For more than a dozen years now, I’ve been picking up copies of the Potomac Basin Reporter, newsletter of the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin. You can reliably find it on the brochure rack at outdoor stores and park visitor centers all around the Washington DC metropolitan area.
Somebody went to a lot of trouble at one point to set up this network of outlets, and it’s still a viable way to get the good word out. Instinctively, we know that outdoorsy people are more likely to care about the river than couch potatoes, and research tells us outdoorsy people are also more active in civic life than the couch potato set. So putting our message in front of them this way is just plain smart.
But my spidey senses are tingling, and they’re telling me this particular effort isn’t quite fulfilling on its promise. That’s because there’s a mismatch between how the newsletter is circulated and and how it’s written. Many issues are chock full of terminology that most park goers and outdoor store shoppers won’t get: watershed, nonregulatory, stormwater, and plenty of government-insider acronyms. It’s kind of like trying to entertain a bunch of six year olds by popping an episode of PBS Masterpiece Theater in the DVD player.
How does this happen? Probably because the editorial board is a group of earnest professionals who use each other as the frame of reference — and have completely lost sight of the potential readers browsing the brochure rack at REI.
So here’s a quick tip for improving the newsletter, and it won’t cost a penny or hurt a bit: Next time the editorial board meets to discuss the upcoming issue, they should do it at one of the parks where the newsletter is distributed. As they discuss what to include, what to leave out, and how to write it, they can observe the families with strollers and picnic baskets milling about, eavesdrop on the fishermen asking questions to the park rangers, and watch the school groups romp in front of the educational displays.
If they do that, I bet the gap between the language and the audience will start to close.
Anybody else got a suggestion to share?
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This is always the trick: to provide good information about complex topics in a way that is interesting to the public. I think the usual approach I see is to avoid the problem and just dumb down the content and focus on less complex issues. But it is important to get word out about regulatory issues, etc.
One key is to always be asking yourself as you write something: why does my audience care about this? can they affect the outcome? what suggestions can I give about how they can be involved at the level(s) they feel comfortable?
In our highly educated area (Triangle NC), most frustrations I hear voiced on the part of the public are not that there is too much jargon (although doubtless that is a problem), it’s that they are inundated with information without guidance about what they are supposed to DO with it.
Make it personal, make it relevant, make it constructive. Even though calls to action may not be heeded directly, over time they build a sense of efficacy on the part of the public.
“Even though calls to action may not be heeded directly, over time they build a sense of efficacy on the part of the public.”
I wanted to pull out Sarah’s point here and express agreement with that. Most people will ignore most opportunities to make a difference, but some people will respond to some opportunities and that’s how the world changes for the better.
Interesting discussion. Here’s a thought — what about turning Eric’s example about 6-year-olds and Masterpiece Theatre on its head? I think an argument could be made that this publication, and many others like it, is actually too much like Sesame Street and not enough like Masterpiece Theatre. That is, it’s rather bland and “educational,” and doesn’t offer sophisticated adults much to sink their teeth into.
I completely agree with Sarah’s points about the importance of writers asking themselves why the audience cares about a given issue and what the audience can do about it. Many publications tend to focus on “Let us tell you about all the things our organization is doing” rather than on “Here’s information you can use.”
I also agree with Eric that publications like this are peppered with too many insider words — another symptom of the disconnect between writer and audience. However, it seems to me that the audience for this particular publication probably isn’t “the public” in the broadest sense but rather a subset of the public that is more informed about Potomac River issues and is looking for something meaty. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend pitching this publication at “the school groups romping in front of the educational displays.”
One final comment — I don’t want to be too hard on the Potomac Basin Reporter. I’ve certainly seen worse!
Seconded. As someone who is probably a member of the “educated lay public,” I have often been frustrated by the lack of information targeted to this audience. That is, you can either find extremely basic information or extremely technical information, and often there isn’t much in between. Without knowing what else is out there or much about its content, I think it is quite possible that this publication fulfills an important need. Someone needs to be talking about fixing the bureaucracy that produces all these crappy decisions.
Eric’s point that there is a mismatch between the audience and how it is distributed is well taken, though. The Potomac Reporter might be worth mailing to a targeted set of individuals, and perhaps having a separate publication that is more of a general-interest type of thing, more colorful and less jargony.
I would be interested to know if the inside has as many good images as the cover. I think images are a super-important and often underutilized tool to help bridge that gap Eric was talking about.
Great suggestion about having two different publications for the different audiences. I think a lot of organizations try to make one publication do double duty or triple duty — understandable in terms of limited budgets and staff time, but not an effective way to reach people.