CRISIS KIT PRO™
Crisis playbook — free

A journalist wants comment by morning.

The deadline is real but it's not a trap — 'no comment' is a quote, and a rushed paragraph is a worse one. You have more control than it feels like right now.

First: the next 15 minutes

Reply fast with three sentences: you saw it, you're looking into it, they'll have a statement by a time you choose. Then score the severity and draft from the template.

Say nothing publicly yet. Nothing you publish in the next 15 minutes fixes this — but one wrong sentence lasts forever. Then:

Score the severity — free, 2 minutes
What NOT to do
  • Send a long email — everything you write is quotable, and long = more surface area to be quoted badly
  • Say 'no comment' — it prints as an admission of guilt in the reader's head
  • Speculate about causes, blame others, or share anything you haven't verified
Your likely lane

Most press inquiries land in Acknowledge (short holding statement with a committed update time). If their story contains provable errors: Clarify with evidence, once. If you caused real harm: Apologize, specific and short.

Not sure which lane? Run the 60-second lane picker →

This page is the first aid kit. The full system is the hospital.
The Crisis Kit Pro™ gives you the fill-in-the-bracket templates for this exact scenario, the six-factor severity calculator, the approval workflow, and the hour-by-hour plan — $149 USD one-time payment.
Get Crisis Kit Pro — $149 USD pilot

Other scenarios:

A negative review is going viralAn ex-employee is making allegationsProduct outage or failureYou made a public mistakeA co-founder dispute is going publicAnnouncing layoffs because of AI

Educational guidance, not legal advice. If safety, money, data, or legal rights are at stake, involve qualified counsel before any public statement.