The time to prepare for crises is now!

News professionals routinely cover crises and disasters that affect others. But few take seriously the need to prepare themselves for events likely to threaten their organization’s viability and ability to continue reporting when the public needs them most. There are many reasons news managers tend to underestimate the risks they face. But the threats to news media viability that the 21st century has delivered – economic erosion, climate change, pandemic and war – make clear that news organizations cannot afford to be naïve about their risk exposures. The time to prepare for the next crisis is now. 

The discussion paper stresses the importance of careful preparation to increase organizational resilience. It identifies best practices of news organizations to decrease their vulnerability to crises and disasters.

For more information, also have a look at the Media Resilience Scanner, a comprehensive online crisis preparation, management, and recovery tool for news organization.