Crisis Communications Editing and Proofreading Services

Crisis communications is writing under conditions where every instinct is wrong. The organisation knows almost nothing, wants to say almost nothing, and is being asked by a journalist with a deadline in forty minutes. Legal counsel wants no admissions. The executive wants to reassure. The people affected want to know what happened to them. The statement that emerges from that room, written in twenty minutes, is the one quoted for the next decade in every article about the incident.

We edit what organisations and their advisers produce — holding statements and initial responses, media statements as facts develop, customer and affected-party notifications, employee communications during an incident, regulator and stakeholder notifications, spokesperson briefing and question preparation, social media response wording, website incident pages and update logs, apology and remediation statements, executive statements and video scripts, post-incident communications and lessons-learned messaging, crisis communications plans and templates prepared in advance, and simulation and exercise material. Our editors work at the speed these documents require.

The holding statement is the first thing published and the most quoted, and it is written when the organisation knows least. The failure is universal: it says the organisation takes the matter extremely seriously, is conducting a full investigation, and cannot comment further — three sentences that convey nothing, appear defensive, and leave the story to be told by everyone else. We write these so the statement contains whatever facts are actually established, however few, because two confirmed facts beat three paragraphs of posture; so what is not yet known is listed explicitly, which is both true and demonstrates that the organisation knows what the questions are; so the concern is expressed about the people affected specifically rather than about the situation; so any immediate action taken is named as an action rather than as a process; and so the next update is promised at a stated time and then delivered, even if it says nothing has changed. We also draft these in advance for the incidents an organisation can foresee, since the twenty minutes available is not enough to invent this and is enough to adapt it.

Everything you send is treated in strict confidence, including live incidents and material under legal privilege — though privileged material should come to us only with your counsel's agreement. We are editors rather than crisis advisers or lawyers, and we offer no view on strategy, liability, disclosure obligations or any operational decision. What we can do is make the words clear and fast, when there is no time.