Eric B. Dezenhall (born September 9, 1962; pronounced DEHZ-in-hall) is an American
crisis management
Crisis management is the process by which an organization deals with a disruptive and unexpected event that threatens to harm the organization or its stakeholders. The study of crisis management originated with large-scale industrial and envir ...
consultant,
author
An author is the writer of a book, article, play, mostly written work. A broader definition of the word "author" states:
"''An author is "the person who originated or gave existence to anything" and whose authorship determines responsibility f ...
, and founder of
Washington D.C.
)
, image_skyline =
, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, Na ...
-based
public relations
Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing and disseminating information from an individual or an organization (such as a business, government agency, or a nonprofit organization) to the public in order to influence their perception. P ...
firm Dezenhall Resources. His aggressive tactics on behalf of his clients have made him both a target of criticism and a quoted
pundit
A pundit is a person who offers mass media opinion or commentary on a particular subject area (most typically politics, the social sciences, technology or sport).
Origins
The term originates from the Sanskrit term ('' '' ), meaning "knowledg ...
on
crisis communications
Crisis communication is a sub-specialty of the public relations profession that is designed to protect and defend an individual, company, or organization facing a public challenge to its reputation. Crisis communication is aimed at raising awarenes ...
.
Career
Born to a Jewish family in
Camden, New Jersey
Camden is a city in and the county seat of Camden County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. Camden is part of the Delaware Valley metropolitan area and is located directly across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At the 2020 ...
, Dezenhall grew up in nearby
Cherry Hill and
Pennsauken Township. He graduated from
Cherry Hill High School West
Cherry Hill High School West (also known as Cherry Hill West or CHW) is a four-year comprehensive public high school, serving students in ninth grade through twelfth grades in Cherry Hill, Camden County, New Jersey, United States, operating ...
and studied
news media
The news media or news industry are forms of mass media that focus on delivering news to the general public or a target public. These include news agencies, print media (newspapers, news magazines), broadcast news (radio and television), and th ...
and
political science
Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and la ...
at
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native A ...
.
Dezenhall worked briefly in
President Ronald Reagan's White House communications office.
After a four-year stint at
Porter Novelli, Dezenhall and boss Nick Nichols left to form Nichols-Dezenhall Communications Management Company in 1987. The company's name was shortened to Dezenhall Resources Ltd. in 2004 after Nichols retired in 2003.
Dezenhall Resources
Dezenhall is founder and CEO
of
public relations
Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing and disseminating information from an individual or an organization (such as a business, government agency, or a nonprofit organization) to the public in order to influence their perception. P ...
firm Dezenhall Resources,
which represents
high-profile clients facing "
crisis
A crisis ( : crises; : critical) is either any event or period that will (or might) lead to an unstable and dangerous situation affecting an individual, group, or all of society. Crises are negative changes in the human or environmental affair ...
, conflict, and
controversy
Controversy is a state of prolonged public dispute or debate, usually concerning a matter of conflicting opinion or point of view. The word was coined from the Latin ''controversia'', as a composite of ''controversus'' – "turned in an opposite d ...
." Dezenhall's published writing on public relations focuses on how a celebrity or corporation can successfully defend their reputation in the face of "a lawsuit, a sex scandal, a defective product, or allegations of
insider trading
Insider trading is the trading of a public company's stock or other securities (such as bonds or stock options) based on material, nonpublic information about the company. In various countries, some kinds of trading based on insider information ...
", among other crises.
Kevin McCauley, from O'Dwyer's PR Report, regards Dezenhall "as one of the most effective in his specialty, calling him 'the pit bull of public relations.
Clients
Although Dezenhall does not comment on clients and contracts, ''
Business Week
''Bloomberg Businessweek'', previously known as ''BusinessWeek'', is an American weekly business magazine published fifty times a year. Since 2009, the magazine is owned by New York City-based Bloomberg L.P. The magazine debuted in New York City ...
'' reported that Dezenhall had been hired by
ExxonMobil
ExxonMobil Corporation (commonly shortened to Exxon) is an American multinational oil and gas corporation headquartered in Irving, Texas. It is the largest direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, and was formed on November 30, ...
/
Public Interest Watch
Public Interest Watch (PIW) was established in September 2002 by Mike Hardiman. The PIW website states that the group was created "in response to the growing misuse of charitable funds by nonprofit organizations and the lack of effort by governme ...
, lawyers representing former
Enron
Enron Corporation was an American energy, commodities, and services company based in Houston, Texas. It was founded by Kenneth Lay in 1985 as a merger between Lay's Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth, both relatively small regional companies. ...
CEO
Jeffrey Skilling
Jeffrey Keith Skilling (born November 25, 1953) is an American businessman who is best known as the CEO of Enron Corporation during the Enron scandal. In 2006, he was convicted of federal felony charges relating to Enron's collapse and eventual ...
,
O'Melveny & Myers
O'Melveny & Myers LLP is an American multinational law firm founded in Los Angeles, California in 1885. The firm employs approximately 740 lawyers and has offices in California, Washington, D.C., New York City, Beijing, Brussels, Hong Kong, Lon ...
,
Mark Geragos
Mark John Geragos (born October 5, 1957) is an American criminal defense lawyer and the managing partner of Geragos & Geragos, in Los Angeles.
Early life and education
Geragos was born in Los Angeles, California, where he attended Flintridge Pr ...
(attorney for
Michael Jackson
Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American singer, songwriter, dancer, and philanthropist. Dubbed the "King of Pop", he is regarded as one of the most significant cultural figures of the 20th century. Over a ...
), and
Eli Lilly and Company
Eli Lilly and Company is an American pharmaceutical company headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, with offices in 18 countries. Its products are sold in approximately 125 countries. The company was founded in 1876 by, and named after, Colonel ...
;
''
Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
'' identified
Procter & Gamble
The Procter & Gamble Company (P&G) is an American multinational consumer goods corporation headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, founded in 1837 by William Procter and James Gamble. It specializes in a wide range of personal health/consumer hea ...
and
General Electric
General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable energ ...
;
and ''
The Hill'' cited
Community Financial Services Association of America
The Community Financial Services Association of America (CFSA) is a trade association in the United States representing the payday lending industry.
Controversy
The payday lending industry has been the source of ongoing controversy due to its lo ...
as clients of Dezenhall.
He was contracted by the
Association of American Publishers
The Association of American Publishers (AAP) is the national trade association of the American book publishing industry. AAP lobbies for book, journal, and education publishers in the United States. AAP members include most of the major commercia ...
to run an up to half million dollar campaign against the
open access
Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre op ...
movement.
In a series of emails that were leaked to the journal ''
Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...
'', Dezenhall concedes that "it's hard to fight an adversary that manages to be both elusive and in possession of a better message: Free information", and suggests joining forces with think tanks like the
American Enterprise Institute
The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, known simply as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), is a center-right Washington, D.C.–based think tank that researches government, politics, economics, and social welfare. ...
in an attempt to persuade key players of the potential risks of unfiltered access. "Paint a picture of what the world would look like without
peer-reviewed
Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work (peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review ...
articles", he added.
AAP CEO
Patricia Schroeder
Patricia Nell Scott Schroeder (born July 30, 1940) is an American politician who represented Colorado in the United States House of Representatives from 1973 to 1997. A member of the Democratic Party, Schroeder was the first female U.S. Represe ...
praised Dezenhall and told ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'' that the association hired Dezenhall's firm when members realized they needed help. "We thought we were angels for a long time and we didn't need PR firms."
In 2001 as media stories about the abuse of oxycontin produced by
Purdue Pharma
Purdue Pharma L.P., formerly the Purdue Frederick Company, is an American privately held pharmaceutical company founded by John Purdue Gray. It was owned principally by members of the Sackler family as descendants of Mortimer and Raymond Sackler ...
received wide attention, Dezenhall worked for the company along with
Sally Satel
Sally L. Satel (born January 9, 1956) is an American psychiatrist based in Washington, D.C. She is a lecturer at Yale University School of Medicine, a visiting professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, a senior fellow at the American Enter ...
, an AEI Fellow, to counter the bad publicity.
Writing
Dezenhall has written extensively, in news publications and through several fiction and nonfiction books. His subjects often deal with difficult and complex hidden underworlds, including organized crime and spies. He first chronicled the diaries of the late mobster
Meyer Lansky
Meyer Lansky (born Maier Suchowljansky; July 4, 1902 – January 15, 1983), known as the "Mob's Accountant", was an American organized crime figure who, along with his associate Charles "Lucky" Luciano, was instrumental in the development of the ...
in
The Baltimore Sun
''The Baltimore Sun'' is the largest general-circulation daily newspaper based in the U.S. state of Maryland and provides coverage of local and regional news, events, issues, people, and industries.
Founded in 1837, it is currently owned by Tr ...
in 2001; two years later he published ''Money Wanders'', a fictional account of organized crime in
Atlantic City
Atlantic City, often known by its initials A.C., is a coastal resort city in Atlantic County, New Jersey, United States. The city is known for its casinos, Boardwalk (entertainment district), boardwalk, and beaches. In 2020 United States censu ...
, where Dezenhall spent his summers growing up. In 2011, Lansky was the main character in Dezenhall's historical fictional novel, ''The Devil Himself'', about Lansky's work with Naval Intelligence during World War II to secure the ports in New York City against Nazi sabotage. His 2018 non-fiction book (coauthored with
Gus Russo
Gus G. Russo (born 1950 in Baltimore, Maryland) is an American author and researcher of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Russo was part of a team of researchers that worked on the 1993 ''Frontline'' Lee Harvey Oswald documentary, ''Who Was ...
) ''Best of Enemies: The Last Great Spy Story of the Cold War'' chronicles the friendship between the KGB's Gennady Vasilenko and the CIA's Jack Platt. The book details for the first time Platt's critical role in identifying the FBI's
Robert Hanssen
Robert Philip Hanssen (born April 18, 1944) is an American former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) double agent who spied for Soviet and Russian intelligence services against the United States from 1979 to 2001. His espionage was described ...
as the mole inside the US intelligence community.
As a leading expert about crisis communications, Dezenhall wrote ''Nail 'em: Confronting High-Profile Attacks on Celebrities and Business'' and ''Glass Jaw''; he coauthored ''Damage Control: Why Everything You Know About Crisis Management is Wrong''.
Dezenhall's other novels include ''Turnpike Flameout'', ''Shakedown Beach'', ''Jackie Disaster'', and ''Spinning Dixie''.
Criticism
In 2001, Dezenhall reportedly tangled with
Bill Moyers
Bill Moyers (born Billy Don Moyers, June 5, 1934) is an American journalist and political commentator. Under the Johnson administration he served from 1965 to 1967 as the eleventh White House Press Secretary. He was a director of the Counci ...
while representing the chemical industry based on Moyers' documentary ''Trade Secrets''.
Dezenhall has been criticized for being a "
spin doctor
In public relations and politics, spin is a form of propaganda, achieved through knowingly
providing a biased interpretation of an event or campaigning to influence public opinion about some organization or public figure. While traditional publi ...
" who lowers the quality of
public debate
:''for debate among the public, see Public sphere''
Public debate may mean simply debating by the public, or in public. The term is also used for a particular formal style of debate in a competitive or educational context. Two teams of two compe ...
for the sake of protecting business interests. His efforts on behalf of traditional
publisher
Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, newsp ...
s to combat
open access
Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre op ...
to
scientific
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...
research have been an ongoing source of controversy in the
academic
An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary education, secondary or tertiary education, tertiary higher education, higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membershi ...
community.
Published works
Nonfiction
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Fiction
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References
External links
Dezenhall Resources profile page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dezenhall, Eric
1962 births
Living people
American crime fiction writers
American public relations people
Cherry Hill High School West alumni
People from Cherry Hill, New Jersey
People from Pennsauken Township, New Jersey
Writers from Camden, New Jersey
Dartmouth College alumni
American male novelists
21st-century American novelists
21st-century American male writers
Novelists from New Jersey