Saucon Valley orgs need to get serious about public information
It shocks me how little so many community organizations in Saucon Valley are willing to do to provide up-to-date news about themselves.
Only a few local groups regularly send out press releases, for example, and the whole notion of a “public relations” specialist or even a marketing expert for orgs seems almost non-existent.
It’s not that complicated or time-consuming, after all, to write a press release for your local cup-cake bake-off.
But there’s a big expectation that the Fourth Estate (look it up!) is supposed to swoop in, hold the hands of people in local orgs and gently coax and sweet-talk news out of them. Sorry, that ain’t how it works in 2022.
The local media needs your help. When I worked as a community news editor in Texas, I regularly received excellent or at least passable press releases for events written by ordinary citizens who were volunteers for the local Cub Scouts, Lions, Rotary, etc.
Faces were IDed in photos, photo captions were complete and relationships with spokespeople gingerly cultivated. The media were treated with respect, too, but never fear nor hostility.
The Borough, Hellertown Borough and Lower Saucon Police departments, Hellertown Lions, American Legion Post 397 are exceptions that make the rule in terms of PR. They really do seem to try on social media to get the word out, despite a few misspellings and typos (that local editors can normally fix), and that makes an enormous difference in enriching public life.
Lower Saucon Police have some great public Facebook posts on their public-facing page.
But social media isn’t enough, particularly if you don’t have trained specialists handling your org’s social media strategy.
The worst offender, by far, and most inexcusable in terms of budget, is the Saucon Valley School District.
It can’t market itself for diddly, assigns no one truly qualified—ie, someone not reflecting the generally hyper-paranoid, defensive and, to my mind, rather unprofessional posture of the district toward its publics—to serve as a voluble press contact. It’s hurting the brand, too.
On top of that, I have regularly seen legitimate public requests to the district for the most innocuous basic information treated like criminal conspiracies.
The school district needs a skilled, dedicated Public Relations Director—someone who strives to work with the local press and publics, who isn’t straitjacketed by some overzealous and narrowly educated district lawyer, and who understands social and online media.
Meanwhile, month after month, critical information flows between the school board, the administration and a few select members of the public via secretive texts and an irregular, unschooled public relations patchwork of posts and webpages. Is that transparency?
But why am I surprised at this state of affairs?
I shouldn’t be. Writing a press release means writing. People don’t read much in 2022, and so they can’t write very well or often.
There are also too few volunteers in Saucon Valley in general to serve organizations as press-release writers, press contacts or marketing specialists.
When I was a news editor, often there was someone who liked writing in college or maybe majored in the liberal arts who crafted decent releases for their orgs. I loved these folks. Where are they now?
An example of Lower Saucon Police Department’s very effective social media work. Image: Lower Saucon Police Department Facebook Page
