What governments can learn from local media's struggles
Talking about the issues that matter and educating audiences is hard when there's a lot of noise.
Welcome back, readers! Local governments and local news outlets have a lot in common: a limited audience, constrained revenue streams and a bifurcated audience. A recent meeting I had for the GFOA’s Rethinking Financial Reporting project got me thinking more about the challenges of producing one document that’s read by different types of audiences with very different motivations. Around the same time, journalist
, who writes a Substack newsletter I subscribe to, wrote a couple pieces about local news media audience engagement.There are some parallels here that local government folks should keep in mind.
Puppies and taxes
In his newsletter on measuring website traffic, Owens points to the conflict between the business side of media and the editorial side: Stories that attract a large audience versus news that informs. He cites an exchange in 2008 between Sam Zell, who had recently acquired Tribune Media, and a reporter from The Orlando Sentinel.
“You need to, in effect, help me by being a journalist that focuses on what our readers want, and therefore generates more revenue,” Zell said.
“But what readers want are puppy dogs,” the journalist responded, adding “we also need to inform the community.”
For governments, it’s not puppies, it’s tax cuts. A big reason elected officials are attracted to tax cuts is because they’re popular with constituents—and popularity is currency.
Tax cuts are great if you can afford them. But they’re not free and that’s where the communication about affordability can start to break down. It’s even harder to broadcast a clear signal in places like Detroit, where taxes were outrageously high in 2013 and yet the city still went bankrupt.
Government finance officers deal with different demands from different audiences. But the culprit here isn’t elected officials or taxpayers (who among us wouldn’t want to pay less in taxes and pocket more cash?). It’s that most finance officers’ resources are sucked up by the time-consuming financial reporting required by the regulatory and municipal market audience, leaving little left over for reporting and explaining financial outcomes to the rest of us. But in relying on those complex financial reports to communicate outcomes and fiscal balance to the public, governments can obscure the stuff that really matters.
Look at pensions, which get all bogged down in odd-sounding terms like “actuarial value” and “discount rate.” It wasn’t until ballooning pension payments in the 2010s started hitting taxpayers’ pocketbooks that governments’ questionable funding practices got the attention they deserved.
Less is more
Many of us tend to equate length with effort or importance. But anyone familiar with the 80/20 rule knows that’s not actually true. In the context of news stories and government financial reports, 80% of the information immediately relevant to the general public can likely be found in 20% of the document.
Given the title of this newsletter, I’m obviously a believer in less is more. It’s also a lot harder to write a 400-word story versus a 1,200-word one so producing “less” can actually be more time consuming. It’s hard enough gathering all the information, but determining what pieces are most relevant to readers—rather than reporting out everything—requires even more effort from the expert. So, the misconception that length = effort can make doing this a big turn-off.
I learned this when I wrote for the now-defunct local section of the Washington Examiner over a decade ago. The tabloid-size publication was about one-tenth the size of the Washington Post and stories were typically around 400-500 words. For cover stories, we got a whopping 800 words.
There were no stories about puppies, though I did once (very happily) cover the birth of a panda at the National Zoo. The local section focused on the stuff that mattered with reporters covering the counties, D.C., education, transit, sports, economic development and crime. Over the course of a 45-minute metro commute, I could read that day’s paper cover-to-cover (minus the opinion section) and feel informed about the latest regional and national news. On the ride back, I’d tackle the Sudoku and crossword.
Some folks couldn’t look past the Examiner’s less-is-more approach. But most readers liked it because they got a lot of value from it. Working there was grueling. But it made me a better writer and that experience plays a big role in my ability today to translate the weird world of public finance into language everybody can understand.
Authentic audience engagement
Like most media outlets, the Examiner’s higher-ups placed too much importance on website clicks and stories going viral. Owens’ newsletter noted that, “So many media outlets have failed over the past 15-or-so years simply because they were too focused on raw traffic numbers at the expense of true audience engagement.”
In the world of local government, tax hikes or cuts tend to go viral. “Extra” money also gets a lot of attention whether its budget surpluses or unprecedented amounts of federal pandemic aid. The budget basics of more money or less money is very easy to understand. What takes more work is making it just as easy to understand the reason for more or less money. That information is in financial reports, but how that information is conveyed to the public tends to fall short.
Some of you might be thinking: “But the only time we hear from most constituents is when their pocketbooks are threatened or when there’s ‘free’ money!!” That may be true in terms of traffic numbers. But that doesn’t represent everything people care about.
Why else would voters willingly tax themselves by approving school bonds at such a high rate? (Even in tax-adverse Texas?) And while “fiscal responsibility” tends to be a snoozer of a campaign message, it works with the right communicator.
Read more
Jerry Brown Pushes Fiscal Responsibility in (Calif.) State of the State (2016)
Anthony Williams’ assurances of solid fiscal leadership resonated with D.C. voters (1998)
Moreover, as Owens also notes, not all audiences are created equal. Meaningful engagement with a handful of people can lead to greater understanding than speaking through a megaphone to hundreds.
I’m reminded of a story I once wrote about negotiating pension reform with unions. The breaking point is always the math. Once everyone’s on the same page with that, the conversation opens up and those few union reps then carry the message.
Public finance—what the public gives to the government for the greater good and where that money goes—is complex. Relying on one way to reach all audiences just isn’t enough to cut through the noise.