In Nieman Lab the other day, Laura Hazard Owen wrote:
When most Americans decide how to spend their time, it is not with the news. In the coming years, an exhausted public is even more likely to tune out, and that includes the most engaged news consumers.
I think a broad range of nonprofit organizations, particularly in the advocacy and social change space, are already facing the same ambivalence. And should expect it to get worse.
By creating content and stories that aren’t useful we’re not reaching people. We’re creating information deserts that are quickly filled by a rush of emotion, fear, and simplistic us vs. them messages.
Information deserts
The US has more than enough food to keep everyone comfortably fed and meet nutritional requirements. But we still have urban and rural food deserts, food banks, food rescues and a wealth of nutritional deficits.
There are lots of reasons for this. Economic incentives don’t reward putting grocery stores in low-income neighborhoods. We view poverty as a personal failure and don’t, as a society, ensure access to food for everyone.
Communications rich but starved for information we can use.
Many people and communities are blocked from useful information by structural disincentives.
Advertisers aren’t excited about reaching people who won’t or can’t spend disposable income on packaged foods, electronics, pharmaceuticals and more.
And many folks - be they immigrants, low-income, working class - are disconnected from the media world. They may be hard to reach by email or websites. They probably aren’t working in or well-represented in newsrooms and certainly aren’t walking the halls of ad and PR firms.
This analysis applies, at least in general terms, to political parties, nonprofits and news organizations.
The irony is that the disconnect is conversely related to the size of the institution, the budget, the the resources, the communications team, the spend on digital ads and list building.
The money, testing, messaging is directed away the disconnected communities.
Yet they’re spoken of in the third person: Black women, Latino men, immigrants, working class.
When you’re hungry you eat what you can get. Even if it’s not good for you.
When you need info you take what you can get. You type a search into YouTube. You listen to radio. You pay attention to a voice that helps make sense of things.
Trump's jumble of racism, finger pointing and bluster soaks all the way through, reaching the dry places and slacking the thirst of sensemaking.
Greening the desert
I’ve seen a lot written about the left’s need to have a media infrastructure that competes with Fox News and Joe Rogan. I’m using those as proxies for a larger ecosystem that includes a handful of companies (Sinclair, for example) that control thousands of TV and radio stations in the majority of US markets.
That’s a big project. Perhaps one worthy of tackling. But know that you’re talking about timeline that’s generational or longer. And it’s insufficient at best. (who am I to say it won’t work? Maybe. Maybe not.)
There are simpler places to start. Though simple isn’t the same as easy because (see above) there are a lot of structural disincentives to greening the information desert.
Create content that meets people’s needs and interests.
Develop content, marketing and engagement strategies that reach people who aren’t engaged with us.
Strategies that reach people who aren’t relying on email. Or who aren’t trained to see and use email as an engagement tool.
Let’s assume that many of the people who moved to Trump (or stayed home) are motivated by inflation. Food prices in particular. There’s plenty of news out there about egg prices and the macro factors involved in food prices. But the messengers are wrong (big national media pundits and reporters) and the angles are irrelevant to most people. Sure, some of us want food price stories with a side of political and macroeconomic analysis. But we’re the exception.
A Wirecutter for groceries may seem like an odd idea but it’s an example of creating content that reaches people through their needs. As Laura Hazard Owen writes, “local news outlets cannot change grocery prices. But they can help their readers deal with them.” For years the Sunday paper had pages of coupons (and large full color comics, RIP). Coupons gave some a reason to subscribe. It gave many others a shared sense of what food cost. Meanwhile, food sections were practical with recipes and product reviews.
Food stories today, if they exist at all, are reviews of high dollar restaurants and debates over macroeconomics. Very little is useful to most people.
This can be turned around without building a media empire.
Be IN the desert
Another thought: be present in the community. Digital, email and social media hold the promise of reaching people at scale. I love this. But scale is a marketing term. Nobody wants be a data point that’s lumped into a segment and reached (or not) at scale.
Digital marketing (and digital advocacy and digital fundraising) is fast and data-filled. We can measure, test, report, learn, repeat.
Somewhere along the way, though, nonprofit membership and news organizations came to think of lists, visitors and followers as community. But a visit is not a relationship. Neither is a return visit.
I’m excited to see in person events like the annual Texas Tribune festival, the Colorado Sun’s SunFest or Westword’s member events that have included food, music and even psychedelics (it is Denver).
Any good organizer (or party planner) would tell you that’s the tip of the iceberg. Organizations can meet and talk to people at local events and concerts, speak at community meetings, tables at the ever present farmers market. You can advertise on local radio, in community newspapers and online forums. You can host coffees and meetups in food halls and pubs. Local news organizations and nonprofits can partner on stories, research, advertising.
Reading
If you want to see my running list of Trump is a fool and we're all doomed bookmarks I can share those. Just ask. But trying to keep it constructive. To wit:
The US Is a Civic Desert. To Survive, the Democratic Party Needs to Transform Itself. [Pete Davis, The Nation. Nov 11]
The structures of an effective field: what we can learn from the nonprofit news sector in the newsletter Democracy Takes. It comes with this Editor’s Note (from their editor, not me, but I agree with the sentiment):
Editor’s note: I’m obsessed with this piece. What INN does to support nonprofit news organizations lacks a parallel in the US democracy space.
Describes the data sharing and collaborative learning across the diverse nonprofit news space. This process, facilitated for several years by INN (Institute for Nonprofit News)
Shannon Mattern’s Local News seminar curriculum and field guide is brilliant and inspirational. This class looks so fun.
Getting past newsroom myopia. Stephen J. Adler on collaborating with local partners in Columbia Journalism Review. I'd say "local partners" could take the offensive here. Don't be a wallflower.
Mapping hegemonic power in a time of monsters by Natasha Adams. This is from 2019 but a useful primer on power mapping and campaigning in "these times."
Flooding the channels: Information abundance and narrative change. The chaos, craziness and noise is intended to make you look away. How do we help people NOT look away. I talked to some very smart people in 2019 and wrote this for Narrative Initiative.
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