This study explores the use of issues advertising as a form of organizational crisis communication. Specifically, the study analyzes Northwest Airline's (NWA) use of image restoration strategies in the issues advertisements it placed related to the 1998 pilots' strike. We conclude that issues advertising enabled NWA to be proactive in their attempt to reduce culpability for the strike. The evidence also suggests that NWA was able to retain passenger volume but failed to maintain investor confidence. NWA's persuasiveness was limited by the decision to offer only pseudo-corrective action, an inappropriate attempt at separation from its pilots and a failure to account for the relationship history with employees. The study concludes that issues advertising campaigns can incorporate image restoration strategies, serve as part of an organization's crisis management plan, and provide essential information to internal and external stakeholders. ate in the summer of 1998, Northwest Airlines (NWA) initiated one t of its most extensive advertising campaigns. This campaign, however, was not designed to lure customers to the airline's seats. Rather, NWA used newspaper, radio, and television advertising to publicly defend its position prior to and during its 15-day pilots' strike. During the strike an estimated 2 million passengers were displaced and 31,000 NWA employees were temporarily laid off. Heath (1997) contends that issues campaigns, such as the one mounted by NWA, provide &dquo;opportunities for creating, altering, and using zones of meaning that can bring entities

As organizations and communities recover from a crisis, they balance and accommodate competing value systems, complicating the process of healing and renewal. Using the Red Lake, MN public school shootings in 2005 as a focus for this case study, 246 media articles-drawn from Minnesota Public Radio, Minneapolis Tribune, New York Times, and USA Today-revealed the role of cultural variables in the renewal process. While an etic assessment of the community response to the tragedy provided evidence of renewal, particularly related to the reopening of the high school, an emic examination revealed underlying cultural tensions stemming from pre-existing conditions between the dominant White and Native American cultures that demonstrated the complexity of the renewal process.