Virginia Review

"What we got here is ... failure to communicate." — Cool Hand Luke, 1967, starring Paul Newman

Along with spending the last 20 years as the editor of the Virginia Review, I've enjoyed a mirror career of sorts through my work with nonprofits, particularly in the area of museums and Virginia history. Most recently, I was asked to help a new nonprofit I'm involved with develop a media list for press releases. When in the midst of that task, they also expressed a desire to distribute their brochure to the better hotels in the area, and that list was developed. Subsequently, the network of Virginia Visitors Centers was discovered. It was news that many of the visitors centers have a brochure manager whose responsibility it is to find display space for tourism brochures and other information. Getting the correct TV, print media, and radio contacts was not far behind. Access to spreading the word about this nonprofit seemed to be snowballing.

In the midst of getting this information together, I experienced some frustration. The organization's contact person vacillated between wanting to send out a barrage of press releases right now (when attendance was slow and few funds were coming in), to not being sure at all what to publicize if anything. We had several meetings set up that were canceled with the excuse that grants had to be written, etc. It was suddenly apparent that this organization did not see the value of public relations communications because they did not see it as an integral part of their fundraising and public awareness campaigns. Good communication is the key to all success, whether it be in the public or private sectors. Raising awareness can most definitely lead to raising funds. This has always been a no brainer to me. Why isn't it to others?

As I thought about it, it dawned on me that my frustration in this instance has been magnified over the past two decades when dealing with government officials. We have encountered two distinct camps of state and local government managers. In the one camp, they embrace public relations and incorporate it as an integral part of their long term strategic planning. They budget for it, they plan for it, and they invest in an employee or staff who are trained to do the best job possible. In the other camp, they see no value in having a public information professional on staff and hand these duties off to someone on staff who is generally a) not professionally fit or equipped to do the job, and b) who is already overloaded with bits and pieces of other job descriptions.

It's been my experience that when the first lot encounters a conflict, scandal, or emergency, they sometimes fumble, but generally face challenges and tackle them head on resulting in a workable outcome. The second group doesn't usually fare so well, and this is exacerbated by the fact that they often hate and distrust the press. They do not cultivate a positive relationship with the local media and, as a result, when they face their toughest dilemmas, they get no slack from the press or the public.

So, what's an organization to do? Why invest in good communication as an essential tool to good governance? And what does that have to do with the rest of the state or local government's role in society. Well, in a word, everything. Investment in solid, informed communications is a necessity, not a nicety.

Meeting Dr. Sheryl D. Bailey (r), the new Virginia Resources Authority Executive Director, was educational as well as informational. Read more about our visit in the Cover Profile.

We find that newspapers and wire service reports are useful tools to us as are press releases and other news directly from state and local government organizations. In cases of scandal, or employee relations, most governmental agencies refuse to comment. This is understandable. However, what is not understandable is when a media mention prompts us to pursue an idea with an organization, and we hit a brick wall of no communication or obfuscation. We are usually pursuing an article idea that is positive for the community and shows the government officials involved in a responsible light, something not every journal in the Commonwealth offers.

"Who in their right mind wouldn't want positive coverage," you may be asking yourself. This is a good question, and when I started this job 20 years ago, I doggedly pursued interesting article ideas until I got at a minimum of three rejections from the organization I was trying to "help." Then I learned something because of experience and dumb luck on my part. Quite often, those organizations that were the most resistant to work on their positive public relations image were, well, quite frankly, more often than not, hiding something. A case in point is a Northern Virginia town we visited a few years back.

We were invited to town for a two day visit of the town government's operations, but it was after we convinced the manager it would be good for the community. That was our first mistake. The manager was a hard sell. Once we got there the manager, who in a normal scenario acts as the facilitator for our visits, played hide and seek with us for two days. Bells should have gone off when we found out through the grapevine that he and some other town officials were getting deposed for a legal case. We otherwise spent a delightful time touring the place, and got to interview most officials and even were interviewed ourselves by the local media. They asked us, point blank, if we thought something was up with the manager and one of the council members. We said we couldn't comment because we had yet to spend more than 30 minutes with the manager and had not met the councilmember in question. Turns out there was soon an investigation, and the end result was that not too long after our article was published (that didn't mention any of this back story) the manager packed up and left the state. He was asked to leave. There was a question of misappropriation of public funds.

While some shy from attention, like that manager in Northern Virginia. The alternative has also been true. In the case of one local government manager in Southwest Virginia, his public information person pleaded, implored, and all but begged us to do a feature about this manager whom everyone in the region allegedly thought the world of. We explained that we didn't pursue cover profiles on behalf of endorsements by employees, that there were too many ethical problems with that. It didn't sink in. He didn't get it. He insisted if we just called around we would find out what he about his boss was true, and that the guy was a local legend. Well, we did call around, and it turns out those two were apparently living in some kind of alternative universe. While some people said they carried no hard feelings for the manager, they wouldn't go as far as to say they would support or even read a cover profile of him. Others had feelings so negative about the guy we wondered why he thought he was so popular among his peers. They certainly did not share his good opinion of himself. Long story short, the manager who wanted the whole world to pay attention to him got what he wanted in the end, though probably not the kind of attention he anticipated. Seems he'd been accessing public money like it was his own private account. He ended up in serious trouble, and in prison, not jail, prison, doing some serious state, then federal time.

Another unfortunate attitude we have encountered was in the Richmond region. According to the county administrator, citizens and the business community loved each and every thing the county did. They must have. No one ever criticized or challenged them about any of their decisions. They also puzzled over, but didn't worry much about the fact that public attendance by citizens and members of the business community was poor at their board of supervisor and planning commission meetings. One supervisor was famous for berating the business community for not being there to represent their interests. Well, turns out the reason was this: they were not informing the public about what was going on. Sure, they let the public know the trivial stuff like when the historical society met, or when the county would be closed or open. But they did not communicate the big stuff like when important votes on the BPOL tax were coming up, or zoning cases that could impact several communities. Citizens and business owners alike woke up and got motivated to attend public meetings. Attendance at public meetings is no longer slim to none. Well, the result has been interesting. The stunned local officials got criticism, all right, and they got challenged for sure. Citizen groups became more organized, neighborhood associations formed, and a chamber of commerce formed, the first one in the county's history. Now whenever the county administrator is among peers he is often heard to bemoan that everything was just fine until special interest groups and the media got involved. The public and the press combined are now apparently the bane of his existence. One good look in the mirror would help more accurately place the bulk of the blame. Keeping information from the public can be as destructive as misleading them.

Last year a state agency finally filled the public information post that had been empty for some time. It was just in time, too, because the community the agency serves had been used to getting regular updates about what was going on in the state via printed newsletters and a quarterly journal. However, a lot of that essential news was curtailed when a long time staffer left to take another position elsewhere.

In the interim between public information officers, a staff person took up the PR mantle in a modest way by broadcasting news clippings by email from around the state that pertained to the agency's interests, and in particular, what different people on staff were up to where. It was fabulous because everyone kept up with the news they otherwise would never have gotten, plus it was fun to read the installments and see what was going on around the Commonwealth. This was communication at its cleverest, simplest, and best. It provided a real service.

Well, of course, that was halted the minute the new public relations "expert" came on board. There would be no more emails or broadcasts. The protests from the agency's customers were ignored. In the "expert's" experience, press releases and other typical forms of communication were obsolete and expensive. In future all communications would be via their website. In other words, he was saying, in effect, "Don't look for us to make communication easy for you. You have to find us to find out what we're up to." This sent a couple of clear messages. The first was that they did not value their customers' input or needs when they said they wanted more information. The second was either they were openly admitting they were bone lazy, or that they were just plain secretive by creating a system that was and is process oriented and user unfriendly. As a result, a once vibrant and important agency has been reduced to a typical bureaucracy with diminished visibility.

So what is an organization to do? When I talk to my friends in public relations who actually know that they are doing they roar with laughter when I tell them what some of the public agencies we've worked with are doing to basically sabotage their own marketing programs. Ineffective or user unfriendly communication is, in the words of MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, worse, poor communication is worser, and no communication is worst.

In the next issue of the Virginia Review we will cover in greater detail how to achieve good communication for your organization. But in the meantime, the following are compiled by various sources, including our own that you might find helpful.