A group of mayors visiting Columbus this week explained their strategies for gaining support for big community projects, saying they use everything from live video streaming to old-fashioned newsletters to get their message out.
As part of a regional session for the Mayor’s Institute on City Design, the mayors gave their views during an open-to-the-public panel discussion Thursday night at Upland Columbus Pump House in the city’s downtown, giving about 30 local residents a chance to welcome the mayors to Columbus and learn more about their cities.
After a welcome by Richard McCoy, who leads Landmark Columbus, which brought the institute here this week, AIM Media Group Vice President and Group Publisher Bud Hunt led the mayors through a series of questions about how they work to communicate to their residents, and how the media plays into that communication strategy.
Bruce Wilkerson, mayor of Bowling Green, Kentucky, said his city issues press releases to the media in an effort to lead the conversation.
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“If we are the first to get the information out, we set the narrative,” he said.
Each of the mayors has a different media landscape to navigate, with the cities represented having a variety of print, radio and television coverage — some who focus and location are the city, but others who are from bigger cities nearby.
It is not unusual for Jacob Day, the mayor of Salisbury, Maryland, to interact every day with multiple journalists representing a variety of news outlets, he said.
Day said his administration does as much media-direct-to-consumer as it does with journalists, using the new tools of social media that are now available.
Live-stream video to Facebook is prepared for city residents to watch either live, or saved on social media, and reporters are invited to come to filming to ask questions during the broadcast, he said.
Mayor Paige Brown of Gallatin, Tennessee, said her administration also prepares video clips for social media that are shared with journalists.
Brown, who revealed she worked as a journalist for many years, allowed that the Nashville television market, which serves Gallatin, has some inexperienced journalists in their first jobs working in a smaller market who are being asked to do so much more than every before with news coverage.
The decline of print journalism has affected Fairhope, Alabama, where Mayor Karin Wilson pointed out the city had a daily newspaper that has since gone down to publishing three days a week.
“To get the news out, I want to make sure we are creating it,” she said. Wilson said she enjoys talking to constituents through social media and her blog as complex issues “cannot be communicated through a sound bite.”
Mayor Michael Vandersteen, of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, said he appears on local radio shows to recap what happens in city council meetings and the city does live-stream of meetings for constituents. The city administration also posts a monthly newsletter on social media and is active on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Mayor Stephanie Orman, of Bentonville, Arkansas, said she works to build relationships with local media to make sure they are telling the story the city administration wants them to convey.
Columbus Mayor Jim Lienhoop, who was also part of the panel, talked about the city moving into social media with at least five Facebook pages (overall city page with individual departments) and increasing the ways for constituents to contact city officials.
“We try to be accessible — we allow any city employee to talk to anyone, including the media,” he said. Lienhoop meets monthly with The Republic and also does a monthly radio show to connect with listeners.
The mayors said it is sometimes difficult to gauge just how engaged the community is in city business, or big community projects, and the media is essential in helping mayors get the message out.
“The media’s role is pretty significant when we have an engagement challenge,” Day said. When a reporter or videographer is not seen at an event or announcement, it may signal a message about its importance to city residents, he said.
Wilson said when complex issues are being discussed, she wants to make sure that even the shyest person in the room feels comfortable sharing their viewpoint. At roundtable discussions, Wilson said the focus is on how everyone can have input on a project.
The mayors shared a few laughs with each other during the session, including some after Brown mentioned that a city newsletter is shared with residents in utility bills, harkening back to the long-ago days before instantaneous communication through social media and websites.
And Brown also got a few nods of appreciation when, as a former journalist, she said the words “no comment” are not a mayor’s friend.
“We try to be very quick to respond and get out in front of issues, be real and be forthright,” she said. Instead of “no comment,” Brown advised to be honest when the information isn’t known, and telling reporters the administration doesn’t have enough information right now.
“Relationships matter,” she said. “It’s about building trust.”
[sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”About Landmark Columbus” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]
To learn more about Landmark Columbus, visit landmarkcolumbus.org.
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To learn more about the Mayors Institute on City Design Regional Session, visit micd.org.
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