“You’re a public company. People buy your stock,” Mr. Weiss said. “Stuff happens. Companies don’t do anything wrong — they do what they’re supposed to do — and yet you get hit by this firestorm of stuff.”





A Hacker Appears

As the crisis worsened, three prominent reporters and columnists quit the newspaper, citing its ties to the problematic investor. A major environmental group sold its shares in The Times and urged other groups to follow, saying the impartiality of our reporting couldn’t be guaranteed. The Change.org petition had amassed thousands of signatures, and the boycott was expanding.

And just as we were reeling from all of this, here came the grand finale: a video from a masked hacker speaking in a low, distorted voice. He praised the boycott efforts by environmental groups and delivered a grim message. Based on the investment connection, we were told, a group of concerned hackers planned to use a virus to wreak havoc on our facilities so long as The Times kept exchanging “blood money for ink.” He proclaimed the group would keep fighting for the environment, ending with: “We’re also doing this because we can.”

Stunned silence followed. Then our photographer, Sam, piped up. “Do we bring the F.B.I. in?”

Indeed, Mr. Gilman said, we had “progressed, unfortunately, in the world of crisis communications” to criminal behavior and had become something of a victim ourselves. Still, he added, that didn’t mean public opinion would swing in our favor, pointing to the fallout from Target’s enormous data breach in 2013.

Despite any pressure we may have felt during the simulation, we had the luxury of going back to our actual jobs when it was over. But the quick escalation of the disaster and criticism from all sides made it clear why companies are paranoid about ending up in that kind of situation — even without an ominous video from a hacker — and why they feel the need to plan.

“You can’t prevent any crisis from happening,” Mr. Gilman said. “But you can shorten the duration, you can lessen the impact and do better preparation.”