Community college presidential leadership is more taxing than ever; leaders face unprecedented economic declines, increased expectations, and the immediacy of media reporting. The smallest of rumors can escalate into campaigns for good or ill within minutes via the Internet, social media (such as blogs, Twitter, Facebook) and electronic news. Using a basic qualitative design, this paper examines key struggles of community college presidents and describes challenges of leading in the new media spotlight. In-depth interviews were conducted with four presidents to identify their perspectives of how a crisis became a "wounding experience." The leader stories reveal how the daunting realities of leading can be complicated in the digital era, and the paper concludes with some insights and implications for how to cope with a leadership crisis and the new media. (Contains 1 table and 1 footnote.)