Every story is somebody’s page 1

There’s a nice writeup by Sonia Simone on the Copyblogger about the recent Horizon Realty PR fiasco.  Quick summary: Horizon Realty Group, a Chicago real estate company, sued one of its tenants for libel because she posted on Twitter that Horizon “didn’t care” about the mold in her apartment. The tenant only had about 20 followers on Twitter, but the heavy-handed actions of the company soon made it to trending topics on Twitter. This means the issue was reaching hundreds of thousands of readers.

The key line of the Copyblogger piece is:

You don’t get to bury your story on page 47. There is no more page 47. Every story is somebody’s page 1.

Organizations must stay current with the latest communications channels if they want to control their message and influence their story.