Mobile Edition
Print
Get the Mag
Weekly UpdatesI am a consultant for ballot measures, issue advocacy, and candidates in California. One of the first questions my clients always ask is: When do we get to meet with editorial boards?
That's because even in a world where tweets are replacing blogs, where texts are replacing emails, where Facebook has replaced the need to have face-to-face conversations, and where YouTube ensures that every irrelevant campaign ad without adequate funding to buy air time can still find a relevant audience, it turns out people still want to sit in a room with knowledgeable journalists to have a substantive conversation about their campaign or issue.
In the heat of the campaign, there's little that's more satisfying than going before the judge and juries of thoughtful editorial writers with your A-Team of influential spokespeople and persuading a room of skeptics to support your view.
Does that make favorable editorials and columns critical to the success of the campaign? Not necessarily. Let's face it--the sad reality is that newsrooms are thinning out faster than contestants on The Biggest Loser, and some major metro daily newspapers are now about as thick as Chinese take-out menus. It's up to the campaigns to make positive editorials and columns matter to voters.
Despite this seismic shift we've seen in the newspaper business, the brand identity of some newspapers and certain editorial writers still resonates with many voters, whether they're willing to pony up for a newspaper subscription, or not.
Two political trends will only continue to bolster this need for credible messengers: the growing ranks of decline-to-state voters and the increasing tendency to micro-target political campaigns.
True to their name, independent voters say that they prefer to find information about candidates and issues independently. In focus groups, they say they don't trust information they receive in the mail or on television and in radio ads. Instead, they are increasingly turning to podcasts, interesting blogs, and Websites that they trust. That's good news for enterprising opinion writers who have learned to distribute their information in varying and ever-changing media.
And, as campaigns work to micro-target their audience, the political bent of the editorial can be used to devastating effect, whether in a 30-second campaign ad, a mail piece or taken door-to-door. The micro-targeting can be by region, by ethnicity, by gender, or even by sub-groups of political parties.
For example, when the Sacramento Bee's traditionally conservative syndicated columnist Dan Waiters wrote a couple of columns that seemed to make the case supporting funding for public schools during California's remarkably painful budget process, education groups didn't hesitate to redistribute the rare gems to right-leaning legislators.
The fact is, a thoughtful, well-written opinion piece, when wielded properly in a campaign, can cut through the white noise of wall-to-wall campaign commercials.
And nothing can replace the face-to-face meetings where editorial writers and campaign representatives can cut through the talking points and get down to the nuts and bolts. Sometimes, even the tone and tenor set by the spokespeople in the room can help editorial writers get the real scoop.
In the last election cycle, I attended an editorial board meeting for California's Farm Animal Protection Act, where a hired gun by the opposition played the role of a struggling single mother and theatrically presented proponents' free-range eggs that she claimed she "couldn't afford." The stunt could've worked for a television audience in a press conference setting, but the editorial writers ultimately saw through the smoke and mirrors, writing one of the most thoughtful opinion pieces of the entire campaign. (Though perhaps watching her drive away in her BMW SUV, or discovering her $20K per month retainer ultimately confirmed suspicions that something about her story and her insistence that she wasn't a paid flack wasn't quite right.) And in this particular scenario, the editorial writers also did their due diligence with plenty of follow-up conversations to clarify specific economic arguments.
This kind of thoughtful exchange almost never happens in a "virtual" environment. Though time is limited for busy editorial writers, it would be a shame if in-person meetings were a casualty of newspaper downsizing. While content is being developed, real conversations and in-person exchanges are irreplaceable. But once the editorial is inked (or pixelated), distributing the piece in diverse media and ensuring that readers can be involved in an online dialogue about it is critical to its relevance.
Responsible editors are going to have to strike a careful online balance, working to break down the stereotype of the aloof editorial writer for an audience hooked on reality television and used to giving credence to information presented by the everyman.
Though most readers will never see the inside of an editorial board meeting, their experiences and online exchanges can help add real-life applications to sometimes cerebral editorials, and should be given enough space that they feel invested in both the issue and the venue. Ultimately, the online "comments" sections are the new "letters to the editor" and show just how engaged a reader is with a particular writer or piece.
So my final 140-character "tweet" for the editorial writers of America is this: GOOD EDITORIAL WRITING WILL ALWAYS BE RELEVANT, AS LONG AS U ADAPT TO NEW METHODS OF DISTRIBUTION AND LET UR READERS JOIN IN ON THE ACTION.
Robin Swanson is a principal in Swanson Communications, a political consulting firm in Sacramento, California. Email robin@swansoncommunications.net
FEED