izing, its public relations and human Understand the Power of Symbols resources staffs were ecstatic that most of the coverage also included their messages. While conceding that "the AT&T downsizing still has far to go," the Washington Post continued that "thus far it is unfolding as what outplacement expert [Chuck] Albrecht [president of the na- tion's largest outplacement firm] called a 'textbook example' of how to do a layoff in today's economic climate. 'It's an excellent process, he said."3 The New York Times used an Allen quote from the news release acknowledging "how wrenching it will be for employees and their families," and then its reporter added that the company really had little choice but to slim down "in response to changes that are ex- pected to rock the communications industry over the next few years-in particular as AT&T and other long-distance carriers prepare for the regional Bell telephone companies to attack the $80 billion long-distance market."4 The Wall Street Journal said that "the magnitude of the cuts stunned even some veteran AT&T-watchers," then went out of its way to give Allen an opportunity to explain himself in the third paragraph of a 1,777-word story. "This is not one of my favorite days, but then I'm not one who is in SO much pain as some of our workers,' AT&T Chairman Robert E. Allen acknowledged yesterday. 'But to the extent we can get in trim, we'll produce better margins, more flexibility and more cash flow to defend our markets and attack others.'"5 A Bullet Dodged As we shut off our PCs that night in the PR department, we felt we had dodged a potentially fatal bullet. But as it turned out, we had fo- cused too much on the newspapers that were tucked into the seat pockets of the limousines that ferried AT&T executives between home and office. We took too much comfort in the fact that most of our "messages" made it into print, albeit at the end of long stories. We should have paid more attention to the evening news broadcasts, which were how most people heard about our down