Author: Jim

I love this for public health reasons, public information reasons and well, it’s just ballsy. The big news in the public health world last week made the front page thanks to New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg. Banning extra large sodas.

I’m a public health guy, but I agree with all of the folks who say that it’ll never happen (that’s just the soda industry story, the talking heads are almost completely opposed). It’ll never happen. As much as I think it’d be a good idea.

But. (There’s always a but.)

Tell me you EVER thought we’d be having a discussion about banning soda. Ever. But we are now.

And that’s our lesson today. Sometimes you will fail. You will take a chance on a story, an angle, and it’ll fail. (And maybe you know that it will fail.) So long as you’ve been proactive and, well, ballsy, in your messaging, you’ve got a chance to set the discussion, to set the parameters for the media interest.

Maybe you can have that discussion your agency has always wanted to have…

When I present on social media to public information and emergency management folks, I LOVE to talk about citizen-journalists. Half of the room usually rolls their eyes, while the other half mentally checks out.

Citizen “journalists?” Bah, bloggers in their parents’ basement. And rarely do they look as dashing as Jude Law in Contagion.

But then I talk about how they drive coverage by the media. How CNN’s iReport is often, and more and more frequently, the lead view of how CNN reports the story. And then I tell them it’s going to get worse (if you consider that a bad thing, which I don’t necessarily).

My evidence for that is a lightly reported story about AP partnering. with streaming video social network Bambuser to provide streaming video of events.

The partnership between Bambuser and the AP is significant in part because it formalizes the relationship between the news organization and citizen video reporters, who on occasion are thrown into the spotlight just because they happen to be live streaming from what turns out to be a major event.

You wouldn’t know it from the American press, but the situation in Syria is really the hottest story in the world. And the best, on-the-ground reporting has been done using none other than Bambuser. It’s already available for download in your neighborhood.

Who is the public information officer? No really, who is it?

Got that name in mind? Great, now what happens when he or she is gone. No, not retired, but gone. Like (god forbid) hit by a bus or (again, god forbid) caught with their pants down? We spend an awful lot of time training people to back up a lot of our emergency response roles, but do we do that for our PIOs, too?

Okay, maybe you do. Good for you. The backup knows where the letterhead is and how to update the website, they are authorized to set up interviews and have gone through media training. Now think about what PIOs do and what is their most valuable asset. Consider how that is different than a lot of your operational and planning folks and the roles they fill? The most important thing that a PIO has and can offer is his or her relationships with the media. Working relationships that goes beyond how to write a press release. It’s about working with the reporters day in and day out and establishing trust and rapport.

Now think back to our little bus incident. If that happened tomorrow, and your organization got pulled into a brouhaha, would the media’s trust (or lack thereof) in your backup PIO hinder your ability to get information out? When what you say in a crisis (and what the media reports) is as important as the response itself, are we setting ourselves up for failure by only having media relationships through one person?

That’s the thrust of this article on Dan Hicks’ blog, Communicating Through a Crisis, Spokesperson And Others in Crisis Plan Need an Alternate. It’s a quick read, but gives a shocking example that’s left the University of Texas, San Antonio scrambling.