This post is for all those journalists who wonder why events or reports promoted as "major news" often turn out to be less newsworthy than promised. We won't be dishing about White House interference or political infighting, just pulling back the curtain to show how the "big announcement" sausage is actually created.
The Federal government issues lots of reports and holds press events to unveil many of them. Many of the reports are technical in nature and are not written for a general audience. The technocrats who write the reports often bristle at efforts by flacks to distill the key themes and findings into press releases, talking points and likely questions and suggested answers (Q&A).
"I don't care about dumbing things down for the media," one executive roared at me years ago.
The screamer actually had a point. Major announcements, whether the awarding of contracts for a new line of ships, the unveiling of problems in an information technology program, or an announcement of a new program, often are written using the subject-specific jargon. Acquisition, IT, safety programs, all have languages of their own, and the terms are have very specific meanings.
Flacks must be careful, therefore, when simplifying concepts for public conception. Take, for example, the challenge faced by the U.S. Coast Guard in 2007 when it was trying to reassure a skeptical Congress that it was getting control of its massive shipbuilding and aircraft construction program. The Deepwater Program was under fire for cost overruns, schedule slippages and whistleblower allegations of construction flaws.
The Coast Guard took a series of steps to improve oversight of the program, including implementing a strong risk management process to ensure that problems that cropped up during construction of the first National Security Cutter were identified and mitigated. According to Wikipedia, " In all types of engineering of complex systems sophisticated risk assessments are often made within Safety engineering and Reliability engineering when it concerns threats to life, environment or machine functioning. The nuclear, aerospace, oil, rail and military industries have a long history of dealing with risk assessment."
The public takes a different, more personal view of risk. Call it the "what does it mean to me" risk assessment. Journalists, especially those who are not subject matter experts, routinely look for news that interests their readers or viewers. For the "if it bleeds it leads" media outlets (local television and many community newspapers, the word risk leaps out from government reports.
The leadership of the Coast Guard's new Acquisition Directorate decided to proactively communicate to Department of Homeland Security leaders and key lawmakers the steps it was taking to identify potential risks, and determine how to eliminate the risk or reduce it to acceptable levels. Media attending a December 2007 Coast Guard briefing were somewhat skeptical, as evidenced by the lead of a Congress Daily story on the media event. "Coast Guard officials today claimed progress in turning around its troubled $24 billion, 25-year Deepwater program to upgrade or replace 93 cutters and over 200 aircraft," reporter Terry Kivlan wrote.
The flack's job is to serve as a translator, providing information that is both accurate and in plain English. This can be a thankless task, especially when the report or announcement is targeted to multiple audiences. The technocrat executive who screamed at me years ago about "dumbing things down" for the media also believed that Congressional staff who received the agency's reports would actually read a 20-30 page report. Some Hill staff do read Government Accountability Office or Office of Inspector General reports cover to cover. Most don't. In an era of 140 character attention spans, summaries and soundbites are crucial to breaking through the clutter
With the back story out of the way, let's get back to planning for that big announcement. Let's use the annual release of traffic safety statistics by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration as an example. In November, NHTSA issued its annual traffic safety analysis. The press release led with the following statement: "U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood today announced updated 2010 fatality and injury data showing that highway deaths fell to 32,885 for the year, the lowest level since 1949."
The second sentence proclaimed that "the record-breaking decline in traffic fatalities occurred even as American drivers traveled nearly 46 billion more miles during the year, an increase of 1.6 percent over the 2009 level." The fatality rate is based on the number of fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles. Try explaining that in a tweet.
While I don't have first-hand knowledge of how NHTSA prepared for its December press conference, here's what likely happened. The public affairs staff were given a draft of the report and provided a briefing on the key findings. Taking into account the Administration's priorities, the flacks made a recommendation to the Administrator on the the key messages that should be emphasized in all public statements. A press release was drafted and circulated to the report authors. Remarks or talking points were developed for the Secretary of Transportation and the NHTSA Administrator. News coverage of previous reports was analyzed to determine what questions might be asked.
A day or two prior to the announcement, an advisory was issued information the media of the pending releases. This was followed up by "pitch" calls and emails to media encouraging them to attend. Press kits (both print and web-based) were developed containing the press release, prepared remarks and the complete report, along with charts and other graphics.
The Federal government issues lots of reports and holds press events to unveil many of them. Many of the reports are technical in nature and are not written for a general audience. The technocrats who write the reports often bristle at efforts by flacks to distill the key themes and findings into press releases, talking points and likely questions and suggested answers (Q&A).
"I don't care about dumbing things down for the media," one executive roared at me years ago.
The screamer actually had a point. Major announcements, whether the awarding of contracts for a new line of ships, the unveiling of problems in an information technology program, or an announcement of a new program, often are written using the subject-specific jargon. Acquisition, IT, safety programs, all have languages of their own, and the terms are have very specific meanings.
Flacks must be careful, therefore, when simplifying concepts for public conception. Take, for example, the challenge faced by the U.S. Coast Guard in 2007 when it was trying to reassure a skeptical Congress that it was getting control of its massive shipbuilding and aircraft construction program. The Deepwater Program was under fire for cost overruns, schedule slippages and whistleblower allegations of construction flaws.
The Coast Guard took a series of steps to improve oversight of the program, including implementing a strong risk management process to ensure that problems that cropped up during construction of the first National Security Cutter were identified and mitigated. According to Wikipedia, " In all types of engineering of complex systems sophisticated risk assessments are often made within Safety engineering and Reliability engineering when it concerns threats to life, environment or machine functioning. The nuclear, aerospace, oil, rail and military industries have a long history of dealing with risk assessment."
The public takes a different, more personal view of risk. Call it the "what does it mean to me" risk assessment. Journalists, especially those who are not subject matter experts, routinely look for news that interests their readers or viewers. For the "if it bleeds it leads" media outlets (local television and many community newspapers, the word risk leaps out from government reports.
The leadership of the Coast Guard's new Acquisition Directorate decided to proactively communicate to Department of Homeland Security leaders and key lawmakers the steps it was taking to identify potential risks, and determine how to eliminate the risk or reduce it to acceptable levels. Media attending a December 2007 Coast Guard briefing were somewhat skeptical, as evidenced by the lead of a Congress Daily story on the media event. "Coast Guard officials today claimed progress in turning around its troubled $24 billion, 25-year Deepwater program to upgrade or replace 93 cutters and over 200 aircraft," reporter Terry Kivlan wrote.
The flack's job is to serve as a translator, providing information that is both accurate and in plain English. This can be a thankless task, especially when the report or announcement is targeted to multiple audiences. The technocrat executive who screamed at me years ago about "dumbing things down" for the media also believed that Congressional staff who received the agency's reports would actually read a 20-30 page report. Some Hill staff do read Government Accountability Office or Office of Inspector General reports cover to cover. Most don't. In an era of 140 character attention spans, summaries and soundbites are crucial to breaking through the clutter
With the back story out of the way, let's get back to planning for that big announcement. Let's use the annual release of traffic safety statistics by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration as an example. In November, NHTSA issued its annual traffic safety analysis. The press release led with the following statement: "U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood today announced updated 2010 fatality and injury data showing that highway deaths fell to 32,885 for the year, the lowest level since 1949."
The second sentence proclaimed that "the record-breaking decline in traffic fatalities occurred even as American drivers traveled nearly 46 billion more miles during the year, an increase of 1.6 percent over the 2009 level." The fatality rate is based on the number of fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles. Try explaining that in a tweet.
While I don't have first-hand knowledge of how NHTSA prepared for its December press conference, here's what likely happened. The public affairs staff were given a draft of the report and provided a briefing on the key findings. Taking into account the Administration's priorities, the flacks made a recommendation to the Administrator on the the key messages that should be emphasized in all public statements. A press release was drafted and circulated to the report authors. Remarks or talking points were developed for the Secretary of Transportation and the NHTSA Administrator. News coverage of previous reports was analyzed to determine what questions might be asked.
A day or two prior to the announcement, an advisory was issued information the media of the pending releases. This was followed up by "pitch" calls and emails to media encouraging them to attend. Press kits (both print and web-based) were developed containing the press release, prepared remarks and the complete report, along with charts and other graphics.
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