Two months after the scandal, Penn State’s crisis PR remains off-key

The past few days have seen the scandal return to the headlines for two reasons:

1. Joe Paterno sits for his first post-scandal interview.

Paterno gave the interview to The Washington Post‘s Sally Jenkins, his first since being dismissed by the university. Lung cancer, Jenkins wrote, “has robbed [Paterno] of the breath to say all that he wants to about the scandal he still struggles to comprehend.”

In the interview, the former coach claims ignorance, saying this about the moment when assistant coach Mike McQueary reported the incident involving Jerry Sandusky to him:

“You know, he didn’t want to get specific,” Paterno said. “And to be frank with you I don’t know that it would have done any good, because I never heard of, of, rape and a man. So I just did what I thought was best. I talked to people that I thought would be, if there was a problem, that would be following up on it.”