This morning on CNN's "Starting Point" program, Soledad O'Brien was interviewing Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) about the Supreme Court's then pending healthcare law ruling announcement. It piqued my interest because Senator Schumer used two smart media interview tactics:
Avoid repeating the negative - At one point O'Brien was asking about what people should consider as the main reason for low support for the healthcare reform law. She asked Schumer if he'd consider it a "failure of message" to which the senator replied, "I wouldn't call it that. I would say..." This is a smart and simple approach to a leading negative comment by the interviewer. Don't repeat the negative and give the media that sound bite. Use the opportunity to bridge on to what you need to say for clarification of message.
Avoid speculations - I bit later in the interview O'Brian was trying to get the senator to talk about what he thought would happen if the Supreme Court ruled against all or part of the law. Schumer initially wouldn't take the bait and opted not to speculate on live TV about next steps. This was probably a result of the Schumer being pretty adept as a politician conducting himself with media. (He later went ahead and talked in general terms about what steps might be taken politically.) It's still a good idea to avoid speculations for anyone being interviewed by the media if ask about an area or possible scenarios that you do not fully know or can share. For goodness' sake, don't guess.
Have I mentioned how much I dig Storify? In addition to being super-easy to use (drag-n-drop), it's a great tool for capturing tweets, pics, posts, slide decks, videos, links and more on a topic, event, news item or anything really if you are creative. I recommend PR pros experimenting with Storify.
Earlier this week the Dallas ISD received some summertime media attention with their incoming superintendent setting the salaries for four chiefs in his cabinet including $185K for a Chief of communications.
I have no interest in debating whether or not this individual should or should not be paid this as a base salary for a school PR job mainly because I don't know the ins and outs of the DISD budget. Nor am I interested in the arguing the newsworthiness of the Dallas Morning News article that raised eyebrows because that education reporter was simply following the template of others: share salary of public official + compare it/share it = shock and disbelief x readers. Textbook.
No, I'm focused on two intriguing aspects of this situation from a school PR perspective:
(1.) An increase in the value of school communication professionals by superintendents and (2.) the timing of summer information releases.
Top-level value of school public relations
The article mentions that the new superintendent, Mike Miles, is bringing the district's communication position into the executive fold.
DISD’s top communications position has not been a chief-level job, but Miles said the change was needed because there will be an increased focus on communication.
Honestly, I was surprised to read that communications was not previously an executive or cabinet-level position in Dallas ISD. By including his communications person among his chiefs, the new superintendent has shown how much he values strategic communications for his district administration. I sincerely hope DISD has found someone to help bring things along (or turn things around depending on where you sit) for the school communities. School PR should take note of how expectations for internal and external communication can be of value and service to a school district.
“We’re going to do communications differently,” Miles said. “Most people in the community will agree that our communications have to be better.”
I do, however, take exception to part of theDallas Observer's post on the salary from their "Edumication News" section. (Yikes!) and his premise that anyone can do communications because it's a sales job. Joe Tone writes,
There are plenty of areas of public education that require a really specific set of skills. But communications isn't one of them. It's sales, basically, only for almost every customer you have, yours is the only product they've ever heard of.
Wrongo. What Joe Tone doesn't realize (or care to understand) is that strategic communications and school public relations does require a specific skill set just like other administrative functions. But that's ok, he's in the media. He can write what he wants. I may need to save that list for a future post.
Summer Timing
The other tactical aspect of this news story should be of interest to school PR pros as well. While the administration of school districts continue all year long, some of the stories for education reporters dwindles in the summer. While this salary brouhaha will cause a bit of bruising in the short-term for DISD, it won't have lasting effects since people move on to other things in their heads pretty quickly. Especially in the summer. If there was going to be a time for an OMG-look-at-what-they-are-paying article to come out, the summer is really the best time for it. Controversial news has a better chance of being managed internally and externally when released over the summer. I recommend information-gathering and using online statements as well as direct communication with the community in addition to working with the media. It's true during the school year and during the summer.
Photo credit: grbenching via Flickr Creative Commons
Oh what a difference a year makes. One year ago my school district had a lively (and ultimately positive) PR issue at end to the school year: a high school student protest at the administration building.
On Friday, June 3, approximately 100 students from Timberview High
School held a peaceful demonstration at the Mansfield ISD administration
building voicing their concerns over the decision to transfer a staff
member from their campus to another school within the District.
The Timberview staff member received notice of an administrative
transfer to a middle school in MISD as a teacher and coach starting in
the 2011-12 school year. To date, this individual is one of 75 Mansfield ISD employees who
received such administrative transfers in our continuing efforts to save
jobs in the District. (While other districts were cutting staff and eliminating positions, the Mansfield ISD administration and board committed to avoid personnel and student program cuts during the state of Texas' education budget uncertainty.)
The important thing to note is that in this situation is we were not surprised by the demonstration. The students tipped their hand through word of mouth and social media. The rumor-mill revved up during the last week of school about the students being upset that one of the teachers was being moved/fired/replaced/sent away/etc. (You know, the way the rumor-mill works, they only had a portion of the truth.)
Thankfully, I got wind of it pretty early because we aggressively monitor traditional media and social media for mentions, problems, topics related to the District and campuses. It wasn't long before the students took to Twitter and Facebook to rally support and organize the demonstration. Using Twitter search and a Boolean search string with hastags, campus name, the teacher's name and the 'OR' operator, I had a pretty good handle (and free look) into the conversation on that channel. The students also set up a Facebook Page to save the coach and pretty much left it wide open for anyone to see. This was good because we could observe as well.
When the conversation moved to an actual organized protest for the last day of school, we were not taken by surprise and were able to anticipate their movements. Originally, they wanted to demonstrate at the high school, which was a bad idea because in addition to it being the last day of school it was also a finals day. Naturally, the concern here was a disruption in the academic process particularly for those students not involved or interested in this particular demonstration. But things changed.
What happened next? Since we were monitoring the conversation, we followed the news that the students decided against rallying at the high school and instead were going to gather and demonstrate at the District administration building. Great. Again, this was the last day of school but this was a better situation for us since we could contain things away from students taking finals.
The radio station told me they had heard there were "300 students gathered at the stadium" to protest. Since we had anticipated the students' moves and had confirmation from District police, I was able to give her the actual numbers (approximately 50 kids at the time) and an updated location of our administrative complex. I told her to have the reporter meet me in the parking lot and we'd go from there.
And thus started the media relations side to this story.
As members of the local media began to arrive and get their b-roll of the students marching then coming over to get some interviews I took an opportunity to show a little strategic support for the students. I had our student nutrition department deliver cases of bottled water so we could distribute among the students during what was quickly becoming a hot Texas day. Ideally, I wanted the media footage to include us passing out the water. Yes, this was done on purpose from a strategic viewing benefit as well as simply being a case of us still being responsible for the students during a school day.
The media interviews went fine. Most of the articles and stories that aired were balanced and we were able to share the key messages that this was all a part of our District's job-saving measures during a time of state education budget cuts. In general, I still consider this a positive experience also because the students did a good job of staying focused and took the demonstration seriously instead of using it to act unruly, disrespectful, or cause problems for traffic or the general community. These were good kids, they didn't have a perspective beyond what they thought they knew. It was actually refreshing to observe an organized student protest for something they believe in even though we had to deal with the media fall-out from it and took a bit of a short-term bruising.
I've used this case study a few times over the past year, but figured it was time to put it down in a post so hopefully other school PR pros or administrators can benefit from some of the steps we took. Simply put, school districts must monitor the online conversations and when topics or issues arise, be ready to take action. Traditional media and social media monitoring are must-haves in a school PR pro's arsenal from an early-warning device to a part of the measurement practices.
I'll leave you with one of the local media stories on the protest:
