TJ Walker examines UC Davis's 2011 pepper-spray incident and how it haunted the university for years. The school spent $175,000 on reputation management while Chancellor Linda Katehi eventually lost her job over questions about transparency and spending. Walker argues that building positive content regularly beats hiring reputation managers to hide problems.
Questions this video answers
Linda Katachi (as named in the transcript).
$175,000.
2011.
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The University of California Davis chancellor fired for how she handled a social media brouhaha. Speaking the show about effective speaking in public to the media, at work and in life. Speaking with TJ Walker. Folks, I reported this to you a couple of months ago. It was in the spotlight, received the spotlight. This is the University of California, Davis. Their chancellor was in the hot seat for spending hundreds of thousands or more than $100,000 on so called social media experts, reputation managers to clean up the fact that when someone typed in their name in Google, the first thing you saw, I don't mean to laugh at it, it's a serious matter. Was a 2011 incident where campus police were pepper spraying students and protesters. It was a horrible PR disaster, but it lived on and on and on and on. Finally, at some point, so we just can't take it anymore and they started using these so called reputation managers. Well, here's the problem. Apparently she was not completely forthcoming in how much money she spent. Whether she did it. There was an investigation and now she's lost her job over this. Interesting comments. The university, typical of the university, they didn't really fire her. She still gets to be a professor there. I don't know if she's getting a pay cut or not, but this is one of the things that frustrates people about universities is even if you are caught doing something that destroys a reputation, it's like you can never get fired. Ken Starr can't get fired from Baylor. He still has a full professorship. So here's what the university did do. They sort of hung around to dry. The reporter was sent an email asking. The reporter sent an email to the spokesperson for the university and the spokesperson, Diane Klein, wrote back to say she, meaning the chancellor, Linda Katachi, who was fired. To say she had problems with candor, conduct and judgment is an understatement. Boom. That's about as strong as an attack as you're going to get from a university that is still employing you very forcefully. Negative. The Sacramento Bee reported this earlier this year that the University had paid $175,000 to try to remove negative online postings. And that of course just created another giant round of negative publicity. Folks, I've said it before, I'll say it again. If you don't like what shows up when people type your name in on Google, YouTube, the best way to get rid of it is to create new interesting content, if not every day, every single week and attract eyeballs to that because Google will then figure out that that's more relevant to people when you use these other black magic arts, it can blow up in your face, as we've now seen from the disgraced Chancellorship of Linda Katachi. I'm TJ Walker, speaking with TJ Walker is the number one rated daily streaming TV and radio show devoted to all aspects of speaking and communication. If you received value from this show, then please subscribe to it@mediatrainingworldwide.com Please review the show, leave comments and share it with your friends and colleagues. To Today.
