BOSTON, June 1—Cone is expanding its crisis communication capabilities with the addition of veteran journalist Dave Overton as a vice president. Overton comes to Cone from Austin, where he was most recently news director for CBS affiliate KEYE. In 26 years as a journalist, Overton worked as a newspaper reporter, investigative television reporter, news producer and as a news director of ABC, NBC, and CBS affiliated television stations in Tucson, Norfolk, Austin, and Dallas.

Working closely with executive VP Mike Lawrence, who heads Cone’s media services practice, Overton will lead the expansion of Cone’s crisis assessment, prevention and management practice.

“Our past work for clients has involved preparing for media attention resulting from various threats to business and has included monitoring the risks associated with overseas manufacturing, consumer and Internet boycott threats; product contamination and safety concerns; environmental accidents, and staff cutbacks and layoffs,” says Lawrence.
“We are seeing an increased need and demand for crisis services for our clients.  We believe this is fueled in part by an increase in the number of investigative stories done by the news media,” says Jens Bang, president. “However, an even greater factor is the Internet which has given consumers a powerful ability to complain and be heard by a worldwide audience—including journalists in search of story ideas.”