Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

The hyper-local news website network issued an internal memo on Friday touting good news to come. On Monday, heads rolled and some offices were shuttered.

Imagine you're sitting at your desk at work on a Friday afternoon. You're shocked to receive an email stating that the company's CEO is resigning, but the chairman sends a reassuring follow-up email stating that some positive retooling is coming.

Then, on Monday, you and a lot of the other people in your office are laid off—with no severance pay.

It sounds outlandish, but that's exactly what happened to employees at Daily Voice, a network of hyper-local news websites in the Northeastern United States. According to Gawker, employees were told Monday the company would shutter 11 bureaus in Massachusetts. Many of the most experienced employees in its Connecticut and New York offices received layoff notices. Those sites will continue running with smaller staffs....

Even with Citigroup’s huge job cut plans announced Wednesday, Hewlett-Packard Co (NYSE:HPQ) remains the leader in corporate job cuts from U.S.-based companies in 2012, according to data from Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. Back in May, the ailing Palo Alto, Calif.-based tech giant said it would cut 27,000 jobs to save up to $3.5 billion. H-P contributed to May being the peak month in 2012 for job-cut announcements with more than 61,000 and pointed to computer companies as one of the most vulnerable industries of the year. Shares of H-P are down more than 45% for the year....

The vultures have been circling Groupon founder and CEO Andrew Mason for a while now. Today, they swooped in. With the company trading around a quarter of its IPO price and its future cloudy at best, the board officially gave Mason the boot and announced a search or a new chief executive. 

Mason, meanwhile, is going to fat camp. 

Or so he says in an amazingly self-effacing and candid goodbye letter he tweeted out to Groupon's employees (Groupon PR also confirmed it was real. Can't be too careful.). "I was fired today," Mason writes. "If you're wondering why...you haven't been paying attention." The ex-CEO then precedes to graciously take responsibility for Groupon's recent travails, before wishing his former work force the best. 

Say what you will about the man's business acumen, at least he's self aware....

The banking giant announced 11,000 layoffs, doing so in a remarkably convoluted press release that the media can have their way with. Communicators weigh in.

...In a remarkably convoluted press release on Wednesday, the banking giant announced it would lay off 11,000 employees. Several communication professionals say the press release is so bad it insults employees and gives the media carte blanche to interpret the news as it wishes.

“This is textbook of the old way of writing a press release,” said Jim Ylisela, a veteran journalist and communications consultant. “It is so perfectly bad, from start to finish.”

Here’s a look at what went wrong—and what you can do to avoid such mistakes....

[PR fail: BS, bafflegab and insensitivity. How NOT to announce 11,000 employee layoffs. ~ ]