me, Jim Whittington, of Whittington & Associates, LLC which is on www.incident-service.com. Whew. There will be regular guest bloggers too. I bet you can guess their names.

This blog will discuss IMT dynamics, leadership, incident information, crisis communications, risk communications, media issues on incidents, NWCG and FEMA training, emergency management, academia, wildland fire, and other directly or tangentially related topics. There might even be posts that are not related at all. Here’s some other admin stuff:

• This is a blog and our goal is for it to be informative. Most of the time, anyway. It will be opinionated some of the time. Arguments could break out. It's all good.
• If you’d like us to post on a certain issue, just drop a note in the comments section and we’ll consider it.
• The schedule for posts will be as regular as we have something compelling to say—this one excepted.
• I chose the title “Anchor Point” because it is not only a key concept in the world of wildland fire, but it is also a good approach to take when confronted with a messy situation that demands immediate action on the communications front. Plus, it sounds cool. 
• If you haven’t figured it out yet, here, communication means “the imparting or exchanging of information or news” and not the radios, batteries, and repeaters kind of things the Communications Unit manages on an incident.
• Speaking of that, I’ll probably do a “Terms” post soon looking at the differences between incident information, crisis communications, risk communications, etc.
• We’ll try not to repeat ourselves from post to post, but it may be difficult for us to not repeat ourselves from post to post.
• I don't expect any ruffians, bots, or purveyors of filth to frequent this blog--but still--be considerate of others in the comments. Salty language may be OK if it is used to make a legitimate point about rhetoric, but not gratuitously and certainly not as insults.
• I like basketball, so there will be occasional basketball references.
• We'll do the best we can, but we will make errors, write poorly, and wax confusingly. If you see any major issues, let us know. We are all about learning through failure.
• Just hitting the publish key on a post is enough to bring it under the shield of copyright, but let me say explicitly that every thing in the blog is copyrighted and all rights are reserved. Academic use is approved with notification and attribution. Though why any academic would want to use something from here escapes me at the moment.
• That said, nobody pays attention to copyright on the Internet, so if you use anything from here, please attribute and link. Oh, and say good things about us. Thanks.
• If you don't follow those guidelines, be forewarned: I know a guy who knows some lawyers. 
• I reserve the right to update this post as circumstances demand. 

Thanks for being here. I hope this will turn into something fun and rewarding for everyone.
_____
Jim