I was working on a response to an enquiry early today from a well-known broadsheet. The journalist’s name stuck out as someone I had dealt with in the past.
After a quick Google, I found her Twitter page. I remembered that the last time I searched for her, I saw a tweet commenting on how many out of office email replies she’d gotten from council press officers, saying they were lazy and workshy or words to that effect.
A tweet I saw on her Twitter page today made reference to a particular council press office with the comment, “Those that can’t become council press officers.”
I’d like to see her do a day in this press office. It’s not all parks openings and bin collections, you know, although with Pickles on the rampage, the latter is enough to keep us in business most of the time.
Today I’ve dealt with Panorama regarding ID fraud discussing our months of filming with them, BBC TV news about Brent Council winning the judicial review on library closures and organising an interview for them, a child trafficking piece for the Times we worked with the Home Office on following a prosecution that couldn’t have been won without this council and a particularly nasty enquiry from another broadsheet. I’ve also kept my eye on the HS2 debate in parliament, the No to HS2 campaign being a priority for this council.
I of course answered her enquiry quickly and professionally.
As well as these reactive stories, today I’ve met with the Leader of this council to talk about how we can let more old people in the borough know about our schemes to keep them warm in the winter and how we can work with Age UK get them more volunteers.
While I’ve been doing this, my colleagues have been working on more enquiries and pushing stories so we can let our residents know what services we provide and what we’re using their council tax to do.
We deal with enquiries because we get an endless stream of them from journalists and it’s fair and right that we have right of reply, even though our responses to stories are frequently ignored and left out.
This job isn’t glamorous. I’m not trying to get a client’s new nail polish in a magazine or bribing a journalist with a new product or getting them drunk in the hope they’ll write something positive about my company. But what this council does is important.
We are a particularly good press office at this council. And I know that because journalists, as well as other communications professionals, tell us so.
I am fiercely proud to do what I do and take strong exception to anyone who thinks that local government PR is a soft option. It’s really not.
