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Adolph Coors Company (B)
The following is the complete transcript of a speech given by Shirley Richard, director of corporate communications, at the International Association of Business Communicators annual conference on May 12, 1983.

Introduction
The winds of change are blowing, and as we progress into the information age, investigative journalism is something which will affect all of us—either as consumers, members of special interest groups, business persons, or members of the general public. Organizations—and especially businesses—will be forced in the years ahead to deal with investigative reporters in an open and forthright manner. Adolph Coors Company, the nation's sixth largest brewer, has changed its news media …show more content…

To properly prepare for any investigative reporter, you should know as much about the program and its host as possible. To prepare for Mike Wallace's visit to Coors, we learned as much about "60 Minutes" as we could. The success of "60 Minutes" is attributed to its investigative portions and especially the hard-hitting, inquisitorial approach of Mike Wallace, who has been with the show since its debut on the CBS network in the fall of 1968. The show reaches approximately forty million Americans each week. Allan Maraynes was the producer for the Coors investigation. According to Palmer Williams who recently retired after thirty-one years with CBS—the last fourteen as deputy to Don Hewitt—the founding father and executive producer of "60 Minutes": "Producers are the be-all and end-all of everything that happens on this show. They are the twenty-three skilled entrepreneurs who do a great deal of research and collar people for interviews and arrange schedules and beat

Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth

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their correspondents over the head all year long. Good camera crews and good editors improve pieces, but it is the producer who does the donkey work at every level, and it's his neck that's out. If his case—and that includes his big-name correspondent—doesn't perform up to expectations, it's a blot on the producer." After we learned this information, we traveled to New York to visit the producer, Allan Maraynes,