HWB recently worked with the New York City Fire Department Incident Management Team. Ronald Spadafora, Deputy Assistant Chief of the Fire Department in the City remarked "The media communications class HWB gave last month at the Working On Fire Academy was very informative and will prove helpful to me now that I have returned to New York. I feel privileged to have been in attendance."In my capacity as an Incident Commander in the greatest city in the world (my opinion), I am confronted by the television and print media all the time. Knowing how they think and what their time constraints are will assist me during interviews. I will also convey the knowledge gained to inexperienced Public Information Officers on our FDNY Incident Management Team.
"They also must realize what the priorities of the news media are and how to develop a rapport with journalists who cover fire operations. As you stated in your lecture, cultivating a relationship with writers can pay off handsomely in getting the public to favorably understand what the fire service is doing.
